And while I’m here being self-righteous….

alovelyburn:

“Berserk is Manly, no one is gay, it’s stupid and fangirlish to think Miura would have gay stuff going on in Berserk and also it’s designed just for men, why are girls reading it wtf.”

Okay, all things that have been said in fandom either on tumblr or skullknight or what.ever.  Let’s just reality check this thought because here are some of the influences we know Miura has/had:

Go Nagai – particularly Devilman, which is about a teenage boy whose male best friend turns out to be the latent form of satan, intersexed and in love with him.  The queer romance plot is pretty understated (and tragic) in the original manga, but the sequels since have made it increasingly prominent before finally leaving it off at a point where Satan resurrects his lost love and they literally join forces to rebel against a tyrannical God together.

Guin Saga – a fantasy novel series known to turn into yaoi romance after a while.  I’ve seen this referred to as the beginning of the yaoi genre as it exists today.  It’s also the series Miura repeatedly calls his single biggest influence.

The movie roles of Rutger Hauer – Hauer is an actor whose roles Miura has explicitly noted as forming basis for Guts.  In one, Ladyhawke, he plays a medieval warrior who fights with a crossbow, wears all black, turns into a black wolf and is in love with a preternaturally beautiful woman – someone so beautiful that everyone who sees her is instantly in love with/awe of her, who becomes a hawk.  An eclipse forms a major plotpoint in this movie, as does Hauer’s character’s struggle between vengeance and love.  He’s even accused of choosing anger over love at one point.

Pygmalio – a shoujo comic with a male protagonist that is described as being “all about love in every form.“  Speaking of Berserk and shoujo…

Fist of the North Star/Rose of Versailles – apparently the initial concept for Berserk came from his desire to merge these two worlds into something with elements of both shounen and shoujo.  And speaking of Rose of Versailles, that means another of his influences is…

Ryoko Ikeda – one of the pioneers in queer and transgender themes in manga, whose most famous character, Oscar (from the very manga he named as a basis for Berserk!), is a woman raised as a man (kind of) and involved in bisexual love triangles.

I mean, yeah, not everything that influenced him had queer themes – as far as i know Pygmalio doesn’t, and LadyHawke is a straight romance (although… he did use the ladyhawke herself as an influence in Griffith rather than Casca).  And of course being influenced by something with Theme X doesn’t mean you’re going to put it in your own work, but… really.

Really.

(And I don’t mean to equate queer themes with female demo, btw, I’m just saying the same argument is used on both fronts and it’s always stupid.)