Berserk: With Darkness Ink Hardcover – February 15, 2021

A beautiful book that came plastic wrapped and in excellent condition. It also has a built in ribbon book mark. My husband has enjoyed delving deeper into the lore of the manga Berserk!

“Reasons for pain. Reasons for sadness. Reasons for life. Reasons for death. Reasons why their lives were filled with suffering. Reasons why their deaths were absurd. [Humans] wanted reasons for the destiny that kept transcending their knowledge. And I produce those, as it is what I have been brought into existence for.”-THE IDEA OF EVIL.

Creo que pocos análisis lograrían el análisis tan profundo, extenso y lleno de referencias ocultas que este trabajo contiene. No es un libro de arte sino más bien un tratado de nivel TESIS DOCTORAL de Berserk desde un análisis muy de fan, pero también con una objetividad aplaudiste

Excellent book. Personally love how it explores the religious, literary, historical, and movies that have inspired berserks writings. You can tell the writer passionately loves the series

The book arrived almost great condition

Only con is sometimes the pacing of the essay can be unnecessarily drawn out at parts. And there's some translation errors. But it's totally worth it! The insight into Berserk is fascinating, made me realize a lot of details I missed in the manga. It also got me to watch Hellraiser and Flesh and Blood which are both excellent movies that inspired Berserk! I would recommend this to anyone who considers themselves a diehard berserk fan.

It came really quick but was odd for it to be wrapped in plastic, there’s a small stain of something on one of the upper pages where the bookmark is.

I hadn't heard of Quentin "Alt 236" Boeton before, but he's apparently a big name in the Francophone Berserk fandom, and as a result he had one of his longer books translated for English fans to enjoy. Long story short, it's absolutely fantastic and 100% deserves a spot on the shelf of just about anyone who considers themself a fan of Berserk.Short story longer:After a preface detailing the intent of his book to analyze (but not provide definitive explanations of) the story and worldbuilding of Kentaro Miura's manga Berserk, and an introduction giving a serviceable (but far from exhaustive, it's not enough to give completely new fans an idea of what the author is talking about) rundown on the main plot points to get Berserk fans back up to speed, the bulk of the book consists of 4 parts, all worth reading: Antihero Quest, Exploring the Darkness, The Builder of the Universe, and The Labyrinth of Imagination. All four parts demonstrate both Boeton's enthusiasm for the series, his probing analytical eye, and the sizable amount of reading he's done. Antihero Quest examines the most important characters (Guts, Griffith, Casca) personally from both psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives, as well as Gut's personal journey from both the depths of horror to the lightheartedness Puck provides. Exploring the Darkness looks at Miura's inspiration from European history when constructing his fictional European setting of Midland as well as the fictional Asian antagonists whose name was taken from a real-life empire, the Kushans. Boeton also examines how brutal and violent this world seems to generally be, considering the profusion of body horror, rape, and other terrible things throughout it. Exploring the Darkness takes a turn to the metaphysical, and I mean this in the philosophical sense--Miura examines the role of the Beherits and what they say about the basic principles of the story (including an aside on the Skull Knight as a Deus ex Machina, from Miura's perspective), even deeper than its European setting--causality, destiny, and the role of God--even if an evil God--in putting that causality in motion. On that note, he turns to Berserk's theology, exploring its visions of the afterlife and the implied Apocalypse that seems to be coming. Finally, "Labyrinth of the Imagination" examines Miura's takes on mythology and legend (and their conflicts with organized religion) in the context of the story itself, then the various stories and pieces of art Miura might have considered as an artist, author, and fan, like Escher and Bosch, ending the main text with some quotes from interviews where Miura describes his own life and philosophy of creation, and explaining how that perspective might have influenced his work. I consider myself pretty well-read, both in terms of the manga itself, its supplemental material, and other things Miura might have taken inspiration from, but even I didn't see some of the connections Boeton finds, such as Miura's possible inspiration from the films of Ken Russel (not just his well-known inspiration from Clive Barker's Hellraiser), inspiration from stories like Treasure Island, intriguing connections between the philosophy of David Hume and causality as it appears in the plot of Berserk, and the art of Francisco Goya, among many other sources. This book is just bursting at the seams with all kinds of interesting information and intriguing interpretations, I don't see how anyone who likes Berserk would want to pass it up.I have some very minor caveats about the text. First, while the translation is generally excellent, there seem to be some minor errors--one sentence on page 132 reads, "When Guts says, 'unfortunately there's no way for man to change the course of this festival," it should be "when Skull Knight says," as that line comes at chapter 142, and it's Skull Knight speaking to Guts, not the other way around. Also, there are citations in the essays and a good bibliography, but I wish there had been a little more in the way of citation. Sometimes Boeton mentions where he's quoting directly from the French translations (in the U.S, Berserk has been licensed by Dark Horse, but France has its own official translations), but more often he doesn't, and I wish he'd made that a little clearer in the book in case there were intriguing differences between the French and English official localizations. Also, in general, more citations of specific chapter numbers (if not page numbers) might have made it easier for newer Berserk fans or those who haven't reread the manga as much as I and other old-timer fans have. But, again, these are trifling concerns, hardly enough to take away from an easy 5-star rating.Finally, I must gush about the quality of the actual, physical book itself. Aside from the sturdy and pleasing construction of the hard covers, the excellent art of the Skull Knight on the front, the fine quality of the print as well as the pictures contained within (no art from the manga itself assuemdly due to copyright reasons, but some pictures of classic artwork Boeton describes in relation to Berserk, as well as chapter bookends and the Dragon Slayer on the sides of the pages), and the nice little red bookmark cloth that's part of the binding, this is a really professional, well-done piece of work; you'd never expect it was written by a fan as opposed to someone working for Dark Horse Publishing. Overall, it's definitely right up there with anything released officially in English. An absolute must-have for Berserk fans!