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  • The 10 Scariest Monsters In Anime

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    The Xenomorph. The Thing. Donald Trump in Home Alone 2. What do all these movie monsters have in common? None of them are as scary as creepy critters on this list (well, maybe that last one). Anime has come up with some seriously terrifying beasts over the years, containing as many horrific multitudes as an evil twin of Walt Whitman. When it comes to the freakiest of the freaks, this crop of monsters rises to the top. Here are the 10 scariest monsters in all of anime – the sensitive reader may want to avert their innocent eyes.

    Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist
    (Aniplex of America)

    A secret antagonist from Fullmetal Alchemist, Pride is the true form of spoiler alert – Selim Bradley, son of King Bradley: the Führer of Amestris himself. A synthetic shapeshifter made of shadows, Pride was the first homunculus created by overarching antagonist Father. Named after the deadliest sin in Christian theology, Pride lives up to its reputation by being the single most dangerous creature in the series. It’s a being that exists in total darkness, an obscure mass of eyes and limbs and teeth that can tear anything to shreds when the lights go out. Stealthier than the Xenomorph and twice as tough, Pride haunts the tunnels beneath Amestris, killing anything that gets too close to the lair of its creator. Thankfully, the beast has one weakness: light. A flickering match will stave off Pride’s advance – but not for long.

    The Angels – Neon Genesis Evangelion

    Sachiel, an angel from Neon Genesis Evangelion
    (Gainax)

    The eldritch horror alien invaders of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Angels possess the exact opposite temperaments of their benevolent namesake. Unknowable extraterrestrial terrors, these beings assault planet Earth for purpose that scientists don’t fully comprehend. Their bodily forms are as inscrutable as their motives – no two angels are exactly alike. Some are walking Godzilla beasts blasting cityscapes with biological lasers, others are higher dimensional horrors that break the laws of physics. Worst of all, each Angel generates a psychic barrier appropriately called an “Absolute Terror Field” that’s capable of deflecting all forms of conventional ballistic weaponry. The only way to stop an Angel is by beating it at its own game – meaning you have to stick a middle schooler in a giant biomechanical suit made of repurposed Angel flesh and sic them on the alien enemy. The tactic works, but is it worth the cost? Shinji Ikari’s mental breakdown doesn’t exactly make a compelling case.

    Titans – Attack On Titan

    Reiner in Marley looking at Erem
    (MAPPA)

    Attack On Titan engineered pure nightmare fuel by wandering through tried and true horror territory: the uncanny valley. Naked flesh-eating giants with sporting a parodies of human faces, Titans are lumbering horrors that belong on the other side of a big old wall. Thankfully, that’s the tactic humanity uses to contain them, but when intelligent Titans emerged and kicked that wall down, humanity was forced to change their strategy. While the idea of intelligent humans piloting Titans is terrifying enough, the WORST type of Titans are the abnormals – killers that behave with an inexplicable level of cunning. Their intelligent behavior isn’t the result of an internal human pilot – so why are they smart? They’re simply aberrants, random mutations of whatever cursed genome makes a regular Titan. Unpredictable. Unexplainable. Uncanny.

    Awakened Beings – Claymore

    (Crunchyroll)

    Underrated monsters from the underrated dark fantasy series Claymore, Awakened Beings rival Berserk‘s demons in terms of pure, unnatural terror. In this dar fantasy world, humankind is plagued with the scourge of the Yoma, shapeshifting flesh eaters that gorge on human flesh. Claymores are all-female warriors made to combat Yoma, augmented with Yoma flesh by the shadowy Organization that engineers them. If a Claymore leans to much on their Yoma powers, they run the risk of become an Awakened Being – an evolved form of Yoma with near divine abilities and infernal appetites. They’re also called “Voracious Eaters,” providing a clue into how they spend 99% of their time. Intelligent, cunning, ruthless, Awakened Beings are a mix of angel, demon and animal – eerily beautiful, totally evil, always hungry.

    Parasites – Parasyte: The Maxim

    a parasite from "Parasyte"
    (Sentai Filmworks)

    Parasites from Parasyte: The Maxim are just plain awful – monsters from the ninth circle of sci-fi Hell. They’re an alien species that begins its life cycle as a nasty little worms, landing en masse on a planet and burrowing into the brains of intelligent life. After they consume the host’s mind, they then devour the host’s entire head – shapeshifting to disguise themselves with their host’s face. Using this human camouflage, they cozy up to their host’s intimate partners and friends – devouring them with fleshy maws of blades and teeth once they get close enough. It’s Invasion of The Body Snatchers but so much worse. The weirdest part? Some parasites are known to develop human emotions, expressing gratitude and even affection to human beings. These are the exception to the brain-eating rule, however. Most parasites don’t feel the need to get to know their food.

    Goblins – Goblin Slayer

    Goblins from "Goblin Slayer"
    (Crunchyroll)

    Who would have guessed that such a traditionally “starter level” enemy would become one of the most reviled creatures in all of anime? The goblins of Goblin Slayer are a different breed, violent killers with surprising levels of cunning and strength. Capable of growing to ogre sizes and intelligent enough to command armies, goblins are so traumatizingly good at murder that the series’ protagonist engineered his whole identity around eradicating them. The worst part of goblins aren’t their homicidal tendencies, but reproductive ones. They create more of themselves by capturing women of all different species and forcing themselves on them – breeding goblin offspring. There is nothing good about goblins, they’re cruel and brutal creatures working towards the total eradication of mankind. No thanks.

    The Walking Fish – Gyo

    A walking fish from "Gyo"
    (Aniplex of America)

    The antagonistic force of Junji Ito’s Gyo, the walking fish are a nameless assortment of sea creatures that have inexplicably grown gross robot spider legs. These critters are able to saunter out of the ocean en masse and lay waste to the human world, spreading their noxious presence far and wide. The horror of these beings is the fact that they aren’t fish at all – they’re machines piloting the corpses of Dead Sea creatures, and the use the gasses generated biological decay to power themselves. Eventually, these evil walking machines are able to attach themselves to human corpses, powering themselves through the rot of our species. What do they want? It’s never made clear – they’re like a virus, they seem to only want to make more of themselves. Considering that the lifeforms in the ocean outnumber us a bajillion to one, it’s only a matter of time before the human race is entirely overwhelmed by the sea.

    The God Hand – Berserk

    The God Hand  from "Berserk"
    (OLM Team Iguchi)

    The crapsack world of Berserk is the definition of “godless” – plagued by wanton violence and murder as rival kingdoms attempt to assert their dominance through never-ending war. And yet, gods do exist in this bloody and bitter land – and that’s the most horrible part. The psychic manifestation of collective human suffering, The God Hand is a nigh-omnipotent group of five demon princes that orchestrate the fate of the world. Ordained by the mysterious Law of Causality, these infernal sovereigns command the forces of demonkind, and are responsible for handing out “behelits” – abyssal artifacts capable of transforming humans into demons. They’re not evil for evil’s sake, they’re simply operating according to the greater divine will of the universe – a will that leads everything to death and ruin. Not good.

    Koh The Face Stealer – Avatar: The Last Airbender

    Koh The Face Stealer from "Avatar the Last Airbender"
    (Nickelodeon)

    Koh The Face Stealer is the most criminally underrated monster in all of anime – a primordial terror whose capacity for evil is only limited by the fact that he exists within a cartoon marketed to kids. An unfathomably ancient spirit, this centipede monster has spent eons pilfering the faces of living things – adding them to his never-ending collection. If you seek an audience with Koh, you can’t show the slightest expression – otherwise he’ll yank your mug off your dome! The most terrifying aspect of Koh is that he doesn’t seem to have a reason for face-theft, it’s simply his nature. He’s the ultimate example of Neutral Evil – he doesn’t actively seek out people to hurt, but he’ll hurt you for certain if you visit.

    Johan Liebert

    Johan Liebert in 'Monster'
    (Madhouse)

    The titular monster of Monster, Johan Liebert doesn’t need fangs, claws, or a carnivorous appetite to earn a slot on this list – his actions guarantee it. An angel-faced agent of destruction, Liebert uses his supernatural levels of charisma and cunning to orchestrate “the perfect suicide” – killing himself after killing everyone who knows about his existence. The ultimate nihilist, Liebert views human life as an unimportant speck of consciousness floating in an uncaring cosmos. The ultimate cynic, Liebert thinks that any human being can be manipulated into performing evil acts faced with the right amount of despair. The ultimate monster, Liebert manipulates and kills simply because it is his nature to do so. He’s the pinnacle of anime evil, and the scariest thing on this list.

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    Image of Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like… REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They’re like that… but with anime. It’s starting to get sad.

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    Sarah Fimm

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  • The 10 Best Dark Fantasy Graphic Novels

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    Noble warriors? Just rulers? Good triumphing over evil? Hah! Whether I’m cracking open a graphic novel or pondering eldritch truth held within my wizarding orb, my rule is the same: I’ll believe it when I see it. In a dark fantasy, there are no heroes. When it comes to the adventuring game, people are only in it for one thing: themselves. It’s a dragon eat dragon world out there, one where the rules are decided by whoever is holding the sword. If your idea of a good time is a graphic novel that feels more “Red Wedding” than “Bilbo’s 111th Birthday,” boy do I have a list for you. Here are the 10 best dark fantasy graphic novels around.

    Monstress

    (Image Comics)

    Monstress by Marjorie Liu will have you Mon-stressed out. Inspired by East Asia’s bloody 20th century, this graphic novel is set in a grimdark world at war. This realm is being torn apart by a never-ending struggle for power between matriarchal sorcerers that rule the human world, and the eldritch Arcanics that can pass for people. Maika Halfwolf is an Arcanic – hunted for her magical abilities like the rest of her kind. Not content to serve as a magical battery for the ruling class, she strikes out alone on a quest to avenge her mother. Well, not entirely alone. She’s got a frenemy of sorts, a demon that lives in the stump where her left arm used to be. In order kill the monsters the did her family wrong, Maika will need to learn to embrace the beast within – before it can consume her from the inside. Don’t let the glittering art deco style fool you, this epic fantasy is as dark as they come.

    Kill Six Billion Demons

    Cover art for "Kill Six Billion Demons"
    (Image Comics)

    Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson Morgan is a martial arts manual, a spiritual treatise, and a sapphic romance all rolled into one. Before she was kidnapped by a runaway god, Allison Ruth was a barista whose biggest concern was loosing her virginity to her boyfriend. After being spirited away to a city at the center of the multiverse, she now has bigger fish to fry. Those fish are The Demiurges, seven tyrannical divinities that each rule 111,111 of the 777,777 universes that make up all of existence. With the help of an angelic martial arts teacher and a demonic sapphic lover, Allison will learn to embrace her budding divine power to and break the cosmic cycle of violence and suffering. If all goes well, she might even inherit the throne of God themself. Brutal, beautiful and gloriously queer, this dark fantasy is one of a kind.

    Something Is Killing The Children

    Cover art for "Something Is Killing The Children"
    (BOOM! Studios)

    In case the title didn’t clue you in, James Tynion IV’s Something Is Killing The Children is set in a world where not even the most innocent of us are safe. Kids in Archer’s Peak fare about as well as children in a Stephen King novel – they tend to go missing and turn up dead. Frantic for answers, the townspeople lay the blame on a chainsaw wielding new arrival – a young woman who claims to be able to see monsters that they can’t. Erica Slaughter is an agent of the Order of Saint George, an ancient organization dedicated to eradicating monsters that are spawned from the darkest human fears. Sadly, they’re also dedicated to eradicating any humans that find out about their clandestine organization – a policy point that creates some tension between the merciful Erica and her ruthless handlers. Grim, gory, and grotesque, this novel is perfect for anyone who could stomach It.

    Berserk

    Cover art for "Berserk"
    (Dark Horse Manga)

    The poster child of dark fantasy, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk is one of the genre’s most seminal works – inspiring grimdark games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring. The story follows Guts, a linebacker sized mercenary with the sword the length of a four door sedan. Guts wanders a demon haunted world searching for a former comrade, the man who betrayed him and sacrificed his friends to demons. Armed with a dragon slayer of a blade and a repeating crossbow, Guts is 300lbs of pure, grass fed hate. He walks the dark path of vengeance, and he’ll pulverize any demon standing in the road. While the author tragically passed away before the story could be finished, his assistants have taken up the narrative torch and are seeing it through to the bitter end. Guts would be proud.

    The Wicked and The Divine

    (Image Comics)

    The Wicked and The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie is Almost Famous mixed with ancient myth. Every ninety years, a pantheon of twelve gods is reincarnated into human form. Upon awakening, the young gods have two years to walk among mortals before dying and beginning the cycle again. Through supernatural powers, supernatural talent, and supernatural good looks, these divinities make very good use of their time. They become movers and shakers, pop stars, celebrities, idols, burning hot and bright before finally sputtering out. Like any self-respecting divine pantheon, this gaggle of gods comes with some serious family drama. When multiple lifetimes of emotional baggage combine with the pressures of fame, the results are messy, violent, and explosive.

    The Last God

    Cover art for "The Last God"
    (DC Comics)

    At the beginning of The Last God, by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, the big bad has already been defeated – the heroes won. Thirty years ago, a group of warriors claimed to have felled The God of the Void and his undead army after journeying to an alternate dimension. Problem solved! Except for the fact that the undying legions have reappeared to renew their assault on the world of Cain Anuun – sounds like we haven’t heard the last of The Last God after all. Now a new group of heroes must traverse dimensions in order to slay the dark divinity once and for all – a perfectly sensible plan. What doesn’t make sense is why the old group of heroes claimed to have killed The God of the Void when they very obviously didn’t. Somebody is playing a trick, and The Last God is having the last laugh.

    Redlands

    Cover art for "Redlands"
    (Image Comics)

    Redlands by Jordie Bellaire takes place in the darkest of dark fantasy worlds: small town Florida. The town of Redlands is ruled by a matriarchal coven of witches, who have asserted their dominion through decades of demonic sacrifice. Serving as the local law enforcement, the terrible trio maintains an uneasy peace with the average citizens. When young woman start turning up dead, the peace dies with it. A serial killer is stalking the streets of Redlands, and the vengeful spirit of one of the murdered can’t rest until her killer is found. It’s a swampy, Southern Gothic detective story steeped in feminist revenge. Like a witch’s victim, you’ll be charmed.

    Through The Woods

    Cover art for "Through The Woods"
    (Margaret K. McElderry Books)

    Through The Woods by Emily Carroll is a collection of dark fantasy fairy tales that would make the Brothers Grimm proud. Five separate stories are rendered in a muted color scheme of ghastly black, grim grey, and bloody crimson – including Carroll’s viral webcomic sensation His Face All Red. These bleak fables don’t end well, just ask the main character of the novel’s most famous story. Granted, he killed his own brother, so he kind of had it coming. What he probably didn’t expect was how it came, at the hands of the sibling he thought he murdered, returned from the dead. Unless it was some kind of magical doppelgänger? In this macabre world, it’s highly plausible.

    Black Magick 

    Cover art for "Black Magick"
    (Image Comics)

    Black Magick by Nicola Scott is a hard boiled dark fantasy noir. The plot revolves around Rowan Black, a loose cannon detective who doesn’t play by the rules, which in this case are the laws of physics. She’s a witch, and uses her magical abilities in order to help crack cases while working her police detective day job. While she’s managed to keep this secret under wraps, someone is now targeting her – threatening to expose a fact of her existence that would have gotten her burned at the stake a few hundred years before. This tense police procedural blends magic and mundane to create a tight drama drawn in shades of morally grey.

    Pretty Deadly

    Cover art for "Pretty Deadly"
    (Image Comics)

    Pretty Deadly is a hallucinatory murder ballad – something that late career Johnny Cash would sing about while tripping balls off of discount acid. It’s the story of Deathface Ginny, the gunslinging daughter of the grim reaper himself. She can be summoned via song, and her vengeful spirit will aid anyone who has been wronged by a man. At least, that’s what the legends say. Sissy isn’t sure, she’s been traveling across the wasteland with an old man named Fox for quite some time now; she and her guardian have been trading bits of Ginny lore back and forth, but the stories seem to conflict. Little does little Sissy know, her to the legendary gunslinger might go deeper than she ever imagined – perhaps they even share a common ancestor. Who’s to say death’s daughter is an only child?

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    Image of Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like… REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They’re like that… but with anime. It’s starting to get sad.

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    Sarah Fimm

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  • The 10 Most Beautifully Illustrated Graphic Novels

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    Looking at pretty pictures may perhaps be the oldest human pastime – we’ve been doing it since prehistory! Ever since primitive humans stepped out of their caves and sighed at the beauty of the natural world, they attempted to replicate it on cave walls, preserving their fire-discovering, wheel-inventing stories for future generations. Thousands of years later, the graphic novelists took up the torch to do the exact same thing – like Michelangelo! The Sistine Chapel really is just a graphic novel adaptation of the Bible, after all. While watching humanity’s drama with God play out on the ceiling is certainly worth the trip, this list is for those who want to drink in stunning artwork without traveling to the Vatican. For all the homebodies, are the 10 most beautifully illustrated graphic novels of all time.

    Blacksad

    Cover art for "Blacksad"
    (Dark Horse Originals)

    When Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido created Blacksad, they reminded us of something that humanity has known for thousands of years: cats are beautiful. Aesthetically appreciated as far back as ancient Egypt, cats are given a modern makeover in this Neo-noire masterpiece. This is the story of John Blacksad – a hardboiled private investigator who also happens to be a kitty. A feline lone wolf, Blacksad operates independently from the foxes and bloodhounds of the local police department, preferring to stalk his way into the city’s reptilian criminal underbelly on his own. A gritty pastiche of mid-century America, Blacksad’s art style feels like if you took Edward Hopper’s famous Nighthawks painting and turned everyone in it into an animal. Moody, dramatic, lonely, and furry.

    Blue Is The Warmest Color

    Cover art for "Blue Is The Warmest Color"
    (Arsenal Pulp Press)

    Reading Jul Maroh’s Blue Is The Warmest Color feels like getting slapped in the face by an angel – divinely beautiful and searingly painful. It’s the story of a tragic love affair between two young French women, beginning with incendiary passion and ending in brutal heartbreak. The watercolor art style feels like if you mixed regular paint with human tears – the tears that you’re certain to cry as you turn through its pages. The novel’s use of light is especially poignant, everything has a soft and blurry glow to it, making you feel like you’re looking at a world seen by someone ever on the verge of weeping. With the way things go in this novel, that pretty much describes the emotional state of these characters at every second of every day. Looking at the one we love has a way of making us all misty eyed – if that person goes away, bring on the waterworks.

    Daytripper

    Cover art for "Daytripper"
    (Vertigo)

    Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá is ten days in the life of obituary writer Brás de Oliva Domingos, each of which results in his death. Separated into ten vignettes, the story follows Brás at pivotal moments of his life – first love, new parenthood, old age – before exploring how any of those moments could have been his last. After kicking the bucket at the end of each of these days, and the story continues on as if he hadn’t – a literary device intended to remind the audience of the fragility of our lives. The art style of the comic is equally delicate, soft colors and softer lines mix together to create a fuzzy and kaleidoscopic portrait of life – a life that could be snuffed out at any moment. Like Blue Is The Warmest Color, the blurry pages of this graphic novel are sure to be further smudged with your tears.

    The Incal

    Cover art for "The Incal"
    (Humanoids)

    A seminal work of sci-fi, The Incal by avant-garde film director Alejandro Jodorowsky is essentially Star Wars on acid. It’s the story of John Difool, a detective who comes into possession of a mysterious extraterrestrial artifact called the Luminous Incal – a crystal coveted by just about every faction in the galaxy. John navigates a labyrinthian world drawn by Jean Giraud, a groundbreaking illustrator more famously known by his pseudonym Mœbius. Depicting soft sci-fi worlds with Salvador Dali-esque surrealism, Giraud creates a dreamlike landscapes where technology and fantasy meet. This graphic novel sits somewhere between space opera and acid western, with a little bit of Dune thrown into the recipe for added spice – see what I did there?

    Berserk

    Cover art for "Berserk"
    (Dark Horse Manga)

    While “beautiful” isn’t the first word that many would use to describe the dark fantasy nightmare-verse that is Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, the late, great mangaka’s art style is nothing short of arresting. No doubt drawing inspiration from the biological horror of H.R. Giger, Miura paints the picture of a demon-haunted world that would terrify the devil himself. With his images of beautifully composed brutality, Miura was able create what is arguably the finest work of dark fantasy ever penned. It’s the story of Guts, a linebacker sized mercenary with a sedan-sized sword, cutting his way through demonic hordes in order to take revenge against a former comrade turned dark divinity. It’s somber, thrilling and tragic – blood drenched, rainswept portrait of a lone warrior who refuses to give in, despite overwhelmingly grim odds.

    Monstress

    (Image Comics)

    Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda is a master class in art deco – a steampunk East Asian world rendered with turn of the century opulence. It’s the story of Maika Halfwolf, a teenage girl attempting to hide her identity as an Arcanic – arcane beings that are captured and consumed by the ruling sorcerer class for their magic. On her quest to avenge her dead mother, Maika is aided by a monster – a demonic being that resides in the stump where her left arm used to be. At its core, the art style of Monstress is a 1920’s interpretation of the biblically accurate angel – lots of wings and eyes, all laced in gold.

    Square Eyes

    Cover art for "Square Eyes"
    (Jonathan Cape)

    Square Eyes by Anna Mill and Luke Jones is a soft sci-fi that follows Fin, an engineer who recently revolutionized the society of the near future with a powerful program. Once seated at the top of the digital world, Fin suddenly finds herself completely disconnected from the virtual reality that binds humanity together. Unable to access the artificial network that augments her city, the amnesiac Fin attempts to solve why she’s been booted out. The art style of the novel is just as eerie and dreamy as its plot, drawn with soft pastel pinks and purples that wash the world in a sense of unreality. It’s a place where everyone is wearing rose-colored VR glasses, but no one can take them off. Beautiful and disorienting, like a meet cute with a hot hologram.

    Through The Woods

    Cover art for "Through The Woods"
    (Margaret K. McElderry Books)

    Through The Woods by Emily Carroll is a modern day collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, creepy enough to impress the screwed up Brothers Grimm themselves. Each of these five stories are rendered in shadowy black, bone white, and blood red, casting a lurid gleam over the already macabre tales. It feels like a folk horror picture book, something that the sorceresses of Robert Eggers’ The Witch would read aloud to the children they kidnap. The book features one of the author’s most famous works His Face All Red, which catapulted her to the heights of internet webcomic glory. It’s the story of a man who killed his brother, only for his deceased sibling to wander out of the woods a few days later totally unharmed. Did his brother pull a Lazarus? Or is it a doppelgänger that didn’t quite get all the details of the disguise right? You’ll have to read to find out.

    Sin City

    Cover art for "Sin City"
    (Dark Horse Books)

    Sin City by Frank Miller is the ultimate hardboiled detective comic, and so quintessentially representative of the author’s style that it borders on self parody. Frank Miller made a name for himself in the late 80’s with his grimdark reinterpretations of Batman, somber portrayals that created the dour image of the caped crusader we know today. Sin City is Batman level grit taken to the extreme, taking place in a black and white metropolis peppered with streaks of bloody red. It’s classic noire stuff, femme fatales, burned-out private eyes, ruthless mob bosses, all rendered with such extreme chiaroscuro that it puts the Renaissance masters to shame. It’s a monochromatically mad world.

    Persepolis

    Cover art for "Persepolis"
    (Pantheon)

    Persepolis is the graphic memoir of Marjane Satrapi, who came of age during one of the most tumultuous periods in Iran’s history. An adolescent during the Islamic Revolution, Marjane saw her formerly progressive society take a hard right turn towards theological conservatism. For Marjane and young women like her, this meant that the plethora of choices that they once had for their lives were suddenly limited – from what clothes they were allowed to wear to their career prospects. The novel is rendered in a somber monochrome that juxtaposes itself with Marjane’s colorful and outspoken personality. She’s a young woman who refuses to conform to an increasingly reactionary society, a world that views morality to be as black and white as the colors with which it’s illustrated. Hailed as one of the finest graphic novels ever written, Persepolis is a must read for anyone grappling with authority figures, which, now that I think about it, is perhaps every adolescent on the planet.

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    Image of Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like… REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They’re like that… but with anime. It’s starting to get sad.

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    Sarah Fimm

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  • The Best Berserk Adaptation Is Finally Available Again

    The Best Berserk Adaptation Is Finally Available Again

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    I don’t care about any new animated show this year more than I do the reissue of a 24-year-old one with dated animation and a frustratingly incomplete story. This week, the original 1997 anime adaptation of the late Kentaro Miura’s manga Berserk, only ever released on home video domestically, came back in print in the United States and sold out within a day of its debut this Tuesday. Luckily, knowing the show had been unavailable to buy or legally stream for about a decade, I had planned ahead. As its distributor Discotek raced to get new copies out to stores like Crunchyroll and Amazon this week, I poured some bourbon, hit play on my preordered Blu-rays, and dove back into the beauty and brutality of Berserk.

    Set in a dark fantasy world dominated by feudal empires and similar to medieval Europe, the show follows Guts, a burly wall of an anti-hero racked with guilt and trauma. We meet him in the first episode as “The Black Swordsman,” a cruel and committed slayer of the demons that prey upon the countryside. An abused child who grew into a violent and cursed man, Guts wields a colossal sword — a heavy slab of metal seven feet long and perpetually soaked in blood — and a gruff, merciless attitude. He also has only one eye and one arm. At the end of the first episode, after Guts destroys a demon who reminds him of his past, the show immediately flashes back to his teenage years as a young warrior, before he lost his eye, his arm, and his humanity. This Berserk anime, which preceded a workaday 2012 film series adapting the same arc and a reviled 2016 adaptation, is largely a prelude to Guts’s story in the ongoing manga: Over the course of 25 episodes, we watch his power grow and his shell soften as he finds allies in the warriors Griffith and Casca and overcomes the traumas of his childhood, even as he improves his skills as a mercenary. As the young Guts begins to find meaning in those friendships and relationships, though, tragedy rips them away.

    We won’t spoil more than that, except to note that the specific horrors of the series include grotesquely graphic cruelties and shocking sexual violence. Like other epic series such as Game of Thrones or Vikings, Berserk is known for not pulling punches, and not only are the show’s demons literal agents of hell, they also prey upon the psychological and societal ills of the medieval world Miura created. In the story, torture, rape, and genocide are all wielded to break individuals and kingdoms, as they are in real life. Nonetheless, we empathize more and more deeply with Guts as the show progresses; he is introduced to us as a vicious monster, but we come to understand the experiences that shaped him, and how he keeps struggling through them, despite the pain they caused him.

    Every episode begins with a narrator’s epigraph on causality and free will — “Man has no control, even over his own will” — but Guts’s actions prove we’re not meant to believe that: The point is that no matter what he faces, Guts continues to strive. In Miura’s manga, the same quote appears, but it goes on, hammering that point home, “Man takes up the sword to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a far-off time beyond remembrance.” Berserk may be a hyperviolent story, but it’s not an edgelord’s power fantasy: It’s a dark tragedy about how difficult waking up to a ruthless world every day can be, especially if you have dreams beyond fighting.

    The animation in the 1997 adaptation underscores the point. Think of the most impressive, immersive action animation you’ve seen, old or new, and you’ll likely think of characters in motion. The fluidity of the bike races of Akira and staccato styling of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse often feel like the most important elements of those films’ success. But they’re not. What’s most important is tempo and pacing — balancing the fluid, high-budget action with deliberate, evocative character building. Berserk has that in spades — in part because director Naohito Takahashi and studio Oriental Light and Magic (which also released Pokémon the same year) had to allocate animation budgets carefully. As a result, it’s full of conversations where the only visible movements are lip-flapping, slow pans over painted backgrounds, and the occasional still spliced right into an action scene, but they all still punch hard.

    The show’s most poignant episode, “Bonfire of Dreams,” is built largely around a conversation Guts has with Casca, standing alone and overlooking his comrades’ camp at night. The scene’s emotional power comes from its stillness, its music, and an artistry that amounts largely to simple, slow animation framed in front of gorgeously painted backgrounds. The scene doesn’t need much else, because Miura’s source material, the direction by Takahashi, and the art direction overseen by Shichirō Kobayashi do all the work that flashy animation cannot. Neither anime adaptation of Berserk released since could touch this show’s sense of style.

    But that limited, controlled cartooning also feels like the most undersung aspect of anime series. The manga produced by Miura is legendary and has inspired fellow artists, metal bands, and video-game series like Castlevania, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring for decades. The manga is also intricately detailed, a work that relishes in double-page spreads of supernatural landscapes and the details of every segment of Guts’s black armor — to say nothing of the hundreds of pages in which he swings his sword. Miura, who died in 2021, created a masterwork, and though this translation doesn’t capture the full richness of his pencils or the entirety of his story, it remains the best adaptation we have of Berserk. Like Guts, it will never be whole, but in a way, that’s fitting.

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    By Eric Vilas-Boas

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