Artwork of Berserk interview - End of page 4 & beginning of page 5

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Page 1: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Page 2: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Page 3: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Page 4: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3


Interviewer: The berserk's armor has become a big weapon for Guts after the Dragon Slayer, I see.

Miura: As a manga continues for a long time, the powers or skills are definitely inflated (1) but it should be controled. Sometimes it happens that when drawing at the suitable speed for a weekly serialization, we can’t handle it in the end. So I think I want to control that inflation as much as possible.

The big inflations in "Berserk" are twofold: when magic was introduced and when the berserk’s armor was introduced. It's also an element where the well-known parts in "Berserk" go on to the next stage. With magic's introduction, the world view is changed, and as Guts in the berserk's armor gets into serious action, he takes one step away from "humans' sense of physicality" that I’ve drawn so far. So I should inflate things after being conscious of this point. The color drawing (we talked about) minutes ago was drawn at a time when I felt a response that the inflation "went well".

And watercolor paintings (2) for the calendar or paintings for the card game have remained in my memory since their colors are different from my usual ones. I enjoyed being able to draw scenes of Guts' group's everyday life without being bound by restrictions, unlike in a tankōbon. I used to do watercolor paintings on the back of the posters (3) in the tankōbon. Watercolor paintings are good to realize the feeling of everyday life, so I wanted to paint scenes of (their) journey with it.

Image caption: Drafts that he has been working on. We can see the process of drawing characters (step by step).


Note 1: Miura specifically uses the word "Inflation" (インフレ) throughout this part.
Note 2: Miura uses a Japanese word here (淡彩). Its literal meaning is "light coloring". In the art world it refers to wash, the technique of diluting ink or paint in water. The meaning is a little wider than "watercolor", but he's referring to the same thing, so for clarity's sake I just translated it as "watercolor".
Note 3: He uses the word "pin-up" to refer to posters, a common use in Japanese.