Duranki

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[Spoiler free]
I'll start by saying that i have no idea how i missed the title, i only found it a few days ago randomly.
Saying that berserk is being published at a slow rate would be an understatement , its ridiculous at this point so I’ve never expected Miura to be working on something else simultaneously…. But hey even if its not berserk at least we are getting something. (Note: I’ll be using berserk a lot as a reference)


Art: I’ll start with this one , the art is amazing , perfect , very detailed I expected nothing less from the man behind berserk , ... the art of both titles is very similar and I am a big fan of this style I have nothing to complain about , the only noticeable difference is that Berserk had a dark theme , but Duranki seems to be light hearted and you can tell the world is colourful , similar to Elfhelm in berserk.


Story/World: here as well we are introduced to this fantasy world that’s similar to berserk where you can find different races , species , spirits and most likely magic since we haven’t seen it yet. One thing added to the mix was the introduction of Gods , River Gods , Forest Gods , and so on … the first two presented to us are both Gods of wisdom and they were responsible of giving birth or as they said creating a child who’s “ not divine , nor human , not man , not woman ….” And was given the name “Usumgallu”. The child was given to another God with an appearance similar to Hermes from the Greek myth and was tasked with taking the child to the real/physical world or whatever you call it.
Finally the Child was found by an old couple living near the mountain and they took him and raised him as their own for several years , the story jumps years ahead and the child is already a young kid and the story goes from there.
The child is clearly not normal , not in a bad way , and also not the sex part , but it was how cleaver and talented he was and talented ,as shown when he made several tools , weapons and even structures , ones never seen in his world.
Another thing about him is his appearance, if you have read berserk remember how people looked at Griffith in the latest chapters of the story (as of this review), it the same exact thing and after encounter people become more and more found of him.


Characters : it’s too early to discuss the characters in the story , there isn’t much development the few information we got was from chapter 5 where it talked abit more about the side characters but nothing too noticeable to talk about , any reader will get the same idea when they get that far.
Everything special about the MC iv already talked about at the end of the Story/World part, thought it would be better if I mentioned it there.
Enjoyment: Hm I don’t what to say here , if I didn’t enjoy this title I wouldn’t be writing all this , but apart from that I did enjoy Duranki so far , again the story is still young and there’s a lot of potential here, I wouldn’t call myself a Miura fanboy but I really like his work , I only read berserk after all and if theres anything close to it I’m sure ill enjoy it and I’m sure berserk fans would agree here.


Overall: Duranki seems to be a very promising title , it’s too soon to talk in details about or to even criticize it , I’m not even sure if this is a real project I thought this is just a way for Miura to try and forget that he has a more important title to finish , and I don’t wanna get my hopes up looking at the Berserk release schedule…. But hey im just here for the ride.

Finally , ill just end by saying that if you liked berserk and are a fan of Miura’s works in general you should give this a shot , as of this review ( and probably for the next 10 years) I don’t think theres going be that many updates , so theres no harm trying for yourself.

I can't really focus that much on the story and characters while rating this manga, so I will leave it at 9/10 overall, and just describe what I've seen so far.

I'd say the review is spoiler free, since I've tried to not speak much about things that happen further than in first two chapters.

-- Story (9/10) --

So the main character's name of this story is Usumgallu, a hermaphrodite (at least from what we've seen so far). We're placed in a kinda real world, with people of unknown century. It seems that people in this story strongly believe in Greek Gods associated with Greek Mythology, and ... also Gods like water Gods, air Gods, mountain Gods, etc. etc.

The story is interesting. Usumgallu is nothing of this realm, and just from the beginning Miura feeds us with many mysteries related to the character and not only - mysteries related to the world. Characters seem to have different personalities, and that's good. I strongly feel an adventure vibe from this manga, since it's so stereotypical (in a positive way here) - a group of friends who fight together for their back, etc. I'd say that I'm pretty surprised after latest chapter, and I can tell, that we already see that these adventures won't be any of those "normal ones", and that the real adventure begins just here.

-- Art (10/10) --

It's 10/10 without much saying. You know Miura. His art is (I'd personally say) perfect. These were only 6 chapters, but they took me a few hours, since the panels were like giant paintings, following one after another. There are so many details that you can't even fully devour a single panel with your eyes. Animals are drawn so good, with sometimes full panel dedicated to picture their savagery with microscopic details. It's just beautiful, and after chapter 6 I can tell you, that this was what I was expecting from Miura.

-- Character (8/10) --

I can't really say much here, since it's the beginning of our adventure and we didn't really see the character development of our characters yet. But I can see that, that as I've previously mentioned - every character has some kind of different personality. If you think about the beginning band, and if you have a good memory which would allow you to remember every single name of the main characters from the story, then I promise you - they are pretty easy to recognize. Those personalities are not fully shown yet, but we can slowly see what will bloom out of them. These were only 6 chapters, and Miura introduced every character so well, that you can already talk about personality of each one. These characters have troubles and some kind of a sad past on their head, which haven't been that much explained yet, but you can already tell, that this will be the base area to build their character development from - and also from the adventures and experiences during the rest of their lifespan.

-- Enjoyment (10/10) --

Not much to say here. It's just a good (would even say exceptional) experience. I think I won't be mistaken with his work, since I wasn't with Berserk. I just hope that we'll get a good piece of manga, with a not-so-long release time for each chapter.


OVERALL (9/10)

I just hope that Miura (and Studio Gaga) won't give up on this project, and that they will keep a good pace with it. The art is fantastic, and the story is too. And let's just stick with that. Hope I will be able to edit this review in the future, changing it to 10/10 in "Overall". I will stick with 9/10, since we don't know much about characters and story yet. It looks promising, it looks reaaaaaally good, it looks interesting, but we don't know much about it yet.

I came and read Duranki in the wake of Kentaro Miura's passing far too early at the age of 54 because I wanted to go through his entire body of work, with the future of Berserk being up in the air. Overall, I enjoyed Duranki, but I feel like it's held back by its short length (at least thus far) and the fact that it's a side project and shows. I'll try my best not to spoil anything past Episode 1, but no guarantees.



Starting with the obvious, the art gets a perfect 10. As far as I know, this was done entirely by Miura's assistants ... at Studio Gaga with Miura himself only doing the storyboards, and they do a pretty good job of emulating his style. I particularly like the spread depicting the birth of Usumgallu, which immediately screams at you that this is the legacy of Miura, something I feel is far more impactful now that the man is gone.



The story follows the aforementioned Usumgallu, an androgyne being created from the genetic material of two gods of wisdom as the last God Seed. Their "father" (the gods of wisdom are only genetic templates) takes them down to Mount Nisir, where they're eventually adopted by a human family. The rest of the series follows them just living their life, helping their parents as an incredibly resourceful child alongside Pan, our comic relief humanoid for this series.

Put simply, if you were expecting something with the dark tone and nightmarish abominations of Berserk, you're gonna be disappointed. At least thus far, it's been fairly standard, which is fine, considering we're only a few episodes in, but I just think a number of people will approach this series expecting something closer to Miura's other works and be disappointed.

Onto my issues, of which I don't really have many, and mostly touched on those I do have in my overall section. Firstly, Duranki was made as a side-project, and it feels like it. While the art is amazing, the story itself isn't up to the admittedly incredibly high standards set by the previous work of its creator. It also struggles with its characters (which I'll elaborate on when we get there) and suffers from its short length. As far as I know, this isn't something I can necessarily fault it for, the latest chapter (which, as of the time I'm writing this, is Chapter 6) seems to have come out around the time that COVID began to become an issue, but I feel it's an issue I still have to talk about, since I was actually pretty interested to see where this was going and now the series' future is up in the air.



I feel like the characters suffer from the same issue as the story, they're decent but suffer massively from the expectations of its creator's older works. You could give me any named character in Berserk and I would be able to tell you what makes them so great, who they like and dislike, and their reasons for doing so, something I cannot do for any of the characters in Duranki. Usumgallu also suffers from feeling a bit like a "Sue" character (I don't know what the genderless equivalent is.) They're probably only around 5 years old, and (SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 2) they come up with a crossbow for hunting and immediately know how to call for the help of spirits. I get that they're literally the sort-of child of two gods of wisdom, but explaining your sueyness doesn't make your character less of a sue.

Overall though, I still enjoyed my short trip through Duranki. Be prepared to walk into a side project, but definitely try and check this one out if you want to go through one of Miura's lighter works or want to see Studio Gaga working for themselves before whatever they do next in this post-Miura world.