After covering the first four volumes of Kentaro Miura’s Berserk a few months back, Tim and Kumar decided to keep going. In volumes 5 and 6, the lengthy (volumes 3 to 14!) flashback to Guts’s origin story continues, but why does the flashback seem to exist in a magic-free world? In the early volumes, in the “present”, Guts was shadowed by an elf, frequently encountered ghosts and demons, and pulled off comically over-the-top feats with his huge sword. But the world of the flashback seems to be, with a few exceptions, a fairly realistic medieval Europe. The guys examine the difference and pick up hints of what comes next.
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Berserk abruptly ended when creator Kentaro Miura died two years ago, later resurrected by Miura’s assistants and his friend Kouji Mori. Neither Tim nor Kumar had read this violent, complex manga, but it lingered on our to-do list the past two years until a 
Prolific manga creator Taiyo Matsumoto’s Ping Pong is, nominally, a sports manga, but it doesn’t stick to the tropes. It presents table tennis matches that take place in a small town, not at a major tournament in Tokyo; often it doesn’t even show the end of a match! In some ways it functions as a parody of the genre. Kumar and Dana discuss this fun and unpredictable manga.