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Kentaro Miura wanted Berserk readers to feel “even the layers of air,” which explains those impossibly detailed pages
Reading Berserk, it is impossible not to marvel at the detailed artwork of Kentaro Miura, but it definitely wasn’t healthy.
NewsbyTrent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer
Published on Mon Aug 31 2026
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No one can accuse Kentaro Miura of being lazy with his backgrounds or character designs. More likely, you’ll accuse him of pouring too much into every page of Berserk. Even Miura himself would admit that his focus on details was borderline unhealthy, but it was all because he was influenced by manga like Akira and Fist of the North Star.
“The level of detail I put into my drawings is an illness,” Kentaro Miura said during a 2019 interview.“There’s no other way to describe it.”
Which is fair, to be honest. This is a man who insisted on giving every fairy an individual expressionand every participant in a massive battle a fully detailed suit of armor. It was like he couldn’t help but dive into the minutiae of a scene in the hopes he could give it a bit more life. That drive apparently comes from his love of 1980s manga. “It’s because of the manga I’ve come to love,” he explained in that same interview. “After all, the Baroque era of manga, with its incredibly detailed artwork like Akira and Fist of the North Star, coincided with my formative years. Plus, I believe that manga panels are windows to another world. Because they’re windows that peer into another world, there must be something beyond that. I want readers to feel as much as possible, even the layers of air.”
“Everything has details,” he stressed. “Even clothes have fabric and thread, and the surface is different depending on the material. I want to be able to feel those kinds of details, like the things between the lines in a manga.”
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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Trent Cannon: Trent is a freelance writer who has been covering anime, video games, and pop culture for a decade. (He/Him)
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