Looking back on the promotion of volume 41 in three newspapers worldwide

Here are some pictures of the newspaper ads for volume 41 that ran in Asahi Shimbun, the New York Times and Le Monde on December 24 & 25.

The collage at the beginning is at scale, although the NYT was scanned flat by Walter (while everything else is from a single photo I took) and so the perspective isn't perfect. For reference, the NYT is 55.88 x 31.75 cm as measured by Walter while the Asahi Shimbun is 55 x 40 cm and Le Monde is 47 x 32 cm.

Besides the sizes, each edition has its specificities: Le Monde is in color and the others in black & white, they feature different artwork and have different bonuses (accessible via a QR code). But what's most notable remains the art chosen for the New York Times by Hakusensha and Dark Horse.

It is a never-seen-before redrawing of volume 27's cover, but puzzingly, it doesn't seem to be from Miura. It's similar to his style, but falls short of his skill. It's also not a sketch for the painting, as it looks inked and differs in strange ways. It really just feels like an imitation from another artist. Yet it's Miura's name on the advertisement. A baffling decision if there ever was one.

Young Animal actually issued a long promotional interview about this marketing campaign, translated in both English and French, which you can find here. It's a self-congratulatory puff piece and was likely included in the ad package they bought, but it does touch upon the artwork. Unfortunately, it stays quiet on this particular issue.

Here are noteworthy excerpts:

[At first, Hakusensha considered running an entirely digital ad campaign, but in the course of repeated internal discussions, they landed upon the idea of using newspapers: “What made us decide to use newspaper ads was above all the texture of paper, which would enable the appeal of Miura’s penwork to be reproduced to the maximum extent. Other key  reasons were the sense of size that can only newspapers can reproduce, and the fact that newspapers can actually be delivered to readers in tangible form. We felt that something tangible delivered to readers in  the real world would be more likely to move them than image data  accessed digitally.”]

Given the desire to showcase Miura's "penwork", one can't help but question anew the decision to use an unpublished drawing that as far as we know isn't actually from him...

[“For The Asahi Shimbun and The New York Times we selected illustrations that would make a strong impact precisely because they were black-and-white. As it was extremely difficult to actually reproduce Miura’s color illustrations in black-and-white, we had The Asahi Shimbun’s printing plant undertake multiple trial print runs of different versions. It was thanks to these trial print runs that we were able to ensure that the final images accompanying the ads were of a satisfactory standard.

In Le Monde’s case, as the newspaper’s format is a little longer vertically than Japanese newspapers, and the ad was in color, we used a full-body illustration, and it fitted very well. For the two overseas newspapers we arranged a collage of manga panels in the background of the images, so that even people seeing these images for the first time would realize that Berserk is a manga."]

This comment contains some interesting details. Could it be that the painting used for volume 27's cover just wasn't cutting it for the NYT's printing quality? Hakusensha wasn't in charge over there, and Dark Horse... Well, we're familiar with their frequent displays of incompetence. Still, plenty of other iconic artwork from Miura could have been used.

Also strange is the comment about Le Monde's format, given that the NYT is by far the "narrowest" of the three. I did wonder whether that might have been a factor, but I made  a mockup (see above) and the painting could have fit. Maybe they deemed it problematic to crop it, it's hard to say. Still would have been better than impersonating Miura as far as I'm concerned.

Besides the why, there's also the who. Who drew this illustration? Someone from Studio Gaga, at YA's request? Seems to be the most plausible hypothesis. The only way to know for sure about all of this would be to ask Young Animal's staff directly. I considered replying to the official Twitter account to ask, but ended up not going through with it. Not sure they'd bother with a response. It still gnaws at me though...