Kentaro Miura

Born in Chiba City of Japan's Chiba Prefecture, Kentaro Miura (July 11, 1966 – May 6, 2021) first began drawing manga when he was ten years old. His first manga, Miuranger, was created and published for his classmates in a school publication. His second manga, Ken E No Michi (The Way to the Sword) was the first time that Miura would use India ink, and when he went to middle school, his drawing technique would improve greatly as he started using professional drawing techniques, with a Doujin being produced with the help of his friends in 1982.

In 1985, Miura created and submitted another manga called Futanabi for the entrance exam of an art college at Nihon University, which not only got him his admission into the college, but got him a nomination for Best New Author work in Weekly Shonen Magazine. Miura would publish another manga called Noa for Weekly Shonen Magazine that same year. Due to a disagreement with one of the editors, Noa was stalled and eventually dropped, which marked the point where Miura's career would hit a slump.

In 1988, three years after Noa, Miura created the foundation for what would be his masterpiece in the Berserk Prototype, which would win him a prize from the Comi Manga School. The story had Guts, who would soon become the main protagonist of the series, as a somewhat less cold character with an eyepatch (which he gives up before the prototype's end) who had elements of a Deadpan Snarker and took up Demon Slaying after his mother was killed by one. The Big Bad was to be a single demon lord by the name of Vana (instead of the five archdemons known as the Godhand that take up the role in the series proper). Lastly, the prototype was intended to be a Shonen story, but it was changed to its now-familiar Seinen form because the story was too dark.

After receiving his doctorate degree in 1989, he entered into a collaboration with Yoshiyuki Okamura, better known as Buronson, for a manga by the name of Ouro (The King of Wolves), with Buronson providing the script and Miura providing the art. 1990 saw the publication of Ouro Den (Legend of the Wolf King), the sequel to this manga. In 1992, Miura would do one last collaboration with Buronson, creating the manga Japan, again with Miura providing the art to Buronson's story.

The first volume of Berserk was published in 1990, though it met with little success. The series would not really take off until it was serialized in Young Animal in 1992 with the publication of the Golden Age arc. Miura's epic tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, horror, vengeance and supreme demon asskicking is still ongoing today, with 35 volumes and counting, a 25-episode anime series that covers the Golden Age arc of the manga, and two video games for the Sega Dreamcast (Sword of the Berserk) and the PlayStation 2 (Berserk: Millennium Falcon Arc - Chapter of the Holy Demon War). Due to Miura's notoriously irregular schedule and the incredible detail of his art, particularly when rendering Guts's incredibly bloody battles and the horrible demonic creatures that he regularly fights, new tankobon volumes of the manga often come out twice a year at best when Miura is not on hiatus.

Miura's primary influence comes from works in different media, with his primary inspiration being Kaoru Kurimoto's long-running Guin Saga fantasy series, and additional influence being drawn from Go Nagai's two darkest and most violent mangas, Devilman and Violence Jack. Miura's style is at times quite beautiful and emotional, but at other times, he comes up with and draws some truly messed up shit straight from the land of High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

In addition to Berserk, Kentaro Miura has also created Kamui Gakupo, a Vocaloid whose design is based on Japanese Visual Kei artist Gackt. He is also a big fan of Nico Nico Douga and The iDOLM@STER, the latter to the point where it is starting to worry fans of his work.

He died at age 54, from an acute aortic dissection.

Works by Kentaro Miura:
 * Miuranger
 * Ken E No Michi (The Way to the Sword)
 * Futanabi
 * Noa
 * Berserk Prototype
 * Ouro (King of the Wolves)
 * Ouro Den (Legend of the Wolf King)
 * Berserk
 * Japan
 * Kamui Gakupo