Miura: You know how they said on [the TV show] Manga Yawa that I was bad at drawing? They’re absolutely right. Ever since high school, I’ve been trying all sorts of different things to combine being good at drawing reality with being good at drawing manga art. If I were doing a story like Fist of the North Star, I would be able to really concentrate entirely on just drawing well. The manga I want to create, however, has aspects to it that can be downright shojo mangaesque, and I wouldn’t be able to pull that off if I went all-out Fist of the North Star in terms of art. So I have to strike this balance between delicate drama and Fist of the North Star, and after much wrestling with this I finally ended up with my current art style, although I imagine that it will still be subject to change.
–Ah, so you try to give a certain delicacy to your art as well as the story. I actually have this personal theory that Berserk is really a shojo manga, but I take it then that it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise for you to hear that?
Miura: Makes sense to me. Shojo manga is all about expressing every feeling powerfully, and in that sense it’s not as contrived as manga for men. Men’s manga tends to come off as more calculated to sell well, whereas shojo manga are somehow just… fluffier. I realize that’s not a very descriptive word, but anyway, that might be something I have in common with shojo manga.
–You have fluffiness in common?
Miura: I guess what I mean is, like, in order to express emotions, logic comes second, whereas it’s usually the other way around.