The Author Of Berserk Thought He Would Be Sued After Seeing Evil Dead II
"Army of Darkness" turns 30 this week and enjoys a well-earned reputation as a horror-comedy classic. Indeed, the influence of Sam Raimi's filmmaking stretches beyond the Pacific Ocean. Kentaro Miura, the late, legendary manga artist responsible for "Berserk," named Raimi and Tim Burton as his favorite filmmakers. In an interview (transcribed into English), Miura praised these directors as "offbeat," noting, "it's strange that a person can be that offbeat and big at the same time."
Miura would know; "Berserk" is one of the bleakest, most violent stories you'll ever read. Some of its splash pages are less action spreads and more ethereal tableaus. However, it's often cited as the crown jewel of fantasy manga. He and Raimi were so alike, in fact, that Miura started to get concerns about copyright. He recounted:
"Back then [the late 1980s] I was still in college, it was the day I finished the first episode of 'Berserk,' and there was 'Evil Dead II' playing at theaters. So after I mailed it to the publisher, I went to see it. It was so similar to 'Berserk,' I was really surprised by myself."
What are the similarities between "Evil Dead" and "Berserk?" It has to do with their lead characters, Ash Williams (played by the one-of-a-kind Bruce Campbell) and The Black Swordsman, Guts.
Guts and Ash
In "Berserk," Guts is a warrior who wanders Midland, a fantasy realm resembling Dark Ages Europe. Guts has companions: the small fairy Puck, his enormous sword the Dragon Slayer, and hordes of demons on his trail.
On Guts' neck is a brand marking him as a "Sacrifice" for the Apostles, humans who gave themselves over to the force of darkness and were reborn as demons. The Brand of Sacrifice allows Apostles to track Guts, and he in turn can tell when one is near because his brand painfully bleeds. Amoral and bloodthirsty, Guts seeks vengeance on the Apostles' masters, the God Hand, for reasons that are revealed as the story unfolds.
Sam Raimi has a thing for cursed protagonists. In the closing narration of "Spider-Man," Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) calls his powers "[his] gift" in one breath and then "[his] curse" in the next. In "A Simple Plan," the leads' misfortunes all start when they come across a crashed plane full of money and take the cash. Then, the lead of "Drag Me To Hell" is literally cursed and doesn't escape it.
Ash Williams is the original cursed Raimi protagonist. Like Guts in "Berserk," he's trapped in a cycle where he's hounded and tortured by demons. Both Raimi and Miura have a sadistic bent when handling their main character. Granted, Raimi plays Ash's misfortune for comedy, not a tragedy as Miura did with Guts. There are more similarities between Ash and Guts than just fighting demons though; they also look quite alike. Miura, as befitting of an artist, took note of the design overlap.
Missing and metal hands
Both Guts and Ash have a missing hand, severed by their other one. In "Evil Dead II," Ash's right hand is possessed by a Deadite and begins attacking him. He's eventually forced to pin it down with a knife and then sever it with a chainsaw. Later, he attaches the chainsaw to his arm as a groovy replacement. In "Berserk," Guts is introduced with a mechanical arm; we learn later his original limb was bitten by an enormous Apostle and he hacked it off to free himself. While Ash wields a "Boomstick" shotgun as a backup weapon, Guts' new arm can turn into a cannon.
Miura described his astonishment at these similarities: "[Ash] had his arm cut off and he had a chainsaw attached to his arm and had a shotgun on his back. I was like, 'What the?' because Guts has a gun on his arm and a huge sword on his back. It was just like Ash." A creator feeling anxious before sending their work out into the world is to be expected. Now, though, Miura also had to worry that he would get sued for copyright before his creation could blossom. It didn't help that the similarities grew in the third "Evil Dead" film, "Army of Darkness," or as it was called in Miura's native Japan, "Captain Supermarket."
Recursive influences
In "Army of Darkness," Ash is sent back to the Middle Ages; instead of a cabin in the woods, he fights demons in castles and black forests, echoing Guts. Ash also ditches his chainsaw for a full-on bionic hand that's fastened to his arm stump with a belt harness, just like Guts. Give Ash in "Army of Darkness" a slab of iron shaped like a sword to carry around and he'd be Guts' spitting image.
Now, it's unlikely Ash directly influenced Guts' character, at least conceptually. Most of the similarities between the two originate in "Evil Dead II" — in the original film, Ash keeps both his hands attached to his body. If anything, I'd say Gut's mechanical arm is probably inspired by Luke Skywalker (in the aforementioned interview, Miura declared, "'Star Wars' is my all-time favorite movie").
That said, one can spot some small nods to "Evil Dead" if they look closely at "Berserk." In one chapter, Guts is captured and held in a pillory; only his intact arm is bound while his prosthetic is removed and the stump lies free. This looks remarkably like Ash's predicament in the opening of "Army of Darkness." In the "Berserk" chapter "He Who Hunts Dragons," we learn how Guts got his artificial arm. In Dark Horse's English translation of this moment, he gives the device a familiar compliment: "Groovy."
Given how similar their sensibilities were, it's not surprising that Miura counted Sam Raimi among his favorite directors.