What inspired Kentaro Miura's art?
Miura spoke about his influences more specifically than most artists, and the first name was always Go Nagai. Devilman and Dororo, by Osamu Tezuka, are the two manga he credited with showing him, as a young reader, that comics could carry horror, tragedy and adult weight. The line from Devilman's demonic world and Dororo's wandering, body scarred swordsman to Berserk's premise is one Miura acknowledged rather than hid.
The second great influence was a novel series: Guin Saga by Kaoru Kurimoto, the long running Japanese fantasy epic whose leopard headed hero gave Miura a model for a sprawling, decades long fantasy narrative, and whose painted covers formed part of his visual education. Berserk's structure, one hero crossing a fully built world over many years of publication, owes Guin Saga more than it owes any single comic.
His craft influences were the masters of his reading generation: Buronson and Tetsuo Hara's Fist of the North Star, whose studio he later collaborated with directly, and the broader world of European fantasy illustration and film that supplied Berserk's armor, architecture and monsters. He was also a devoted gamer and film viewer, and interviews name the dark fantasy films and games of the 1980s among the textures he absorbed, an influence that later flowed back as games began citing Berserk.
A caution this hub keeps: influence is not imitation, and Miura's own account stresses combination over copying. Devilman gave permission, Guin Saga gave scale, the shonen masters gave craft, and thirty years of drawing gave the result. The Library's Berserk section covers the series' own influence on later games and manga; this page is the other direction, the shelf behind the artist.
