Back in December I bought the entire Berserk collection (Vol.1–41) used for a little over 8000 yen. Usually on Amazon it can got for 10,000 or 20,000 yen. So I just couldn't pass this up. I’ve been slowly working my way through it as reading practice. I finally wrapped up volume 5 today, which feels like a pretty satisfying milestone.
I’m currently studying for JLPT N1, but this has still been pretty slow reading for me. I think I am getting used to certain words and phrases. But a lot of the time I can only get through around 7 pages in an hour. I know this because I listen to Gutz theme for one hour when I do this. I don't know it just sort of became the ritual when I read Berserk. Anyway, I am able to read so few pages because I’m stopping to look up vocabulary and phrases I don’t know.
The funny thing is that a lot of the time I actually kind of understand what’s being said from context, the artwork, or general Kanji knowledge but I still end up looking the word up anyway just to confirm it. I’m starting to wonder if that might be slowing me down too much.
One thing I’ve definitely noticed though is that I’m starting to understand contractions and rough speech a lot better. Manga like Berserk uses a lot of things like shortened forms and rough soldier dialogue, and at first it was confusing, but now I’m starting to recognize them much faster.
Some of the hardest parts have been the medieval vocabulary, rough soldier speech, and dramatic phrasing characters use. Volume 3 with all the exposition about cause and effect really took me a while to get through.
One line I liked was something like:
自分の命さえ自由にできないなら死んじまえばいいんだよ
“If you don’t even control your own life, then what’s the point of living?”
It was a line of dialogue that shocked me and showed me that this was going to be a real dark story. Even though the reading can be slow, it still feels really rewarding to actually finish volumes in Japanese. I've read a lot of Japanese manga in the past but not to the extent I am with Berserk. I would just skip over words or phrases I didn't know and just keep going. The kind of reading I'm doing with Berserk is slow but it has been extremely rewarding.
by AdUnfair558