Slightly Biased Manga

The volume starts off with lots of pity for Griffith.  It was really depressing, and I am kind of glad that it didn’t go on for too long like that, because… well, because the characters just don’t seem like they’re meant for that sort of thing.  Griffith does what he can to run away after overhearing a conversation where Casca basically admits she’d need take care of him for the rest of his life since he’s been basically crippled.  There is kind of an amusing/vaguely frightening daydream that follows this which has Griffith and Casca leading a normal home life… and once again, those two just aren’t meant for those sorts of things.   What they are meant for happens next.

I knew they’d find the Egg of the King again, and I knew the Cenobites/”Four Kings” would be summoned, but how they actually show up is one of the absolute coolest things I’ve ever seen in a manga, ever.  The landscape turns into sad-looking faces and the four take form by rising up gigantic.  One drops from the sky, one is formed when her single enormous face rises up out of the ground, many faces form one of them… you know, different things like that.  I think there’s a whole chapter dedicated to having these four appear when the Egg of the King starts weeping blood.

I can’t stress enough that the ground is made of faces.  This makes everything a LOT freakier.  At one point, the Cenobites raise Griffith up on a platform in the shape of a hand made out of faces.  Guts falls off the edge of the platform, and Griffith tries to save him by putting his arm out, but it starts to come apart at the elbow… which is one of the most disgusting things I think I’ve ever seen.  Guts stops his fall by gouging his broken sword into the side of the platform… into the eye of one of the faces.  Then he climbs up the sheer face precipice with his broken sword, repeatedly gouging the faces on the way up.

A lot of what goes on in this volume deals with the Cenobites explaining the situation to Griffith and him making a decision.  Basically, he can become the lead Cenobite and realize his dream of being king, but he’ll have to sacrifice every single member of the Band of the Hawks.  And really, isn’t that what he’s been doing all along?  Guts realizes that this is probably what Griffith meant when he asked if he was being cruel awhile ago.  Griffith makes his decision, noting just beforehand that Guts is the only person he’s ever met that made him forget his dream.  While certainly interesting now (”You’re the only one…” has been an incomplete thought for the past two or three volumes), I wonder if it will also be important later.

Everyone is branded with that symbol we saw on Guts in the first two volumes.  Judeau gets it on his hand, Casca gets it on her breast, Guts on the back of his neck.  Then the slaughter begins, and it is fantastic.

I wasn’t sure what to think when the scene went back outside the Cenobite dimension and we saw… Puck.  Why Puck appeared is sort of a mystery with a thin excuse (it was helping the one member of the Band of the Hawks that escaped the branding and slaughter), and maybe it will be explained later, but it just seemed like a good excuse to show Puck in a situation where Puck wouldn’t be able to see or recognize Guts.