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Berserk creator Kentaro Miura has always been a perfectionist; it is why the series had so many long delays before his death in 2021. However, that drive for perfection also pushed him to create some truly breathtaking scenes in Berserk. It also presented some interesting problems for the artist when Guts travelled to Elfhelm in Volume 39, and the scale of the elf population suddenly struck Miura.

During a 2019 interview, Kentaro Miura talked about the level of detail in his drawings. His immediate response was rather self-deprecating. “The level of detail I put into my drawings is an illness. There’s no other way to describe it,” he said. Volume 39, which sees Guts travel to Elfhelm, presented a unique problem for this “illness.”

“The scale of the elves was something I hadn’t considered,” Miura explained. Having so many characters the same size as Puck on one page at the same time was incredibly difficult when we actually tried it. And then you want to give each and every one of them a reaction. They have souls, after all.”

This is, of course, all a problem of Miura’s own making; few other comic book artists would attempt the level of detail in their work. The result, however, is that the world of Berserk feels remarkably alive. There are no copy-and-paste expressions, no fudged details or lazy backgrounds. Everything feels unique and individual, which makes it feel like we’re peering through the panel into a fully-developed world. 

The level of detail in Miura’s work may have been unhealthy, but it earned him a reputation as one of the greatest comic book artists of all time.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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