Berserk 28

Kentaro Miura – Dark Horse – 2009 – 33+ volumes

In this volume, there’s a panel of all the people in Guts’ group reacting in open-mouthed shock when his armor activates and he slices a gigantic demon in two with his sword.  It’s how everyone should look all the time whenever Guts is fighting.  It’s my favorite panel in the entire series.

Almost as good is a passage at the end when Guts’ group gets to a town where mercenary soldiers gather.  Serpico explains who all the armies are and their strengths and weaknesses, then he and Guts get into a discussion about the mercenary soldiers.  Since absolutely nobody in the group knows who Guts is, Serpico then begins to talk about how great the Band of the Hawk mercenary group is rumoured to be.  Isidro jumps in with his approval, then says his favorite member is the captain.  Guts says nothing, but waves away the admiration in a cartoonish way with his back to Isidro.  Hilariously, Puck is the only one who knows Guts’ past, though Farnese suspects a connection to Griffith and the Band of the Hawk since she’s heard him speak the name.  Puck says nothing thorough this sequence, though I’m having a hard time remembering just how much Puck knows.  I’m pretty sure he knows quite a bit, if not everything.

The other thing I’m growing to appreciate is the fact that Griffith is strengthing his army with the strongest undead and enchanted warriors that can be produced.  They are all flocking to him and fighting in his name.  Guts seems to be taking them down with the help of a dead witch’s armor, a ghost, a couple elves, and a group of women and children.  In any other series, this would be quite comical.  It’s a little comical here.  I want to see them succeed so badly.

I’m very much looking forward to Elfhelm, but I suspect that is still very very far in the future.  Sigh.

Berserk 27

Kentaro Miura – Dark Horse – 2009 – 33+ volumes

The beginning of this volume doesn’t really hold any surprises, but the Berserker Armor is way cooler than I initially thought.  Of course it’s cursed/magic so that it’s pushing Guts past his limits and making it so he doesn’t feel pain… but apparently it’s not really protecting him from severe blows, so his bones are breaking as he fights the apostles.  The armor helps him alone by digging metal spikes into his bones and holding them together and reinforcing them so he can fight.  What. That’s one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen.  And of course the story takes several opportunities to deliver bone-crushing blows, complete with anatomy illustrations of the bones breaking inside of Guts and then being impaled by the spikes.

After this fight, the story takes a big detour to look into Midland in Charlotte’s kingdom.  It’s overrun by the Kushan and their king.  This is, of course, a lot more extreme than it first seemed, since the captiol is near deserted, with dead bodies impaled on the spires of all the buildings and the women being sacrificed in insane demon rituals.  The king himself seems to be a powerful apostle looking to challenge Griffith and the Band of the Hawks directly.  He, uh… is keeping Charlotte unharmed in a tower in the castle.  You… you can imagine where that is going in this series, but thankfully he thinks better of it before the act is committed.

There’s an awesome struggle between his demons and Griffith’s demons in the Band of the Hawk, which is interrupted by a scene where we see how the King’s demons are being made.  It is absolutely horriffic and very graphic, just like everything else, and involves naked pregnanent women beind dipped into a bio-mass of demons and little demon babies popping out of their corpse.  It’s just Berserk’s style to do the most tasteless thing possible, of course.

The art in the demon warring scenes is pretty incredible.  The Kushan-created demons all look alike in theory, but any spread showing them, you’ll see that they are all drawn slightly differently, with different intricate details and even slightly different armour designs for each demon.  There are also really awesome-looking elephant demons and a few other things that I really appreciated the design for, and of course we get to see a lot more apostles, each with a pretty incredible design.

Now, as awesome as all this was, I was pretty angry it took me away from what was happening with Guts and his crew.  We rejoin at the very end of the volume, where we see that Guts was more or less mortally wounded in that fight and may or may not have much longer to live, even with all the healing magic Schierke, the two elves, and the armour (which only takes away pain) have to offer him.  I’m guessing he’ll live long enough to slay what needs slaying, but I’m going to be pretty broken up if Guts dies at the end of the series without getting at least a little peace.  Especially since he seems to be enjoying himself with his new party so much.  It’s hard to deny the charm of Isidro’s hero-worship, Guts’ careful watch over Schierke, the way he appreciates Farnese watching over Casca, little details like that.  It’s a pretty homey scene at the moment.

Anyway.  On to Elfhelm!

Berserk 26

Kentaro Miura – Dark Horse – 2008 – 33+ volumes

I always somehow forget just how cool Berserk actually is until I read a new volume.  I mean, I remember it’s pretty cool, but then… you know, massive troll destruction, Cenobites summoned from the entrails of trolls, “Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea,” you know.  Berserk is the coolest thing I own.

So, as expected, troll slaying commences for the first half of this volume.  I actually figured this would be a lot more violent than it actually was, but I think that has something to do with the fact the design on the trolls is less human-looking, so the violence isn’t registering as much for me.  They’re still having their heads and bodies cleaved in half and literally there is page after page of Guts splitting them with his sword, so don’t think the battle is skimping in any way.  It’s not.  Guts is taking extra delight in the fact that he’s sent all the children away so he can actually cut loose in a hundred beast brawl for the first time in a long time.

He loses his shirt in one of the most horrible/erotic scenes in the series yet.  I was seriously recoiling from the book in horror at the “Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea” section.  I mean… what was even going on there?  Was it pleasure as well as pain?  It seemed… it seemed like they were both into it.  Though “it” doesn’t really mean anything here, since this was uncharacteristically chaste for a fight climax in Berserk.

Guts stays shirtless for the entire second half of the book.  We get to see the first confrontation between Guts and the new Band of the Hawk, but not with Griffith just yet.  Guts is rather mortally wounded in both body and spirit in the… uh, “Uterus of Darkness” (again, unusually for Berserk, this is not what you think).  He can’t put up much of a fight against the great warrior of the Band of the Hawk, so he gets some help.  Some excellent help.  Berserker armor.

YES.

Also, “The first form I’ve taken in some time… alas, troll entrails make for a revolting ethereal figure” is one of the coolest lines in the series yet.  It rivals the one about Guts losing his desire to kill a few volumes back.