The alleged relationship between The Idolm @ ster and the Berserk breaks

Dark, demonic and bloody are some of the words that best describe Kentaro Miura's hit manga Berserk and even rank him as one of the best of all time. For over 30 years of career, Miura has delighted her fans with a brilliant story and impressive art. Unfortunately, the pace of it has slowed down quite a bit. These days, Berserk is published in too distant spaces of time and it no longer follows the bimonthly serialization that we were used to. In 2019 only one chapter was released, and 2020 seems to be going down the same path, but what is the cause of this?

The theory

If you have spent enough time on the Internet, you are surely aware of the most absurd and at the same time the most popular theory, which ensures that Miura is obsessed with a certain video game franchise and which plays instead of writing the manga. According to theory, this franchise is The Idolm @ ster, a massively popular game series in the rhythm genre that focuses on becoming the manager of a group of cute aspiring idols, perhaps the most opposite concept from Berserk. that we could imagine.


In an interview with Young Animal magazine staff, Miura mentioned that he is, in fact, a fan of The Idolm @ ster franchise. Of course, the author has every right to enjoy whatever entertainment means he likes, but that didn't stop fans from starting to make fun of him. There is something in the concept of this situation that seems quite curious, and it is the fact that the creator of such a violent and dark manga series spends his free time playing an idol game. In fact, this statement was one of the reasons why the theory emerged on Reddit, and to this day it continues to be shared as the “real cause” of the delays. In Japan, a fake new was even distributed ensuring that Miura would leave Berserk.

In some ways, the idea, despite being ridiculous, contains quite a few arguments in favor. Miura's release rate for Berserk began to slow between late 2006 and early 2007, very close to the release dates of the first game in the The Idolm @ ster franchise. As the franchise released more games, Berserk's publishing cadence declined more and more, to the point that fans already know that they will only have one chapter a year. The growth of The Idolm @ ster franchise is then, according to theory, directly proportional to the slowdown in Berserk's publication. Fans even claim that Miura neglects the manga's writing to focus on more focused works on cute girls. This, according to theory, is demonstrated with the other two lesser-known works of Miura, Duranki and Gigantomachia. These two manga feature cute girls as characters, and Miura focused more on developing these stories recently.


There has also been an increase in the appearance of female and young characters in Berserk. The young witch Schierke, the prophet Sonia, and the fish girl Isma are recent additions to the series, and fans at the time felt that these colorful characters didn't quite fit into the old-time realm of Berserk. The theory assures that Miura's interest in the pretty girls from The Idolm @ ster finally ended up influencing Berserk, as well as other of his works. However, the only statement that Miura has made about it is that he is a fan of The Idolm @ ster at the same level as he would be of any other game.

Berserk's legacy

Either way, although fans tease Miura's likes in video games, they still respect him for his amazing work as an author. It's much more credible that Berserk is on hiatus due to the strenuous work involved in illustrating and writing this manga, rather than The Idolm @ ster theory. Berserk's manga is popular and renowned for his amazing artwork, and it is clear that maintaining that level of detail represents a considerable amount of work. It's a common story for manga authors to over-exploit and shorten their series, so fans should actually be grateful that Miura works this way, as she is avoiding acquiring severe health issues. It is understandable that you want to venture into writing other types of manga, instead of sticking to a single series and genre for thirty years, which surely had already caused you some exhaustion.