Dark Knights gather from far and wide in FFXIV to grieve the news of Berserk author’s death

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-05-21 00:19 (JST)
Translated by. Ari Clark

On May 20, a series of gatherings of players dressed as Dark Knights in the MMO Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) were spotted and reported by multiple Twitter and reddit users. Especially on servers outside of Japan. These gatherings seem to have been sparked by the news of the death of Kentaro Miura, creator of the manga Berserk, which had been announced earlier that day.

Berserk is a sword-and-sorcery manga with a medieval European fantasy setting. It began serialization in 1989, and over the course of a long run spanning over 30 years, it was adapted into two television anime series, plus a trilogy of animated films. It’s a popular work that has been well received, both in Japan and abroad, and it has over 50 million total copies in circulation worldwide. However, on May 6, its author, Kentaro Miura, passed away due to an acute aortic dissection. The news was announced by his Japanese publisher, Hakusensha, on May 20.

Berserk has been highly influential on the fantasy media that followed it, and it would be no exaggeration to say that it was the seminal workthat established the character archetype of the “swordsman wielding a giant sword” in fantasy media. The Final Fantasy series itself features the protagonist of the popular game Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife, carrying a giant Buster Sword on his shoulder. In From Software’s popular Dark Souls series, elements that make homage to Berserk can be seen scattered throughout the games.

The Dark Knights in FFXIV are no exception, being a magic-using job with a motif of darkness that involves one-handedly wielding a sword as long as the character is tall. Among the players who love the Dark Knight class, there must be quite a few who would cite Berserk as the reason they found themselves fascinated by a job class that involves swinging around a giant sword. So, when the news broke of Mr. Miura’s passing, a series of images of Dark Knights gathering to pay their respects in the cities of overseas servers were posted to Twitter.

For example, on Balmung server, a long line of players in Dark Knight gear was seen gathering in the city of Ul’dah. The line significantly exceeded the player rendering limits for FFXIV, and stretched from the front of the Thaumaturge’s Guild all the way to the front of the Adventurer’s Guild. Even that distance still wasn’t enough, and a second line had to be formed. It was astonishing to see so many players gathered together to offer up their condolences.

Balmung server has been especially famous for a while now for being a server where a lot of players gather who love to roleplay. You can glimpse players conversing inside the Adventurer’s Guild as if they were actual in-character adventurers. It’s a server where roleplaying flourishes in its most traditional sense, to the point where there’s even an organized calendar of roleplaying events.

The director/producer of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, alluded in a previous interview to Berserk being one of the influences that was worked into the image of the Dark Knight (see link in Japanese). There have to be plenty of players among the base who enjoy roleplaying as Dark Knights due to being fans of Berserk. This seems to have combined with the player culture of this particular server, to result in the huge number of Dark Knights crowding into the Balmung server to pay tribute to their fallen hero.

There have also been reports of sightings of Dark Knights gathering around the Aetheryte plaza in Limsa Lominsa, in Tonberry server. These gatherings seem to have been born out of a combination of a server culture that values the community, and a deep love for games and manga.

You can see the way these Dark Knights gathered to express their grief by following the #FFXIV and #Berserk hashtags on Twitter. The sorrowful voices of these fans, who were unable to hide their shock at the unexpected news of Mr. Miura’s passing, can be seen as a moving testament to the magnitude of the influence that Berserk has had as a work of fiction, and the love they felt for the work and its creator.