Schierke, on the other hand, was never alone a day in her life, and Guts already saved ALL of their skins like….well, every time anything happens, so not only does she expect it by now, I think she rather likes it. You know, aside from the whole “armor head eats Guts’ head and tries to make him kill them all” thing. Which in and of itself is kind of a bonding ritual for the two of them.

Said ritual is as follows.
1)Monsters attack
2)Guts kills monsters
3)Big monster appears, hurts Guts
4)Armor eats Guts
5)Guts goes insane
5)Guts kills monsters
6)Schierke saves him (and by proxy everybody else) in the only way anybody can, which is to say the way only SHE can. She’s amazed by the apparent ocean of rage he has inside him, and is then even more amazed by how nice he is to her and the rest of his friends despite it.

Hahahah “used to punch people just because they were old.” Age is a messed up qualifier for a face punch, particularly OLD age. Particularly from Guts, an 8 foot tall one-eyed freakjob with an iron hand.

I love reading through the early volumes where he went out of his way to make people angry, because it seems weird to reconcile that with the broken guy that comes out on the other side of the sacrifice. He used to punch people just because they were old back then.

I do love how protective he is of Schierke. I kind of wish he was like that for Isidro too, and that part of his intervention would have been to help him, but he would let Isidro deal with his own problems. Schierke, despite wielding the strong powers of a witch, just needs that extra-close eye kept on her. It’s adorable, which is something I never thought i would say about Berserk.

I have to say I liked the part a little bit before that, when Schierke was talking to that other girl right around the pirate fight, when she realized that Guts had been watching like the entire thing from the shadow under the gateway. And, at one (telepathic) word from her, Guts would have SLAUGHTERED that Captain Hook looking guy.

Hellsing… if you can find it on sale, it’s… more worth it than Trigun. I’m waiting rather impatiently for the last volume to come out. It’s pretty insane, ridiculous, and fairly nonsensical, though reading the volumes back to back helps keep the thread of the story. Not that the story will win any awards. It is pretty good for that violent action fix, though.

And I think a turning point in this manga was when that guy spilled beer on Schierke’s new clothes. Well, immediately after that, when Guts punched his face in. Oddly enough, that was almost a demonstration of restraint. I mean, he has a gigantic sword on his back, and he decided just to break some face bones. Almost solely because Schierke looked sad.