Why is Berserk volume 41 different?
It is the last volume of Kentaro Miura’s own chapters, and the first the world read without him.
Miura died on May 6, 2021, at 54. Four months later Young Animal published his final chapter, episode 364, in a memorial issue, its manuscript completed with the help of his own studio. Volume 41, gathering those last chapters, reached shops on December 24, 2021: the first new Berserk book in three years, and a farewell the whole industry stopped for.
THE TWO EDITIONS
Regular and special · December 24, 2021
Volume 41 · Hakusensha · 2021
Guts in the foreground, the island behind him: the cover of the last volume Miura completed, collecting episodes up to 364.
The special edition
Alongside the regular book, Hakusensha issued a special edition built around Miura’s own canvas artwork, the same painting that served as the key visual for the Berserk exhibition in Tokyo that autumn. It is the rare tie-in object that is simply more of his art.
The drama CD
The special edition also carries a drama CD of the manga’s “Awakening” chapter, a turning point no anime adaptation had ever reached, performed by the anime’s returning cast from a script by Makoto Fukami.
THE UNDECIDED WINTER
What the book itself saysRead the afterword
The editorial afterword printed in volume 41 says plainly that the future of Berserk was undecided. The book was published as an ending-shaped object by people who did not yet know whether it was one. The announcement that answered it came the following June.
Why collectors mark it
Volumes are usually separated by story arcs. Volume 41 is separated by a life. Everything before it is one man’s hand; everything after it is his studio and his friend carrying the plan he left them.