BakaBT
Discussion Forums => Manga => Topic started by: Xemnarth on April 30, 2009, 06:26:42 AM
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I've recently purchased the first three official English volumes of my long-awaited favorite manga of all time, Berserk.
Re-read the whole of volume 1 and noticed that some pages were not presented in the full size and were rather slightly cut, re-sized or fit to page. Also noticed that page numbers weren't available where they're supposed to (but it seems volumes 2+ started to have 'em).
I'm starting to doubt that this release is really exactly as the original Japanese release. Not in terms of censoring but page size/quality/weight. Perhaps someone could verify the differences across both (English and Japanese) official hard copies of volume 1? (I'm having hard time getting the Japanese release)
Any help is kindly appreciated.
Update:
I've received the official Japanese version volume 1 of Berserk. The differences were indeed clear and are as follows:
1. The book is more compressed (lighter) than the English release.
2. Print quality is clearer and brighter than the English release which is just too dark/uses excessive ink.
3. Pages are presented in full size without losing anything (marginal proportions).
4. Page numbers are visible in the Japanese version wherever they are supposed to be.
Now that I've noticed such differences I don't feel that much inclined to complete my English collection of Berserk.
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Any information on how the later volumes of Berserk compare to the Japanese version is very much appreciated. I'm keen to know how much it resembles the original release in terms of the details mentioned in my previous post.
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I don't know how the Dark Horse volumes compare to the Japanese volumes, however, I have all 29 volumes of the Dark Horse releases of Berserk, and the later volumes feel the same as the earlier ones released by Dark Horse. The only real difference I've noticed is on the later ones I haven't seen any tiny pieces of paper falling out of the books as I read them the way I noticed with a couple of the earlier volumes, such as volumes 1 and 6 and maybe a few others. I have noticed an overall improvement over the later volumes of Berserk in terms of artwork and in the later volumes everything seems slightly more detailed, though I attributed that the improvement of Kentaro Miura as an artist over the course of 20 years. I never really noticed any problems with things being too dark. Page numbers do appear sporadically throughout pages on each of the volumes, so some pages have them and a lot of them don't and there doesn't seem to be any pattern to which pages get them or why. And each volume is the same size as the others, so there is no size variation, which I never had a problem with as they all fit and look nicely together on my shelf. But if the Japanese volumes are in fact bigger then I can see where that would become a problem. :)
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No, I wasn't talking about Kentaro Miura's art over the years and how it effected his work. In fact, the English volume 1 had many problems when compared to the original release as I've mentioned and this doesn't look professional.