In a freak health event, the mangaka's aorta tore open and he died. Berserk dies with him. This is why you don't spend more time on hiatus than finishing your manga. The Berserk manga began in 1989, it's not like he didn't have enough time to finish his series. What he lacked was guts. (pun intended.)
He was an artist and drew his manga panels with great attention to detail, but even that cannot explain away 32 years of failure. He had 32 years for God's sake. The majority of his life. His entire adult life. Nothing has been revealed about the mystery of the Skeleton Knight, the fate of the world which is currently under siege by monsters, whether Griffith intends to be a good ruler or an evil ruler in the end, or how Guts can hope to get revenge on the Godhand that killed his friends given the ridiculous power gap. The only resolution we get is that at least Casca's sanity was restored before this arbitrary endpoint.
I keep telling authors, telling them and telling them, 'finish your stories in a reasonable timeframe, before you die of old age or your fans die of old age, so everyone who loves your work has the investment of their feelings repaid.'
No story should take 32 years to tell. If you think to yourself, I want to write a 32 year long manga, you should immediately throw that concept in the trash and start over with something less ambitious. The story of Berserk could have been shortened. They could have made the Godhand weaker, there could have been fewer roadblocks in Guts' way, all sorts of things could have been done. But the author chose his meandering path and the story went nowhere. For 32 years. If Kentaro had had his way, he'd probably still be writing Berserk 32 years from now. There didn't seem to be any remote possibility of the story summing up any time soon.
With all the breaks Oda takes I'm not even sure One Piece will reach a conclusion before his death, but he's clearly pushing the limits of the possible. Anything more ambitious than One Piece needs to be rejected by the editors forthwith. Tell the author that's a disservice to the fans and to come back with something reasonable.
This doesn't only apply to mangaka. (We all know Hunter x Hunter will never receive an ending). I'm telling this to George Martin and his stupid Game of Thrones series, Robert Jordan and his unfinished Wheel of Time series, and so many others. How many times have we seen this scenario repeated? How many more times until artists recognize their responsibilities? Finish what you begin. That's your job. That's every professional's job. Whether it's carpentry, war, raising a child or writing a book, it's always your foremost duty.
Berserk had millions of fans (I'm one of them, Berserk is my 15th favorite manga), and he broke all their hearts today, not just his own, if only a little. They had all invested decades of worry and care to that fictional band of the hawk, they were part of that band of the hawk in spirit, and now they have nowhere to go. They're lost in the dark and cold because Kentaro Miura couldn't do his job. The amount of pain he caused is almost commensurate with the amount of good he'd done by enchanting us all this far. He ruined what should have been an enormous legacy. The finished work would have been immortal, passed down by parent fans to new children fans forever. Now it's basically rubbish. How can you recommend this work to new readers knowing that they'll only be stuck at a cliffhanger? The more they like it the more awful they'll feel. This predicament was entirely unnecessary. He could've hired assistants to speed up the art. He could've let editors speed up the pacing. He could have averted this moment. Too late now. We all knew this was how it would end.
There isn't even a decent way to finish this work. It's so far from finished that there's no way anyone else can put the pieces together in a satisfying manner from here. This is even worse than George Martin and Robert Jordan, who at least did get endings of a sort.
Today it was Berserk, a series that had already dragged on way too long. Tomorrow it will be Seikai no Senki, Guyver, Major 2nd, MIX, Hunter x Hunter, Index/Railgun, Fate/Kaleid Liner, Dragon Ball Super, Rurouni Kenshin, Saki, Prince of Tennis, Card Captor Sakura, Baccano, Amagi Brilliant Park, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Xanth, Game of Thrones, Futari Ecchi, Broken Blade, and God help us One Piece.
Everyone involved in this racket should be ashamed of themselves. I wrote the Wyrd trilogy in a couple years. Yes, it was a trilogy, not some 50 novel epic, it ended. I wrote '100 Waifus' in a year. Yes I'm still tinkering with it at the edges but it's been a finished work for a long time now. It is possible to finish works of art. I know, I've done it. And they're the best works of art around. All it takes is a clear sense of what's worth saying, what's important enough to say, and what isn't, and then setting down what you want to say and being satisfied with what's been conveyed. You don't have to make every damn story longer than War and Peace.
God gave us a limited time on this Earth. There's no telling when you'll fall over dead from a stroke, it could occur minutes from now. Everything must be planned around this. Don't leave things hanging. Be satisfied with the life you lived such that you could die at any moment. And if you are doing something long term, take a reasonable look at your chances of living through it and act accordingly. Set doable goals and only start a new one once you've finished the previous.
God gave us a limited time on this Earth, but 54 years is enough time to accomplish anything reasonable. God gave Kentaro 32 years, 32 years!, to finish Berserk, and he still screwed it up. This can't be laid at God's feet. This is all Kentaro.
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