Slightly Biased Manga

The one thing I’ve liked so far is that, ever since the flashback started, the fantasy elements have been almost completely cut out.  In the present, Guts is fighting horrible mutated monsters and is being followed around by a faerie, but these things don’t exist in the past.  So far, the only hints that these things even exist in the world have been the Nosferatu and the dust that Judeau gave to Guts to heal his wounds.  Well, and the egg that Griffith wears.  And then suddenly, because things are starting to fall apart, we have all sorts of hints.  Last volume it was the prophecy Guts listened to, and then in this volume, we once again see monsters, fantasy creatures, and all sorts of other things.  I suppose since an immortal monster was the only enemy that Guts has been unable to defeat so far, it’s appropriate here since now you know shit is really hitting the fan.

This volume is mostly concerned with the rescue of Griffith.  The Princess helps, and as everyone (Pippin and Judeau included with Guts and Casca, along with the Princess and a maid) descends into the basement of the tower where Griffith is being held, the Princess tells a history of her kingdom.  Apparently the tower is the oldest part, and the hole was there before the kingdom was.  It was a relic from the kingdom that had been there before, which had been totally wiped off the map.  That king’s ruler?  None other than the one who had warned Guts before he had his reunion.

Like I said, I have no imagination.  What that little man did to Griffith was totally unexpected.  They didn’t show his face, which I thought was a nice touch.  He seems to still have hair, but even Guts is repulsed by whatever they did to his face.  The little man took pretty much everything from Griffith that made him important, though.  One wonders how that will work itself out.  It seems Griffith is perhaps not mad at Guts about what happened, though.

Of course the small party runs into trouble as they escape.  Specifically, assassins are sent after them.  I liked that Judeau proved himself more useful than everyone other than Guts, basically.  I actually like him quite a bit, he’s talented (but not overly talented) and he’s not all doom-and-gloom like every other character in the series is.

Anything else?  Well, it looks like the King, for whatever reason, has an unending supply of monsters on hand to send after the Hawks.  Next up is the Wolfman, apparently.

I bought up through volume 10 of this series on sale, and I was so… caught up in the end of this volume that I read 10 right after.  I may not be clear on some of the details, but the dividing event between the volumes is so clear that there is only Berserk before this and Berserk after, so I’m pretty sure I’ve got things straight.

First and foremost, I loved what I saw of Griffith in this volume.  I was pretty happy to see that he was so shocked and bent out of shape about Guts, because I was not expecting such a violent reaction out of him.  I mean, I remembered that Griffith “owned” Guts, but I thought Griffith was sort of above caring for people unless it directly affected his plans.  And maybe Guts leaving did, but I think Guts made the right call, because he would have just been a warrior unable to fight in a time of peace if he’d stuck around.

I was sort of sad to see Griffith’s self-destructive behavior, though.  Old Griffith would never have been that reckless, and he is indeed paying for it.  We haven’t seen any sex in a long time (not since volume 3), and there’s something both beautiful and repulsive about it in this series.  I suppose that proves beyond a doubt that Griffith is in fact a man, something the degenitaled nude from earlier in the series hadn’t completely convinced me of.

When I saw the torture start, I thought that they would just scar Griffith’s body and gouge his eyes out.  Seriously.  I have no imagination whatsoever, apparently.

A year passes, and after fighting in a tournament, Guts finally hears rumors about the fallen Band of the Hawk and goes to them just as they’re about to mount a rescue for Griffith.  Not before he gets a prophecy, though.  Actually, the prophecy happens at the beginning of the volume, and the Hawks part happens at the very end.

Also, something else happened at the end.  It was shocking, unexpected, and dammit, it just wasn’t in the cards.  Things had sort of been heading in that direction ever since the 100-man melee, but I just didn’t want to believe anything would happen.  They HATED each other.  Apparently not enough, though, and the volume ended on something so beautiful and grotesque that I just had to pick up 10 immediately and read it, even though I hate doing that before I write about stuff here.

In case you had any doubt as to whether or not Griffith is a total psychopath, this volume will clear all that up. To be fair, he only acts out because there are people in the kingdom’s court who are trying to kill him. But he manages to secretly thwart their attacks, kill all of them in a most “accidental” way, and then kill everyone who knows what he’s done. He doesn’t do this himself, though. He uses other people so his hands won’t get dirty. Griffith does kill one person on the battlefield, and it occurred to me that he’s not often shown slaughtering people in the same way Guts and Casca are, but he’s somehow more terrifying, even with his girly face.

Guts acts on his decision to leave, which bummed me out. He says he needs a goal so that he can return to Griffith and not be someone Griffith can look down on. He leaves without one, which doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. There’s actually a few really nice scenes where various Band of the Hawk generals try to convince him to stay. I like Judeau, who is sort of a lighthearted background character, and he winds up having a nice conversation with Guts about being happy with one’s lot in life. Guts really should be happy, since he’s about to be made a lord and given whatever he wants… but alas, he goes to chase some intangible goal.

I was hoping Griffith would stop him. Part of me feared that Griffith would understand what Guts wanted and just let him go amiably. When the duel commenced, I believed that Guts would be kept against his will since there was no way he could win against Griffith. I was pretty mad, and so was Griffith. Maybe Griffith doesn’t forgive.

There’s a huge battle at the beginning of the volume. I was happy to see Guts get what he deserves as far as near-constant combat goes, his sword finally breaks against something it should. A mystery Nosferatu tosses him an even bigger sword from on top of a cliff to finish what he was doing though, which was either a cop-out or badass, I couldn’t decide.

At one point, Griffith puts a question of morals to Guts, who backs off because he says someone who has killed 100 men shouldn’t make a moral judgment. At this point, I can’t count how many people have been cleaved in half by Guts, and while he has defeated 100 at once single-handedly, there’s also the matter of the guys he slices in half and decapitates in the battles. Hm. Maybe I should go back and take a body count.

I don’t know how I feel about this business with Casca.  It seems to be over for now, which makes me feel relieved.  I really can’t picture her and Guts together.

One thing I forgot to mention last time was that Griffith’s speech at the beginning of the volume was not only about someone who he considered a friend being equal, but also how everyone has to have a goal or dream to aspire to in life.  Guts didn’t say anything throughout the course of the speech, and I was a little unsure about his reaction.  I figured the main part of the speech was about what Guts saw as his dream, and I wasn’t sure if Guts considered fighting his hardest or being strongest his goal, or was deeply unsettled by Griffith’s speech since he lacked purpose in life.

It turned out to be that he lacked purpose, which made me feel better since this means “being the strongest” is not going to be a goal.  After saving Casca, she talks a bit more about how attached she is to Griffith, and I was surprised to see that there was no romance whatsoever.  She says she realized her purpose in life was to be Griffith’s sword so that she could help clear the way for his dream of… world domination, or being king or supreme ruler or whatever the lofty goal he was striving for is.

Guts talks.  And talks.  And talks.  There’s probably a page somewhere in here which is equal to all his dialogue in all the previous volumes combined.  What does he even talk about?  Well, he tries to explain himself to Casca a little bit since she always criticizes him for being reckless, he talks about Griffith, and later, he talks about what he plans to do in the immediate future.

The decision he comes to is  not one I’m happy with.  I’m a little worried, actually, because I thought only death (or undeath, or pacts of evil, whatever) would drive Griffith and Guts apart.

And even though there’s lots of talking and bonding between Guts and Casca, there’s also plenty of violence.  In one of the coolest battles so far, Guts slays 100 soldiers who come to collect the bounty on his head.  As you can imagine, heads explode, eyeballs fly, body parts are cleaved apart, and Guts explains that his secret is that his sword is dull and that if you don’t die when he hits you with it, you’ll wish you had.  There’s also another huge battle at the end of the volume, but its resolution isn’t going to come until volume 8.

Let’s see… Griffith is sort of working himself more and more into the King’s good graces.  Also, the good graces of the princess, which is sort of what I imagined he had in mind when he described his ambitions.  He’s got a ways to go for that, though, because there are plenty of people who hate him just because his blood is apparently not blue enough.

Griffith actually has Guts murder someone in the dead of night, which is interesting because prior to this most of the fighting has been pretty straightforward and out in the open (well, I suppose the weird sewer worms with the lord’s face on them in the early volumes are sort of an exception, but that was magic).  The person plays dirty and certainly has it coming, but things go bad and Guts winds up doing something really horrible.  So horrible, in fact, that even Guts feels a little bad.  When he tries to talk to Griffith about what happens, he hears part of a speech that seems to apply to everyone present (Griffith, Guts, the Princess, and Casca).  The gist of it was that Griffith considers a friend someone who is equal to him, and I couldn’t figure out if Guts was disturbed by this, gratified by it, or considered it something to strive for.  I’m not sure that the specific effect is all that important just yet, though.

What else… there’s some weirdness in the last few chapters where Guts winds up saving Casca and the two are separated from the main group.  I was a little insulted that Casca fell in battle because she was menstruating, but I suppose it gave the story reason to show how it was that she joined the Band of the Hawks and some of her other problems with being a woman among men.  Thankfully this single event doesn’t seem to have magically healed the rift between Casca and Guts, but it at least got Casca’s feelings for Griffith out in the open.  Well, a little.  I suspect that’s where the flashback is going, anyway.

I must say, I’ve never seen so much fighting/action in a single volume of manga.  Not just that, but this is the most graphic fighting I’ve ever seen.  There are many decapitations, stuff being shoved through people’s heads, and… well, even some quartering by what is apparently a Nosferatu.  I’m all about that stuff.

Lots of male bonding between Griffith and Guts.  There is an implied relationship between Griffith and the female captain that hates Guts… implied because I would guess that she has a serious crush on Griffith that is not spoken, and he doesn’t seem to pay much attention to her.  Griffith does pay a lot of attention to Guts, and vice versa.  At the end of the volume, Guts keeps pressing why it is Griffith continually puts his life on the line for Guts.  If it were any other series, I’d say that that’s going somewhere.  I won’t be surprised if it does, actually, because Griffith really, REALLY looks like a woman.  But given the fact Guts cut the last person’s head off that tried to make him take it up the ass, coupled with the fact that I can’t imagine a place for romance in this series, I suspect it will either take its time getting there or not go there at all.

We get to see the… face-egg again, the one that summons demons or opens a gate or something… which I want to call Lemarchand’s Box but won’t.  Griffith has it and wears it at all times.  I suspected he would somehow have one, but I didn’t figure it would get there yet.  There is a battle with a Nosferatu at the end of the volume that is not very successful, which I’m guessing was just a way for the reader to see that, as invincible as Guts is, he’s still not nearly as strong as he was in the present.

This volume was entirely the scary childhood of Guts.  The narrative would jump ahead every three years, and the last bit of this volume takes place when Guts is… 12?  I’m pretty sure he’s 12.  But at that point, he’s already apparently one of the best mercenaries in the country.

Lots of stuff happens to him in order to screw him up, as you can imagine.  He has a father figure, but for whatever reason (well, because the guy thinks Guts is cursed and killed his lover) he totally betrays Guts.  Not once, but twice.  Guts trusts him enough the first time to believe it wasn’t him, but the second time things go down Guts is run out of his camp. In a series like this, being run out of camp consists of messy bodily injury for nearly all concerned.  Also, fire.

At the end of the volume, Guts meets up with the lead Cenobite we met in the last volume, except here he’s a human.  He’s the only person so far who can match/best Guts in battle, so maybe Guts has another father figure now.  The volume ends after Guts has been accepted into this band of mercenaries after killing several of the members who were trying to rob him.  They run some sort of mission at the end where Guts proves his super-warrior status.

Lots of blood, gore, et al, everything I could want and hope for from this series, and I am totally into the plot at this point.  I’m waiting for Guts to lose an eye in the most dramatic way possible.

Hooray!  I just got a ton of this series in, so expect a lot of it coming up.  I also got a ton of volumes of Saint Seiya, Astro Boy, Dragon Ball, and Bastard, so expect some of those as well, but Berserk is the one I’m most excited about.

This volume wraps up the Guardians of Desire storyline in the most insanely violent way possible.  Much as you would expect, the lord’s daughter is involved in the fight and sees her father in his true form.  Full advantage of this is taken, and Guts continues to fight the undying monster.  Of course, his hand is broken and his fingers are grotesquely twisted, so he has to use his mechanical arm cannon and hold his gigantic sword IN HIS TEETH.  He’ll have to sever the monster’s head somehow, I suppose.

A gate to an Escher-esque hell is opened at one point, and five or six demon lords make their appearance and deepen the story.  In addition to sort of elaborating on their contract with the undying monster, we find out that Guts has something to do with what appears to be the head lord.  There is apparently a distinction between those who are demons or become demons and those who belong to them, and Guts can never be of the demons… as impressed as all the lords are with his tenacity.  One wonders if this is as concrete as they make it out to be, and I kind of hope we get to see Guts get more involved with them later on.  It seems like he’ll have to if he wants to get rid of his demon-summoning brand.

I can’t help but think of the demon lords as Cenobites.  That’s just an amusing connection I’ll have to deal with for the duration of the series, I suppose.

In the backstory of the undying demon, there is the most exquisitely drawn orgy scene I’ve ever seen, complete with false idol.  It was only a few panels, but it made me love the series a little bit more.

We finally see a more human side to Guts, too.  After his possible connection to the head Cenobite is revealed, there’s a really awkward and bizarre scene with Guts and the lord’s daughter where the girl is trying to figure out if she wants to live or die.  The conclusion of the scene makes Guts cry, which is… well, the bizarre part.  I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

The next story arc seems to be a flashback, starting with the birth of Guts and jumping ahead three years every now and again.  Guts was born a mercenary through and through, but there’s lots of good stuff in this story arc so far.

I’ve got through volume 10 sitting next to me.  I’m expecting to absolutely tear through all of them this week.  And then there’ll be more to read!  I’m pretty excited I get to read such a huge chunk of the story at once.

This volume carries over the story that started up in the last pages of volume one.  We learn that the one-eyed old man that called Guts and Puck down to his lair used to work for the King until he was tortured.  His wife and children were consumed by the King along with his legs and most of his face.  He urges Guts to kill the king on his behalf.  Guts smacks him around a bit before he declares he’s going to kill him for his own reasons.  This doesn’t get very far before a warrior possessed by a demon breaks in and starts fighting Guts, because something extreme hadn’t happened for, like, thirty pages at that point aside from the flashbacks of demons eating women.

The demon-possessed warrior actually has a piece of the king in him.  We learn that the King went insane after pagan worshipers kidnapped and killed his wife when they were denied their right to freedom of religion.  He’s been wiping out many people in his kingdom in the name of  heresy since that day, and we find out he was in possession of some sort of key to the demon realm, so… he’s basically turned into a demon himself in order to protect his daughter, who he locks in a tower.

The reason I’m so copiously going through the plot is that I’m still having a hard time believing these things transpired.  It is truly an insane masterpiece of storytelling.

Amid this awesome setup, there’s also a lot of choice battles that Guts engages in.  Some are with humans that he easily wipes out in insane rampages, but he also tangles with the demon warrior twice, and the battle that carries over into the next volume with the King was also pretty choice.  I’d like to see the end of it.

This series is so awesome.

I should have waited until I caught myself up on Bastard, but Berserk is the series I actually wanted to read.  It seems okay so far, but I’ve heard it picks up after the first couple volumes.  As of right now, not much is explained, and we mostly have the main character, Guts, going on these ultra-violent rampages against inhuman enemies, which may include fields of haunted skeletons or snake men.  Actually, sometimes the enemies are human.  When that’s the case, they usually get an arrow shot through their head or sliced in half.  That’s fine by me.

There’s a strange comedy element right now in that Guts, who refuses to talk much or reveal his intentions (other than to kill a certain group of men and fight when the brand on his neck starts to bleed) is followed by an elf.  The elf can heal Guts, which it does sometimes, but mostly it seems to provide comic relief and the appropriate reaction to whatever just went down.  It’s the elf that utters the name of the series at the end of the first chapter after Guts finishes up a one-man bloody battle against a supernatural tyrant and his army.  The elf seems extremely out-of-place, but maybe it’ll be used as a device to explain things later on.

Guts uses an array of weapons.  He’s got a gigantic sword that he uses to slice bodies in half.  At one point, a horse is beheaded and its rider is severed from the waist up with one swing of this sword.  He also often uses a small, high-powered bow and arrow mounted on his metal arm.  The metal arm also seems to have a gun or explosive device of some kind in it.

The art… seems a little stiff in this volume.  It’s extremely detailed as far as character designs and backgrounds go, but the action and some of the character’s facial expressions are a bit wooden.  There’s a lot of gore, but for the most part torrents of blood spurt out in unadorned, straight columns from whatever just happened.  The lack of spatter is mostly what I noticed, along with some really bizarre facial expressions and character movements.  It’s cool enough though, and I’m willing to bet it improves exponentially as this massively long series keeps going.  My roommate had no beef with Miura’s art in Japan, so maybe I’m just not used to the more seinen style.  Or maybe Japan was drawn later than the first volume of Berserk, which looks to be the case.

One other thing I feel like I should mention is that the first panel of the series features Guts having sex with a naked woman, and the rest of the first page is the naked woman morphing into some sort of tentacle monster.  That let me know immediately that this series was going to be worth my time.