Slightly Biased Manga

This ENTIRE VOLUME was just grotesque, deformed monsters the likes of which I’ve never seen eating people in the messiest way possible.  There were a couple chapters at the end after things had settled, but the bulk of this volume was just… a beautiful, horrible, bloody, gory massacre.  When the Cenobites said everyone would be sacrificed, they weren’t kidding.  Monsters appear out of nowhere and begin consuming everyone immediately.  I mentioned last time that the Kings appearing was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a manga.  I think it may be second only to this massacre.

Most of the people who survive the first wave of slaughter can’t or won’t believe what they are seeing.  I liked that reaction a lot.  On one hand, I want to say that it’s more realistic that they didn’t take this horrible situation in stride and just start hacking away at the monsters.  Monsters don’t really exist in their world after all, and the one Guts fought was the only one most of them had seen… so it seemed logical that the sight of so many at once suddenly devouring their friends would give them reason to pause instead of fight.  On the other hand, there was nothing whatsoever that was “real” about what was going on, so it seems poor to quibble over details like that.  Even so, it was the right thing for the situation.

I’m glad that Judeau didn’t die a random, senseless death.  Judeau wasn’t even horribly brutalized by monsters before he died, he just… expired doing a brave thing, and he sort of put the fight back in Casca and forced her to deal with the situation.

The only one who had a chance against the monsters was Guts, who was armed only with the hilt of a broken sword.  He did what he could, which was a hell of a lot.  He went absolutely crazy when he saw the slaughter start (he’s still up on the platform with Griffith while everyone else is down below), and as he swims through the pools of blood on the ground, he does a fair amount of brutalizing himself.  It was just… I can’t adequately describe how absolutely horrifying and perfect this volume was.

Guts doesn’t actually fall until Griffith finishes “incubating” and comes down to face him personally.  It takes several monsters to restrain Guts, and that’s when he loses his arm and eye.  Griffith does horrible things to Casca, and he makes the monsters hold Guts down so he has to watch.

The very end of the volume has someone saving both Guts and Casca.  Griffith holds off on blowing the two of them apart as they flee the Cenobite dimension.  Given the horrible brutalizing he had just given Casca, I’m willing to bet his hesitation mostly concerned the welfare of Guts.   The last couple chapters just deal with explaining that Casca… isn’t quite the same, and sort of set things up for how we know them in the present, which is that Guts is constantly pursued by monsters that want to devour him.

I think the flashback may have one more volume left in it, because… well, because Casca is still alive.  I feel like I have to reserve judgment on her until she either dies or comes to her senses, because how she is now is just sort of disturbing and wrong in the same way Griffith’s condition was when they rescued him after the torture.  I’ll still hate her if she somehow comes through unharmed and unchanged, but that seems unlikely.  I can’t begin to imagine the myriad of bizarre things that may or may not happen to her before the flashback ends, and maybe something will happen that’ll make me like her in the end.  Who knows.  I wouldn’t have thought that there could be a scene which could so thoroughly top every single one of the fight scenes in the series so far either, but I was totally wrong about that too.