Okay, so I kinda went on a slight reading binge
so much so that I might not remember perfectly everything that happens since Guts and Casca became a thing. I'll do my best though.
Casca and Guts
Let's start with them: Casca and Guts make a surprisingly
great couple. At least to me. They actually handled the aftermath of Guts' sudden remembrance of his trauma very well, and contrarily to what I expected, the subject wasn't just teased and buried only to resurface much later. Guts, who seemed laconic up until now to me, confided in Casca right away, summed up what happened and she showed compassion and support.
She's been annoying me since the beginning, but she displayed a brand new side of her by deciding to give instead of always being the one to receive help
Maybe I'm forgetting, but I don't remember seeing much couple stuff in mangas. Usually, even in anime that revolves around love, the characters don't make it to forming couples until the very end, and the intricacies of that sort of relationship are never really displayed. It seems like the whole point is to make it there, and once you reach this stage, it's happily ever after. As if the tension and interesting stuff could only happen in the pre-couple phase.
Here, they gottogether much faster than I would have expected given my experience with this medium, and even faster than Guts himself wanted it since he aimed to reach a level of self-knowledge and determination that would make him deserving of Casca before shooting his shot. But like IRL, shyt doesn't happen when or how you want it.
It doesn't even stop there, because there could have been another common trope in which the characters could have fallen in right afterward: Guts saying he still needs to leave to find himself. But the smart man said Casca can come with him if she wants and she accepted
And all along the chapters, while being well aware that Casca still has deep feelings of admiration for Griffith, Guts just rolls with it with no jealousy on some "it is what it is, I like dude too
"
Leave it to me to appreciate the couple dynamics the most in Berserk of all artworks
Giant meatball and the Girffith's rescue mission
They then set to free Griffith while part of the crew stayed behind... They shouldn't have
first meaningful interaction with... The other world? The demons? Magical monsters? Since Guts took the fight to Zodd, and it wasn't pretty.
I really like that the manga took so much time before diving deeper into this aspect, which I expect will take over the whole thing from where I'm currently at until the end. But yeah, the lil boy saw a creepy butterfly floating in the night while he had gone to draw water from the river, and came back to see his homies turned into a giant meatball by insect-monsters. I was convinced he was about to die but he surprisingly made it out.
Guts and the rest of the main cast except for Corkus reached the tower of rebirth and we learned about the legend of Midland's origin... I'll circle back to that later.
They found Griffith whose body had been destroyed. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I could have expected, even if it was terrible. I think the worst part is the symbolism of these psychos caging his head in a helmet that mocked the one he had when he was a commander. That part is sick as fukk. But he still has both eyes, they didn't cut his dikk off... Even though they still fukked him up bad
can't stand, talk, none of that. At this point, tbh, I was persuaded he would somehow get his body back by some magical way and I still am. His design is too iconic for him to stay in that state and I don't see him operating as a mastermind cripple for the rest of the series. I thought it would happened in the aptly-named "tower of rebirth" though.
Guts and his crew fought the Indian assassin crew. What's up with Miura and Indian fighters
their design and fighting methods were dope though, especially the tall lanky one who was scary asf.
My favorite character during this entire part is a surprising one: the princess' maid. I don't know why, but I liked her and was terrified she would die. She stayed scared the whole time in some kind of adorable way, but still managed to be helpful and a comic relief. The fact that she always was the least important character on the pages during this passage made her so vulnerable with this author that I was scared she'd be used to prove a point. She made it out alive though
Then the King decides to unleash the Monkey on them
I was scared of him. His gang did that family the worst way. shyt was disgusting. Using their desacrated bodies as flags
The Hellish Festival
The fact that Guts somehow managed to get a win over him makes me wonder if he's special, somewhat like Griffith
I mean, is he just a very strong human or does he have some kind of magical power or crazy fate?
Moving to the hellish festival... Welp. I guess there's no going back to normalcy and regular warfare after that. Entire crew gets devoured by a surprisingly diverse array of monsters (some interesting designs in there). I don't have much to say about it besides that it seems to be the series turning point. Griffith really sacrificed his entire crew. Is this what yall be talking about when yall go on these "Griffith did nothing wrong" debates? Or am I confusing with Guts? Because I can already tell yall that that shyt was wrong asf, no ifs and buts about it
The sequence where he engaged with the rest of the god hand members showed more about his ambition and his feelings about what's going on, but what he really thinks about Guts is still a mystery. It seems like he has some kind of love-hate crush on the dude, while it's all love on Guts' side. That part, I 'm really wondering how it's going to evolve next, because I'd expect Guts to become Griffith's rival but he needs to wake the fukk up and realize he's a piece of shyt first.
What's next?
Another intriguing narrative thread is the role of the skull-mask cavalier in all of this. It seems like he was the general of Ancient Midland that unified the continent, but his whole country was destroyed. What I'm wondering is this: they showed the bodies in the buried city and they all had that sacrifice symbol on their head. Does that mean that a mass-sacrifice happened, similar to the one Griffith declared for his comrades? If that's the case, it can't be the skull-dude that wished it, right, since he's not part of the god-hand?
Unless that plays a role into why he's standing against Zodd in that storm and seems to be antagonistic against the rest of the demons?
Could it be that there are multiple factions amongst the demons/magical creatures, with their own agenda? The "fairy" that we see following the lil boy, sole survivor of the second team that tries to catch up with them, doesn't seem to have evil intentions, and is even cool with regular humans (or what appears to be regular humans), which left me confused and intrigued;
Finally, can we have Casca not suffer a rape attempt every 5 chapters? That last one in chapter 81 doesn't make sense, for real. The monsters apparently had no interest in anything else than eating the soldiers. So the monsters can get horny or cruel? If that's the case, why didn't they rape none of the male soldiers? Monsters are only interested in women bodies? That was corny, and the fact that it happens so often also lessens the impact of it. I already know that Casca will somehow find herself butt-ass naked in her next fight, just because.
you mf
