KENTARO MIURA
The legendary manga artist who was an inspiration to many
Kentaro Miura's Early Life
Kentaro Miura was born on July 11th, 1966 in Chiba, Chiba Prefecture, Japan to two artists who were students at Musashino Arts School. His father created storyboards for commericals and his mother was an art teacher, which resulted in a naturally constructed artistic environment that inspired him to draw. Thus, in 1973, he began experimenting with drawing in a notebook.
From the very young age of 10 years old in 1976, he created his first manga for his schoolmates in a school publication, called Miuranger, which spanned 40 total volumes. However, this was never published in any official formats, so original artwork and storyline is unknown. In fact, one image is commonly mistakened to be from Miuranger, but is actually from his one-shot post-apocalyptic story, Noa.
His second manga was written in 1977, called Ken e no michi (剣への道), which is The Way of the Sword in English. This was his first work drawn using Indian Ink.
Then, he became more serious with his artwork. During middle school, he began to use rasters for his work, and he self-trained to utilize professional drawing techniques such as screen tone. Afterwards, he enrolled in an artistic curriculum during high school where him and his friends published in school booklets. It was during this time that Miura began to learn about doujinshis (fan art works of existing manga).
In 1982, Miura published his first doujinshi in a fan-produced magazine. He befriended fellow manga artist Koji Mori. Together, they co-authored a science fiction doujinshi that was sent to Weekly Shonen Sunday. However, it never made through the last round of selections.
At the age of 18, Miura briefly worked as an assistant for George Morikawa, who is the author of Hajime no Ippo. Since Miura already had such a natural talent for art, he was dismissed, for there was nothing more Morikawa could teach him. Around this time, Miura already had a dark warrior with a humoungous sword in his portfolio.
In 1985, he was accepted into Niho Daigaku university where he began his artistic career. He started both Noa and Futatabi during this time, which was submitted to the Shonen Magazine. As a result, he won a prize for best new author for Futatabi and had Noa published in the magazine toward the end of the year. However, due to a difference in opinion with one of the editors, both mangas ended quickly.
Kentaro Miura's Manga Career
The best manga ever, Berserk, first appeared in 1988. This version is what we now call Berserk: The Prototype - a 48 paged manga that won Miura a prize from a Manga School.
Not long after this, he finished his doctorate in 1989 and began another manga called Ourou, otherwise known as King of the Wolves. According to Miura, this was based off of a script from Yoshiyuki Okamura, the manga writer of Fist of the North Star. This manga was published in Japanese Animal House in issues 5 and 7 of 1989.
In 1990, there were more releases to follow up on Ourou called Ourou Den (Legend of the Wolf King), which was also on a script written by Okamura.
That same year, Japanese Animal House also released the first ever publication of Berserk, which did not begin to gain traction until the Golden Age Arc.
In 1992, he started the manga Japan with Okamura, which appeared in Animal House that year with stand alone manga volumes released the following year. However, it was toward the end of this year that Miura decided to dedicate himself to continuing his manga, Berserk.
Later on, due to Berserk's popularity, Miura would eventually manage the production of the 25 episode animated series for Berserk in 1997, which was aired on Nihon TV in Japan.
Presently, Berserk has had a lot of success in Japan and around the world. It has released 40 volumes and has earned Miura the Award for Excellence at the 6th installment of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize- winning him a total of 1 million yen.
In 2013, Miura wrote and illustrated another manga named Gigantomakhia, a 6 chapter mini-seies. In that same year, a movie adaption of Berserk named Berserk: The Golden Age Arc I - The Egg of the King released and won Silver at the Oregon Film Awards.
Kentaro Miura's Manga's & Illustrations
❗ The following are not meant to be complete synopses, but a very vague description about each piece to avoid spoilers.
-
Gigantomackhia
-
Berserk: The Prototype (1988)
-
Noa
-
Futatabi
-
Japan
-
King of Wolves (Ourou)
-
Duranki
-
Berserk
A mini series that is 6 chapters long about a war between Zeus' army and the giant Alcyoneus' army - and set 100 million years in the future! How cool is that?
This is the precursor to Berserk, but not part of the cannon storyline. Guts appearance and personality are different, and so are other character designs.
This manga is about survival in a post-apocalyptic era with more advanced technology following the characters Noah and Angel! Want more? Well no spoilers here...
A mechanic's apprentice who lives underground encounters an intruder named Venus who claims to be from another world that is slightly different to his! The police are after Venus...what next? No spoilers here!
This is a manga written by Buronson and illustrated by Kentaro Miura then published in Hakusensha's seinen manga magazine Young Animal in 1992. It's about a Yakuza in love with a TV reporter who is making a report about how foreigners see the Japanese and how the Japanese view themselves. An earthquake comes and ghost Carthaginians bring them (along with some college students) to the future where the Japanese have emigrated to other countries and have become oppressed. I wanted to explain this more simply but this actually sounds complicatedly interesting...
A historical scholar named Iba disappears on a lone trip to study the ancient Silk Road. His girlfriend Kyoko sets out to find him a year later, only to be sucked into a vortex to arrive in a world where her boyfriend is a warrior-slave under the reign of Genghis Khan in 13th century Mongolia. Miura's creativity is truly out of this world.
Based on Greek, Mesopotamian, and Sumerian myths, Duranki follows a child named Usumgallu who is neither a god or human, nor female or male through their travels through a mythical world. This manga was written produced by Kentaro Miura and illustrated by his manga studio, Studio Gaga.
No lie, this is the best manga of all time (heavily biased). It's an extremely violent story set in a Europe-inspired dark fantasy world that follows both Guts, a dark swordsman , and Griffith, the leader of the "Band of the Hawk", a mercenary band through one of the most deliberate and thorugh story telling and character development stories of all time. Need I say more? Go read it right now!
Read more about this legendary manga artist here.
Read these interviews of Kentaro Miura.
❗ Curious about the older version of this site? Click here.