Berserk Saga Part 3: Conviction

[Music] [Music] yes god [Music] [Music] you're [Music] them [Music] is [Music] [Music] all right it's been a long time coming the next step of our journey through the fantasy epic berserk in part one we were introduced to our protagonist guts a violent cruel demon hunter that is hunting after the monsters that wronged him at first we're led to believe he's just a sociopath a complete [ __ ] that bullies innocent people and shows no regard for the safety of others but there were hints that his traumatic quest was actually starting to get to him bits and pieces that showed he really did have some humanity buried under the surface the character of puck was the vehicle to explore this side of guts his goofy fun-loving nature clashing with the cold-hearted and dark exterior and puck's magical abilities showed that guts was essentially shutting out his feelings with pitch black hate yet we didn't really follow these two for that long we had maybe about eight chapters or so and then we moved on to the absolutely massive flashback arc we covered in part two golden age was all about giving guts every ounce of context necessary to explain who he is along with the setting at large why he's hunting demons how he became disfigured so much was covered in part two it was three hours long alone it introduced a lovable cast of eccentric mercenaries characters we grew to care about and really admire then brutally killed them guts himself showed many different layers that developed him from the archetypical edgy swords boy he was in black swordsman plus he gave our protagonist actual history in the world it went from big sword guy in not dark ages europe to fully fleshed out dark fantasy guts lost his family as a child found a new one in the band of the hawk left that family out of fear his best friend didn't really care about him fell in love with a woman realized he could truly be happy with her and plans to run away only to learn his actions had consequences and his dreams and life were over before they started he threw away his chances at fulfillment and realized too late it was impossible to put things back together then when the eclipse happened to close off our flashback it spelled out in no uncertain terms why guts became as vicious as he did the man survived actual hell only to be cursed for the rest of his life that new family guts grew to love was slaughtered by monsters he will be hunted until he's cold in the ground the woman he loves is completely insane and a shell of her former self his best friend is the one who damned them all and made guts watch as he violated the love of his life even his unborn child was corrupted into being a demon this is all in the flashback arc that explained why a dude wears all black and has a big sword there's overkill and then there's riding a shakespearean tragedy to explain why your oc has a black cloak never say miura was anything but detailed but now that's finally over it's time to talk about the berserk prototype that's right berserk technically has a prequel prototype thing this was the first draft of the story miura came up with before dedicating to the final product we see in the manga and unlike the lost chapter chapter 83 which we covered in part two this is actually in every copy of volume 14 that's out there since technically volume 14 is the ending of goldmage and it sort of acts as a transition between old berserk and new berserk you get to see how the series was originally going to be before you come back to current events that's not to say that it comes immediately after golden age you actually get a few chapters into the next arc and then it closes out that volume with the prototype it's sort of weird but that's how it works and it's better to cover this now instead of cutting out part way through the next arc to talk about what essentially amounts to a big easter egg nevertheless this is actually the version of berserk mior came up with when he was in college back in 1988 the manga itself began publication in 1989 so he basically has some ideas down pat and it's just about ironing out specifics but there are stark differences between the prototype and final berserk gutz's design is the first noticeable change he still has his signature black cloak his massive sword and his iron left hand but he's got an eye patch covering over the eye he lost there's other differences too but i'll explain them as we go along to the chapter itself the prototype opens up with guts walking past rows of skeletons impaled on stakes now the first thing he actually does is make an off-handed comment to puck which shows us that the two are already friends by the time this version of the story opens up which is kind of interesting because you don't get to see the scene in the tavern where he murders the bandits and saves puck instead we're supposed to assume these two have been together for at least a little bit by this point anyway they spot some bandits attacking a wagon in the distance we see the bandits have cornered the girl driving the wagon and try to rape her well just before they can get started they're all killed by crossbow fire the village girl looks up to see guts holding a big crossbow and while it's not the automatic one he had before it still shows he uses it as a weapon so i guess the idea is he just loads them really fast the scene is actually pretty similar to what you see at the beginning of sort of the berserk guts's rage so it's possible that game treated this as sort of a reference which makes sense considering muyor wrote that game as well so he probably just wanted to add a little nod to what came before still the girl is in shock as she watches guts go right to the overturned carriage we can assume is hers and complains about the lack of food she tries to warn him about surviving bandit coming up right behind but he's already a step ahead he cleaves the guy in two with his sword very similar to the first kill with the dragon slayer we see in the first volume but this version of the sword is slightly different it's still the same basic shape as the dragon slayer but it's got these sort of wingtips looking things right near the hilt still the bandit is dead and guts takes his leave the girl he unintentionally saved reveals her leg is hurt and guts reluctantly takes it upon himself to take her home on a horse he stole from the dead robbers and if you're feeling some weird sense of deja vu looking at the village girl it might be because she sorta looks like early griffith in fact a popular fan theory is that her design and the prototype inspired griffith's design since there are a lot of references to griffith's beauty making him look almost androgynous is there any weight to the theory no clue but it's a conversation starter during the horse ride the girl takes note of guts's metal arm and eye patch she's startled by guts yelling at puck who flies out of his pouch much to her delight as she's never seen an elf before meanwhile guts is far less impressed there's some more banters guts complains about a lack of food and puck demands he walks so it gives the elf more space on the horse they're obviously just riffing on each other and once again it kind of establishes their friendship the girl laughs as she decides that since an elf is following guts he couldn't possibly be a bad guy while they arrive at her village the rest of the town's surprised to see her come back alive but they're relieved she's safe and we learn the girl's name is frika she tells the village about how guts saved her from the bandits and we cut to later that night during dinner freaka's uncle explains that the town is being tormented by the local lord vlad tepis ten years ago during a war with another country vlad took over 500 prisoners and had them impaled on stakes lining them against the border including priests and entire families and they've been under strict orders not to remove them ever since there's some pretty obvious vlad the impaler vibes they're trying to get across if it's not obvious by now well after the war ended vlad turned against his own people and ever since he's ordered the capture of young women from his territory where they would be tortured and killed in his castle the villagers discovered his evil intentions when they found a skewered body of a woman in the river behind the castle and four women have already vanished from the village after being ordered up to his keep frica was intended to be the fifth sacrifice her family simply wanted her to run away but frika didn't want any other girl to suffer the same fate as the others gut shows little regard to the peasant's suffering as he asks for more food and beer and the leaders of the village gather at freaka's place to try and hire guts as an assassin they're willing to give whatever they have for guts to kill lord vlad though he refuses saying the job is too risky and why should he give a [ __ ] about a bunch of villagers with no decent reward anyway an old woman begs guts to avenge her granddaughter who is actually the one they found in the river but he's not biting even telling her point blank he doesn't care the rest of the village is disgusted at gutz's behavior and even puck crips into him for being a selfish jackass puck says that he should understand more than anyone what they've been going through losing a family member but gut swears they'll get over it then frika runs up to meet him one last time she admits she told the rest of the village guts was a powerful knight so it was her fault they tried to pressure him into taking the job she tries to apologize but guts still says he doesn't care she's disappointed but she asks guts to keep a memento of his to remember him by guts isn't sure what to give since he's only really carrying weapons with him but he decides to give her his eye patch frika is appreciative of the gift and runs off puck is still mad sarcastically asking him if he actually does want to save her and then he rants about how gutz doesn't seem to care about anyone but himself saying he's a bitter scumbag that only lives for dead people this sets off guts who grabs [ __ ] and goes on a pretty revealing rant it turns out guts watched his own mother be devoured by demons while she was still alive she turned into meat in front of him so now this is life for guts just bitterness and hate he does apologize for hurting puck but his mind is set he only cares about hunting demons and nothing else well just as he says all this he notices freako riding away in a carriage and a certain symbol on the door catches guts's attention yup this is the prototype's version of the brand of sacrifice not really worth trying to hide it it's pretty obvious it's certainly different from the actual one it's more curved while the original is very jagged and angular but it still looks almost the same now a lot of you might have picked up on some subtle and not so subtle differences between actual berserk and prototype berserk gutz's personality is a bit goofier here than his usual very stern self especially considering this is technically black swordsman era that's not to say he's completely comedic but you can definitely tell there's more humor with him here than before even the way his face is drawn leans a bit harder into being silly he's got a big frown like a one piece character and his face stretches when he's mad or acting smug now when he's genuinely pissed off you see guts resemble more of his actual self very sharp intense but during quiet scenes the guts we have here acts more like a lovable [ __ ] than a psychotic [ __ ] puck actually stays pretty consistent between real berserk and prototype berserk he looks the same and pretty much acts the same too acting as guts's moral compass that shows clear frustration at his self-centeredness but of course this leads to the most obvious difference between prototype and regular gutz's tragedy in the prototype is watching his mother be alive by demons as a child now compared to what we saw in the eclipse this sort of feels bog standard and considering his entire journey in golden age revolved around finding a family you know something he's never really had before and losing them in the worst possible way i can see why this plot point didn't really stick guts never having people who cared about him helped sell how tragic he is as a character the one time he found a place to belong in a real family he took it for granted he didn't really understand what was actually given to him and then he was forced to watch them all suffer and die that extra layer gives the loss more impact more identity in a way just saying his mom died sorta relies on you putting the emotional beats together yourself his mom died because of demons you feel bad because you care about your mom and don't want her to die from demons that's not to say it's cheap plenty of good stories have dead parents just that it's kind of a surface level tragedy unless it's fully explored and is the intent with the band of the hawk we watch friendships form as the story goes on guts grows from this apathetic outsider to somebody who finally found a home it's all about build up you spend time with a character and become accustomed to them so when they die it comes out of nowhere and has more impact show don't tell you know very basic writing rule you don't want to just say someone died you want to show it happening of course this is a hypothetical first chapter you know the idea is this is the introduction to the story so the assumption is more details would have fleshed out this aspect of miura actually stuck with it we might have had a completely different backstory with guts if miura decided to go through with this idea of berserk now coming back to the chapter we transitioned to lord vlad's temple frica is taken inside the gate and brought before him he's creepy right out of the gate and wastes no time showing he's a literal monster weird monster eyes and monster teeth he's a monster okay and just as it looks like freak is dead meat our classic all is lost moment a crossbow pierces vlad's eye despite all the bloviating and edginess and being a complete douchebag and also an inconsiderate jackass and [ __ ] you guts wasn't gonna let freaka die vlad tries to say some [ __ ] a typical bad guy speech and he gets another crossbow bolt right through the mouth despite his wounds the guy isn't dying so gus's suspicions were correct vlad is a full-blown demon the platform guts is standing on explodes and he has to dodge out of the way of a pile of very sharp objects coming to impale him he manages to avoid most of the spears but unfortunately he does get a few lodged right in his abdomen vlad takes time to brag but gut starts [ __ ] talking as well of course he didn't die though he actually did get impaled through the stomach it looks like that really [ __ ] hurt guts rips out the spear and unsheathes the dragon slayer ready to rock and roll he also calls vlad a dog of wanna this is another difference between the prototype and the actual story but i'll have to explain a bit of that later vlad transforms into his demon form and he talks about how humans shouldn't know the name of the god of darkness fuana oh [ __ ] well i guess he explained it for me yeah there's no god hand in the prototype instead it's the typical demon king thing you see in fantasy anime though instead of managing mcdonald's he has vlad the impaler as a buddy hard to really compare an offhanded comment about a shadowy main villain with actually seeing villains do villain [ __ ] so i'm not gonna bother all i will say is i'm not crazy about the name vewana it sounds weird like an italian soda brand or something i might have to find a case on amazon nevertheless vlad is full on monster mode also if you're wondering why just call him a demon instead of an apostle is because the term isn't really used that much in this vlad calls himself an apostle and puck uses the term when talking about vlad and passing but it still doesn't really feel concrete you know actual demons in berserk and even the god hand use the term all the time even wylad who is a complete hedonistic madman with little regard for anything else but having fun called himself an apostle in this it feels more like a romanticized description of what vlad was even if he says that's what he is you wouldn't call a psycho monster with bird wings an angel would you actually save that for later anyway guts and vlad fight and it's very similar to the first battle with the snake lord from the first chapter it plays out practically the same even down to the demon grabbing guts and bragging to his face about how he's gonna eat him then guts blows his head off with the arm cannon and slices him in half it's pretty obvious the prototype heavily influenced the first chapter hell it's almost literally a first draft in a way well as vlad is bleeding to death he notices the branded sacrifice on guts's chest this one bigger than the small spot it takes up on his neck and of course we get the part where guts reveals he's been sacrificed and that caused his hatred of demons only instead of a burning building collapsing on top of him it's a large chunk of the castle that crushes his skull still pretty good you know nice and visceral anyway the trio escaped from the castle and frika is safely returned home all's well that ends well gut swears that saving her was just incidental he just killed his enemy he didn't want to save the cutie but puck thinks about how much scarier guts seem than vlad almost sinister by comparison guts takes his leave but puck still demands they he treat the guy's wounds showing that elf dust is still absolutely a thing and puck is basically there to act as the therapist and the medic gut simply responding that he'll give the demons as much blood and flesh as they want while he drives steel into their heads and with that the prototype comes to a close the two walking off into the distance to end the chapter now you can see why this is a prototype a simple standalone adventure that gives hints towards a larger universe now obviously there are elements that didn't make the cut the demon king vuana some of the designs of guts's weapons the brand of sacrifice the death of his mother the eye patch but it's actually something that with a few tweaks what if it's snuggly into black swordsmen it's still fun and it's interesting to see what came before the actual manga especially considering this was only a year before the manga officially started remember it came out in 88 while the manga debuted in 89 so miura had most of what he wanted with berserk thought out it was just smaller details that changed and ironically snowballed into major plot points later because miura admitted that during black swordsman he didn't really have a plan so with all these tiny details kind of combining together into one idea it drastically affected the story and that's kind of funny considering that a major theme of berserk is exactly that the effects of causality and details causing details later to change which cause details later to change and eventually an entire outcome and event is shifted in your favor or the exact opposite something that in this coming arc you are especially going to pick up on as a theme but really think about all the little details in the prototype that were changed and the effect they had on the actual story of berserk because he didn't continue with the idea of gutz's mother being eaten by demons we got all of goldmage and the tragedy of the eclipse and the band of the hawk and by extension koska because he didn't stick with the demon king vuana we got the idea of evil and the godhand and griffith kind of funny to really think about in a way it was the smaller details that got left behind in the prototype that led to the really famous parts of berserk because miura didn't rely on safe and easy tropes he had to replace them with something and i already mentioned where it led dude took a gamble and it royally paid off and speaking of taking risks it's time to talk about a fan favorite arc technically it's part of the larger arc known as conviction but it's just so good that it's become its own arc in the eyes of fans one that is so metal so hardcore so dark and twisted that it's still yet to receive any attempt at adapting it there have been hints yes berserk 97 sort of implies it would have happened if it continued but as of this video there's been zero official adaptations to the infamous lost children arc and for a good reason too this [ __ ] is so hype that cowards who do not even smoke crack cannot handle it lost children is absolutely incredible for countless reasons for one it's noteworthy for bringing us back to the present timeline wise turns out it's been a full two years since the eclipse and we can assume the black swordsman took place a year before conviction so the timeline works like this gold mage comes first chronologically black swordsman is roughly a year after that since we see guts shows clear experience in fighting demons and understands more about his curse than at the end of golden age and conviction is a year after that there's no official answer confirming this it just sort of lines up some people argue conviction is a few months after black swordsman and that would also make sense because it would be a perfect amount of time for guts and puck to be traveling together and not have some form of a relationship still another reason this arc is so famous is because it's sort of the point where the art really peaked style-wise it hits a perfect balance between gritty horror and beautiful fantasy that's not to say the art is bad after this i mean god damn but simply this is the point that managed to not lean too hard in any direction it doesn't look too rough and it doesn't look too soft there's also the uh really well-known reason this arc is talked about but let's not spoil anything just yet where's the fun the ark starts off just a little bit after the eclipse a unit of knights ride past a mother and her young child turns out these are the holy iron chain knights an army for the holy see essentially these guys are foot soldiers for the vatican we see some of the members bantering as they ride a man by the name of serpico teases his friend azan by saying the woman they wrote past is a looker and probably his type but azan is not interested in playing along they were sent to investigate a possible sign of god and this idiot was busy looking at women they're both told the canit by their commander a woman on a regal looking horse and it turns out they found their objective the red lake it's the remains of the band of the hawk torn apart and unrecognizable the way the commander sees it this is a sign right out of prophecy when the sun dies five times a red lake will appear to the west of the city with the name both old and new and it's a prophecy specifically predicting the birth of what they call the hawk of darkness master of the sinful black sheep king of the blind white sheep the one who will call down an age of darkness to the world basically the antichrist man i wonder who this is talking about what bird guy could this prophecy be referring to sun dying five times that sounds like an eclipse where the sun goes dark for a little bit and five that's like how you have five fingers on your hand you need five to make a hand and this prophecy is biblical so it's like you need five to make a hand that's close to god yeah the foreshadowing here is a little bit blatant the god hand are gonna do evil [ __ ] to the world and griffith in particular is gonna be involved well take that little seed and put it in the back of your mind because now we're jumping two years ahead to a dark rainy forest some bandits are complaining about the lack of loot to steal mentioning that times are getting tougher the most they manage to snatch is a little girl who they plan to sell off well one bandit decides to take his pants off because it turns out he's a moderator for reset era but luckily she fights him off with a kick to the groin the ruffians then talk about the history of the tree they're sitting under the forest itself was used by a cult of heretics who cut people's stomachs open and make them walk around trees with their intestines staked into them and that very tree is one of the ones they used for their sacrifices to prove his point the bandit telling the story shows the stakes buried into the wood even saying the bumps in the tree look like human faces this causes the pedophile bandit to get an idea he wants to see if the story could actually be true so he plans on cutting the girl's belly open and making her walk around the tree as he's cutting her dress open a chestnut falls onto his hand the spike stinging his fingers they all look into the darkness trying to spot who threw it and they see guts sitting by himself his cloak shielding him from the rain at first the little girl assumes he's a forest ghost but guts rises to his feet and complains about his lack of sleep the bandits try talk tough the pedophile one even licking the blade of his knife but guts doesn't give a [ __ ] even pushing the blade of the knife into the pedophile bandit's tongue instead he wants to know if the story about the sacrifices is actually true the storyteller says it's legit and guts tries to warn them all to leave well the bandits take it as a threat and prepare to fight but guts is a step ahead breaking the jaw of the leader bandit with his metal arm this escalates the situation but right before they can fight guts feels his brand he tries to warn the bandits and now the tree is looking at them not only was the story true the tree is possessed by the spirits of the dead who were murdered by the cult now this is something that actually does crop up in adaptations to berserk even if this specific part isn't covered berserk ps2 has the tree as an enemy type you fight same with berserk musso though it never actually touches lost children material berserk 2016 actually covers the bandits in the forest but changes the scene to not include the little girl or guts instead this happens at the same time as the wagon and the skeletons it's sort of an icon to the series in kind of a funny way for good reason too it looks [ __ ] dope the idea of a demonically possessed tree sounds sort of silly but hey evil dead plus you look at this thing and tell me with a straight face it is not metal as [ __ ] especially when it sends its branches down and turns some of the bandits into paint their brains and eyeballs flying through the air from sheer force the surviving bandits run for their lives at the horrific flesh-eating tree and the little girl is left behind collapsing to the ground petrified at the horrors but guts does what he does best and takes a swing his sword flying over her head and tearing into the demon tree some of the branches are ripped off and it actually bleeds blood spraying out from the wounds so not only is the tree possessed it's been transformed into a living creature the whole time little girl is watching she repeats the famous catch phrase to describe the dragon slayer it was much too big to be called a sword massive thick heavy and far too rough indeed it was like a slab of raw iron guts is back baby this arc actually has sort of an interesting thing going on with this kid she's sort of our narrator guts is our protagonist but this arc is almost being told from the perspective of this kid it fits thematically with what's to come lost children specifically focuses on the trials of being a child in the world of berserk gutz's situation wasn't great but as you'll soon see it's not really much better being a normal kid in this setting still our narrator watches the fight between guts and the demon tree she's astonished at his skills able to fight off the monster dodge its attacks and explode its head with the cannon in his arm and to finish it off guts uses the momentum of the cannon blast to increase the speed of his sword swing she was so terrified she could barely move the bandits were slaughtered and ran for their lives but this random stranger not only fought this nightmarish creature he won she sees spirits rising from the bark the sun peeking through the clouds and perching the spirits from the forest guts remarks that it's the first time he's seen the sun in three days well just as little girl comes down a remaining spirit in the tree tries to bite her but it's chased out of the bark by chestnut landing on it turns out it was puck who started the altercation with the bandits using his special technique bloody needle where he throws the chestnut at you he admits to using guts as the muscle to save the girl but she reacts negatively she starts screaming her head off which causes puck to drop a chestnut on his own head guts tries to write off the incident as the two being crybabies but then she claims puck is an elf from misty valley and for some reason that's something that causes her to shake in fear we cut back to the bandits as they've been running through the forest since last night soon they're consumed in a heavy fog and start to hear laughing all around them as the men begin to panic they spot elves flying all around the leader of the bandits can't believe what he's seeing saying that this ain't some kid's fairy tale but one of the elves insists that's exactly what it is a fairy tale for children yep say hello to the moth demon that attacked record back in golden age she's our villain this go-around we don't see what happens to the bandits but considering what we saw her do earlier let's just assume it's very very bad so lost children is kind of a monster of the week type story it has the typical formula you saw during black swordsman gut shows up at a new place fights some bad men and through fighting the bad man learns about a new demon nearby for him to also fight however what actually happens here has some serious consequences in more than a few ways but i can't talk about that until we get to the larger plot just know that this entire segment and honestly conviction at large along with the next dark after revolves around a conflict within guts is guts a monster or is he a man is he still capable of redemption or has he completely fallen to the dark side it's the overwhelming question that dictates a lot of what is about to come now of course if this is your first experience with berserk and don't know what's on the horizon you're gonna say gutz is a good man he's simply traumatized by horrific experiences there's no way for him to be well and truly evil but as you'll soon see both sides have some legitimate arguments coming back to the chapter the little girl guts rescued leads him and puck back to her village it's small and run down nearly abandoned people stay hidden inside their homes and watch our group with suspicion the little girl walks up to what we assume is her house and peeks inside the door reeling back when her mother calls out for her we learn her name is jill and she went missing from the village sometime last night her mother was worried sick while her father doesn't give a [ __ ] jill's dad is an alcoholic [ __ ] that only cares about sharing old war stories with his buddies his friends seem to be thankful she's okay but jill is visibly uncomfortable when one says he's sorry about last night jill's father demands she go buy him booze and beats her with his cane when she tries to call him out for not caring about his family her father is obsessed with his time in the military probably the only time he was ever actually useful for somebody and is angry at his sacrifice being squandered by his family he's pretty merciless towards jill beating her and berating her over and over again with his wife begging him to stop basically in the middle of the street the only thing that actually gets the guy to back off his puck throwing a chestnut at his head something that's kind of becoming a signature move of his jill's father tries to pin the blame on guts but he's quick to throw the elf under the bus and as it turns out jill isn't the only one terrified of elves at the mere sight of puck the entire village turns against them jill's mother drags her into the house and the rest of the villagers surround guts with weapons they threaten him to hand over puck who is begging guts to ski dad dole out of there an old lady takes a swing with a farming hoe but lands flat on her face when she dodges now just begging them to get back her grandchild the village interprets this as guts attacking the old lady and move in to try and kill him yeah [ __ ] these people like trust me you're gonna be on my side by the end of this [ __ ] these people guts considers killing a few of the [ __ ] to scare the rest off but puck begs him not to he also spots jill looking at him from the doorway trying to scream in vain at the crowd to stop this seems to snap guts out of his original idea instead he unleashes the dragon slayer and splits a wagon in half with the cargo flying in the air he takes the opportunity to escape while the crowd is distracted guts manages to lose the villagers and hides out under the town walls he's visibly frustrated how the situation fell apart and puck is infuriated at being treated like a menace he goes on a rant about how actually elves are lovable and cute so they should be respected and treated with praise also he accuses the villagers of being sex offenders which he's not wrong anyway guts is annoyed that puck is still following him taking up space in one of his satchels as his new home but the elf considers himself a good luck charm for the brute jill finds the duo and tells them to hide out in the old windmill just outside of town nobody goes into it since it broke down meaning they should be safe inside she offers to sneak out and bring them food after sundown but gutz insists she stay away from him until dawn unless she wants a repeat of that previous night we cut to that night and see jill back at home she's in a room watching through the doorway as her father abuses her mother for taking too long to bring him and his friend's booze she sees one of her dad's friends walking towards her room drunkenly claiming he's trying to take a piss but jill seems to understand what his real intentions are she quickly barricades her door quivering in fear as the grown man tries to enter her bedroom when he finally leaves jill covers herself and guts his cloak and cries i'm hoping you guys caught up to the implications here it's not fun to put it politely but i did tell you guys this arc was heavy it's all about the suffering of children from abuse to neglect to well let's not spoil things just yet just know if you're a fan of shot and freud you're probably going to enjoy this a lot as dawn breaks jill sneaks out to the windmill guts and puckerette she spots him sitting in the corner sleeping as some spirits floating near him are burned away by the sunlight she tries to wake him up but puck asks her to let him be he only just fell asleep she wraps guts in his cloak and sits down next to him to jill gutz is from a strange world a swordsman dressed in all black traveling with an elf it's clear she's fascinated by the man seeing him as almost a pseudo-father figure he's the only symbol of strength and protection she's had in her life her actual father is cruel to her and her mother is powerless to stop him so of course jill shows an interest in the one man the mysterious stranger that risked his life to save hers some time later we see an incubus slither down to try and attack guts but he crushes it against the wall with his middle arm he's awake and frustrated having no proper sleep and count him four days now he looks down to see jill sleeping in his lap her basket of food laid down in front of his leg it seems she was waiting for him to wake up guts notices the bruises on her face and hands and shows a twinge of sympathy for the girl which makes sense considering his own circumstances not just that guts practically went through the exact same [ __ ] jill is going through during his own childhood even down to the implied sexual abuse hell it's something we've seen a few times guts really doesn't like kids getting hurt he was traumatized after the murder of adonis to the point he was in a daze for what we can assume was hours plus the incident with teresa during guardians of desire where he acted like a detached [ __ ] trying to push her into suicide but the minute he thought nobody was looking he started crying and now jill is invoking similar feelings and to take a step further all the times after golden age where we see guts deal with children there's an extra layer of tragedy remember guts was going to be a father himself before the eclipse happened now this isn't something that's ever explicitly stated at least not yet but with this arc coming right after golden age which ended with the reveal of koska's pregnancy and the loss of their baby it's kind of tragically fitting how do you follow up a story beat about the loss of a child dedicate an entire arc to how cruel this world is towards children back on point jill wakes up after puck falls on her head and she sees guts is on his feet he asks her what's so special about misty valley and jill explains that the valley east of the village was always filled with mist all year round not only that but legends point to elves having lived there so it became a popular story among the villagers she also reveals that for the last few years the villages around the area have been attacked by mysterious monsters they devour crops kill livestock and every single witness to the attacks claim they're the elves of misty valley puck refuses to believe actual elves are attacking villages but jill describes the monsters as tiny people with insect wings on their backs she also says something about the elves not seeming right to her not the fact that the elves eat people and kidnap children nah that's fine don't worry about that something else is strange about them well just as they finish their conversation gutz's brand starts bleeding he runs outside to see a swarm of elves coming for the village and gut seems to realize what's going on before puck and jill they aren't elves they're something else they're full-blown demons the demon elves ripped through the village consuming everything in their path tearing through guard dogs livestock even bursting into a nearby home and devouring the family inside laughing while they kill them we see jill's father beat her mother for trying to go outside and find her to him it was jill's fault for going outside in the first place so it wouldn't be their fault if she died once again this dude's an [ __ ] the surviving boy from the massacred family runs outside chased by a swarm of demons taunting him to go play with them but the boy runs straight into guts who simply tells him to stay down he rips through the swarm using the blade of his sword as a fly swatter the rest of the village in awe at the site that weird guy from yesterday just killed a bunch of tiny monsters they've been terrified of for years guts takes a good look at the scene the dead family and most importantly the elves just like the woman we saw in the beginning of the ark they're more of an insect human hybrid than actual elves puck has insect wings but he doesn't look like a bug monster he just looks like a little person with insect wings kind of a traditional fairy like something you'd expect from tinkerbell but these guys have obvious insect qualities plus gutz's brain reacts to them when elves so far have had very positive connotations when the brain is supposed to react to evil of course we understand they're the minions to whoever the moth woman is but even then they don't look like a moth they're more reminiscent of wasps guts asks the boy if he wants to avenge his parents or go with the elves that killed them the kid makes the obvious choice and gutz interprets this as permission to use him as bait to attract the rest of the swarm attacking the settlement i mean i think he skipped a few steps here but whatever jill and puck come in to see guts hanging a small child off the tip of his sword so it's possible they didn't get the full context for why this is okay the rest of the village definitely got the message they're still as useless as always choosing to huddle inside and complain about guts using this bait instead of doing anything to try and help well with the terrified screaming child acting as a lore the rest of the swarm comes flying towards them guts leads them on a chase the poor kid forced to look at the evil monsters trying to grab onto his face while the psycho adult he just met uses him as live bait guts manages to hurt the swarm over to a nearby barn he throws the boy onto the ground and tells him not to move even as the barn is filled with demons confident they finally caught their prey the elves turn into their demonic forms looking more like wasps than ever before even growing abdomens with stingers as they close in guts cuts down the rafters of the barn tosses a bottle of gunpowder to the ground and sets off his arm cannon using the momentum of the cannon blast guts escapes the barn by bursting through the wall behind him with the dust lumber and gunpowder all being ignited at once the barn goes up in flames the young boy he used his bait desperately running away as fast as possible he falls to the ground in front of guts who thanks him for doing a good job as bait his reward he gets to watch the monsters who murdered his parents burn in front of him jaylen puck watch from a distance as the leader of the elves reveals herself in front of guts now if you're reading this volume by volume you see why i covered the prototype immediately because that cliffhanger is what closes off volume 14 right after is the prototype chapter and then you're screwed until volume 15. and to sort of take a minute to talk about what we just saw you're kind of seeing what i mean by guts is kind of evil just a little bit you know just a tiny little bit though even if he clearly has some sympathy for jill's situation the fact that dude used a random village boy as bait to kill monsters kinda negates that little bit of humanity we just saw even if the kid turned out okay because i really do fully believe guts intended for the kid to stay alive that [ __ ] was risky to say the least that's the strategy a crazy person would come up with i'm not mad at this you know i'm not actually upset guts did this in fact him becoming so reckless and hot-headed and bloodthirsty is part of the reason i really enjoy this arc i'm simply pointing out that this is the start of something really bad with the guy coming back from our cliffhanger we see the queen of the elves flying in the air above guts she's just as bubbly as the rest of her elves even after gutz tries to kill her with his throwing knives she's still wearing a big smile and confidently smacking them away guts insults the queen for pretending to be an elf when he actually knows what she is and that's something that actually does seem to set her off she calls upon her swarm who all accuse guts of being a lying grown-up which kind of gets puck's attention he picks up on it and realizes that they don't seem like actual elves instead puck realizes a bit too late what they really are the queen flies down to attack guts covering him and her wing dust and stinging his arm with her proboscis all the while puck's trying to intervene in the battle with the queen she takes some time to gloat over her attack working and we've yet to see what she actually means by this all the while puck is trying to tell guts what's going on but the big guy isn't listening it takes puck literally screaming in his ear for his message to get across to him the monsters aren't elves they're children human children somehow the queen transformed the children she kidnapped into monsters like her it's why the families die while the little kids are taken away she notices puck speaking with guts and accuses him of being picaf the outcast the two don't recognize the name but jill seems to know what she's talking about the queen comes in for another sweep attack saying pcaf gets punished with the humans and guts tries to prepare but his body goes limp turns out her dust is poisonous and with the wound on his arm and went straight to his bloodstream the only thing that saves him is jill diving in front and calling out to the queen calling her rosine this causes the queen to pass over the two for getting her attack instead she actually seems to recognize jill the two share a look before the queen flies away taking her swarm with her jill repeats the name rosine just in time for guts to collapse to the ground the poison from before is weakening him jill helps get guts to his feet just in time for the rest of the village to arrive they scream at guts for burning the barn mistakenly believing he destroyed all their winter provisions when we actually saw that the elves took care of that still they're pissed off they're especially angry at guts using the boy from before his bait but guts isn't having it instead he simply laughs at the villagers asking if any of them even tried to unlock their door when the boy ran out of his house the villagers changed the subject not wanting to be called out for their cowardice and demand he hand over the children jill and thomas the boy jill's mother even calls out for her but she's hesitating to run back she seems conflicted on leaving guts behind and even though she starts walking back to her fellow townsmen a part of her regrets stepping away all just in time for the big reveal remember apostles turn back into humans when they die so that's warm-up bug monsters guts just set on fire in the barn they transform back into normal children now burning in the remains of the barn in front of the horrified villagers guts decides this is the best time to take a hostage grabbing jill and putting a knife to her neck the situation is tense as guts tries to walk past the angry crowd puck is in a complete panic as it seems like everything guts does just makes the situation worse one of the men in the angry mob tries to attack him but guts presses the knife hard enough against jill's neck to draw blood scaring away any more attackers guts and jill make their way at the mob jill's father watching them from his hiding spot but cowering away when he sees guts jill is visibly upset at the idea of her father not even trying to save her but she stays quiet almost as if she was expecting it to happen they managed to get out of the village where guts lets jill go buck is angry at the fact he even took her as a hostage in the first place and then calls attention to the wound guts put on her neck but guts grabs the elf and sprinkles her neck with the healing powder basically telling him shut the [ __ ] up she's fine guts apologizes for what happened and goes to quietly walk away only for jill to state the obvious he's on his way to misty valley but she wants to come along turns out that queen elf is a friend of jill's who went missing some time ago rosine gutz tries to make it clear to jill just what is going to happen when he gets there rosine isn't human anymore and he's on his way to kill her what does jill honestly think she can do in essence he tells her to stay far far away leaving jill alone with her thoughts she's frustrated with her own life how no matter what happens nothing ever seems to change it's all just [ __ ] and she's stuck living with it we come back to puck lecturing guts about how he shouldn't be cruel to a little girl she gave him food and shelter and he repaid her by telling her to [ __ ] off then he sees guts is still bleeding from his arm wound he offers to heal it for him but guts push his puck away too saying he's sick of him and wants him to go away puck tries to play it off as a joke but gutz isn't joking he throws him to the ground and walks off without him puck is upset but he spots jill walking up to him she's gonna follow no matter what now here is what is possibly one of the darkest moments for guts not the darkest and dear sweet christ that saying something but this moment is up there he's resting at a campfire trying to purge the poison from rosine out of his body he's puking profusely resorting to eating a snake raw for food and even eats coca leaves not only was he poisoned but he's got major blood loss and hasn't slept in four days all the while images of the burning children are in his mind he prepares for a long painful night but then his brand starts to bleed now that the sun is setting something is taking shape in the campfire the demon child found him again and taking no time to start annoying his father it seems as though it summons a horde of flaming spirits the dead souls of the children guts killed in the barn fire now we don't know if the demon child specifically brought them to guts every time it showed up it never seemed outright malicious so it would be strange if it suddenly started attacking him especially when it seems to instinctively recognize guts as his father but guts blames it for the ghost coming after him so [ __ ] it the dead children close around guts all screaming and crying as he cuts them down it's actually not made 100 clear if they're intentionally trying to kill him sure they're surrounding him but the spirits aren't bragging about drinking his blood or devouring him they're sobbing crying out for their parents they're afraid it's quite possible that the ghosts are still just scared children deep down but because they're in flames anything they touch burns and regardless of whether or not they're purposefully trying to kill him guts doesn't seem to care he's happy to cut them apart all over again now visibly deranged meanwhile jill and puck are trying to track guts down puck decides to use some of his abilities to keep jill safe scaring away any animals that might get too close since they're running around in the middle of the night but he can't help but bring up what she already knows deep down even if she finds guts it's not like he's going to protect her from the swarm and her friend isn't going to become human again if they meet she's probably going to regret all this when it was over jill admits that's probably true but by this point she's already far enough that it would be a waste to turn back she needs to see this through to the end they manage to spot guts as camp in the distance and find him in the midst of a full-blown rampage he's cutting through the phantoms like a madman just slicing through everything he sees even after seeing one of the ghosts begging for his mother guts doesn't hesitate he's becoming less human as the fight goes on jill is horrified at the sight but puck is used to it and unfortunately for them some of the dead children materialize right behind them guts absolutely consumed and psychotic blood loss takes a swing in their direction the only thing that saves them is gut stopping his sword at the last second because he recognizes jill this half second of hesitancy gives the ghost a chance to pile onto guts he collapses on top of jill grabs onto her and leaps off the cliffside away from the demons the two are knocked unconscious and wake up the next morning jill is okay but guts hurt himself against the rocks falling down and can't move he asks her to sprinkle some of puck's dust on him to heal his wounds who is also not exactly in a good shape after the fall she helps treat his wounds while guts asked why she followed him turns out it was because the queen called puck pecaf it's a local fairy tale that all the children know p calf was a boy born with pointed ears and red eyes bullied by the local children though his parents always loved him eventually pikaf began to believe that he wasn't with his true family they weren't his real people nobody else had pointed ears or red eyes so why was he different he ran into the forest to try to find his real parents and eventually stumbled onto a colony of elves who also had red eyes and pointed ears but they swear pikaf isn't one of them instead they explain that some time ago a man and woman came into their forest to save their baby it was sick and dying the village forbade anyone from entering the forest and speaking with the elves so the couple broke local law to try and save their child the elves granted their request and saved their baby though in exchange the baby was altered to look like an elf given their eyes and ears but the parents didn't care they were just happy their kid was alive pcaf understanding that they were talking about him realizes too late his parents really were his true family and tries to run back to the village but by the time he came back a hundred years passed in the outside world now all alone picaff cried until his red eyes became even redder guts says the story sounds kind of grim but jill says that her friend rosine loved it in fact she saw herself almost like a p-caf-type character now i actually want to talk about the fairy tale a little bit since you might think it sounds a little familiar a boy living with his parents decides to run away because he doubts that the people around him are his real family during his journey he finally learns that the home he knew all his life was where he truly belonged but by the time he came back he was already gone ringing any bells the story is about guts i'm not saying the story is literally about guts but instead it's clearly supposed to remind you of his tragedy with the band of the hawk gutz was convinced that the hawks weren't his real family that he still needed to find his true purpose and it was only once he threw them away did he learn the hawks were where he truly belonged but when he came back we all know what happened it's beat for beat honestly just a few details shifted around to fit a fairy tale vibe they never draw an explicit comparison between guts and pcaf it's sort of something you realize on a re-read or two plus the story has larger implications for a plot point that was probably going to be touched on before miura died but that's way down the line outright part 4 or if we're being perfectly honest here 5 or even six back to our summary jill explains that her friend rosine was a neighbor girl who lived across the street she was four years older than her so the two bonded more like sisters rosine was a tomboy who liked to play outside in the woods catching bugs and collecting little trinkets one thing she found was an egg-shaped stone with a human face as the two became friends jill noticed that rosine wanted to stay outside as long as possible almost avoiding going back home and the reason for it is because she too was dealing with abuse from her family rosine's family would fight constantly and it was always about her jill would always see rosine covered in bruises from the beating she suffered from her father this caused rosine to latch onto the piccaf story as sort of a way to escape her life even going so far as imagining an alternate ending for the story in her version picaff really was an elf and ever since he left home he's been playing with his real family in the forest far away from humans she even claims that she's just like an elf and belongs in their land instead of with humanity jill says that the village they live in was caught up in a skirmish some time ago most of the people evacuated but some of the women were left behind and raped by the invading forces rosine's mother included so the reason her father is so cruel to her is because he's convinced she's a product of rape and not his actual daughter it's something she's had to live with her entire life never once getting a break one night as jill is sleeping she sees rosine standing outside her window in the rain she claims that she's running away to misty valley to be with the elves and she just wanted to say goodbye to jill one last time leaving her box of treasures to her ever since that night rosine vanished from the face of the earth the village organized search parties but they never found her and a few days after she left her own parents disappeared too jill inspected the box brazine left for her and saw that the only thing missing was her lucky charm the weird stone with a face sometime afterwards is when the swarm started to attack puck picking up on what happened shows off the bale of guts collected all the way back in volume 3 asking if the charm rosin had looked the exact same guts doesn't waste time explaining the truth the bailit is an artifact used to summon demons to grant the user power in exchange for a sacrifice he puts two and two together and flat out says rosine killed her parents to become an elf gutz tells jill one last time to walk away that none of this is a fairy tale and she will die if it keeps going then to drive the point home he says point blank he's not stopping his sword next time so gutz admits he's fully willing to murder jill if she gets in the way he even insults her parents calling her father a loser and her mother a coward which okay i mean in this specific instance he's right but you know this makes jill snap and she tries to slap him but guts catches her hand he ends the debate by telling jill to stick to p calf before he goes to leave she's just a kid she doesn't belong in this really [ __ ] up adult world he lives in puck attempts another lecture but guts traps him in a pile of rocks fully abandoning the two to hunt rosine on his own puck tries to comfort jill who's broken down crying from gutz's words but she knows her life is a mess and having someone say it out loud to her just makes it worse well as the two talk a certain somebody flies down to meet them rosine she's come with her swarm puck is sent flying from his prison the rock scattered when rosine lands down and jill is petrified rosine walks up to her and puts a frog on her head the elves all share a laugh and we see rosine actually does recognize jill as her friend it's kind of a heartwarming moment seeing these two damaged children share a moment together as friends rosine shows off her new form excited at the idea of being a true elf while jill can't help but think about what gus said about rosine sacrificing her own parents to have her wish granted but rosine's energy is enough to distract her turns out she wants to formally invite jill to join her in misty valley she swears it's a fun place where they won't have to worry about a thing she pulls jill close intending on flying her over her kingdom promising no cold no mean parents no big guy dressing all black looking at them oh [ __ ] yeah guts takes a swing just dives right at him with his sword and the ambush actually works he manages to slice off a bit of her wing something that causes rosin to cry out in pain showing off her more demonic form the sight terrifies jill and causes her swarm to get violent but rosine decides to leave once jill begs her to stop just leave it be let's go they all leave guts and puck left behind and watching them fly away puck then says that it looked like guts was about to kill jill too to which he gets no response the [ __ ] was actually gonna do it he pulls us so what this finally pushes puck over the edge he kicks guts in the nose and tells him to well and truly [ __ ] himself gutz doesn't seem to care but does think that he might have actually hesitated when he tried to kill rosine something held him back well we cut to rosine and jill flying through the air they stared down at the landscape in awe for the first time jill sees the world as truly beautiful even noting that her village is so small she can't even see it anymore so high in the sky roseanne continues to manipulate jill swearing that being an elf is a magical experience if she becomes one of them she can fly all she wants rosine notices jill hesitate with the decision and asks if she's thinking about guts implying she might have a crush on him i have no idea why i'm just chalking this up too mysterious stranger is cool and badass therefore i like him cause what experience with this band has ever pointed you to ever wanting to like him ever still rosine points out that he's coming for misty valley but he'll never actually make it their kingdom is protected by real adults who care about children turns out guts is indeed marching into misty valley now consumed in the fog we saw the bandits run into in the beginning of the ark his brand is spilling blood so he knows he's getting closer well he finally spots something in the fog and discovers a pile of corpses shaped into a ball just like when it happened with rickard a form forces itself out of the corpse ball and we see it's one of the bandits the rest of the group emerges out as well all of them completely naked they're noticeably brainwashed talking about how they won't let guts pass because they'll hurt the children they charge atom showing that they have enhanced speed thanks to whatever transformation rosine put them through but guts makes quick work of the mutated bandits with his crossbow and throwing knives however one of the bandits transforms into an insect-like monster this is the full extent of the mutations the bandits are now a hybrid between man and insect remember rosine's hobby as a normal girl was collecting bugs so this is almost like a sick joke she's playing on the bandits nevertheless guts is absolutely merciless he's cutting through the monsters like a [ __ ] tornado the big bandit dude turns into a giant beetle and manages to pin guts against a tree trying to slice his head off with his pincers but guts slowly cleaves the guy in two dragging the dragon slayer upwards and spilling him open guts even fires his automatic crossbow into his head in an attempt to shake him off while at the same time another mutated bandit starts scattering down to guts his head to munch on his face oh by the way i completely forgot if you have a phobia of insects this arc won't be great for you i probably should have put this warning earlier but now you guys are cool well guts manages to kill the bug monsters by kicking off the tree and using the momentum to slice the one above him in half just as guts finally gets a chance to breathe he sees more mutants in the distance a whole mass of them are running straight for him so guts raises his weapons and makes the rules clear he won't leave even a single one of them alive the assault begins and it's a blood vest he kills as many of the mutants as he can with his crossbow before whipping out the dragon slayer and jumping in as the orgy of violence takes place we see puck is still seething over his fight with guts he takes a seat on a passing crow as he thinks about what could possibly make guts so hateful and angry he knows the god hand did something to the guy and especially the raven looking one but puck has no clue well he decides he doesn't care anymore guts is an [ __ ] and puck doesn't want to be his friend instead he's gonna be friends with his crow the crow is also an [ __ ] thankfully puck is okay though he unknowingly stumbled right into misty valley recognizing it as an opportunity to save jill puck decides to infiltrate the valley and find his friend guts is still losing his [ __ ] something awful by the way he killed pretty much all the bugs only two survivors left we didn't see the actual fight in full but it was bad enough that guts is soaked in blood and heaving and he's just ripping their body parts apart he's actually kind of reminiscent of how he ended up during the tower of rebirth fight only koska isn't there to calm him down even the surviving bugs comment going yo what the [ __ ] is wrong with you well the two decide to transform into their insect forms a large rhinoceros beetle and a prank mantis say hello to biggie and smalls that's not their cannon name just sort of a nickname i gave him you have the classic big strong dude working with a fast agile guy trope and they're noticeably harder to fight than the mob guts just slaughtered as it turns out these two have combat experience as knights they know how to combo their abilities smalls slashing at guts with his talons and biggie putting enough pressure to keep guts from getting a chance to swing and because smalls rushes in with quick attacks guts doesn't have enough time to prepare a strike to kill a beetle it's a bad situation we cut back to the village who are busy burying the children killed in the barn fire there's so many bodies they resort to a mass grave the scene is grim parents crying over their missing children possibly being among the bodies but they can't even be sure because all the corpses have been burned beyond recognition all the while jill's father is drinking on a stump away from the funeral procession [ __ ] this dude like seriously just [ __ ] this [ __ ] this is the point where the holy iron chain nights arrive remember these guys yeah they're actually kind of important for things to come the village panics at the side of them but the local priest assures them that the knights are here to help the commander greets the priest and reveals that they were sent to investigate a possible miracle say hello to farnice she's the leader of these nights that's about all i can say at the moment just know that she's probably one of my favorite characters when this arc ends you will learn a lot about her so no reason to spoil things just yet she orders her men to help bury the children while her and her top henchmen talk with the priest he explains everything to her about how guts and pucks showed up and set the kids on fire i would hope he added the details about the killer swarm of demon elves that have been eating people for the last few years but the most we see is them talking about the fire just saying man that that shit's kind of important you kind of want these guys to know about that well jill's father is actually eavesdropping on the conversation as farnese explains her mission she and her knights were tasked with tracking down guts referred to as the black swordsman it seems as though midland has been suffering from extreme plagues and famine and on top of that stories about monsters and spirits are becoming more and more common so the holy see decided to investigate the issue and discovered a common factor among all the witnesses whenever a guy with a big sword dressed in all black comes into town everyone dies and every time the holy iron chain knights investigated an area he was supposedly in they found piles of corpses and destruction now farnese herself is unsure of whether or not guts actually exists she theorizes he might just be a criminal with an exaggerated reputation an entirely fictitious person made up to connect stories or even worse he might actually be important to that prophecy farnese mentioned at the red lake the priest admits he has zero clue about any of this the most he knows is the guy went into misty valley a place nobody has ever come back from the priest wants to offer them a guide but [ __ ] he doesn't want to risk anyone dying then jill's father comes in to volunteer for the job yeah he seems capable he rushes back home his wife crying over her daughter going missing after being taken hostage by a violent maniac just a day ago but he doesn't give a [ __ ] he came to get his armor the way he sees it he gets to live out his glory days one last time leading the knights into the forest i know what you're thinking god be praised it's an actual miracle let this guy be eaten inside out by those horrible bug monsters i know how i know cause i thought the same thing dude's got a pretty good looking village wife and all he gives a [ __ ] about is larping as a soldier again [ __ ] you give me your wife hand her over give it back of the fight with biggie and smalls we see gutz is still having trouble fighting them they just refuse to give him a window to attack he just can't fight both at once he tries cutting off biggie's head but he can only wound him his hips are too busy dodging to help him build up striking power in order to kill them guts needs to find a way to hit them both at the same time this causes him to have an epiphany to kill them at the same time guts readies his arm cannon he fires at biggie exploding his head and the momentum from the explosion is strong enough for guts to swing the dragon slayer so fast smalls can't escape he managed to kill the two of them in one attack it's probably one of the sickest kills in manga lost children has some pretty [ __ ] good fights well despite his victory guts is wounded bad he's bleeding a lot thankfully no arteries were severed but the sheer blood lost is beginning to become a problem the one thing that saves him is some extra elf dust left over by puck when he was sleeping in the pouch guts rubs the medicine against his wounds as the corpses of the mutants turn back into humans now surrounding him in a scene of absolute carnage yeah you can assume why an order of knights would assume a guy like guts is just a psychopath and not a demon hunter because this any good optics chief jumping over the puck we see him still nervous about entering misty valley though he's quick to notice that the place really does look like a paradise the scenery is calm and beautiful enough so that puck can't resist but take a nap on a passing lily pad his lazy snoozing is interrupted by the sounds of happy carefree joy puck sees some of the demon elves playing catch with a ball oh that's cute maybe they aren't so bad puck knows it's a bad idea to join them they're technically the enemy but it looks fun and he can't resist trying to join the fake elves they catch on to the fact puck looks different but they still decide to play with them now that's really nice it's really sweet to see that these guys maybe are just kids deep down and they're playing catch with a human eyeball no wonder guts set you freaks on fire puck is scared stiff but the elves fly away when they hear the queen is back with a new friend he uses this chance to slip further into the hive seemingly focused around a massive cedar tree the side of the tree stirs something in side puck and he has a vision of elves flying past him but before he can think about this any further he spots rosin sitting with jill the elves bring her fruit to eat and rosine continues singing praises about her new utopia swearing that they'll always have food to eat it'll never be cold and grown-ups are not allowed inside the manipulation is effective enough that jill admits she would have come sooner if she knew it was like this though she still stays on the fence about actually becoming an elf razing gives her the rest of the night to think it over but ask jill if living in the village gave her the same wonder as flying through the sky she leaves her alone just in time for puck to come to the rescue also you didn't see it but puck totally killed like 18 of them he said he did and he doesn't seem like a liar you're a liar jill asks him about guts and puck says in no uncertain terms that the partnership is through even admitting that guts planned on killing jill when he attacked rosine the revelation actually doesn't seem to shock her almost expecting to hear that was the case and even though puck tries to lead her out of the forest jill seems content to stay put she's seriously considering becoming an elf with rosine puck thinks the idea is ridiculous they aren't elves they eat people but the peace of misty valley is starting to sway her over in jill's eyes attacking people is just like what animals do so maybe it's just in their nature and the village is so much worse than the valley jill recalls the incident that caused her to run away from home that friend of her fathers that tried to enter her room actually attacked her that night getting on top and licking her face she barely got away in time and simply ran as far as she could remember the guy that specifically said sorry for last night the reason jill was kidnapped and met guts in the first place is because he tried to rape her the thoughts bleed over into puck who feels all the fear she has about life he tries to argue that her mother would miss her but jill just rants about how terrible her circumstances are she's terrified of growing up to be her mother letting herself be bullied and abused and doing nothing when her own children are bullied and abused or even worse she might become her father cruel to her children only to make herself feel better the entire time she's ranting she's been unknowingly crushing puck in her hands to the point that he starts crying out that she's hurting him this seems to snap her out of her episode and she releases puck they come back to reality just in time to see the elf children putting on toy armor and weapons ready to play pretend war it's cute i like the little bug armors they have like little ladybug shields and they're using little pincers as swords it's really nice to look really holy [ __ ] [ __ ] yep they're not playing they're really killing each other dismembering decapitating impaling the grass is stained with blood the victorious elves hold up their enemies bodies up into the air celebrating the end of their game as puck puts it they're enjoying the killing and only humans enjoy killing them or monsters of course jill's whole they're just doing what they have to do logic would fall apart we saw the elves act sadistic when guts was fighting them these things are not just misunderstood creatures they're actually evil and if you needed one last scene a nightmare fuel to tide you over we see one elf chase another down it gets on top readies its stinger and performs what the victim calls an adult attack the elf is raped to death by a wasp stinger right in front of jill and puck who have been watching the whole time the elves even try presenting one of the corpses to her as a present but jill freaks out and slaps them away just in time for the corpse to fall to the ground and revert back into a human child as do the rest of the elves who died in the play war jill is staring at a field of dead children the elves notice her fear and become angry claiming she isn't a friend since she hit them jill freezes solid but puck snaps her back to the world and screams at her to [ __ ] run the two trying to escape the swarm by running for their lives they get lost in the fog and jill collapses to the ground in exhaustion puck tries to inspire her to keep going but jill points out they don't even know what direction they ran towards they took a look at their surroundings and see that there's a bunch of orbs hanging from the ceiling puck goes to poke one of them to see what it is and notices something stirring inside of it one opens up next to jill and reveals one of the demon elves hatching out of it yep they ran straight into a nest of cocoons each one contains a human child that's transforming into an elf rosine calls it the emergence grounds she approaches jill far more sinister than the friendly face she tried so hard to sell before rosine demands to know why jill ran away and she tells her about the carnage at the play session but rosine brushes it off by saying they were simply playing at war even calling jill a coward for being afraid of it at all jill points out the obvious with the whole you people are actually killing each other but rosine is convinced it's not a big deal they'll make new friends anyway all the elves were doing was simply pretending to be human if jill goes home the real thing might happen in the future anyway a real war rosine repeats her pitch one more time become an elf and never worry about the big bad human world again rosine even promises to make jill an extra special elf nobody will ever be able to hurt she wraps jill in her wings letting her poisonous dust lull her to sleep rosine assures her she'll simply fall asleep and wake up his nail everything will be fine puck tries to talk her out of it and rosine tries to whip him with her proboscis but she misses and accidentally splits open one of the cocoons revealing the contents inside jill gets a good look at a half-transformed child melted down and only vaguely resembling a human shape jill snaps awake and screams in horror and to top it all off the nest erupts in flames all the cocoons burn as they look towards the figure in the distance its guts holding a torch he lit the whole place on fire [Music] rosine sends her swarm after guts he uses his sword to cut down one of the flaming trees it collapses on top of them incinerating all the elves the whole crowd watching in horror as everyone burns in front of guts code in a dark silhouette from the flames puck convinces jill to run for cover and as she moves she notices something about guts for just a moment as he's surrounded by fire he's the one that looks like a monster instead of the elves so guts came in like the wrath of god and showed very quickly he's not one to be [ __ ] with and the best part is this isn't even the most hardcore part of the fight it's the epitome of a chef kiss because it's pure unfiltered kino we take a break from the violence and see jill's fathers leading the holy iron chain nights into misty valley tonight azan misinterprets the situation as a devoted father trying to rescue his daughter but nah dude's a dick bag farnus orders them all to dismount their horses and investigate the area the roots of the forest making traveling by horse risky and as they get ready to march one of the knights finds what's left of the mutants guts killed ripped to pieces azan believes it might have been from cannon fire suspecting the black swordsman has an entire crew but farnese's second in command serpico has another theory one guy killed them his evidence is that despite the damage done to each corpse there's clear indication of an edged weapon being used so instead of a cannon it's more like a massive sword which yeah that's what happened jill's father confirms the theory having seen guts of sword back when they tried to attack him in the village azan believes this is proof that guts is the one called the hawk of darkness that bad boy that the prophecy kept talking about but farnese reminds him not to use the term loosely now we as the audience know that description they gave of the hawk of darkness doesn't exactly match guts but these are a bunch of stupid nobles so it's okay for them to speculate they don't know what we know well despite her yelling at azan for calling guts the hawk of darkness she herself calls in the hawk of darkness hypocritical [ __ ] still she swears to hunt him down and capture guts for god back to unspeakable brutality and we see guts shredding what's left of the swarmed pieces as he fights the corpses revert back to being children so before long the man is surrounded by torn apart corpses which are then consumed by the fire so guts is surrounded by mutilated dead burning children berserk isn't very pleasant sometimes the scene frustrates rosine who reveals that she has more friends to throw at guts she orders her swarm to chew him slowly and they all latch on biting into his flesh it looks like he's done for jill freaking out and rosine taking the chance to brag but guts calls [ __ ] on the idea instead the man throws himself into the fire setting himself ablaze to burn off the elves remember when i said that guts was starting to work off crazy person logic well this is what i mean the dude literally set himself on fire to prove a [ __ ] point now it's not like he goes the entire fight on fire though at this point you really wouldn't bet against that idea instead he pierces one of the cocoons letting the fluid inside put out the flames they all stand in amazement at how clever guts is or they're absolutely terrified because he looks like this and this say hello to bad guts guts could get pretty ruthless before he was quick to execute enemies in golden age and in black swordsman some of his tactics could get downright dirty but that's a far cry from looking like an actual animal the dude is so consumed with hate that he's biting into the half-transformed corpse of a child the dude's like a werewolf just feral and mindless because something is boiling inside of them we just haven't been told what it is yet all you have to know is guts's very humanity is at stake here i already said before that the conflict of the next few arcs revolve around whether or not guts is evil it's a pretty crucial element to what's about to come guts has gone so far downhill with his quest for revenge that he's not just violent the guy is acting like a feral beast it's to the point that rosine asks what the [ __ ] is up with this guy and jill can't help but think about the first time she met him at first she believed guts was a ghost in the forest but now she has no clue what the hell this dude is rosine swears she's gonna kill him but guts is ready this time she tries to dive down an attack but he manages to deflect her proboscis and cut off her antenna even cutting open part of her wing turns out since the nest is full of trees she can't fly at full speed and all the fire burns away her dust meaning guts has the perfect conditions to kill her in fact there he is right now yeah he's not stopping this time rosine manages to dodge the attack and fly off into the nest but he chases right after her only to stop when his brain bleeds heavier than before jaylen puck are still spectating the fight and they all see rosine's true form as an apostle a large moth what the [ __ ] do you want from me her whole aesthetic has been moths and bugs anyway rosine is sad to see her kingdom burn but knows that there's nothing she can do besides she can fly to wherever she wants she can make a new kingdom with jill the only thing she needs to do is kill guts rosine flies to the nest her speed now fast enough that the entire forest is shaking from the g-force jill and puck are sent rolling to the ground from the wind and rosine has her stinger aimed squarely at guts he tries to block the attack but it's just too strong he's sent flying through the air hell the trees are bending from the speed in fact it's so fast he couldn't even see her coming the only thing that saved him was rosine not being able to aim properly thanks to the loss of her antenna but she settles on going for twozies jill and puck are trapped in the middle of the nest the wind rosine is kicking up with her speed feeding the fire now a blazing inferno roseanne goes for a second attack and once again it kicks his ass he knows she's aiming for his head but at her speed there's nothing he can do to avoid her he's being thrown around like a ragdoll plus the explosive sound she makes implying that rosine is literally breaking the sound barrier deafens guts so hard it's hard to coordinate his timing rosine notices guts is still alive and decides to go for one last attack this time going slower to aim for his head properly turns out this is the exact thing he needed to keep an eye on her attack she's slow enough that gutz is able to see her stinger coming so he prepares his defense he puts his arm up it's not his fault he's very tired anyway rosine believes she can finally skewer his head and go for the kill the stinger pierces guts his arm but he adjusts his iron hand to redirect the stinger away from his face now that gutz's arm is impaled with a stinger he flies up into the sky with rosine she notices he's still alive but decides to let him ride along teasing guts by saying they're going on a date in the starry sky rosine takes them high above the tree line hovering in the sky she notices gut seems to be passing out from the blood loss and continues teasing him even saying he's not a bad looking guy so that must be why jill has a crush on him but the way rosine sees it only she can have jill so she plans on flying at full speed to rip him apart she takes the time to plant a kiss on his face and of course she forgets gutz has an iron cannon for an arm like everyone seems to forget this actually in her defense i don't think she ever saw it but still yet another demon that took the time to bad guy's speech and got [ __ ] up by the cannon the wound sends the two flying straight to the ground guts crashing through the trees angry at himself for supposedly blowing another chance to just kill her she actually hints at the idea guts is dealing with a psychological block that's holding him back from just killing her he sees rosine reeling in agony from the cannonball and guts crawls over to his sword while she destroys the forest around her in frustration her intestines are spilling out from the wound guts gave her but she's still in the fight royally pissed off and dedicated to killing him he's covering his hand in sword wrapping keeping the dragon slayer tight in his grip he's infuriated at blowing so many different chances at just killing rosine and guts wonders if it's from knowing about her backstory or it's because rosine still looks like a kid and because he went soft on her he's on death's door and can barely hold his sword so instead gutz decides to drown out his thoughts don't think about anything else but killing black everything else out give into the worst parts of himself and just move but with rosine now waiting for him to attack again and his gun powder completely spent he needs to be smart about his next move that's when he sees [ __ ] jill walking around in the fire hopelessly lost and unsure of what to do and then guts gets an idea we see jail and puck trying to avoid burning in the flames but it's too much to handle jill wants puck to fly away just abandoning her but he's not gonna do it he's not leaving her to just burn and die instead he decides to try and split open the cocoons to protect them but guts did jill hates the very idea still remembering what's actually inside of those things and puck asks if she has any better ideas jill breaks down crying admitting she's a stupid kid and regrets ever coming to misty valley she knew it would end badly but she did anyway now she's directly telling puck to leave she wants to die puck tries one last time to reach her but a flaming branch falls down on top of them only to be saved at the last second by rosine she's wounded far worse than we thought bad enough that even jill notices it too she swears that the two will run away together somewhere far away where no one will bother them but starting to sound a bit hollow she's close to the end well hopefully the two can escape and jill can wish your friend goodbye one last time not on this dude's watch he dives out of the fire impaling rosine with a dragon slayer right in front of jill the sword right next to her head rosine reels back from the pain and accidentally tosses jill into the fire but guts kicks open one of the cocoons to drench her in the fluids the elf inside this one partially alive rosine flies away again guts stuck to her back with his sword still straight to her body and puck immediately picks up on what happened guts knew rosine would try and save her friend so he took advantage of the situation he was willing to let jill possibly burn to death if it meant killing rosine jill meanwhile has lost it now just laughing to herself too much [ __ ] has crashed down around her her mind is broken rosine is desperately trying to shake off guts but the man is not budging she demands to know just who the hell this guy is but he simply says she wouldn't remember out of all the people she's killed there's no way she would remember why he's doing this to her the very idea that a human is the one hurting her pushes brazine past her own breaking point screaming out that humans aren't allowed to hurt elves she throws guts off her back finally removing him and the sword and sending them careening down to the ground for a brief moment we flash back to rosine to when she discovered misty valley back when she was just a normal girl she was happy in her little paradise but it's immediately broken up by coming back to the fight rosine wants to finish off guts she flies towards him one last time intent on driving her stinger through his skull and she actually succeeds the stinger goes through guts and it looks like rosine won nope it went through his cheeks gutz is still alive and he bites down on the stinger what's left of his mind is just not there anymore guts finally found his chance and he [ __ ] takes it cleaving rosine opened with the dragon slayer both sides are bleeding like stuck pigs and crashed the ground one last time rosine in absolute agony thinks about when she found misty valley she waited for days but no elves ever appeared she knew deep down it was just a story she never really believed in them but it was all she had it turns out her parents actually did find her shortly after she went missing her mother was relieved running up to hug her but instead of showing care or any sign he was happy that she was safe her father savagely beats her berating her for making the whole town worry humiliating him and accusing her of not being his real daughter yeah he sticks on that shtick he even beats her while just asking again and again were there any elves her mother tries to pull him off but then he just shifts his attacks to her the sight is too much for rosine to handle her horrible home life creeped into her fantasy world the one thing that was never supposed to happen is happening right in front of her and she wants all of it to just go away forever which is enough for the bailiff to activate rosine is back to her normal form apologizing to her mother and father as she hits the ground jaylen puck find her bleeding her left arm completely severed puck recognizes that she's dying and rosine talks about how there were never any elves in misty valley it was all just fairy tales for lonely children but puck swears that was not the case he says that they really did live in the forest but for some reason they all left still their energy was strong enough for him to pick up on rosine is confused by what he's saying since she doesn't realize puck is a true elf the three share a moment as rosine finally gets to see one of the creatures she spent her whole life dreaming about it's actually pretty touching even if roseanne did so many nightmarish things to people all this time she's just a little girl that's been hurt by the world that does not excuse what she's done not by any means yet you can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for her she made the choice to sacrifice her parents yes it was her decision but it was because so much of her life was already a living hell she just wanted to stop to go away once again it's not an excuse she's made countless other people suffer just as if not worse than her rosine is a monster that deserved to die but she was just a child a child that sadly has met the consequences to her actions and those consequences came in the form of guts a specter of absolute vengeance that would not go away now this is actually something i really like about some of the apostle fights in berserk the demons are sadistic monsters yes but they always feel human deep down there's some aspect to their personality that makes them feel like flawed beings and this almost always ends up being the key to defeating them the snake lord was so prideful that he wasted time bragging instead of killing guts the count was so attached to his daughter that guts could exploit her as a hostage to kill him while add was so impulsive and carefree guts could outsmart him and use ambushes to his advantage and now rosine is dying because she wanted to protect her friend this is what makes these fights so special at least to me personally the apostle fights in berserk are more character studies for the demons you see a wide range of emotions from each one and it almost always ends in an ironic comeuppance ironic in that the human aspect to the demons is what kills them hell you want to know why nosferatu zod was such a dangerous fighter not just because guts was inexperienced dude didn't fight too many demons when he killed wylad but because za didn't have any weaknesses to exploit there was no relative to take advantage of or obvious personality trait that hindered him zod well and truly abandoned his humanity to become what he is and in a strange way that made him far deadlier than any demon guts fought up to this point oh by the way speaking of guts the dude explodes out of the lake next to the cedar tree he's coming and he's still angry rosin and jill are blissfully unaware the two sharing their last words as the demon girl dies she tells jill that she's lucky if she found an elf so everything will be okay and rosian swears that jill will be okay even if bad things happen but their conversation is cut short by guts he's not finished yet he wants more he doesn't say a word or even acknowledge jill or puck or there all he cares about is rosine jill begs him not to hurt her anymore rosine is already dying he should be satisfied she even asks why he hates her so much but he just pushes her away he readies one final blow directly aimed at rosine's head puck too weak to stop him with his chestnuts chill jumps on top of razine to protect her but guts isn't stopping the only thing that saves the girl is a crossbow bolt right through the abdomen we see jill's father is the one who fired it bragging about taking down the black swordsman the holy iron chain knights are right behind him they opened fire on guts intending on saving the children not realizing rosine is actually a demon still guts retreats into the forest the knights chasing after him and leaving the rest behind jill's father attempts to join but azan tells him he should simply be thankful his daughter is safe once they're gone he lashes out in anger his one chance to experience battle one last time squandered of all the people that died in this story and this douchebag got to live [ __ ] ain't fair rosine stands up much to everyone's shock but she's delirious saying she needs to go home rosine takes flight jill stopping her father from firing at her with his crossbow rosine hallucinates as she flies through the air thinking she needs to be at home in time for dinner otherwise her parents be worried her stomach rumbles rosine wondering what her mother is cooked as she falls to the ground finally dead from her wounds we see the ending lines of the piccaf story repeated as rosine dies finished off with an image of a happy rosine eating dinner with her parents pretty heavy right well it's not finished just yet there's still a bit more to close us off with this chunk of berserk we come back to jill having watched rosine fly away for the final time her father is complaining by losing a shot at glory barking at jill to come home with him but she can't go just yet he tries to strike her with his cane but she dodges out of the way even ordering him to go back to the village without her she needs to find guts no matter what puck warns her that he's dangerous a drainage mess that just tried to kill her and why does she want to find him anyway after all the [ __ ] she's been through and jill admits she doesn't know but things simply can't end like this we find guts hiding in a cave away from the holy iron chain nights we're having difficulty tracking him down in the fog guts rips out the bolts from his body and spots jill staring at him she managed to track him down she asked guts if he's leaving and he's quick to berate her for coming along saying nothing good ever happened when she followed him and she keeps tagging along it'll only happen again and again jill swears that when she almost fell in the fire guts went out of his way to save her and begs him to let her come along she doesn't care where they go so long as it's far away and here is actually a pretty heartbreaking sequence guts tells jill to look around him at the shadows in the cave they are completely surrounded by evil spirits if jill wanted to come with guts it would mean following him into the hill he lives with every single day the hordes of the dead constantly attacking him the apostles that's all that's waiting for jill if she comes with him and jill learns very quickly she isn't even safe from the ghosts they crowd around her just like they do to guts he saves her from them letting jill fall to the ground and cry and he covers her in his cloak comforting her as he lays out the truth there's never going to be a utopia or a paradise she can run away to it's better to stay where she is and try to change things than look for a way to escape for the first time since they met gut shows a true care for her safety everywhere she goes will be painful but she's safer at home than anywhere close to him gutz walks off urging her to simply walk away jill doesn't want to go back to her horrible life but guts isn't giving her a choice he's leaving without her and the horrible monsters are leaving with him soon jill is left alone she closes out our ark with a final narration she never did find out who gutz was and she's not truly sure what all the horror really meant the misty valley burned away all the wonder and mystique is dead jill looks up at the sky the miss cleared away and thinks about her flight with rosine the excitement she felt wasn't there but the sky is clear like after a storm blows through jill's childhood is officially dead in a way she's finally grown up she knows she can't run away from her problems like rosine and she can't go to war against the world like guts did instead she'll go home and try to change things for the better it'll be painful but that's life as a parting gift puck gives jill some elf dust in one of his chestnuts to sting her dad whenever she wants he's still going to travel with guts whether the big guy likes it or not she looks at puck one last time thinking about how elves look best flying in the sky we close out lost children with jill returning home with her father content with whatever is about to come so the arc ends in a very bitter sweet manner rosine is dead guts is a wanted man and so many innocent kids died in horrific ways but deep down there's some hope that things can be better even though guts well and truly became a monster to kill rosine he still decided to save jill in his own twisted way yes but he still managed to protect her from the world he's forced to live in a lot of people love this arc myself included it's just such a beautiful tragic story you see all the elements that make berserk special focused down and refined into one standalone arc yeah there's some outright nightmare fuel plenty of [ __ ] up and downright disturbing scenes which doesn't help considering this is all about child suffering but underneath the horror you have tragedy not just from rosine and her whole story jill herself is a very tragic figure and with her perspective we see a new side to this horrible [ __ ] up world the children in the story can't catch a break dealing with abuse whether it be physical emotional or even sexual dealing with cruel uncaring parents that are supposed to represent figures of kindness and safety and any kind parent figure they might find are powerless to stop tragic things from happening to their own children there's also the conflict that this arc deals with that's a bit understated it's all about the effects of abuse on children and we see it in a few different ways rosine represents a child desperate enough to escape their own circumstances to the point it leads them down an ever-darkening road to the point she became a literal demon and subjected other children to fates worse than death so she can play pretend forever she didn't want to face what happened and try to become stronger for it she just succumbed to the despair guts represents a kid that uses his trauma to attack the world around him remember guts himself went through some [ __ ] [ __ ] as a kid which followed him into adulthood not even talking about the eclipse he doesn't try to run from his issues he tackles it and tries to kill them he would rather burn the world to the ground but this isn't healthy either hell it drove him insane jill is supposed to represent the best case scenario yes her life is full of pain it's something a kid should never have to deal with but instead of trying to escape or lash out she decides to try and find something to be happy about regardless of her circumstances she'll try and make the world better around her in a way lost children is a coming-of-age story for jill she matures into a better person by the end beginning as a scared girl that just wants someone to protect her from the big scary world and ending as someone willing to stand up for herself it's not a complete happy ending a lot of bad things happen that she's never forgetting but you feel like things might be okay hell it's the entire reason guts gives her the speech in the first place he's not gonna let her ruin her life sticking with a guy that's actually cursed everywhere they would go it would be nothing but nightmares for her so guts in his own way tried to save her from that by pushing her away and when all the bluster and anger and aggression didn't work he finally broke down and was just honest he made it clear stay away and jill finally got the message this is by zero means a happy ending but it seems like berserk might be starting to get less depressing guys yeah the title isn't a joke lost children kicked off something it starts off small very small but nevertheless it's the snowball of the search rolling down the hill for guts as a character okay so i say it's getting less depressing but we've got a lot of ground to cover before that actually becomes accurate and just know that there's pretty major venting session in a little bit over a specific part of the manga mainly how a specific adaptation skipped over a lot of what we just saw and how that accomplished nothing but being a terrible first impression for people trying to get into the series we're talking about this when it happens just know that's coming we come back to our summary just after the events of lost children misty valley is burnt to a crisp filled with scorched trees and charred corpses of what's left of rosine's elves skull knight appears taking note of the grotesque scene he even comments that if guts keeps walking down a road that puts him through [ __ ] like this it can't end well he then goes to the tree that sat in the center of the valley and retrieves a bailout from inside no doubt resins that she kept with her after her transformation into a demon for some reason skull knight decides to eat the balet i have no commentary on this at this point but it does have a point with his business finished skull knight rides off and we return to guts still heavily wounded after his fight he's dragging the dragon slayer behind him bleeding so bad he's leaving footprints of his own blood behind him and his breathing is strained and it's at this point the demons decide to start [ __ ] with him again cackling in the tree line mocking him for killing children for his own grudge asking if they really deserved it the kids never had a choice in becoming monsters rosine kidnapped and manipulated them and guts wasn't trying to be a hero or save a village he was just angry and taking his hatred out on any demon he saw even if that included victims it didn't matter what rosine went through the manga explicitly states this more than once and guts didn't give a single [ __ ] with the apostles experience that turned them into demons the spirits haunting him are putting that very aspect of his personality on blast they even directly say guts is evil he stinks of darkness the way they do the spirits go so far as forming into a wolf shape claiming that something bad lives inside guts what they call the beast of darkness the more guts kills the thirstier it becomes and the thirstier the beast becomes the more guts kills it will never be satisfied it wants to keep him killing until he is completely alone letting it take complete control and turning guts into a monster in the form of a man or maybe guts could become a real monster like griffith did this sets the guy off and he tries cutting down the spirits but the strain is too much and he collapses to the ground his wounds bad enough that guts actually starts to wonder whether or not he can get back up he's pissed off at the idea of dying by weaklings but then he thinks about how far he's gone down this road for revenge he's been cutting through demons and the undead for years yet he's not one step closer to griffith how long can guts really keep doing this what does he think is gonna happen when he finds him again we saw what happened last time they saw each other guts was barely on the god hand's radar they didn't give a single [ __ ] guts has done all these horrible things to people enough that he's hellbound even without the brand but griffith is still nowhere to be found the last image we see is guts falling unconscious as an image of griffith looms overhead this is one of the scenes i absolutely love my favorite parts of berserk are when it explores guts as a character and delves into a psychology and this whole sequence is completely about that the guy was tormented by the spirits of the dead over how he set a bunch of demon children on fire for the sake of revenge how is that not the sickest [ __ ] thing you have ever seen and in a funny way this is sort of similar to what happened after he killed adonis guts beat himself up over accidentally murdering a child it was enough to really [ __ ] with his head he had a whole nightmare sequence about it but now not only did guts mean to kill them but it was far slower he wanted them to feel pain guts went insane during this arc and did atrocious things yet instead of beating himself up it's a horde of malevolent demons sort of symmetrical but with a few twists and that actually ends up being kind of a theme for this arc another interesting thing that this segment introduced was the idea of the beast of darkness it's just a hint for now but this thing is a major aspect to why this arc plays out the way it does there's a reason i'm so protective of lost children because it's the foundation to the ideas this arc comes to play with speaking of which let's get back to our summary we see puck flying through the sky trying to track down guts he finally spots the guys he's being mobbed by the forest spirits and puck tries to wake him up but guts is out cold one of the ghosts tries to attack puck but he fends it off with one of his chestnuts from there puck has a revelation guts got beat by the spirits puck beats said spirits therefore puck is better than guts this inspires puck to go on his own little rampage fighting off the demons while guts slowly wakes up guts tries to get his attention only for puck to sting him with his chestnut he tries to get angry at the elf but he just can't instead he laughs an actual laugh this time not one of his crazy homicidal ones with puck in his life it's really hard for him to be tense the demons fade away leaving guts with some final words insisting that the beast inside of him will take over and he'll become a monster but gut swears nothing like that is about to happen there's nothing but him now inspired to keep walking down his road of revenge puck nestles back into guts's pouch telling him to go wash off the blood in the river after that he'll treat his wounds he then states the obvious guts is only alive because of him puck is the one keeping guts moving so he finally relents telling himself it's purely because puck has medicinal value but in truth guts likes him he even finally calls puck by his name for the first time since they met saying that pouch is officially his they're well and truly friends now that's a nice bit of character development puck managed to break through guts's anti-social nature now this might actually bring to mind what puck said earlier all the way back in chapter one one of his abilities that elves have is making people happy now i never saw this as a literal power instead because elves in this world are considered very positive beings almost like the exact opposite of demons they bring good fortune to those they interact with not always i mean dear sweet christ but still puck is having a better impact on guts than so much of the [ __ ] the poor guy suffers with and that one piece of good in his life is what's keeping him from turning into that i said back in part two and it most definitely applies here guts needs the people in his life to keep him going when he's alone he can be pulled down very bad roads but having a guy like puck somebody who is always cheerful and happy no matter what pulls guts away from the worst aspects of his own personality the band of the hawk gave guts a family when he was a kid and now puck is doing the same thing for him as an adult it's good to see that things are finally working out for these guys hopefully they can have more fun adventures from now on oh hey look it's those dudes yeah the holy iron chain nights caught up to guts and this is actually a scene covered in the 2016 anime in fact it's the only scene anywhere close to lost children that got covered without some weird change see the 2016 series skipped over lost children for time they only had 12 episodes to cover all of conviction so a lot of the material had to be cut to fit all in by the end that's fine you can't really push blood out of a stone you know what i mean the problem with this is that berserk isn't exactly bleach there's not really any filler you can skip that doesn't in some way impact the story and if you start cutting things up people pick up on the holes a big complaint from people that watch the 1997 anime but haven't read the manga is that the ending makes no sense and feels incomplete because it literally is not complete berserk 97 never introduced a lot of the supernatural elements until the very end it covered zod and the bailit but stuff like wylad puck and especially skull knight are left by the wayside now while add in puck you can see how skipping around them won't hurt golden age too bad as a standalone story which is what 97 mainly tries to do but skull knight was downright crucial to the eclipse he literally saves guts and koska it kicks off the black swordsman arc and beyond yeah so those that watch 97 note his absence it's hard to ignore the movie trilogy did something similar leaving out a lot of the character bonding moments between guts and the band of the hawk and especially koska so anybody that watched those movies feel like the story is pretty rushed and sorta hollow with how it betrays things like character development it's not bad people still really like the movies but anyone that read the manga knows how rushed it feels but the biggest sinner in my eyes is the 2016 anime now the funny part is that they just downright couldn't cover the material that was left out but thanks to it being missing you get radically different first impressions from people just getting into berserk a big theme to the story is causality basically cause and effect and action was taken in the past so the outcome is guaranteed to happen in the future it's not really predestination like prophecy or anything like that though prophecies do show up in berserk more that consequences are a crucial element of the story and if you only have one half of the formula because you took the other away you have disastrous effects on the pacing of the story so in 2016 since lost children is skipped over it merges the fight with the demon tree with a skeleton attack at the wagon guts fights both the monsters away and that's when the holy iron chain knights show up problem is that right after this point is when the manga plays out as normal the reason that's a problem since you think i'd be totally okay with them playing things out as they happened is you have to remember gutz is on death's door right now he's bleeding profusely hell he fell unconscious and puck had to save him which right there that was the culmination of their character arc set up in black swordsman so all that development just plain never happened plus the entire reason they managed to track down guts is they found him when he was about to execute rosine and open fire so yeah people that say lost children is filler the ending of the arc is literally a lead-in for the rest of conviction so i'm sorry that's [ __ ] there really is not much filler in berserk not only that but the entire motivation they have for tracking down guts in the first place is because he's been on the war path for two whole years burning towns to the ground and killing scores of people now we see the actual events take place that guts was merely fighting to stay alive while he was hunting demons but the knights see him as a violent lunatic on a rampage we buy this because we saw the events of black swordsman we saw each fight so even if you argue that the beginning with black swordsman was just kind of standalone monster of the weak fluff it served a purpose it gave us time to connect to guts puck and now we see the impact they had on the world their hijinks didn't go unnoticed the rest of the rant is gonna have to wait until later just know 2016 [ __ ] up this much in the span of like one episode the knights announced their presence they're all in shock at guts at his massive sword and his entire body being stained in blood but he's confused why they're even after him but farnese is dead certain to capture him demanding he surrender himself over into their custody gut says he didn't do nothing he a good boy going to college but farnese calls [ __ ] they found the mass grave at the village and guts is splattered with their blood varnish calls for her men to capture guts surrounding him in a mob but he can barely hold his weapon all the damage he took from the rosine fight is still affecting him the knights are nervous to think they're really fighting the black swordsman but nevertheless they dive in guts tries to block a strike but he sent reeling back from the force that last battle took a lot out of him so much so that these random jobbers are able to push him around saying guts is not able to use his weapon the knights grow confident and charge for him he dodges each attack even managing to fight back with his iron arm but it doesn't help much he can only dodge and roll like dark souls 3 watch those iframes guts despite being outnumbered and pushed to the limit guts trips up the knights by sliding at their legs using the dragon slayer as a board azan is disgusted at the sight of trained soldiers having trouble with one wounded man but serpico admits that the holy iron chain knights are merely a ceremonial piece these guys are made up of the sons of nobles who want a guaranteed status but didn't want to actually risk being sent out to fight so they have zero combat experience hell the only reason serpico is there at least so he claims is because he hates the sight of blood well despite the admitted incompetence of the knights they managed to corner guts farnese orders them to charge in and finish things but he isn't down yet in fact guts reaches the point known as [ __ ] it he tears open the wounds on his arms to swing his sword cleaving through a group of unlucky knights they all watch in horror as the men are reduced to mincemeat and the morale plummets once they realize the stories about guts were true farnese chokes up as the knowledge hits her but azan doesn't seem to care he suits up and demands she give him permission to dive in azan has now joined the fight and shows a noticeable difference in skill from the rest of them he calls himself iron club azan a nickname that guts actually recognizes puck asks about the name and guts explains that iron club is on was a story he heard as a kid there was a knight who held up close to a hundred horsemen because an old man was left stranded on a bridge and he refused to let anyone cross until the old man was helped to the end azan is proud of the story seeing it as a true example of a night's chivalry and demands guts gives his name as part of the duel believing him to also be a knight though guts is quick to explain that he's just guts the fight begins and azan puts him on the defense right from the start he's far more aggressive than the jobbers he dealt with before in fact he's so far beyond the rest that guts is starting to fall unconscious stranding himself past his brink when he already tore open his wounds just to kill a few soldiers guts is so far gone that the only real shot he has to end the whole ordeal is to target the leader barnes so that way the rest will scatter which means gunning straight for her and ignoring everyone else guts rushes in for his last resort using azan's club as a springboard to jump over the knights and get a clear shot some bastards try and stop him but he tears through like a pissed off werewolf bernice watching in horror as the lunatic comes straight for her she desperately holds out her sword as guts gets closer and a miraculous flying log slams guts straight against the arrow wound on his leg the pain making him keel over varnish's sword digs into his neck and he falls to the dirt guts is done barnes is amazed she's still alive and the rest of the holy iron chain nights cheer believing their commander took down the black swordsman in truth it's more like a certain somebody actually took him down if him sighing in relief doesn't make it clear almost like a gamble he may just paid off let's just say you find out more about the guy that shows he's way more dangerous than he let on nevertheless the battle is over guts is captured by the holy iron chain knights some of the soldiers want to kill him for what he did to their friends but azan intervenes to make sure they don't touch him the way he sees it guts is a wounded man who can't fight anymore ganging up on him is a disrespectful behavior from knights their friends chose to become soldiers so they had to prepare to die in battle in fact trying to kill guts once he can't fight anymore would render the duel he and azan had pointless thus making the frenzy murdered pointless is a very roundabout way of going don't kill him you douchebags this is the main character farnese is seemingly shaken from having to use her sword for the first time in battle but azan is there to comfort her he's clearly the power behind the throne of the unit farnese is technically the leader but this is the guy who actually knows what he's doing and he seems cool having somebody as skilled as guts but act as an actually honorable knight is kind of interesting we cut to some time later and see guts to strip down to his long johns in the custody of the holy iron chain nights he's paraded through the camp as they bring him to farnis's tent who's fully intent on interrogating him about everything she's intent on doing it alone though her men are hesitant to actually leave the two by themselves farnese has to bite this poor bastard's head off to get them all to leave fully invoking her status as the commander to scare them out once again farnese is the figurehead but she's not the leader it's clear her men don't really respect her or trust her still they leave and now farnese and guts are alone she tries to interrogate him over his identity and motivations but guts doesn't give a [ __ ] just laughing in her face at the whole situation this pisses her off and she moves to talk about his arsenal of weapons puck secretly listening to the whole conversation from a hiding spot in farnese's suit of armor she notices that his gear is worn down having been used extensively but she doesn't actually know what he's fighting plus they found the bailit now she assumes it's a pagan trinket almost like a good luck charm and even threatens to accuse guts of heresy for having it but he's as stoic as ever simply asking farnese if she's actually ever met god she tries to rationalize her faith by saying that god doesn't always display miracles on earth but he's always around them and gut says that's word for word what a noble said as he justified setting an entire village on fire including women and children church bad is the basic summary of this segment in fact the events to come can be described as church bad it's actually a very common trope in japan if there's an anime that involves a religious order nine times out of ten they're depicted as a horrible cult i'm not here to argue theology with anybody just watch the cool big guy fight demons well this sets off farnese who whips guts and threatens to have him tortured despite his wounds but he's not stopping fully calling farnese a hollow idol using religion as an excuse to not feel empty this is what fully pushes her over the edge and she flays guts's chest in a complete rage he's left a bloody mess but doesn't make a sound still standing strong despite the punishment which yeah compared to the crap he usually deals with this probably isn't much of anything dude took a stinger in the mouth flying through the air this check ain't [ __ ] well the sight of his chiseled bleeding chest sets something off inside farnese the kind of something that involves a locked bathroom door and a feeling of shame once it's over i'm actually not joking too she legit gets horny from torturing guts but before farnese can push things into full-blown and hentai territory azan barges in and snaps her out of it he's shocked at the idea that she was torturing their prisoner but farnese dismisses them all ordering guts back to his cell and for them to dress as new wounds serpico seems to pick up on what happened and ask guts not to antagonize farnese since she can be charming in her own way guts is taken away and we see farnese crying as she prays to the idol in her tent the sun starts to go down and we see guts sitting in his cage he's freezing and covered in bandages worried about the night to come once the ghost starts showing up things will go from bad to [ __ ] before anyone realizes it and guts can already see a few sprout up in the dark he doesn't know what to do to get out of the situation but thankfully puck leaps in to the rescue he stole the keys for the cage from the guards but he's only going to give them over on one condition guts say thank you for the effort he tries to rebuke the request but puck isn't having it say thank you very much oh great puck and get the keys he thanks the great puck for using his godlike powers to steal the keys all the while thinking to himself about how a ring puck once he's free it's a fun little moment between the two they're friends but they'll still [ __ ] with each other and piss the other off nice little moment to break the tension see this is part of the reason i like berserk so much it's very dark and [ __ ] up but it is pretty funny at times too big thing that people try to rip off from berserk or fail to adapt properly they never seem to understand that there's a clear balance between the [ __ ] up parts and the goofier lighter parts we just had a big chunk of story all about carnage and violence and the whole moment with guts and farnese is pretty bleak and intense so having puck give us that moment to breathe can hit home the dark [ __ ] hits you because you had endearing fun moments and the fun moments work because the dark [ __ ] makes them feel relieving it's yin and yang they balance each other out it's great well the two escape the cage and we see that the dead are fully after them a mob clamoring for guts in the dark puck tries to fight them off like before but he's scared off fast the night time demons are way stronger than the daytime ones their only option is to make it to farnese's tent and get his gear back guts even planning on taking her as a hostage if it becomes necessary they see farnese so flagellating in front of her idol wearing nothing but her trousers it's part of a personal ritual she has where she prays to god like a meditation process well guts barges in during her prayer and knocks her out cold he retrieves his loadout and suits up he's still pretty banged up from the previous fight so if he's not careful all of his wounds will rip right open again and as one of the knights comes in to report guts escaped he gets his jaw shattered for being a tattletail [ __ ] gut snatches back to bailey and commits to taking farnese as a hostage setting her tent on fire in the process azan and serpico rush over to see what happened and find guts with farnis slung over his shoulder he holds a torch to her butt and threatens to set her ass on fire if they try to intervene literally they're furious but they let the guy go by unharmed he goes to the horses and causes a stampede by lighting their tails on fire stealing one of them for himself to ride away azan orders them all to gather the horses and prepare to chase him down but serpico is way ahead of them riding off with his own crossbow in his hands we come back to puck who's yelling at guts for hurting the horses even demanding he apologize since the horse is what got him out of the camp and guts does in fact apologize to the horse farnese wakes up during this and proceeds to panic now a hostage for the very man she set out to capture puck tries to calm her down but she's not listening now just screaming about how her and her man are going to hunt him down but gutz is quick to shut her back up she tries to throw one more tantrum but guts lowers her down to the rocks until they just miss her head scaring her back into silence puck panics once more and tries to desperately apologize to farnice but that's when he notices that not only is she not listening to him she outright doesn't acknowledge he's even there puck pulls on her face but farley starts acting like guts is the one messing with her turns out she can't see elves now this is where the magic of berserk gets pretty [ __ ] weird like it's a bit convoluted it essentially comes down to power of belief but at the same time creatures are just there and able to affect the world so while farnese can't see puck he can still affect things around her she'll simply perceive it in a different way than what actually happened really it's an attempt at a metaphor for religious dogma and i say that because none of this has come up before now literally every chapter before this if an elf is there then you'll see an elf people would reference that they were very rare yes but if it was there you would see it i mean judo carried around a bag of elf dust for medicine but i think what they're going for is since the army guts is dealing with now is a bunch of religious zealots they don't perceive magic entities how everyone else did the idea is they're so blinded by their worldview they don't really see what's happening around them that's fine and we sort of see it with serpico too since he finally just notices demons rushing past him to get at guts these people live in the human world where they're obsessed with the vatican and the church and a lot of their preconceived notions of reality well guts is between worlds that's not the literal explanation but you can infer it by how they're surprised to see monsters they do actually explain what the deal is with this but it's later for now puck tries to explain the concept by saying that you'll only remember things that you notice so if they're not directly looking at an elf or even acknowledge it's there then they won't remember it now personally if i saw a tiny little pixie dude flying around and cracking jokes i'd probably remember that but this actually isn't the canon explanation for it like i said before it's just puck speculating next arc is when it delves into the actual world building for how magic works in berserk for now you just have puck throwing guesses at the wall to explain what's happening and none of this matters anyway because the demons are here to [ __ ] [ __ ] up farnese at first thinks it's her men come to rescue her but now it's monster people guts fights off what he can but the strain of swinging his sword physically hurts the horse some of the ghosts go [ __ ] with farnese since remember these things don't really discriminate between targets and has to have guts save her from the actual cosmic horrors staring her in the face he actually goes so far as to call it a miracle since technically god is showing them something that's supposed to be impossible at least a farnese unfortunately the horse is pushed to its limit it collapses and they're all sent to the ground guts keeps farnis safe during the fall saying he needs her for information mainly he's curious as to why they're after him in the first place but france isn't talking she tries to run away only to charge straight into a pack of wild dogs dogs that get possessed by the demons flying around turning into these deformed monstrosities and you might be wondering why this isn't all taking place in a mansion instead it's just on like some rocky bitter road you know off to the side middle of the mountain it's because the 2016 adaptation of berserk completely changed up this section instead of simply reacting and trying to get as far away from the camp as possible guts instead intentionally goes to a certain mansion in the middle of nowhere a mansion that has an apostle inside of it now it uh i'm trying to find the words to describe do you do you remember the pig apostle the jobber one that guts killed in like the very end of golden age the first official kill with the dragon slayer that guy he was the main bad guy of episode 3 of the 2016 adaptation of berserk you find out his backstory and why he became a demon and a lot of the [ __ ] around him and yeah it's not really great it's probably one of the worst episodes and that's saying a lot considering that was a rough rough series and the funny part is they were bragging about how miyora wrote it and it's like yeah maybe on a weekend when he was busy doing other things anyway point is i don't really like the mansion episode it was not great i like here i like them being in the middle of nowhere because basically there's no room to run off to that's literally a point it makes they're surrounded by monsters and can't hide anywhere farnese has to stick to guts to stay alive now she has actually no idea what to do and guts just sort of naturally takes control of the situation and by that i mean he cleaves through the pack of dogs showing he's back in shape to fight even arrogantly telling farnese to say something like dear god as a prayer he murders his way through the evil puppers all while farnese is trapped in a state of confusion and terror this is the first time she's actually seen any supernatural phenomena whatsoever so her mind is blown to say the least it's like an ego face only instead of being filled with semen farnese is convinced she's gonna be torn to pieces by a lunatic and a bunch of demonically possessed dogs i don't think this is like in a hugo face at all anyway speaking of which gutz is still fighting his way through the pack but any wound he inflicts on the animals doesn't seem to work the demons force them to keep fighting even when they're chopped to pieces farnese decides she's had enough of this adventure and tries to sneak away she sees the horse guts still get back up seemingly okay even after the fall down the rocky hill farnese orders the horse to let her ride it to safety but it says no the horse said no yeah it's possessed too and since a malevolent demon is controlling the horse's body it decides to indulge itself in some less than christian behavior the horse stands over farnace licking her body as it talks about how it doesn't get mounted it mounts the woman say hello to rape horse a fan favorite monster plainly just out of sheer absurdity a horse got possessed by a demon and now wants to rape a chick berserk is a wild series well farnis cries out in fear and gut sees the horse ready to violate this causes him to flash right back to the eclipse to the side of griffith raping koska and he can't control himself anymore gutz chops the horse's head off just vanishing to avoid killing farneys as well she's absolutely traumatized trembling and silent as she sees guts consumed with anger his wounds split right open again that's how hardy swung the dragon slayer to kill the horse he tells farnese to sit tight if she doesn't want to die which she agrees with since well what the hell else is she supposed to do puck is upset that guts towards wounds open again and remarks that something is making him more psychotic than usual which is when puck receives a vision of the eclipse seeing koska being molested by demons he doesn't know what he saw but for some reason that image in guts's mind pushed him into homicidal rage guts is past the point of no return he says that he finally remembers that same feeling he felt right after the eclipse that hateful wrath that caused him to become the black swordsman in the first place it's vivid and strong to the point he doesn't even care if they rip his arm off his other arm so until the sun comes up guts is going to keep cutting them to pieces in his own words you'll all keep dying until day breaks it's a legitimately pretty badass moment and pretty disturbing too since guts is just out there which is again of course why 2016 [ __ ] it up see that whole speech guts just gave the whole you know this the worst i ever felt and [ __ ] you guys and i'm gonna [ __ ] on your dinner plates yeah all of that happened because he saw farnese almost be raped by the horse he flashed back to costco the woman he loved being raped that's why he felt so angry the one time he couldn't save somebody it was the worst person it could have happened to so he gives that speech as essentially his action movie monologue that i'm gonna [ __ ] kill you all moment 2016 anime guts just says it to the monster to scare him even though there really wasn't a reason for him to say it i mean nothing about that fight in particular would have driven him over an edge it was kind of a basic fight so yeah kind of spoils the moment it's sort of like how in resident evil 3 remake where you have that you want stars i'll give you stars line from jill said in a random ass hallway and nemesis can punch you out of the line well in the original game that was her closing line to kill off nemesis so he kind of took an iconic moment and made it very mundane it kind of makes it feel a bit sillier in retrospect still guts keeps his promise next thing we know it's dawn farnese staring at guts heaving each breath surrounded by the mutilated corpses of the animals that attacked them she says the sight is like a classical painting farnese is kind of weird in case you didn't know but she also says that guts did the one thing she couldn't do she used religion and her power to not be afraid to escape the fact she's scared guts did the opposite he not only confronted these horrible monsters but seemed to not have any fear whatsoever and this makes farnese feel tiny and helpless here she was pissing herself in terror while this utter stranger didn't hesitate once to strike back a small spirit hiding in the shadows slithers up to farnis feeding into her insecurities by saying she can't feel bad about anything she does she's powerless it's not her fault not only that but it dredges up some repressed emotions farnese tried to keep buried remember when i said farnese felt excited as she tortured guts this demon cuts through the [ __ ] and lays it out farnese felt pleasure from what she did she's a sadomasochist in the literal sexual sense she claims everything she does is for god to show how loyal she is to her faith but the truth is that she enjoys the punishment farnese is desperately trying to deny this but the demon ain't buying it farnese doesn't believe in anything she's empty inside simply exploiting her authority to indulge in her own vices and the interesting part is that the demon basically tells her why is that such a bad thing what's wrong with simply accepting that she has these urges with acting on these urges farney should just throw away the idea that she cares about god and take care of her physical needs and look there's a man right there that could help yeah guts and puck have zero clue any of this happened as far as they're aware this crazy religious lady just took off her pants and started coming onto guts now i know some of you might be snickering at this part but come on take this seriously the school expects you all to treat this material with respect we've got an exam on this in a few weeks nevertheless farnice is fully possessed herself straddling guts and all but demanding they [ __ ] specifically [ __ ] she even goes so far as to position herself onto the dragon slayer tying some rope around guts's neck and ordering him to split her in half with his big sword and be slow about it remember all this demon is really doing is amplifying the feelings that farnese already has so if you're into really kinky bdsm stuff i guess you just met your wife luckily for guts's chastity the sun fully rises into the sky the light expelling out the demon from farnese puck taking care of it as it leaves her body she collapses on top of guts who basically just tells her to get off like literally she's heavy he doesn't like white women he enjoys brown sugar but farnese she was aware of what just happened and she breaks down crying still laying on top of guts which is exactly the moment when serpaco shows up on his horse i'd say this is an example of the classic misunderstanding trope but what could you really say here it's not your fault this guy's friend stripped naked on top of you she was possessed by a demon that only works sometimes and only in mississippi serpico simply walks up and offers his coat to farnese who's still shaken by what happened she orders serpico to kill him for the sake of her honor which really doesn't help clarify what just happened gutz is already seen as a child murderer he really doesn't need to be called a rapist too serpico says he can't kill guts they were ordered to take him in alive disregarding this for the sake of making her feel better about whatever just happened is a bad idea but farnese is insistent kill him serpico then just plainly says guts is too strong he'd die it would all be for nothing so farnice snaps and slaps him across the face marching off without him serpico is left with guts and weirdly enough they actually have a pretty civil conversation gut swears he never touched her and serpico is willing to let bygones be bygones he'd let guts go this time since there's really not much he can do to stop him and gut says he owes him for it they conclude their conversation and he turns to leave and of course serpaco takes a swing of guts who responds in kind serpico slashes his cheek barely able to jump out of the way of the dragon slayer to the point his boot is torn apart from getting too close a mere graze was enough to tear the shoe open with that serpico actually does go to leave satisfied with his test he then acknowledges puck's existence before running off showing that he can see the elf while farnis can't so yeah the guy is more clever than he lets on which makes him dangerous puck mentions that he feels bad for funnies admitting that he can sense she's repressing her emotions but guts doesn't care the way he sees it his problems got way worse first demons now priests puck can't stop thinking about the vision he saw last night unknowingly seeing koska be raped from guts's memories and farnisto wants guts dead with this the conviction arc has officially begun you have a feel for who the new threat is and things will only get crazier rape horse was just the first step also farnese is pretty good enough said the next chapter focuses more on the larger plot than just what puck and guts go through turns out the very next night every single person in midland had the same dream they saw their country invaded by a foreign nation scores of people dying from plague towns destroyed by disasters and earthquakes all of midland is consumed in darkness but right when things are at their bleakest they see a shining hawk cut through the black every person instinctively recognizing it as their savior yeah things are about to get weird just know that this goes places a lot of places in fact we see some middle and knights are attempting to lead a group of refugees through a barren mountain the forest cut down for the war effort making the earth unstable which is only made worse by the rain lord labon is leading the knights the dude with a beard and he's remarking how depressing the site is all around them are scared villagers women and children too and they're leaving the town that the knights are trying to make their way towards a sudden landslide drown some of the refugees and labon orders his men to save who they can he personally tries to rescue a young boy but he's already dead seemingly from an illness his nose is running and vomit is spilling out from his mouth labon rides ahead without his men who are still trying to take care of the refugees and he arrives at the town they all came from the whole place is empty seemingly abandoned the only thing left alive are the rats he comes to the town church and finds piles of corpses stacked outside turns out there is a real plague that's ravaging through midland lavon sees an old man trying to fight off some of the rats who remarks that the piles of the dead attracted them and since the rats spread the plague it spiraled out of control the rats came into the towns after the war efforts stripped the forest clean so they had no choice but to try and adapt in urban areas now they just follow the bodies labong questions why the old man won't leave town but he admits there's nothing else to really live for he's too old to leave and his family all died anyway so he's begrudgingly accepted his fate though he does tell lebron that he should get out of town before the rats kill him as it turns out this scene is something labonte has come across all over midland villages are running out of food plagues are killing entire populations it's like the entire world just grew colder labon is frustrated that the midland army can't help rebuild the kingdom to fix some of the damage he's stumbling into instead over 70 percent of the middle and military is still under orders to hunt after griffith even though most everybody pretty much assumes he's dead the king has officially lost his mind even labon admits it he thinks about the dream the entire kingdom shared about the death and devastation ending when a bright hawk arrives he has no clue what it means but he can't spend any more time to think some of his men arrived into town with bad news the king of midland is dead a sudden illness put him on his deathbed the knights right out of town the rats piling together to manifest the head of conrad one of the god hand heavily implying the state of midland is the result of the idea of evil and its minions pulling strings to manipulate history i don't care if it's considered not canon it's canon to me which i mean if everybody in the country had the same dream then [ __ ] something supernatural had to have happened we come back to the capital midland wyndham and we see the king is bedridden breathlessly begging for charlotte his daughter to come see him the court doctor orders the staff to fetch her sir owen deciding to do it himself and yeah these guys weren't just background bros they actually do things surprising right owen overhears the various nobles talking about charlotte's ascension to queenhood and even run into minister foss who strangely enough has all but completely retired from politics after the death of the queen owen is disgusted by the nobles chattering about how they'll manipulate charlotte when she's in power but he notices foss is just muttering to himself about how the hawk will come again it immediately makes owen think about the dream everyone had which has officially been classified as an actual act of god but he's skeptical since the dream happened before the king fell sick but he can't really argue it wasn't a miracle he arrives at charlotte's chambers but she's not budging she's in a state of depression and hasn't left the palace in two years the last five days fully secluding herself in her bedroom only ever letting her servant anna in but no one else owen tries to talk charlotte into visiting the king but she's not interested she disowned her father and is simply waiting for him to die sounds mean but if you saw part 2 then you see she has a [ __ ] point we transition to a dream sequence the king is sitting on his throne the air around him so cold that steam builds out from his nose with every breath he remarks about his walls his throne his soldiers but complains that they bring no warmth all he wants is a fire something to take the cold away and that's when he sees it a woman standing in the distance charlotte his daughter she's glowing like bright light and the king swears she's the warmth he needs and he orders his soldiers to let him through but they aren't budging he can only watch as a hawk swoops down covering charlotte in its wings glowing like the sun the king begs the hawk to leave her alone she's the only thing that gives him life but the only thing he can do is see the hawk change into the form of griffith and even though he has no eyes the two stare at each other the king slowly relenting until he finally accepts that maybe griffith was the one he wanted in life a liberator that came to free him from the burden of being king the dream ends with the king calling out griffith's name watching him ascend the throne and finally setting the old man free from his prison with that the king is dead his legacy left as an incestuous madman that led his country into ruin over a vendetta and funny enough it seemed like only when he finally died did he realize maybe he should have let griffith be with his daughter that maybe he was in a prison of his own design if he let griffith become king he wouldn't have to worry about the burden anymore but at the same time he was completely insane so of course he wasn't really going to operate on traditional logic charlotte hears the bills announcing the death of her father and she starts to cry clutching the lucky charm she gave griffith before he left for the last campaign back in golden age the whole capital is left in disarray after the death of their king that's when they noticed something the mountains are moving the mountains and invasion forces marching into midland entire armies plural sent by the kushin empire plague war famine death the end of the world has arrived from midland it is actual biblical armageddon and things are only gonna get worse we see a group of mercenaries trying to run away from a mysterious attacker they claim that over 300 men have all been killed by this one man an entire army of sellswords cut down all because the leader wanted to get famous the trio try to run away as they name drop who the attacker is it's nosferatu zod he's still alive and kicking killing scores of soldiers like always zod sits on top of a mountain of bodies he's made watching the crows feeding on the dead he admits that he's grown bored he wants a real fight against somebody that'll push him to the absolute limit over 300 years of wandering and all it's ever ended with is zod sitting on a mountain of corpses he contemplates fighting other apostles but they're no good either the only one that's truly ever given him a challenge is skull knight zod thinks about the rumors surrounding guts that he's killed more than a few apostles that's then and this is now zod wants a good fight now and just as he thinks about this a bright hawk flies down to meet him it tells zod that he is in a state between consciousness and sleep it's not going to shows off the same dream as the others because it knows that zod doesn't care about talking he wants the strongest only the strongest zod transforms and tries to attack but it flies around him cutting him into pieces before he can even react he wakes up from the dream to see one of his horns on the ground his head bleeding from the wound where he was taken off all zod can think about is a cryptic message the hawk left him when the sky falls at the holy ground for the blind sheep gather and erect a pillar of fire the desired will come this prophecy gets repeated a few times because shocker it's pretty relevant to what's about to happen also i say zod doesn't have the same dream as anyone else because it's not made abundantly clear just how many of the named characters actually did have to dream we know the ones in wyndham did and a few others but people like zod and as you'll soon see guts or even farnese they have weirder experiences i don't know if they did see the dream on top of what they also see but it's just never made that clear we come back to guts and puck traveling through a town ravaged by the plague no food every house is empty and the dead are so plentiful that ghosts are appearing during the day puck points out a small shrine outside a town that should be blessed keeping any spookies from being allowed anywhere near so they decide to rest it cuts to a twisted vision guts experiences in his sleep a stake is dug into the ground piles of kindling wood sitting underneath it he sees a mob holding torches force koska onto the stake and tosses their torches onto the kindling and burn her alive the dream ends with guts screaming out for them to stop gutz wakes up thinking an incubus gave him the nightmare but that wasn't it it was the demon infant which is hiding in the shadows underneath some of the stones in the shrine it changes its face to resemble koskas and speaks to guts about a coming danger giving guts almost the same message zod was given about the holy ground in the pillar of fire but this time the demon infant is begging guts to find it as fast as possible specifically saying the word danger along with it guts recognizes that it's trying to tell him something happened to koska and sets off an almost instinctual panic the scene jumps to erica who's gathering firewood in the forest as she's working she sees that stirring to snow then hears a certain elf singing as he's dancing in the air as the flakes fall around him puck is blissfully unaware of erica sneaking up behind up until she catches them in her hands smacking him out cold and calling out to rickard to see what she found which is when she runs into guts and this frame here says a lot about what i want to go into in a bit just know it's probably one of my favorites this little girl running into just a black silhouette it's a pretty classic scene people reference this moment a lot for parts they like but guts isn't an evil man to erica they're friends she's happy to lead him back to godo's cabin where we see rickard working on a horseshoe fully adjusted into his new role as a blacksmith rickard is happy to see guts came back but the big dude isn't wasting a second he wants to know what happened to costco rick and erica go quiet and it takes a bit before he admits that costco left guts is immediately pissed off with the news but erika cries and admits it was her fault she took koska outside to play since she felt bad the woman was stuck inside the cave for so long but she wandered off they tried to look for her but they couldn't ever find koska gutz wants to know why they aren't looking for her right now expressly shaming rickard for staying at the cabin instead of searching for kazuka but erica calls guts stupid and yells at him for just leaving them all two years ago besides rickard did try to find costco for over a month in fact but he had to come back to take care of them there's a reason he can't go too far away goto is dying now this is probably the best moment in all a conviction that's not to say the ark peaks and nothing great happens after this no it's just that this segment here is downright amazing gutz goes to talk to goto as he's lying in his deathbed specifically about life and revenge gutz is shocked to see the old man dying and he thinks the plague might have got him but goto swears that it's just age he inspects guts's equipment and notices how worn down everything is the dragon slayer is chipped in rough the iron hand is nicked and rusted it's enough to tell goto just how bad gutz's situation really is he's fighting so much he can't eat or sleep goto looks right through guts almost deciphering the entire man without even trying gutz is visibly tense way more than ever before the monster that attacked him two years ago just how they showed up with rickard beaten to near death after the eclipse whatever he's involved in is bad business so goto offers his own solution just run away living for hatred is for people that can't accept feeling sorrow they'd rather smother their emotions and anger than let themselves feel vulnerable it's like sharpening a sword in blood the more you soak it the more it rusts and eventually you're just left with scraps rust and blood guts tries to quit back to almost end the lecture early because it's making him uncomfortable but goto doesn't stop the way he sees it guts isn't just nicked his heart has cracks in it he's afraid of something goto doesn't know of what but he's on the money guts breaks down talking about how godot nobody understands what they saw the people he cared for most in life were torn apart scared and stupid to what was actually happening like they were nothing they survived a literal hell and now they're cursed no matter what they do even if they decide to run away it will never stop but goto says it plain and simple guts abandoned them the old man clearly referencing rickard and especially koska he ran off without them two years ago because he couldn't accept that the rest of the hawks were gone so he chased after retribution this is why i love this part it's literally goto calling guts an idiot gutz wasn't a cool demon hunter bringing justice to demons and shit-bagged children he was running away from his problems to avoid his own grief this arc has shown up before in media and especially anime the whole revenge bad the main character that's been obsessed with getting retribution is actually an emotional [ __ ] up hell i guess the most popular version of this is a lot of shonen stuff right now with the whole tokyo ghoul attack on titan thing where the main character gets so obsessed with fighting monsters they literally become a monster what i like about berserk is that it's a bit less literal gutz is a monster yes but he never transforms into one or anything physical at least not right now but no instead it's more the fact that he's mentally and emotionally breaking down he's losing himself to this dark dark road he's choosing to go down and every single thing that guts has done that we were cheering on and think were super badass was actually a horrible mistake yeah the apostles he killed were doing terrible things to people but guts wasn't a hero he wasn't trying to save anyone he was taking his rage out on other people and really at least personally this is the first time it's been this explicitly stated it really digs into guts and frames everything we just saw as him being a [ __ ] up he wants to be angry at rickard for not looking after koska but guts left her there alone and chased after demons when the chips are down guts will choose to go off on his own and rely on fighting but starting to catch up to him he's not just a cracked sword he's starting to break guts physically can't handle the strain of what he's doing it's going to catch up to him sooner or later and he's already done some serious damage to the people he cares about all for the sake of his own selfishness now obviously you can argue that even if it wasn't his intention guts running off and fighting demons is okay because he killed some seriously evil people all the apostles he killed as the black swordsmen were making countless people suffer but remember guts didn't write in to save the day kenshiro style if anything he was a living tornado a natural disaster that caused untold amounts of destruction himself remember back in the beginning of the video guts set children on fire it's not like things became immediately better after guts killed the demon no it only got substantially worse every single time guts goes to hunt one of these things a lot of people are dragged into it and they die so he's nowhere near the mortal high ground himself so seeing godot act as essentially the intervention he needed to really see what he's been doing absolutely works it's not a complete takedown of the guy guts does have a point and that goto doesn't understand what he saw and what made him become what he was he can't just run away he's branded and cursed for the rest of his life but in the end he chose to spread more hate and violence into the world instead of caring for the ones he still has this part is such a great moment for guts as a character you may see what he's done as 100 necessary guts was simply punishing demons he's not evil but having this argument in the story is crucial not just because of what the effects turn out being later but the sheer fact you have such a good argument for why our protagonist [ __ ] up is compelling guts doesn't win the argument he can't rebuke what godot said it lets you sit on his words but this part only gets better so i'm gonna go ahead and go to the next scene we see erika lead guts and rickard to a clip side where swords are dug into the ground standing up erica says they're graves rickard used the sword teammate as practice to give the hawks a graveyard there's no bodies underneath them but it's more of a sentimental gesture than anything guts thinks about his time chasing revenge two full years by himself just hating meanwhile rickard built a whole new life for himself puck mentions that rickard was the boy he met in the carriage during golden age and record remarks that thanks to puck's medicine guts and koskis to rob the eclipse so it's almost like they're all tied together by destiny rickert leads guts back into the ore cave the only place he'll be safe to sleep in for the night puck swears that elves did in fact live there so it's confirmed it's a sanctuary but we knew that because skull knight said it and he didn't seem like one for [ __ ] guts is gonna rest in the cave and by morning they'll start the repairs for his equipment they all sleep in a cabin upstairs giving guts some space for the night he tries to apologize to rickard about the argument over koska but all as well he's happy with erica and goto he found his own purpose in a way they leave guts alone for the night who's just staring into the campfire in front of him and this is the true moment where guts faces his demons he can't sleep without his weapons and thanks to himself he might plain just never be able to sleep at night for the rest of his life he thinks about koska and godo's speech about her gutz knows he ran away just to escape his feelings what he saw was beyond any understanding all he can see is kaska being raped by demons by griffith it's the last image ever burned into his right eye the way he sees it no matter the excuse he can use that bubbling hate to kill his enemies and this is where the beast of darkness makes its first appearance this large demonic hound urges guts to kill to never stop until he's all alone and this isn't a demon telling him to do it remember he's in the cave specifically blessed to keep out any demons this monster is inside of gutz's head all the hatred malice and violence inside of him is manifesting into a separate thing in his mind and it scares guts so badly that he considers that maybe goto is right he has no right to act as the invention crusader for his friends when he abandoned costco hell even before that he abandoned the band of the hawk gutz thinks about them all of corkus judo koska of the last conversation he had with each of them and how each one was about how he abandoned the hawks guts did all of this by himself it's his war not theirs he threw away that identity when he left them all all that time ago the one thing that kept him sane through his journey was thinking about koska and this is where it finally hits guts he did it again right when he got to his next stage in life he threw everything away before he even realized it and now he might have finally lost koska for good because he wanted to play edgelord in the dark or did he guts thinks about the message the demon infant left him he still has a chance koska is out there she's not dead yet so gut swears that this time he's not gonna let her go he's gonna make the right choice and never lose her again i'll admit i'm a sucker for this kind of trope the whole ultra powerful badass dude who's kind of an edgelorded medley his one crutch being the power of love it's cheesy as [ __ ] sometimes but in berserk i think it works really well it's why i really like this segment it's just a great scene seeing guts realize his own mistakes and promising that he will not lose any more people he cares about especially koska we even get a tease at the end result if guts didn't learn all of this he would become an actual monster obsessed with killing and nothing else so he was at a fork in the road and guts is gonna make his choice guts is going to fight for somebody not avenge them it's very positive and hopefully you're starting to see what i mean by guts progressively losing the edgy aspects to his personality at least a little bit it's almost a triumphant scene some people don't like berserk getting lighter that starts to feel way softer compared to what came before and almost abandons the grim aspects of its own identity and let's just say as the story goes on they kind of have a point but i like seeing guts develop as a character and change i mentioned it before maybe all the way back in part one or even the berserk anime video but guts drastically changes between each arc he almost feels like a completely different person between each one golden age he's a standoffish kid that finally finds a family black swordsman he's a murderous [ __ ] that doesn't care about anyone but himself conviction specifically lost children in the events up to this point guts is outright insane like full-blown hallucinates and acts like a deranged madman and i won't spoil who he becomes later but let's just say he gets more quiet and sad like hugh jackman from logan said but once again no spoilers we see a nice interaction between rickert and puck who are both awake at night rickard is working on guts's iron hand and puck is trying to escape from erica's grasp as she falls asleep rickert is still scared of elves which is developed into a legitimate phobia but he can't help but thank puck for sticking by guts not just because he made erica feel better who's been depressed since godot became bedridden but because the last time he saw guts he had a bad feeling the guy wouldn't come back the same man but he did come back and was worried about koska which to record is good enough and he thinks puck kept guts stable during their time together once again pointing to the idea that puck's positive nature was able to mellow out guts even if unintentionally they're both surprised to see goto on his feet grabbing his tools and getting ready to work ricker tries to talk him out of it but goto isn't budging simply telling the boy to take care of erika once he's gone he explains that erica isn't his real daughter but we can kind of assume that he found her outside of her burned house goto took her in on a whim but having her and his life let him feel human goto relates this to a sword if it's well made then no matter what damage is done to the blade it will be reborn once put back into the fire go to his final words before he commits to reforging the dragon slayer is to order rickard to tell guts not to turn out like me now this phrase is very interesting we know literally nothing about goto beyond his vague backstory he was a master blacksmith that was exiled after he made the dragon slayer out of frustration he then became a loner in the mountains just spending his day forging whatever he was ordered to and before he realized it he spent his entire life alone he met erica as an old man and decided to take her in as his own daughter and this decision gave goto a few more happy years having someone else he can share his life with as far as we know he's just an old man that never did anything except be a blacksmith his comments about the nature of hatred and revenge is fascinating did he want to get revenge after his exile before that was he lying about the dragon slayer being the only reason he was thrown out we plain don't know and i like that we don't know sometimes we don't need all the answers the whole scene at godo's cabin is a quiet moment a sliver of peace guts can enjoy and it's when guts finally stops thinking about survival that we see who the man truly is he can't distract himself with short side thinking anymore there's no monster to hunt or any enemies to fight off so he can't run away from his own insecurities his own trauma the emotions he doesn't like to think about or feel but seeing guts finally do the right thing and commit to saving somebody is powerful so much [ __ ] has happened until now guts have screwed over so many people either intentionally or unintentionally he's dedicated himself to being alone forever yet when he was slapped across the face with the truth that he still had people in his life and he was being an idiot guts finally let the best parts of himself take over for once coming back to the story we see that gus's equipment is fully repaired even his armors refined down into a new look rickard hands him his weapon saying that he even made some new tools using gunpowder some more explosives for our boy the two discussed the clue to where koska could be at and record says the only holy ground near where they are is saint albion temple also known as the tower of conviction it's a gathering place for refugees running from the plague the chaos of the situation only made worse by heretics hiding in the crowds causing formal inquisitions a witch trial is on the horizon rickard doesn't think koska is actually there but guts sees it as his last shot puck wonders tsukasuka is the guts to cause him to be this dedicated to finding her but he keeps his mouth shut they say their goodbyes erika and goto watching from inside the house and the old blacksmith says gutz always does this he runs in one direction without thinking and closes out the rest of the world in his mind he's dedicated to his one road whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is still up in the air but hopefully changing focus will help him find some manner of peace [Music] we jump back in time a month around the time costco went missing we can assume guts was at gotos for a period of time or took some time getting there the point is this fills in the gap of what exactly happened the flashback begins with the holy iron chain knights riding past a mob for refugees azan explains that plagues and famine aren't the only reason things got so bad the cushing invasion to the east was bad enough that nobody even knows that the nobles in the capital are still alive as far as these guys are concerned all they have is the holy see to keep everything together so they don't really have a choice beyond keeping their heads down and following orders we also see that farnese was hauled in to explain what happened with the situation with guts the fact they failed to capture him and lost soldiers in the process the whole thing ended up being a big insult to the holy see they tell farnese they are not an army they're an ornamental piece designed to show off the holy see's authority having someone defeat them shows weakness which can't be tolerated especially since the families of the nobles who died chasing guts are pissed the only reason farnese wasn't stripped of her authority was because of her own position in the vandemian family her father pulled strings to make sure she wasn't punished they're big benefactors to the church after all though they make it clear to farnese she wasn't a leader she's a symbol the leader of the holy iron chain nights is traditionally a woman of higher status so the way they see it they have to keep her around because she's a diversity hire with a rich daddy and to drive the point home they dismiss the idea guts was ever a real religious symbol the whole two-year hunt was all for nothing farnese was humiliated forced to watch her comrades die almost got raped and it all amounted to jack and [ __ ] and jack called into work today they give her a new mission essentially telling her to [ __ ] off and not come back and decide to instead focus on investigating the dream the entire country had all at once even priests for the holy see say they experienced the same thing so whatever it is it's a big deal but that very meeting is what led farnese to the detail she's doing now her and her men are tasked with protecting an inquisitor as they travel to saint albion temple during the down time farnese thinks about how everyone claims to have had the same dream strangely she says she never had a dream about a hawk of light or any miracles instead her thoughts are filled with the horror she experienced after guts kidnapped her she's trying not to think about it but it's a losing battle i'm assuming she didn't have the dream because the way she's talking is if she doesn't understand what everyone's talking about once again it's not made abundantly clear if everyone had the exact same dream if there were exceptions because farnese seems to not understand what they're saying and guts didn't mention anything about it you'd think the guy that is really familiar with a glowing white hawk and its symbolism would mention something about having a dream like that still we even see her think about the episode she had involving guts and his sword it's not something she's having an easy time forgetting as they make their way we see peasants gossiping in horror turns out the man the knights are protecting is infamous to say the least the breaking wheels dangled above the carriage is the calling card for bloody scripture mozgus a man who is unafraid to sentence anyone to torture as a heretic his current body count is over 500 and they say he will find it any excuse to send someone to die that of course leads a man to have a lot of enemies and we see villagers preparing an ambush aiming crossbows from the cliffs above the knights they launch their attack intent on killing mozgus for revenge the knights and the peasants get into a brutal melee the refugees keeping the main forces from coming in and squashing the rebellion but as soon as a few villagers open the door to mazka's carriage they're attacked by unknown men inside each of the fighters are gruesomely killed by mazgus's associates a collection of deformed torturers all using classic medieval execution methods to dispatch the jobber farmers you see one man with a massive iron claw twins using two saw blades a smaller one that plucks out the eyes with pincers a giant using a massive breaking wheel as a weapon and finally a man in a coat wielding that thing i don't know what it's called point is it's over report even started all the peasants are either dead or captured and we get a final good look at mozgus and his band of merry men the man himself just looks creepy his face is stony almost carved out of something and he's expressionless for the most part he likes to quote scripture but don't expect anything on doc holliday's level the religion of berserk is pseudo catholic church but nothing specific enough to really mean anything farnese apologizes for not coming in to save them finally able to get past the refugees but mozgus actually seems kind of chill he says he's under god's protection so it wouldn't matter if she tried to save him or not the way he sees it since none of the holy see were actually hurt there's nothing to complain about he introduces farnesen serpaco to his torturers who seem to disturb azan the surviving villagers are all lined up in front of mazgus he wants to know why the villagers tried to kill him and they're not shy about it mozgus sentenced an entire town to die after they refused to send tribute to the holy see they waited until the men left to work and murdered all the women and children mazgis is unfazed at the accusation saying he passed fair judgment and that he was only following god's doctrine the villager he's interrogating shoots back saying they didn't even have anything to give to the church there was literally nothing they would have all starved to death so the way he sees it them attacking mozgus is divine punishment for his cruelty the mention of this sets off moscos who flies into a psychotic rage and caves the man's skull in with his bible mazga sees these villagers as a disgusting bunch of heathens not even considering that he caused them to become what they are only the holy see can speak for god and no one else as stated i'm not here to debate theology with anyone i'm only bringing this up because i know there's going to be a guy in the comments going well actually the most crazy and hateful of all the catholic church people during the dark ages were the ones that were blatantly taking advantage of the system and making up rules on the spot which in turn led to the lutheran movement where they were splitting off just simply due to how crazy the catholics became as stated not here for that argument i'm also not here for any fedora tipping we're just reading a fun story mazgis asks farnese what the appropriate punishment for the villagers is and she says that since they attempted to murder a priest they should be sentenced to the breaking wheel mosques agrees and decides to start the execution there in front of the terrified crowd watching them all they get a pretty brutal scene of the torturers condemning each man to death breaking their limbs and forcing them into the wheels reminder that this is only partially exaggerated for drama breaking wheels were a legitimate execution torture tactic during the dark ages they would actually snap your limbs and force you into a wheel so your wounds wouldn't heal properly if you were really unlucky they'll leave you like that to die which is what these guys are intending to do hearing men screaming in agony sets off farnese's bad thoughts and she has to uncover her face as she feels a little too warm serpico is unfazed and azan is just disgusted by it all i actually really like this guy because he seems like the one good person in this entire army one of the prisoners escapes and tries to run away bumping straight into a dark-skinned woman with long hair the woman just starts to pet the guy's face and another woman has to pull her away from the man so she isn't wrapped up in the carnage one of the knights decides to interrogate the dark-skinned woman for being in league with the rebels despite the other woman's protests and that's when he notices that she's not quite there she's just standing there with her mouth open the knight takes the villager away and the other woman introduces herself as luca she hates the idea of going to the same place that the knights in mazgis are going but there's not much choice in the matter it's either fanatics or the plague they all watch the men be hoisted up into the air where they're feasted upon by crows the crowd goes to leave and luca drags the dark-skinned woman with her noticing that she's just mindlessly staring at the violence how many of you bet the woman was kaska i'm not paying any of you [ __ ] because it was obvious kaska is on her way to the tower of conviction sora just mindlessly pulled into an adventure with her new friend so a cursed person with the brand of sacrifice is going into a heavily populated area full of zealot priests that have been killing people this is gonna end in violence isn't it but before we get into all that we jump perspectives once again this time we see a group of bandits hassling a preteen boy for his supplies he tries to talk tough but they threaten to kill him over his food so he relents the bandits enjoy their feast taunting the kid about how he'll never get a share yet that's when one bandit starts to feel sick then another and the leader starts to choke on his food the boy poisoned the food he gave to the bandits and kept the real stuff to himself the leader tries to kill him but he knocks him unconscious with his sword still in the sheath he says his name is isidro and he poisoned the men with something that's supposed to be non-lethal it seems like he got away with his con scot-free but then some of the bandit's friends show up and all they see is isidro next to a bunch of unconscious bodies of their friends isidro tries another scam playing the scared kid and talking about how some cushions showed up and killed them all it seems to work up until one of the bandits asks why none of the corpses have sword wounds in fact how the hell did he survive the ambush cushions kill kids too well just as easy dro tries one last scam to get out of the situation the bandit he's talking to gets a blade through the head the actual cushions just showed up and they make mince meat out of the poor bastards isidro watching in horrors the men are cut down in seconds and now the cushions are setting their sights on him but just before we can add this poor kid to the body count they all noticed somebody else just showed up it's guts he's passing through town whether they like it or not the cushions try and attack just like they did with the bandits but they're dead before they realize it split in half and sent raining down on their friends icy droves rendered speechless along with the attackers one tries to jump down from the roof but guts shatters his jaw with his iron fist the dude is unstoppable puck hits ec draws attention and tells him to stay down until they're all dead fully confident in what the outcome of this is gonna be the rest of the cushions trying vain to kill guts but he only takes down more of them even after they believe they have the guys surrounded he rips through their numbers the guy has been killing anything that moved for two years straight everything from your average mercenary to unspeakable monsters these want to be sikh [ __ ] are such a non-threat that guts barely even acknowledges he's in danger to him it was a waste of time a chance to try out his new equipment he doesn't even remember that they're cushions the entire invasion has been going on without his notice but right after the scouts are all dead he goes right back to his journey isidro starts falling behind not even sure what he just saw some of the surviving attackers want to chase after guts but a familiar face orders them all to stay away it's a lot turns out the guy's guts just killed was a unit of the bakuraka sent to scout ahead the ones that gave guts trouble all the way back in golden age are barely a blip on his radar now power escalation for upper tag dude's been fighting demons for more than two years now so human enemies all but can't challenge him and salat kinda knows this not the exact details just more that he still remembers when guts beat his ass all the way back in golden age it was a very humbling experience for the guy so now he's more cautious and tactical with his moves this a lot chasing after a vendetta is just stupid it was almost dare say a positive for him guts meanwhile is only thinking about pushing ahead to go faster and faster until he reaches the tower of conviction meanwhile we see that the condition at the tower is downright hellish people camp outside terrified at the current situation the current situation being the ever increasingly violent war between the heretics and the holy see priests have been murdered around the camp the flayed skin of their bodies hung around like trophies the peasants are angry about this since it means the holy see will only clamp down harder but there's nothing they can do all the while a weird image of these eyes looking around camp show up focusing on the skin of the dead priest while the rest of the peasants are in abject poverty and suffering given no food at all except watery soup and left to fend for themselves the holy see are given irregular shipments so the knights and monks are well fed but the people they're supposedly protecting are forced to starve the only thing they're ever given is basically leftovers things are so desperate that the refugees even start trying to steal some of the supplies causing the holy iron chain knights to get violent these aren't criminals or brigands they're just average people that need help one of them is a young mother with a near dead baby they don't even have firewood for the winter fernice tries to give some [ __ ] excuse about how they ask the sea for help but the woman with the baby is desperate she says the kid is about to die and she needs god to save them the sight makes farnese uncomfortable but mazgis arrives before anything substantial can come from it he claims that he respects the woman's boldness and decides to show mercy farnese tries to argue but he says that since she broke the law to save her own child it had to have been divine providence he orders the knights to lead them all into the monastery franny's taking note of the desperation of the villagers around them literally fighting each other for the scraps the monks toss out the rest of the peasants are led away while mazgus insists the woman and her baby stay with him they watch as the priest offers the boy medicine saying that with food and rest he should recover and mazgas swears he sent a letter to the holy see for more supplies and promises conditions will improve for the refugees it seems like he's not that bad of a guy well that's when he leads her to the iron doors she needs to pay for the crime of theft even if she was doing it to save her baby and as the saying goes dark theaters are best for dark deeds mozgus had the villagers tortured each one experiencing some downright grotesque suffering and now it's her turn farnese is horrified at the sight but moscus insists she look he even goes on iran about the type of criminal he despises above all else heretics mazgis despises the refugees to him they're a den of sinners corrupting a holy place he has no love for these people at all it's why he's so willing to kill them all he wants revenge for the murdered priest and has been scouring through the camp for anyone he can send into the monastery for some religious debates damascus god's love is supreme but he can also hate like a [ __ ] so this poor woman who just wanted to save her kid is now in the custody of this absolute lunatic and she is brutally tortured hot iron pressed against her skin all well farnese watches in a blank daze right away we see that mazgis is not only a despicable [ __ ] but he's probably one of the most hateable villains in the whole story minus a few exceptions just out of a mixture of sheer brutality and downright self-righteousness he's doing these horrible things to people and he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong that extra lair just seems to rub the salt in the wound at least the demons embraced the fact they're evil they accepted it hell they bragged about it it's hard to be angry at somebody that knows they're an [ __ ] but mazgis takes this a step further by convincing himself that he's the good guy in the situation his philosophy is blatantly contradictory and practically made up on the spot but mazgis doesn't care he's doing the work of god and that's all that matters and if some women and children have to die to spread the lord's teaching then it's gonna happen and the worst part is that you know some of the holy iron chain nights hate this crap they hate having to protect this psychotic [ __ ] but they don't have a choice in the matter it's either be on his side or be considered a heretic you might be thinking i'm only talking about farnese serpaconazon but you'll see what i mean he's not popular it's a status quo held up for no other reason than it's what you're supposed to do sometime later after the incident in the monastery we see that the situation has only gotten worse the priest's body was found too bad it was in a tree and it didn't have skin but still it's something to bury farnese believes she caught the murderer but the suspect swears it's an accusation just by people who hate him as expected of literally any situation where people just believe accusations without question the refugees started exploiting it to go after people they don't like accusing anyone and everyone of heresy so they can go up to the monastery and not come back but it's okay if this guy loses his skin they were just telling their truth yeah and the worst part of it all that woman moz is tortured she's a [ __ ] now and her baby starved to death it was all for nothing bernice seems to show some remorse for a brief moment but she still brings her suspect into the monastery yeah i probably should have warned you guys earlier but the actual events at the saint albion temple are very misanthropic not even talking about the anti-church themes but in general there's just this spiteful hate towards human nature the refugees are not very sympathetic you do have a few cases where you pity them but the majority are just as much a threat as the psycho priests in fact the characters we follow the most during these sections is actually on the lowest rung of the social ladder luca is our pseudo-protagonist this time the woman we saw help koska during the flashback turns out she's a prostitute and while she's not educated or of high status she knows people the reason the man was accused of being a heretic is because he was a crime boss trying to profit off the situation he didn't fit into the masses so he was destroyed she's actually got a point about how people tend to mob against anyone that goes outside the status quo and she's got a dick inside of her yeah luca is lamenting the state of society while banging a john the guy's name is jerome and actually is one of the knights that works for farnese he openly shit-talks his boss right to luca turns out none of the men respect farnese and really just see her as a bad leader the way they see it she either needs to step up and do her job right or just let the guys that know what they're doing stay in charge it's actually implied that this relationship might be a bit more than engaging in the benefits of a free market luca and jerome actually have a somewhat emotional connection they're not delusional about it he still pays her and is fully aware she [ __ ] for money but they like each other well during their intensive yoga session please susan don't look me koska pops her face into the tent covered in bandages after a funny little moment where she scares jerome bad enough he goes limp we see that luka purposefully disguised koska as a syphilis victim named elaine that way no johns will try and proposition her or worse plus it'll explain her insanity saying that the disease went to her head jerome gives luca a pearl necklace even promising that once the job is finished at the tower he'll take her away from there they can't get married but he'll keep her as a mistress and take care of her even promising to take costco along and get her a doctor still believing they're sisters despite the grand promises luca admits she doesn't expect it'll actually happen he leaves and we see a group of other prostitutes approach these are lucas friends they tease her about jerome but she says that the relationship is to have a card up her sleeve in case anything happened we also see that luca uses the payments she receives to feed her friends even going so far as to break apart her necklace and giving her friends an equal amount of pearls they're shocked at the gesture but she's insistent on it saying she'll get her fair share of it too now i've heard some people say this is a sign that luca has some inklings of socialism in her beliefs the whole redistribution of wealth to take care of the whole that's not really why she does this in fact she plainly lays out why it's a survival tactic nothing else luca and her friends are [ __ ] a profession that is scorned and hated on a good day but now there's a heretic hunt and everyone is weaponizing the situation against each other if they flaunted their wealth no matter how they got it that puts them in the sights of the holy see they can't stand out no matter what letting people feel jealousy towards them is a death sentence we even see that luca is pretty misanthropic all around to her people find any excuse to hate each other have too much people feel jealous have too little people barely even consider you human if the conditions were different there's zero doubt luca would enjoy the expensive luxuries in life why wouldn't she but they're in a situation where you'll be tortured to death if someone gets a bit too envious it's not socialism it's being aware of human nature the only part you can argue is socialistic is that they don't have food it's weird to even bring this into it because berserk has all around been a pretty apolitical story but i have heard the interpretation float around and i kind of want to make it clear that nah that ain't really the way you see this we also see that koska's shocker isn't actually disfigured but a beautiful mad woman who can't defend herself wandering around a camp full of violent refugees probably isn't the best idea turns out the prostitutes grew affectionate towards koska and decided to take her in even promising to never force her to work and luca is the only one aware of the brand on koska's chest though she has no idea what it is she doesn't want to tell the group about this due to fear of it causing a rumor koski is possibly a witch or a heretic she asks another prostitute a woman named nina to make dinner for the rest of them as she handles one more customer giving her a bottle of medicine as payment it's never explicitly explained but it's heavily implied that nina is actually suffering from syphilis now some people have very strong feelings about this character and not exactly positive ones either i completely understand it if you haven't read the manga and use these videos to get a rundown of the story you probably think she's inoffensive she's quiet and timid fearful of everything around her but she doesn't seem like a bad person yeah you're probably gonna hate nina by the end of this we get this scene where nina is leading koska through the camp stumbling into a crowd pelting a man with stones she tries to walk away but the glaring eyes of the mob get to her so she picks up a stone and throws it at the man i'm actually gonna explain what this says about her in a bit all you have to know is this is more proof towards that idea that this is a very misanthropic arc ideas such as the status quo mob mentality and hysteria are very prevalent here nina herself is basically a symbolic figure to word it in a pretty pretentious way still her and koska walked past a prophet screaming about how the mythical hawk is coming to lead them all to be one nation saying that a goddess of flame gave him the message they walk past him as fast as they can not wanting to be associated with a heretic and they arrive at a river nina fills a pail of water and we see her wash her legs caked in blood from what is revealed to be bleeding from her vagina pus is mixed into the blood and her mouth is swollen nina ponders about her condition thinking that at best she's doomed to become a mad woman like elaine though in a way she's kind of envious of koska she doesn't seem to be afraid of anything just innocently existing in her childlike state meanwhile nina is terrified of everything saint albion temple was supposed to be a place of hope but all it does is make nina scared of god hell she's scared of being alive and of dying nina might seem like an annoying cry baby i really can't stress that some people consider her to be one of the worst characters of the series but i think it's because funny enough nina is supposed to represent an average person in the setting nina isn't a strong warrior or anyone of note she's a refugee that ran away from war and plague and works as a prostitute luka is a charismatic clever leader someone that the other girls look up to and respect nina is just sort of there and she knows this too nina knows she's just a scared girl this isn't to excuse her actions or say something like you all just misunderstood nina i don't exactly like her either but i'm just trying to explain what i think they're going for with her character and none of this matters anyway because kaska's brain starts to bleed oh [ __ ] that's right there's a branded woman sitting in the middle of a place full of dead people but before you get excited thinking that a horde of zombies are about to rip through the peasants something interesting happens we do see corpses rise from the ground all screaming in agony about how god abandoned them but they don't attack koska or nina hell they don't even know they're there all because a little somebody shows up to protect them the demon infant its presence chases away the undead and we see again that something is watching everything play out from the distance koska tries to run for her baby almost sensing where it is but nana keeps her from running after it just taking her back to camp instead not aware of what just happened butkaska is still calling out even as they leave back to the monastery farnese is trying to eat her dinner but the image of the suffering peasants will not leave her mind even with her weird sadism fetish the idea that these innocent people suffered for literally nothing got to her only made worse by the fact that they can still hear all the screaming from the torture chamber in the mess hall so they can't put it out of their minds even to eat jerome and his friends are frustrated at the idea of being mazgas's personal army blaming farnese for the whole mess they don't even care that she's well within earshot of their talking well out of nowhere serpico throws a bowl of soup onto their table playing it off like an accident now the men are [ __ ] talking him saying he's just a bootlicker for farnese which i mean wouldn't wouldn't you when you but the tensions only rise when they realize even more refugees are pouring into camp so the lack of food and supplies is only made worse farnese and serpaco leave the mess hall and see some of mazgus's torturers going about their own routines the twins are playing with the crows and the man in the bird suit actually stops to talk with them he notes the two are uncomfortable with the twins appearances but he swears they're good people as it turns out each one of the torturers are deformed in some way chased out villages enforced either work in circuses or just even live out in the forest the man removes his mask to show he's actually pretty normal looking when he sticks his hand into the sunlight the flesh begins to bubble and scab over for some reason he was born with a birth defect that makes him sensitive to sunlight so much so that his immune system is almost non-existent without his suit he'll be dead in days he remembers back when he met mozgus forced out of his village and cast out into the woods alone he was sure he'd die but mozgus stumbled into him just at a pure chance and taking pity on the man he recruited him as part of his death squad for once in these men's lives they had a purpose a sense of belonging they weren't just freaks or outcasts from society they were warriors for god he knows what they do is horrible that they hurt people and everyone sees them as monsters but all he has is his belief that god needs him without that people like this have literally nothing the birdman takes them to find mazgus and they find the father in the middle of a personal ritual of his every single day he throws himself face first to the ground a thousand times each morning and night if you needed an explanation for why his face is so [ __ ] up yeah there you go luckily they get to him just as he finished so they're actually able to have a conversation and mazgis decides to sit down and explain the reason why the temple is so sacred in the first place it's because it's where the old king geyseric imprisoned a sage the sage proclaimed every single sin of geyseric even as he was tortured until an angel came down to talk to him so it's worshipped as holy ground there's a few things this is implying that this is possibly the event that caused the god hand to destroy geyser's kingdom and by extension one of the five we saw is the one that sorta created midland not sure who though anyway they talked some more about the idea of faith and pain the way mazga sees it dedicating his whole life to god no matter what it costs is super cool so self flagellation and torturing others is just proof of how much he loves his religion barnes isn't so sure of it wondering if they're really helping anyone with this all the death and suffering they've inflicted on the refugees hasn't stopped the priest murders if anything people are more angry at the holy see than the heretics really they've been helping their enemies she even admits that some of her own men are growing resentful to the whole situation so for farnese it's looking more and more like all they're doing is causing more damage mazgis tries to counter this by telling a story there was once a nun who practiced her religion so vehemently that she only wanted to help others she owned nothing and simply went around the country helping anyone she could one of the things she liked to do most is comfort the dying holding them in her arms to give them a moment of peace before passing away well one day she finds an old man on the road who is dying she tries to comfort the man but he begs her to let him go he's lived his entire life in solitude and independence so with this nun holding him in her arms she's disgracing his dying moments mazgis summarizes the story by saying that they don't know what they'll accomplish by helping people that they run the risk of seeing themselves as moral arbiters that view themselves as the standards others should live by all they need to do is live by god and god alone they can't think about how they hurt other people or be afraid of death just surrender yourself to faith and never question god's will dude this is [ __ ] so because you don't want to step on god's toes you're not going to help anybody out of the slight chance that person you're helping doesn't actually want it the slight chance you think you'll be better than him because of it you're surrounded by an entire flood of people begging you for help you tortured a woman that stole food for her baby and begged you for help you already view yourself as being above the refugees i mean it's about as transparent as glass that moz gets is insane he just likes hurting people and uses the veil of religion as an excuse even if he is a true believer hell his story pretty much contradicts his own philosophy at least by his interpretation mazga says he doesn't want to help people because you don't know the ramifications of getting involved in their lives that their job is to only serve faith but then he goes and murders entire towns of people for heresy people that swear they aren't heretics and simply can't afford to donate to the church the dude is a hypocrite a hypocrite that is so brutal and cruel to people that a literal sato masochist is having a crisis of faith because of how [ __ ] up he is being kind to people is simply naive and silly for a priest to think about but cutting those same people to pieces is what a good man of the cloth should do now i'm gonna go for threesies and say i'm not here to debate theology but wasn't one of the big commandments thou shall not kill this isn't killing to save other people it's pure sadism mazgus is going full vlad the impaler on anybody he doesn't like hell jesus himself said love thy neighbor granted the religion isn't real christianity or anything like that it's just got purposeful comparisons and the allegory is pretty blatant with the whole holy see standing in for the vatican thing but this is still technically a separate andy from literal dark ages religion and even if i sound angry about this please know that it's actually a good thing to feel upset mazgis is a villain and he's downright evil and hateable an absolute son of a [ __ ] and this obvious contradiction in his logic serves to make us hate him more we know the dude is a delusional [ __ ] so hearing him make this grand speech about how not helping anyone is something god told him not to do and not just because he's a twisted [ __ ] cements our feelings he's trying to disassociate the blame we know it's his fault for why the situation at the temple is getting so bad he's not even trying to make it better he's wasting so much time and energy punishing people for heresy that he's actually making the heretics more powerful but damascus his logic is perfect it can't be my fault i'm just following scripture villains that don't understand they're the villain is fascinating at least to me personally i hate mazgus but he's very interesting especially since he's the first villain in a while that isn't a demon he's human that's right he's not an apostle in secret or anything like that he is a human being he's just [ __ ] evil well his speech motivates barneys to keep doing her job almost reaffirming her blind love for faith and we come back to nina in the camp she's distributing some of the goods they collected to the needy while also trying to keep an eye out for koska when a man tries to talk to her this guy's name is yakum and if you want to get angry at me for pronouncing it wrong [ __ ] you it's biblical i don't gotta explain [ __ ] the guy's presence makes nina uncomfortable who tries to storm off with kaska as soon as she notices him yakum tries to strike up a conversation but nina shuts him down telling him that he needs to buy another girl unless he's okay with the state of her body yakum tries to say that he's worried about her in a more emotional sense but nina snaps and just tells him to buy her already still misunderstanding his intentions a small scene is sparked with other peasants looking at them but nina doesn't seem to care she tells him to meet at the river tonight if he's really serious about what he's saying she goes back to the tent with the rest of the girls noticeably upset at the exchange rousing lucas suspicions about her behavior it's blatantly obvious that jacom really does like nina he was just too nervous to talk to her anita does show some interest in him but you know the saying you can't make a hoe into a house wife but goddammit i'm gonna try with luca you can't stop me rap music still this is part of the reason people really don't like nina yakum seems like a decent guy but she's so standoffish towards him now this can get chalked up to her lifestyle being a prostitute during the dark ages was rough doubly so in a world like berserk no doubt it's hard to really be vulnerable towards somebody you've essentially been trained to see as a customer nothing else or worse someone that can hurt you in pretty terrible ways still yakum keeps his word and shows up at the river and nina seems to confess her feelings to him asking if he actually loves her and is willing to die with her then asks if he's willing to fall into hell with her that sounds kind of creepy not gonna lie but yokom is on board and the two kiss that's nice hopefully they can be happy together i wonder where she's taking him probably a nice quiet spot to share a romantic moment and that luca is gonna spoil the whole thing and embarrass them a situation full of wacky characters in a quirky little place like this it's just like one of my japanese animes why are they going into a kit oh dear sweet christ the chick's a [ __ ] pagan by the way koska is wandering around outside too the dead spirit is trying to manifest but still under the protection of her infant don't worry about her but yeah nina is a heretic a literal heretic she decided to take yakum to a pagan ritual heretics engaging in a massive orgy dancing and boiling a psychedelic substance in a big cauldron luca is shocked to see that nina is an actual heretic and we see yakum is pulled into the festivities he's stripped naked and starts having sex with nina as he begins to hallucinate from the drugs during all this a flaming specter appears in the smoke it's slawn pleasuring herself the heretics referring to her as the goddess of flame reminding us yet again that the god hand have something to do with this the orgy continues until yakum finishes his business with nina who takes him to the great goat for conversion a lanky man wearing the mask of a goat head yokom recites a demonic prayer to defile god and he's told to kiss the goat's chest and his member which he hallucinates as a serpent joachim is almost finished converting to heresy he simply has one last step drink a special concoction honestly these guys don't seem that bad they're a bunch of drug abusing sex obsessed degenerates but hey that's pretty much describing anyone that puts pronouns in their twitter bios not really seeing how these guys could have murdered any priests or did anything that justifies what mazus does to them maybe these godless heathens are just misunderstood eccentrics being oppressed by the totalitarian church is that a finger yakum isn't hallucinating the heretics are cannibals the cauldron is full of boiling human flesh worse they look a bit young don't they they're babies they're eating babies to perform their rituals the heretics cook and devour infants while having an orgy yeah [ __ ] that mazkas did nothing wrong i bring not peace but a sword [ __ ] well yakum panics and runs out of the cave nina now ordering her friends to hunt him down and kill him the poor guy runs for his life until he trips and falls off the cliff nina is at first relieved that her secret is safe but breaks down crying at the idea that jacom ran away from her and had to die meanwhile the rest of the pagans go back inside to enjoy the rest of their delights without interruption this is when luka appears before nina just staring at her while trying to walk up nina panics and tries to threaten luka to stay away first by throwing rocks then by saying she'll jump off the cliff nina finally admits that she's always hated luca seeing her as condescending and proud they're both [ __ ] so why should she act like she was any better but none of it stops luca she's getting closer nina's final hail mary is saying she'll call out to her friends warning that they'll rip luca apart when they come back this finally sets off the top tier [ __ ] who slaps nina across the face even hoisting her on her lap and spanking her until nina is begging her to stop some of you guys might find this part erotic anyway we see that luca only did this because she really does care about nina she's disappointed in her for getting involved with the heretics acting almost like a mother figure scolding her teenage daughter joachim's death finally seems to hit nina and luca tells her not to think about it until they get back to camp but as they go to leave they see a crowd of heretics circling around a woman it's koska she stumbled her way to the heretic cave supposedly from trying to follow luca the heretics are confused as to why she's there thinking she wants to be a convert but one of them recognizes her as luca's syphilitic sister it seems the cover story is enough to scare them off the heritage not willing to catch syphilis and confident that her insanity means she can't rent them out but one of them is curious to see her face he wants to see a face ravaged by disease so he rips off the bandages revealing that yeah she's not disfigured at all the heretic tackles koska to the ground intending on raping her now that he sees that her face is fine he even starts tearing off her dress her mind filled with images of the eclipse of when the demons did very bad things to her she starts screaming loud enough that even the heretic trying to rape her jumps off in shock luka runs down to try and help but we see that's probably not necessary the demons can't touch her but they can still attack the living one of the heretics is possessed and bites off the chunk of another guy's head and the whole situation turns into a blood fest each heretic being possessed and savagely killing each other as luka watches in horror she comes to the conclusion that kaska is the witch the holy see is searching for some of the possessed try to attack koska but the demon infant manifests itself to protect her exercising the spirits from the possessed before vanishing with kaska aimlessly trying to hug her baby calling out for it the nightmare ends with the surviving heretics and luca viewing her as a witch with the crowd bowing before koska who's still oblivious to the whole situation and to close things off we see yakum be pulled out of the river at the bottom of the cliff by whatever has been watching the events at the camp something wanted him alive so despite lucas efforts to stay under the radar in one night she learns that one of her friends is a cannibalistic pagan and her other friend is possibly a witch now we know what actually happened with the demon senkoska she didn't summon them in the way they're thinking it was simply the bran activating and bringing some of the dead over to attack her but the demon infant acted as a guardian to protect its mother but context doesn't really matter in this case the way these people see it the mad woman who lives with the prostitutes summoned demons to kill the men trying to rape her and she used a familiar to protect her when they tried to turn on elaine this is bad news plain and simple man i wonder what guts is doing yeah it's been a while since we've seen him huh well you're just in luck we come back to guts resting against a stump isidro is still skulking behind him and according to the boy guts has been running for a day and a half straight isidro had to hitch rides with people just to keep up with him cardio people plain and simple but still he finally found him and he can finally put his plan into action what plan well easy draw wants to steal the dragon slayer he sneaks up to the sleeping brute and tries to swipe the blade but he can't lift it it's a slab of metal what the hell is he expecting puck catches easier but since he knows that the kid has no chance of actually stealing gutz's sword he just makes fun of him telling him to lift with his hips well isidro finally gets the sword off the ground but all puck has to do is jump on it to send him straight to the ground with the kid thief pinned puck announces his brave capture of the criminal to guts who simply picks up his sword he wants to know why isidro is following him but he's not answering and shockingly guts isn't angry or hateful or aggressive he's just kind of calm puck jokes that isidro wants to train under guts but he just scoffs at the idea the boy's rough nature amuses guts probably actually reminding him a little bit of how he acted as a teenager and all guts asks is if he actually ever killed anyone before isidro is nervous at the question and from there guts tells him to stay away because of well you know the kid says he can do whatever he wants and for some reason guts actually agrees with this he doesn't tell the kid to piss off or threaten to kill him like he's done countless times to other people he's just kind of going okay it probably helps that now is not the time for lectures the sun is going down which means monsters are coming this time their corpses stuck to breaking wheels a sign guts might actually be getting closer considering mazgis loves this tactic hell it's practically his trademark still the wheels want them dead guts and pucker unaffected by the sight but isidro is pissing himself he can barely run away from one but he gets saved by guts the big guy wants to tear through these [ __ ] to feed that bad part of himself but he's 100 focused on saving koska so instead he's pushing through and moving ahead he cleaves through the wheels with lightning speed simply clearing a path to go through instead of trying to kill them all isidro is trying to keep up but guts tells him to piss off to a place the wheels can't reach him isidro tries to fight one but his sword breaks at the first swing so guts once again has to save the boy and after he saves him he just tosses him down the hill not wanting to worry about protecting him and running at the same time a small time jump shows that guts did manage to fight off the undead now no longer worried about isidro's safety and is back to running like a pissed off bull puck is trying to talk the guy into taking a rest but guts isn't listening the only thing that actually causes him to stop in his tracks is a figure in the distance puck thinks it's another demon but it's actually revealed to be skull knight he's back with another cryptic message though he's also happy to see guts as making friends he seemed kind of lonely skull knight warns guts about an apostle hiding in saint albion temple and implies that the god hand themselves are also there though technically the god hand are everywhere at once but areas where extreme amounts of negative thoughts are where their presence are strongest and the tower of conviction has quite a lot of negativity swirling around it skull knight asked guts if he saw the same dream that everyone else in the world did the one about the hawk so it wasn't just people in midland who saw the vision it was literally every person in the world beyond what we can assume is a select view farnese claimed she never saw it unless i'm just misinterpreting things and zod had some kind of weird waking dream guts as far as we know didn't see it he saw the vision that the demon infant gave him a warning he needs to go save koska as it turns out the dream was a sign as skull knight puts it someone who signifies the hawk is going to appear the god hand are coming into the mortal world realization sets off guts but skull knight won't let him think about it too much he guesses that koska is at the tower and explains the importance of what is about to happen turns out the festival is an attempt to create a second eclipse in the human world all the refugees are going to be sacrificed just like what happened before guts loses his [ __ ] for a brief moment and skull knight swears that there's nothing anyone can do to stop the festival it's already set in motion the metaphor he uses is that the world is like moonlight reflected on water nothing they do will ever affect the way it flows just the fact that three met each other in that very spot is proof guts claims that nobody is controlling him he chooses where he goes and nothing will ever change that he survived every single time someone told him he was doomed to die even after the eclipse where he was truly faced with something that should have been impossible to live through him and koska made it out so he doesn't care what skull knight says this time he's gonna save her and then he's gonna kill griffith can't forget that part skull knight is impressed that guts is not backing down so he gives him some advice before he leaves while he can't stop the festival from happening he can change the details it won't be exactly the same as last time in fact since guts is already branded he's outside the flow of causality so he might not be a shadow on the river but a fish though even if guts chooses to get involved he can't have it both ways he needs to choose between fighting or saving skull knight departs with the final words and lets it sink in for guts and puck man that's crazy a second eclipse is gonna happen costco is stuck in the middle of it what the hell does that mean it can't possibly be good guts probably should have asked him if he could hitch a ride still our dynamic duo are committed to saving koska though puck swears he felt something familiar coming off a skull night almost like the guy was an elf but he's not he's a skeleton dumbass nevertheless they're on their way to kick ass acy drove following desperately behind from here we shift over into a brief flashback sequence for farnese we see her as a child hiding under her covers in bed as noises outside scare her she goes to her window and we see a figure burning on a stake as others watch the sight reminding her of a festival cut to her adulthood and we see a line of people burned at the stake from her orders jerome is bitter about the mess and a friend of his explains that farnese has been lighting people on fire literally since she was a kid in fact the reason the holy iron chain knights were approved to find the black swordsman were specifically because of her merits in sentencing a group of heretics to be burned at the stake three years ago mazgus's speech has reinvigorated farnese's devotion meaning she's all on board with the executions again a child breaks down crying at the sight of his father being burned alive and causes this lazy-eyed [ __ ] to accuse him of being involved even saying that if he wants to prove his innocence he needs to throw a burning torch at his own father but serpico makes it clear the kid is innocent by putting a sword to the guy's neck though the boy was saved serpico knows he's going to be hated for the rest of his life he also shows a visible discomfort at the side of burning corpses and asks farnese if he can rest something he apparently does every single time there is a burning serpico finds the spot to sit and jerome soon joins him deciding to slack off from his duties as well jerome assumes that serpico is just as angry about the detail as him but he's still trying to keep up the excuse that he's sick he also explains why he wanted to help the kid so bad as it turns out serpico was forced to watch his mother burn to death at the stake three years ago sentenced as a heretic jerome goes quiet feeling awkward for even bringing it up but serpico seems unfazed the herald at arms goes to leave and as he walks away jerome does some math in his head his mother burned as a heretic three years ago farnese burned a bunch of heretics three years ago which put her in the sights of the holy see there's there's no way right anyway let's not think about that here's some nudity farnice is in her bed chamber staring into her fireplace the flashback we saw from before comes back this time farnese is a little girl being lured out of her home by the sounds outside before she realizes what's happening she found herself in the middle of a heretic burning before she could process the situation someone hands her a torch she throws it and helps light a heretic on fire the crowd cheers for her praising this small child for her enthusiasm and give her more torches to throw farnese loves the event enjoying how the shadows shift and move each time the torches fly through the air she's no longer a scared kid here she's leading these scary monsters around in a dance not only that but she could feel a weird warmth inside of oh [ __ ] now farnese really likes fire bdsm is up there for her but fire is the big kink she even fantasizes about a burning corpse in her fireplace as she takes care of her physical urges though when she's finished she curls up in the fetal position crying about how she's not in the wrong it's pretty clear what her whole deal is i kinda mentioned it before farnese is disgusted with herself for her own perversion and urges and uses the guise of religion to both serve her fetish convenient that a pyrophile gets a job setting people on fire and convince herself that she's actually a morally good person now some of you might despise farnese at this point singer is just a crazy woman that's hurting innocent people and you're absolutely correct but as the story goes on she goes through some changes and if i'm being perfectly honest she ends up probably becoming one of the best characters i can't talk about this until part four which is when we cover the next arc just know that farnice is similar to guts and that her writing is phenomenal she outright becomes a different person i may not be able to convince all you guys to sim for farnese but hopefully i can convert a few of you to love our crazy religious fire mommy is it still october what month is this the days keep blurring together i'm starting to get scared [Music] we see that the rumors of costco being a witch spread throughout the camp now the prostitutes are besieged by worshippers offering tributes and hope to receiving blessings the rest of the horrors are happy to take the gifts but luca knows this can only end badly only luca and nina know why they're actually receiving them the other girl is blissfully unaware of the events at the cave and attempt to stay hidden luca demands they pass out the gifts they received across the camp but she knows it's too late at the rate things are going they'll be turned in eventually it's simply a matter of time nina panics at the idea and then worries about yakum's corpse being found since that's another way they can tie her to the heretics she even floats the idea of abandoning koska cutting her out to lower the risks at the very least hand her over to the heretics so they can take care of her but luca isn't having it she's not abandoning her girls even nina she even admits she can be a condescending and proud [ __ ] so if she starts acting cowardly then she'll be no better than the people she looks down on you know what this chick is pretty cool berserk all around has some good waifus you have a tentacle monster you have a dark-skinned military tomboy who's now [ __ ] a princess in love with a demonic birdman who raped a woman and killed his friends a queen who got lit on fire a psychotic fire obsessed noble chick that likes to torture people a prostitute can i reroll real quick suddenly one of the other [ __ ] runs in to tell luca the bad news one of their friends has been captured by the hunters she's been accused of being a witch possibly by other prostitutes who became jealous of their success still everyone knows what it means she's going up into the monastery to meet moscus and she's not coming back the girl is screaming out about how she's gonna die but nobody even wants to stop and help even as one of the knights start to berate her while striking with a whip just as the man claims no one is gonna save her luca runs in to save her yay well she insults the knights calling them all a bunch of prideful [ __ ] i think they're above all these desperate people which yeah i mean that is true none of them seem to have any sympathy whatsoever but at the same time [ __ ] these people still this pisses off the guy with the whip he goes to strike again but something catches his weapon and yanks the guy right off his horse and to the ground and all the ego arrogance even their dignity is pissed away when they see who the guy was that interrupted their abuse it's guts he's in the refugee camp the knights panic at the sight of the guy luca is confused and the guy with the whip is grabbed like a small child who just woke up as alcoholic stepfather guts knows these are the guys doing the witch hunts meaning they have the information he wants he asks him if they captured a woman with a brand on her chest which piques lucas interest but the knight admits he knows nothing so guts decides to eat him straight at another night on a horse then cuts apart two other horsemen that tried to attack the man doesn't even bother at subtlety he's been here what maybe a few seconds and he's already killed several people he's gonna find his woman and he doesn't care about anything else while guts is busy we see ec dro snatch the keys away from the surviving knight to free the prostitutes along for the ride is puck who simply acts as the cherry on top of an already very strange day guts is still single-minded during the whole thing as far as he cares costco is the only thing that exists some more knights try to break down his concentration but they don't matter see they're dead now gods can go back to thinking about his tomboy wife the violence from guts inspires the crowd to turn against the holy iron chain knights who retreat back into the monastery to avoid their wrath god's intense and going straight up to their hq probably planning on just killing everything he saw until he found koska but lucas stops him by revealing she's seen the woman he's looking for she also sees the same brand elaine has on his neck confirming to guts that she knows where kaska is so guts immediately demands luka take him to her unbeknownst to them nina is in the tent with kaska lamenting on their situation she asks her if it's possible that she can use her witch powers to save them but as expected kaska has no clue what's going on nina is terrified of being arrested and tortured so much so that she simply decides to run away she's conflicted on whether or not to bring costco along after the mad woman comforts her the guilt simply becomes too much she dedicates to bringing costco along thinking that she'd be lonely and afraid without someone watching her that's nice maybe nina isn't so bet wait they're leaving gutz's thoughts are consumed with koska a mixture of wanting to see her again afraid that she'll be the exact same state as when he left broken and insane and worried that he'll be even scarier to her than before luca tries to talk to guts wanting to know why he's trying to rescue koska and basically just try to understand what's even happening but he's barely paying attention which kinda already answers her question without answering it the man's in love can you blame him isidro tries to impress the cute girls but they tell the manlet to [ __ ] off the party arrives at their tent but nobody is there nina and koska ran away funny enough that might have actually been a better idea than sticking around the mass murderer who just killed multiple knights and was the subject of a years-long manhunt but they run straight into a mob of heretics they intend on taking koska into their custody and they're not taking no for an answer we see the group split up after discovering koska and nina are missing you see jerome puck searching around for any clue as to where they went puck notices that pretty much everyone in the camp can see him which is weird since he claims that he's almost invisible in big crowds he talks with isidro about why he even followed guts in the first place and the boy is pretty honest about his goal he wants to be the greatest swordsman in midland so he intends on stealing all of guts's moves to make it happen not exactly a great strategy considering guts's fighting style is all about using a massive sword and he's just a tiny baby boy but isidro is meant to be hot-headed and stupid so it's fine the duo spock koska and nina being taken away by the cultists and decide to follow them instead of running back to make sure they don't lose sight the rest of the group meet up to discuss their findings but guts only stays for a moment before running off to search again he's absolutely obsessed with finding her things shift over to pharmacies and serpico who are finishing a witch burning frontiers watches until the fire burns out completely down to the last ash something she does every time they execute people like this but she's torn out of her thoughts by some of the knights they've come to report that they've discovered the cult is tied out yeah they found yakum who gave them everything he knew not only that but some of their men were attacked in the camp reports say it was a big guy dressed in all black carrying a big sword and oh [ __ ] yeah that's guts azan wants a rematch he's excited at the prospect but farney says it's no longer their job to hunt him down they'll deal with the heretics at the cave before anything else in truth varnise is pissed scared at the news every time guts shows up in her life bad things happen speaking of terrible things we see that easy dro and puck follow the cult into their hideout they watch as the heretics prepare their next ritual the way they see it the holy see is a tool of oppression and nothing else the one with real power is koska the lady with the brain of a potato their plan is to mate costco with their goat god and sacrifice nina as an offering for the crime of trying to steal her away from them isidro has no idea what to do the crowd is too big and he can't fight that many at once but since he's watching from a higher angle he decides to get clever just before they can cut out nina's heart isidro starts throwing stones at the cultists he's actually got pretty good aim and he calls out to the cultists to keep his distraction going telling puck to fly back as fast as he can to tell guts and the others just as planned the cultists try to climb up to get easy dro but with him pelting rocks down they can't get close and with them all being naked all their weak spots are exposed he's aiming for the dick don't aim for the dick bros it ain't right isidro thinks about what led him down the path that ended with him throwing rocks at naked people in a cave trying to make a mentally ill woman [ __ ] a goat man and we discover that he ran away from his village a year ago choosing to wander the land as a thief the life was rough but his experience caused him to develop excellent survival skills all deserve his ultimate goal of being the greatest warrior in all the land and he'll be damned if he's gonna piss off the guy he's trying to shadow as an apprentice plus the prostitutes will think he's really cool which is a bonus during the chaos nina reaches koska and tries to get her to leave but something is wrong her brand is bleeding the demons are here an absolute [ __ ] loaded them at that cut to the holy iron chain nights and we see farnese talking about the sun going down so they can't waste time finding the heretics oh [ __ ] that's right they're going to the same place azan is happy to finish off the heretics hoping it means the end of their security detail and jacom points him to the entrance farnice leads her men inside blissfully unaware of what's about to happen they pour into the cave and are met with a mutilated cultist begging for help half his face has been torn off while he's still alive the knights look around to see an entire horde of possessed cultists all running straight for them the scene is like a zombie movie all the cultists have become feral animals that rip apart anything they see the holy iron chainites have zero clue what to do but azan is quick to take charge of the situation he thinks they're simply under the influence of some drugs but farnese recognizes the scene it's like that time with guts isidro is still trying his stone method but it's getting harder to keep it going they've gone completely insane and barely respond anymore the way he saw things the cloud of smoke came down like it was alive and corrupted the cultists easier sees that koska and nina are in trouble and desperately jumps in to save them he gets his hero moment and tries to lead the two out of the cave but it's a bloodbath knights are killing the cultists who are killing the knights luckily there's a secret entrance some of the survivors are trying to use to escape led by the goat man who yeah is a fraud he's just a guy in a mask well in the darkness of the exit something attacks him stinging him with a spike at the end of a tentacle easy drone the girls watches the cultists run away from the guy in the goat mask who seemingly just turned on his friends and is now coming for them the battle between the holy iron chain knights and the cultists is brutal so much so that azan tells barnes and serpaco that simply impossible to capture anyone alive serpico suggests they retreat and wait for the drugs to wear off but then he spots isidro leading the girls to the carnage the goat man is an actual monster now his legs transformed into a goats and the mask on his face is now his actual head he's become a baphomet like demon now killing his way through the cave the knights are terrified at the sight of a real monster coming after them and it finally hits farnese what's happening she waltz straight into a horde of demons just like when guts kidnapped her in all the confusion isidro accidentally lets go of koska leaving her behind with the horde of demonically possessed zombies jerome is outside the cave with joachim unaware of the horrible ultraviolence just as stones throw away well some other knights are distracted by puck sipping by missing the massive black silhouette looming right behind them it sounds like i'm jumping around a lot because i kind of am but also it's a lot of fast-paced stuff happening here so a lot of events end up just happening all at once costco is surrounded by the monsters who make way for the goat demon it starts to lick her grabbing her and talking about mingling with the witch a brief memory of when it was human in its mind also his penis is now a full-blown snake now wrapping itself around koska puck charges in as fast as he can blinding everyone in his path but she's still alone with the goat it sends its serpent into her dress and makes her flashback to the eclipse once again but her screaming isn't scaring the monster off instead a massive sword goes straight for the goat slamming into the ground guts didn't just take off the goat's pecker but his left arm too all the human characters watch and wonder as guts shreds the horde cultists into pieces like an actual tornado we get this page of guts looking back at koska who's still mindlessly staring off into space even after he just saved her life she seems a million miles away this is another really famous moment that people like to reference a lot you see this pop up whenever you google berserk it's one of the trademark images i kind of talked about before along with some of the stuff you saw in lost children where guts looks absolutely insane one of the things you can take out of context and show your friend and be like dude you gotta read this it's so [ __ ] sick still the sight of guts causes barneys to panic but he has no intention on staying he tells isidro to watch after the women while he fights off the monsters the knights are confused on whether or not they should be attacking guts or leaving him alone while he fights but farnese makes the call for them kill everyone in the cave they can't worry about nuances getting distracted only means more casualties guts clears a path for everyone to escape from and serpico has to protect farnese from incoming monsters making their interception and time impossible just as it looks like guts and the others are about to escape he's attacked by the goat demon which is still trying to get to koska the monster is far more dangerous than the mindless horde around them it's faster and stronger knowing that it's too dangerous to keep koski in the cave he tells isidro to get her out of there trusting the boy to keep her and nina safe they leave and guts is now able to focus 100 on killing this thing it tries to break off from the fight and chase after koska but guts keeps it in the cave with his crossbow he sees the appearance of what he calls a pseudo-apostle as proof skull knight might have been right but no matter what he's gonna save his woman and get her out of there the fight begins proper and guts can barely keep up with the hyper-agile demon so he decides to test out rickard's new weapon a small spiky bomb guts lights the fuse and waits for the goat to come in for an attack tossing the explosive right next to its face the explosion tears open the goat's head sending it to the ground and giving guts the perfect window to chop its head off with the demon dead he goes to leave the cave and meet up with the others the weird thing from before is still watching from the ceiling the knights are busy fighting off the demons azan now ordering the rest of the men to lead farnese out and protect her from danger though she's insulted by the idea and she notices serpico is missing now here is where we see the actual first fight between guts and serpaco there's been hints that the guy is a lot more cunning than he lets on and here we see that's not even the half of it turns out the secret exit to the cave involves walking across a very narrow cliff wall if you're not careful you'll fall right off the edge and sitting right at the other end is serpico gutz tries to get him to go away with his crossbow and then a bomb but he isn't going down that easy we do see that isidro and the others pass by okay they have a plan to lower themselves down the cliff with the rope the heretic setup the only issue is koska who isn't exactly great with precise complicated movements at the moment guts and serpico are still fighting the latter showing an incredible mind for strategy as he's able to keep his attacks frequent enough that the big guy can't even unsheath his sword and even if he could with how narrow the cliff is he wouldn't be able to swing it without flying off the edge serpico knows why they had so much trouble fighting him before because trying to overpower guts with numbers plays right into his hands and once you see 10 friends die with one sword strike panic sets in and things go to complete hell guts unintentionally built his entire fighting style around destroying his enemies morale getting them scared so they make mistakes at least how serpico sees it he doesn't really understand that it purely comes from him having to fight off a million monsters that will not stop but still we see that he isn't just some servant that escorts barnes around he's an actual combat prodigy one who has guts in the exact worst spot to be in considering his skill set he refuses to give guts a window and serpico picks up on how frustrated his opponent has become correctly guessing that he's trying to make it to the girls serpico makes up a lie that his fellow knights must have already captured them to provoke guts further admitting there's no way on earth he can win the fight fairly but he's shocked when guts pulls a hail mary move but before we can talk about that we see that the holy iron chain knights are still busy with occultists apparently the inside of the cave is still a war zone and they're hesitant to call on reinforcements because funny enough it would only make things more complicated well as they're talking someone gets joacom's attention trying to lure him away from the knights by tossing pebbles as joachim follows the bait he runs straight into nina [ __ ] nina was the first one lowered down with the rope and isidro has been busy trying to move koska down well the obvious happens joacom runs straight back to the knights and tells them where they are koska wriggles out of her ropes and hops down using the jutted out pieces of the wall as stepping stones i guess she still has some muscle memory and she's running for nina off [ __ ] and just to make matters worse the heretics are nearly all dead meaning their focus is drifting onto their new prisoners bernice even remembers that guts dove in specifically to save koska meaning they now have leverage back to the fight with serpico we see guts grab the guy's sword bare-handed serpaco thinks this is [ __ ] and tries to pull the sword back but it's not moving it was supposed to slice through his fingers and come right back to him but it's not moving gutz's grip is that tight to the point that the sword is simply stuck in his hand it can't even cut him meaning guts has the chance to shatter the blade with his iron hand and attack serpaco dodges out of the way even tossing one of guts's own bombs at him to make him escape gutz is impressed by the skill noting that serpico has only really seen the weapon once and yet could pick up on what it could do meanwhile serpico is angry at himself for getting in over his head the implication being that hurting farnese the way he did set off cerfico so he couldn't control himself from wanting to kill guts well guts finally reaches isidro but he sees the girls are gone the boy just hanging his head in shame so it kinda just tells him all he needs to know he's infuriated at losing kosuke again but guts can't bring himself to actually hurt isidro he lets the kid go and tries to calm himself down the two leave the caves and spot the girls in the custody of the holy iron chain knights riding away and back to the temple we are finally finally reaching the end game for the convection arc everything is leading right back to the tower of conviction now since it's been a while since we really took a break and analyzed things let's go ahead and go over some story stuff i know some people feel like this can feel more like a read-along than any sort of analysis or review and they're not wrong but there are viewers that actually like that aspect of these videos so i'm trying to find a healthy balance between the two extremes anyway you might have noticed that i've gone into more detail about pretty much everything hell certain scenes are being described panel by panel and the reason for that is because a lot of the events that take place in this arc are far more specific and important to things to come than black swordsmen or golden age with those arcs there's plenty of moments i could summarize as they fight i skipped over a lot of battle scenes simply because they didn't really serve any purpose for the sake of dissecting the story stuff like that are good for endearing you to the cast you get to see the characters be badass and it's cool to see them fight in these big battles but from an outside point of view it can sound repetitive just explain fight scenes over and over again i did skip over a lot of the zondark stuff in black swordsman that's because i still wasn't fully committed to the idea of just explaining what's happening i was still trying to pretend as if it was some kind of analysis and a lot of the zondark stuff was kind of rendered pointless because he was just sort of a jobber working for the main bad guy meanwhile a lot of the stuff that's happening in conviction and lost children is really significant on multiple levels the goat guy was important because him attacking koska and him delaying guts directly led to him not able to you know get to them in time to save them from the knights stuff like that where there was an extra layer beyond just being a cool fight i'm not [ __ ] talking zondark or any of that stuff i'm just saying that when you really break it down it was just kind of a cool fight but of course conviction lost children are different in this regard not just because the fights all around are more creative where you see guts use his skills in a bit more of a interesting way like using the momentum of his cannon to attack monsters but now that the monster element slash supernatural [ __ ] is back in full force the fights have slowly shifted into more being about guts as a character we saw how much he devolved between each battle getting more ruthless and desperate to win the final battle of lost children as you saw was literally guts throwing away what was left of his humanity to win it wasn't just a big sword guy fighting bug people and now with everything at the tower of conviction we see sort of the mirror effect guts is shown to be such a powerful fighter that the invading army trying to take over midland can't even challenge him hell he didn't even know it was going on he's so wrapped up in his own world that he's not thinking about the larger state of everything around him and we know the guy isn't challenged by much anymore at least in the sense of fighting people so this entire arc is focused on guts struggling with his own nature the one thing he does have issues with this is where the whole thing with koska comes in as you saw with the scene at godo's cabin and the section where skull knight comes back guts has to choose between two roads does he dedicate to revenge in killing griffith or does he stick with koska he can't have both and each one has their ups and downs staying with koska means frankly the godhand and griffith go unpunished they'll be cursed forever and doomed to suffer in hell once they die there's no for sure answer that killing the god hand will make that stop but hey at least it's worth a try on top of that koska is not who she used to be now she's just a constant reminder of what he's lost and what they've been through but chasing revenge means losing her and record the last two friends guts has from the old days the band of the hawk really would be gone for good plus the constant strain is turning guts into something downright evil he can't handle this kind of life we know gutz isn't going to die in a fight scene he's the protagonist it can't just happen otherwise the series would be over or they'd have to rush out some new protagonists to replace them and frankly at this point that should be a [ __ ] terrible idea anyone that read killing bites knows exactly what the problem with that can be [ __ ] all you want about plot armor but that's the truth of it so instead koska has essentially been dangled over the pit of sharks since we have no idea what can happen to her she's already been raped into insanity all bets are off some people don't like this idea saying that kaska is now a damsel in distress but it's actually one of my favorite aspects of berserk costco represents the one true option guts has to be happy it's painful to be with her since it's not like how it used to be and it frankly will never be again but she symbolizes the one thing guts has been looking for his entire life a family at first it was simply her being a part of the banjo the hawk but then it almost turned into a literal thing if things didn't go so wrong like how it did back at the end of golden age they would have had a literal family koska was pregnant with his kid and they were planning to run away together but now she's basically representative of what's left of the ban to the hawk that one good period guts had since he was born so when guts rushes in to desperately save her he's essentially trying to hold on to that family that was taken from him rickard could move on and start the next stage of his life with a new group of loved ones which is interesting because it's almost implied that ricker went through a very similar childhood to guts being raised among this army as a child soldier he still remembers the hawks he mourns them but he accepts that they're gone guts can't do that this is removed from the romantic aspect since that's already pretty obvious as a motivation instead i want to talk about how koska has multiple layers to who she is now despite funny enough acting as a way more two-dimensional character aka a crazy lady that's not to say she is two-dimensional i just mean that now her role is literally just being a reminder of what the band of the hawk was i still very much like this period of berserk everything included just a little tirade to kind of soak in the more character focused aspects of conviction a lot of the other stuff is pretty clear the themes of religious totalitarianism is blatantly obvious along with talking about human nature and the idea of desperate people being terrible due to fear farnese is a fire obsessed pervert but i'll still donate to our only fans the holy iron chain knights are actually weak bullies that rely on status and strong arm tactics to oppress people and the god hand are setting up some evil [ __ ] in the background it's easy to pick up on this stuff and it's still fun to read a lot of the fights are [ __ ] awesome and some of the imagery is disturbing to look at which is great berserk is technically action horror but the emphasis on guts changing on finally shaking off his flaws and trying to become a better man is what elevates the ark we're not at his peak character shift yet that's going to be in part 4 but seeing his behavior change just in the last few scenes feels substantial black swordsman guts would have left easythrow to die when they were chased by the undead but he went out of his way to save him same thing when he finds out isidro lost the girls old guts would have threatened to kill him if he ever saw the kid again instead he simply accepts he [ __ ] up and moved on because he doesn't have time guts is still absolutely a violent man we saw that when he barged into camp and started killing dudes but he's not cruel at least not anymore the trip to godot seems to have finally snapped some sense into the man he's not actively pushing away anyone anymore like he did before with lost children pretty much every conversation he had with jill was some variation on just go home it's not safe to be around me because it's a legitimate warning that he should really tell people guts doesn't want to watch them die he simply accepts that he can't stop it from happening if someone insists on getting involved yet now he's single-minded again he's not thinking about how other people get hurt because of him worrying about the road ahead he just wants to see kaska safe you can argue how much of an improvement this really is since he's basically just shedding out the reality of what's gonna happen for the sake of fantasy in his head really just trading one obsession with the other but even that's better compared to who he was before the dude was hallucinating a demonic dog that drinks blood alright feels like a good amount of time for a break let's go ahead and finish up this arc now fair warning things ramp up fast and get pretty weird it's still great in fact the consequences from what happens once this is over resonate throughout pretty much the rest of the series but it's gonna sound weird and i just want you to be aware of that so it's all built up to this gutz is on his way to the tower of conviction luca isidro and puck are following along the rest of the prostitutes are staying away from the camp in case the hunters try and find them guts tried to tell the other two that they shouldn't come along but they aren't budging the way isidro sees it he'll finally get a chance to make up for getting the girls captured and lucas says she'll be able to pull some favors that'll help them infiltrate the tower the other prostitutes have a bad feeling about what's to come but all they can do is pray their friends come back safe skull night's message rings inside of gutz's head about how it's impossible to stop what's on the horizon and we see this orb looking dude sitting on top of the tower watching everything this is the guy that's been skulking around and doing [ __ ] manipulating things from the shadows it's the apostle skull knight has been talking about the entire time and he is i can't even begin to describe let's just say that he's important we can see puff fly around the tower trying to find where they might have taken nina and koska for some reason the knights can see puck out in the open something they couldn't do before in fact puck can't help but think something feels wrong all around it turns out nina and koska have been thrown into a jail cell our puffy-haired friend is crying begging luka to save her and even asking kosuke if she can use her witch powers to save them but naji nina gets frustrated at how her companion doesn't seem to understand how serious things are and pushes her to the floor you [ __ ] nina tries to yell at koska but she feels bad about it almost immediately as much as nina tries to act mean or swear off elaine her fear of being alone makes her stick to whoever she can to give her comfort well the torturers finally come calling demanding one of them come along for interrogation at first they try to grab koska but when they notice nina is too scared to even try and stop them they decide to swap prisoners saying that they can't stand selfish people so really her not speaking up just incurred this guy's wrath nina's mind is going a mile a minute angry at herself for trying to sell out kaska wondering why she's so desperate to stay alive when she's basically dying anyway and thinking that maybe if she just told them everything they might let her go without any torture all she has to do is tell them kaska is a witch and she might be safe but then luca would be right she really would just be a scared stupid coward and it tries to muster her courage she would face whatever is about to come head-on and try and protect costco she can't be a coward anymore luca expects her to be strong no matter what these people did to her nina won't sell out her friend okay [ __ ] this [ __ ] this chick stepped into a literal nightmare so uh have fun with that farnese and serpico meanwhile discovered that they've been called back to the holy see now that the main threat of the heretics is pretty much destroyed the two can finally go home farnese tries to argue that they're still needed in saint albion that she can't just abandon her men but it turns out the order came directly from farnese's father the vandamian family offers substantial donations to the church it's who the refugees were getting supplies from in the first place so this isn't a suggestion it's in order farnese knows right away that serpico is the one who wrote to her father she feels betrayed thinking he told her family that she's been gleefully lighting people on fire like a lunatic but he swears that's not what happened though she does recognize he was probably acting under orders from her father from the beginning even if the two are friends or have any other relationship he can't exactly ignore his boss she ends the conversation by making serpico swear his loyalty to her above anyone else he does so but despite this farnese worries for a second that he might actually despise her deep down now we know that he doesn't in fact he seems pretty protective of farnese even going so far is basically all but declaring a vendetta against guts for what happened when she was kidnapped but he never seems to let her know the extent of his feelings and if you want to say the guy might be in love with her please get that thought out of your head you will thank me later the torturers walked past the two sobbing nina in tow she gave up everything they didn't even rip off one fingernail and she sang like a bird for her reward she gets one last night to live but koska dies tonight you [ __ ] well i mean honestly what were you expecting i mean she walked straight into that what what were you expecting her to do still mazgis thanks barnes for her hard work him and his men are so busy torturing the surviving heretics they can barely keep up with the numbers he swears he will pay her back for a job well done even promising to make up for the casualties her men sustained the conversation shifts to the incident at the cave about the monsters and then the black swordsman the torturers bring koska in and they discuss how gutz was trying to save her they still believe she is a witch worshipped by the cult and some of the people being tortured start begging koska to save them as she's led into the room well mazus decides to tear open her dress and it reveals koska's brand stating that it's the mark of a witch i have no clue how he knew it was there assuming he just wanted to see her naked and it was a happy coincidence still this is all the proof they need that koska is in league with evil so her punishment will involve being shoved inside of an iron maiden puck flies into the torture room just in time to see kaska being forced inside the device he tries to save her but something happens her brand activates the spirits of the dead now possessing the blood stains inside of the iron maiden and they force the entire thing to explode the blood has now become a living blob [Music] guts isidro and luca approach the tower his brand's starting to bleed so bad that he just knows something is wrong with the place luca manages to get them inside thanks to a contact who leaves them a ladder to climb up through the window luca tries to tell them to be as subtle as possible to not show their faces since if the whole place goes up in arms they won't be able to save anyone well as she talks with her contact and bribes him to go find jerome gutz decides to jump through the window he wasn't listening the black swordsman does not take any orders from noho so now luca and isidro are forced to sneak in by themselves while guts barrels through the tower of conviction by himself surrounded by enemies coming back to the scene at the torture chamber we see the blob of blood flood into the room digesting any living being it can find the whole place devolves into chaos serpico and funny is running for it while mazgis and his men retreat back into the chapel and puck is forced to watch koska be consumed by the blob guts finds the survivors just having barely escaped the newly created monsters downstairs and grabs farnies as the rest aren't looking he interrogates her about where they took koska showing that he is in no mood for games she tells him that they took her downstairs but it's impossible to go back he demands farnis lead him down even breaking a stone statue above her head to scare the hell out of her she decides to listen to the very very scary man and the two make their way back to the basement serpaco tailing just behind nina meanwhile is crying in her jail cell unaware of what's happening in the rest of the tower and racked with guilt over selling alcoska she hates herself for giving in so easily but she's scared she doesn't want to die while screams of the guards outside snap her out of her thoughts hearing them talk about running away and leaving the prisoners for dead the monsters are coming she hears foreboding sounds coming from below her and nina begs to be released banging on the door as the noises get closer she's finally let out of her cell by lucca who managed to meet up with jerome he says everyone in the tower is in an uproar over an incident that happened in the basement so they need to get out of there as fast as possible isidro lets the other prisoners out of their cells to distract the rest of the guards jerome begrudgingly accepting that his job as a heretic hunter is dead and buried he might have ruined his life for a woman but it was luka so it was kind of worth it so you see that even though he's kind of an [ __ ] noble dude is alright probably the most relatable of the bunch we have here because he's literally just some dude luka even starts to think that maybe he's not just a big mouth she asks nina where they took costco but she's too scared to admit they took her down into the torture chamber though jerome comes in to save her by guessing that it's probably the only place she could possibly be at but before they can make their way downstairs they see something in the darkness ahead that blob is now a lot bigger than before filling the entire hallway and barreling straight for them yeah if you like the frank therabond remake of the blob you're probably gonna love the next few chapters anyway gods and farnis make it down to the torture chamber now wiped clean of all signs of life only skeletons left behind guts finds puck who stayed hidden inside of a helmet to avoid the monster he explains what happened and how he saw koska be devoured but he couldn't feel her presence vanished like the other victims it's a long shot but she might still be alive farnese thinks guts is a crazy man who's talking to himself up until she sees puck she can finally see the elf which makes sense because for some reason everyone can see him now in fact she's just now realizing puck's been there the whole time even back when she tried to fiddle with gutz's sword so that's kind of awkward the big guy goes to leave and lays it out flat for farnese she can do whatever she wants but if she tries to stop him again he will kill her farnese looks down at some of the blob monster bubbling up from the floor and decides it's probably a good idea to stay with the guy who is an experienced monster hunter mozgus and his men are in the tower chapel desperately keeping the door closed as the blob tries to burst into the room the rest of the torturers want to keep mosques safe but he swears this is simply a test from god in fact he's proud of the challenge ahead if they die it's in glorious battle serving the lord's will if they survive it's because they were strong enough to pass the test god gave them there's also that weird looking orb guy on the ceiling but we don't care about him he's a weirdo for a brief moment we see koska is asleep inside of the blob the demon infant using its power to keep her safe well back to the fight at the chapel we see the orp guy sting mozgus with one of its tentacles then moving on to the rest of the torturers luca and her group are trying to get away from the monster running as far up the tower as they can but unfortunately every floor is flooded with the thing they're cornered at all angles and the only thing that saves them is a blast of fire burning the creature away we see kaska is finally freed but the demon infant soaked up the brunt of the attack so it goes flying mozgus has his hands on koska the mysterious apostle has given him and his men demonic powers just like the goat man mazgis thinks it's a miracle from god that they were chosen to be his warriors now the others want to save koska but mazgis still intends on murdering her viewing their prisoner is the reason the monster is attacking the tower in the first place seeing them as enemies intending on disrupting their holy cause mazgus's men attacked the group the torture with the chain sending a stone pillar down at them with his enhanced strength the people outside the tower have no clue what's going on only that there's a lot of screaming and loud noises more so than usual plus that pillar just blew out one of the walls everyone seems okay after the attack but luca almost falls to her death once the floor collapses underneath her inna and jerome desperately trying to hold on we see the orb apostle watching almost smug about what it created only for it to see the silhouette of skull knight standing on the tower with it along with guts puck and farnese running up the tower i know it sounds like i'm jumping around because i kinda am this is literally within the span of a few pages the chapters are a lot shorter than the previous arc so when something just seems to barge in it's because it's played off almost like a cliffhanger back to story time we see the others trying to pull luca back up as the chain torturer readies another attack now the orb apostle seems like it wants to attack luca too probably to transform her into a monster like the others but skull knight reads his sword in case it tries anything nina is trying her hardest to keep a hold on luka but before she realizes it her friend lets go of her hand telling jerome to look after the others before anyone can process what she just did lucas seemingly sacrificing herself to save the others skull knight rushes in to save her catching her as she falls and carrying her on his horse though luca is convinced that yeah she died and he's the grim reaper can't really blame her i mean it's a talking skeleton he was running sideways on a wall are you seriously gonna believe that you made it out of that alive but it seems like it might have just been a coincidence since skull knight is chasing after the orb apostle which ran off during the confusion the others are quickly reminded that someone is trying to kill them once another pillar is sent their way but suddenly broken in two by guts he's here and once again he is ready to kick ass he goes straight for mazgis who leaps out of the way of his attack the [ __ ] is on while all this is happening we see yeah luke is okay she's talking with skull knight really believing she died and is in the afterlife the revenant wonders why she decided to try and kill herself but luca admits she thought she would have survived the fall maybe landing on a tree or sliding along the wall and catching a giant out section in fact now that she's really thinking about it that was a really [ __ ] stupid idea and now she's in the afterlife not lucky enough to go to heaven so she must have been in purgatory or even hell stuck for all eternity with a skeletal horseman surrounded by dead bodies nah she's alive it's the mass grave right outside the tower but she wants to stay alive stay put the apostle from before is still there and it's watching them coming back to guts we see the fight with mazgus is still in full force him and his torturers revealing grand angel wings mazka is using his to fly back and guts trying to take him down with his throwing knives but his men are not going to let their leader go down easy all the while jerome has to keep isidro from rushing into the fight who stupidly believes he can get some glory by helping the black swordsmen but the kid ain't exactly on the same level these pseudo-apostle dudes are no joke the one with the chain takes the lead striking first at guts but he's tragically separated from his right arm after guts meets him in the air the tiny torturer with the four grips tries to get behind him but he has to vanish once guts takes the swing with his iron arm then a kick then the guy is right up in his face and going for his eye so guts bites down on the grips and headbutts the little guy these dudes are strong fighters but they're used to scared peasants who don't know how to fight back now they're dealing with a [ __ ] lunatic who only knows how to kill people so he is just as relentless even the big torturer coming in with a breaking wheel isn't enough to end things they send each other flying breaking through the stone walls the group simply watches and commentates on the whole fight jerome wanting to bail out and isidro shaming him into staying the torturers lose their masks finally showing their faces for the first time since they've been revealed the big one has a baby face that's about the only noteworthy thing the others look as ugly as you expected leaving that on the back burner we see skull knight and luca still dealing with the apostle she has no idea what's happening all of reality is just sort of coming apart at the seams it's been it's been a tough week the apostles says that this place is his garden and the living are not allowed striking at them with his tentacles but skull knight cuts them off the apostle now freaking out since he's realizing a little too late that the dude on the horse is not one to be [ __ ] with he tries to bail skull knight managing to cut him as he leaps away and the apostle snatches luca as he makes his escape skull knight swears the wound is bad enough that the demon can't get too far away but something about his form is bad news luca wakes up in a makeshift shrine an effigy of a hawk made up of human skin and bones surrounded by candles this is the hideout of the apostle he tells luka his story the apostle was nobody he had no name no family nothing his only memories are of being at the base of the tower collecting trash to stay alive one day he stumbled onto a bail it but he had no idea what it was in fact it was only after he found the bailiff that he felt compelled whatsoever to try and seek out other humans well he was obviously chased out of society for being a creepy wild man so he decided to dig a small hole in the ground for shelter only leaving to gather food at night he instinctively dug deeper as time went on almost wanting to just get as far away from the rest of humanity as he can get but one day a corpse fell into his hole followed by others out of nowhere a bunch of villagers settled right at his spot and turned his shelter into a pit to dump dead bodies into it he was crushed by the corpses doomed to die alone without anyone even knowing he existed but as he slipped into unconsciousness the bailout activated he met the godhand who gave him knowledge and showed him the world he could finally put words to emotions concepts thoughts and thanks to this he finally became aware of how pitiful his existence really was so the stranger agreed to sacrifice the one thing he had to grant his wish the world around him also he can become an egg that will hatch and create the perfect world yeah the dude became a living bailit i warned you things were gonna get weird the only reason a mock eclipse is about to happen is because this guy is giving up the one thing he's ever had the world as he knew it he's sacrificing the very earth that saint albion stands on and everyone inside of it and the reason he's doing this he despises other humans and their society he saw them as cowards that have to choose between a broken totalitarian system or death so in their fear they became the very thing they were taught to hate to justify everything to themselves people became heretics because it justified what the holy see were doing to them they needed an actual enemy to be afraid of if not then it would be all for nothing and the apostle hated this his first real emotions was hatred of everyone around him they ruined his garden luca thinks this is some kind of revenge plot but he admits he's been watching her and the other girls for a while specifically nina for some reason she fascinated him on one hand she's a terrified girl clinging to luca like a scared daughter and on the other she's you know so nina embodied the very contradiction that the egg apostle hates she's a coward yet she hates the one thing she clings to in order to not feel scared and everyone in the camp is guilty of the same crime every man woman and child so to create the perfect world these people need to be dealt with coming back to the fight between guts and the torturers we see that it's just as violent as ever the main battle is between guts and the guy with the breaking wheel though the others occasionally jump in to help it's a rough time guts is completely on the defensive he throws one of his knives into the tiny one's eye and tears off the big one's foot with the dragon slayer the momentum is finally turning in his favor and everyone knows it though nina is still pissing herself in the corner she's useless farnese is also losing her [ __ ] but it's a bit more quiet out of nowhere her boss and his friends sprouted angel wings and started attacking everyone every single time gut shows up in her life things stopped making sense the sight of nina crying out for luca actually makes her think about her own childhood the reason she's so terrified of guts is because of what he represents that cozy blanket of religion she used to hide from the scary parts of the world every time he shows up it goes up in smoke her faith really was hollow like guts said and it's only when she's truly powerless and out of her element does she realize this by the way while all of this character introspection is happening isidro hits jerome in the nuts the bird suit torturer tells mozgus to simply leave let them take care of the black swordsmen moscus and the twin torturers decide yeah that's probably a good idea so they can go back to their duty of lighting a mentally handicapped woman on fire isidro latches on to him trying to knock the guy out with a rock but it doesn't work so now he's just kind of forced to hang on as mosques flies away guts are still trying to get to the leader above anything else but the bird suit guy shows off his new abilities he can send out feathers like projectiles and his feet have become bird like talons now tightly gripped onto gutz's head back to luca and the egg apostle we see he's still ranting about how much he hates people he admits that he turned people into pseudo-apostles and says that everything has been set on a path even luca bringing kaska to the temple was a part of fate all the egg apostle has been doing is nudging things around shifting details but they have no control over the end result he keeps talking about something coming that things are pointing to that time obviously referencing the eclipse luca asks why he's even telling her all this just in time for skull knight to dive down for another attack the egg apostle escapes admitting that he simply wanted someone to hear his story before he dies skull knight is surprised the demon was strong enough to move and he wonders if perhaps he hesitated or it simply wasn't the right time to kill him luca asks all knight who he is and he's just as cryptic as ever saying it would be a good idea to stay away from things like him though whatever's about to go down might make that impossible the hideout begins to collapse skull knight eats the bailout the apostle used before leading luca out to safety just as the two start to get comfortable thinking all the horrible [ __ ] is over with skull knight gets their attention all those corpses at the mass grave are combining into a singular entity ah that's not good meanwhile guts is still at the mercy of the plague doctor now that he's pinned the chain torturer and the tiny guy take the opportunity to take hold of his arms even as he's at the mercy to these sadistic [ __ ] all guts cares about is getting koska away from mazgus but they're long gone with him trapped the torturers decide to beat guts to death with a breaking wheel condemning him to death for attacking the clergy he's sent flying from a single strike then forced through a stone pillar he can't dodge out of the way it's just too fast so if you can't dodge them then [ __ ] it go for the gold gutz fires his cannon just as the wheel hits him blowing out the organs of the big torturer and now that he's got a speed boost he uses the force to slice the chain torturer in two the plan wasn't fun but thanks to the deadly art of physics guts managed to kill two enemies in one similar to how he killed the mantis and beetle back in lost children though now he has an audience that thinks he's really cool he even managed to finish off the tiny torturer with some bombs along with sticking the dragon slayer in his chest everyone is dead except for the plague doctor who just starts praying as he tries one last attack sending feathers at guts and locking his neck with that device i still don't know what that thing is called but guts barely responds to it instead he just swings his sword cutting the last attacker's throat open the birdman thanks god for letting him meet father mazgus collapsing to his knees in prayer as he bleeds to death well guts takes off the device and pulls out the feathers the other spectators barely able to understand how this dude managed to kill these guys they were infamous for a reason but no time for a break the tower starts collapsing around them luca and skull knight watch the corpses and the mass grave become a massive blob just like what happened in the tower this time it's a humongous beast feeding off the malice that's flooding the place only made worse as the worlds of the living and the dead start to fuse the two ride to safety as the monster tries to attack skull knight convinced that the mock eclipse is starting all the while azan talks with the other knights about the scene at the tower having just recaptured the prisoners isidro let loose for some reason everyone they've talked to is freaking out about monsters inside but that's silly and to make matters worse nobody knows what happened to farnese then the [ __ ] tower explodes they all watch in horror as a shapeless form pours out the blob now moving on to devour everyone it can in the camp the tower collapsing from the inside as it rips through the monastery our poor heroes are forced to run for it as everything falls apart barneys trips on the stairs and almost falls to her death when she's suddenly saved by serpico he's still alive but probably not for long a lot of heavy stones are falling on top of everybody moscus and esidro still flying in the air watch the tower fall apart the ruins breaking down into the shape of a hand seem familiar we see the other girls are still outside the camp watching the tower collapse while the prostitutes tried to run down worried about what happened to her friends but she's thankfully swayed away from the idea especially when they start to hear screaming from the slums it's complete hell on earth dark spirits are possessing people and wreaking havoc all the scared villagers are ripped to pieces by the horde of monsters their survivors run for the tower for shelter unaware of the blob monster rampaging there and our protagonist wakes up just as the camp descends into an utter nightmare guts watching in horror as fires burn in the shape of a brand just like before he's standing on the palm of a hand as demons slaughter everyone below and he knows this azan and his men are trying to evacuate the tower just as the villagers run towards them for shelter to possess following right behind and to make things even worse the blob is coming for them from the side it seems like all is lost but a wave of fire burns away everything mazgis makes its debut throwing isidro off as he makes a big inspiring speech he believes god bestowed him with his powers to save everyone from the monsters and orders the villagers to make a stake if they can burn koska they might be able to get everything to disappear still thinking she's the one doing all this mazkas and his remaining torturers protect the villagers as they prepare the pillar azan and his knights jumping into the fight to protect whoever they can as well isidro survived being heated by mazgus him and puck reuniting as they watch them off drag koska over to the stake gutz also sees this but he's distracted by the blob manifesting behind him consuming the corpses of mazgus's soldiers while it shapes itself into the forms of the god hand guts tries to attack almost by reflex but they aren't the real thing simply reshaping itself whenever he strikes he remembers skull knight's words this isn't the real eclipse it's basically a shadow an imitation in fact the pain from his brand isn't as excruciating as it is when he's next to the real deal the blob closes in around guts as the villagers finish their stake and he's faced with his choice waste his time fighting this thing off or rush down to save his woman guts tries to push through but it's simply too much koska is tied to the pillar and they light their torches all he can think about is how this is exactly how it happened last time he was so busy fighting he couldn't save kaska and now the same ending is about to take place he won't be able to keep her safe luka and skull knight escape from the camp and he even tells her to stay as far away as she can but she can't help herself she's going back to save her friends skull knight respects her grit willing to throw herself back into literal hell to save her loved ones and admits that even if she asked him he wouldn't be able to help it's not how this works this is a parallel to the eclipse meaning someone came back for him to fight zod the egg apostle was crawling up the tower bleeding from the wound skull knight gave him he's reflecting on his life how things could have been different if he met mozgus like the others but in the end it never happened all he can do now is wait for death as he climbs he spots the demon infant curled into a hole of its own dying having spent too much of its power to keep koska safe taking pity on the corrupted child the egg apostle takes it into his body saying that it'll be able to die peacefully with the demon and this i can't even begin to describe how important this ends up being just now that it gets it goes some [ __ ] places like the most recent chapters basically made this scene probably one of the biggest ones in the entire [ __ ] story anyway koska is at the mercy of the mob isidro and puck watching from the wall above the others are there on the wall with him jerome pretending to still be a heretic hunter and planning on running off with nina the first chance they get because he doesn't want farnese and serpaco to be mad at him though isidro spoils the plan with his big mouth koska hallucinates the crowd as a horde of demons remembering her time during the eclipse it's all symmetrical like poetry it rhymes just as mazgas gives the order to set her on fire guts is stuck fighting the blob watching the torches fly towards koska no matter what he does he can't get out of the way the stake is lit burning at koska's feet but just because things are similar doesn't mean they're going to be the same details are shifted around and if enough details are changed then maybe maybe you can affect the outcome guts managed to do this even if unintentionally he's not completely alone this time easy drone the others prepare a risky bungee jump the kid leaps down grabs koska and pulls her out of the stake before it can burn her alive they did it they saved her this pisses off mozgus something fierce and he dives down to recapture the witch they just barely managed to avoid his attack and we see guts exploded out of the blob he's managed to fight his way out and he isn't stopping just as skull knight guessed guts is more than just a shadow on the water he's something more running down the tower right for moscos he impales him right in the chest the two slam straight into the stone wall the impact hard enough to explode dust and bricks all over the crowd the terrified peasants watch their guardian angel be defeated by a demon in all black gut standing triumphant over the priest for a brief moment guts could have sworn he saw the demon infant but he's unaware of what's going on with the echopostal and all that mess who gives a [ __ ] guts managed to save his mocha chocolate waifu all is good in the world oh [ __ ] i forgot about those two yeah the twins are still alive and they're intent on making sure koska dies though isidro won't let them take her also mazus is still alive he's alive and fully transformed into an apostle his angel wings now stony arms that just beat the living [ __ ] out of guts guts is distracted worrying about kaska but jerome goes out of his way to protect her from the twins letting guts take his mind off that and focus on the fight he finally has people he can trust to take care of things he's not shouldering everything by himself and he absolutely needs that because mazgis is royally pissed off turns out the bible he always carried with him protected him from the attack giving him enough time to transform covering himself in new armor these solid scales now the guy is nearly indestructible he orders the twins to capture koska the others get to be torn apart by the saw and once he realizes that guts being there means that he had to have killed the rest of his men mazu starts crying blood swearing to kill guts in order to honor their memory they fight but mazgis is on a whole other level now each hit is like being smacked with a heavy stone and the dragon slayer barely affects him now guts is distracted momentarily by the twins swooping down to get koska and mazgus uses this window to beat him senseless while we take a break from the fight to see azan is in the middle of complete insanity he's trying to protect the refugees but they can barely keep up between them the blob and the possessed especially since mazgus isn't burning away the monsters to give them a bit of support if things don't get better fast they're all gonna die guts is still getting his ass beat it's kinda sad mazgus is relentless with the attacks even using his fire breath to burn him to a crisp it seems like the guy can't be stopped only for the flames to be redirected into the air hitting the twins guts use the dragon slayer as a wall to keep the fire away from him and he shoves the blade into mazgus's mouth and tries to take the top of his head off with a heavy push but it's not working the guy is a tough bastard biting down on the sword and keeping guts stuck in place he tries to break the blade now that he's vulnerable but a well-placed throwing knife in the eye throws mazgis into a rage the others debate on what to do next whether they run away or stay and try to finish off the last two torturers to help guts nina is freaking out convinced that if she stays then she's a dead woman she tries to run only to see farnese and serpico walking towards them nina freezes still thinking they'll kill her for heresy and the twins ready their saw around her neck right before they can decapitate her however she slips over the edge of the wall and crashes through a conveniently placed shed the others aren't sure if she's alive or dead but they don't really have time to care the torturers are still hanging around in the air puck offers to handle the situation much to isidro and jerome's skepticism but he's actually pretty useful since he can blind people remember [ __ ] you guys you're just haters [ __ ] is cool still now the twins are vulnerable giving isidro a shot to nail them with his throwing stones they fall to the ground and get executed by jerome moschus is distracted by their deaths upset to see the last of his friends dead and genuinely confused as to why people are trying to interfere with his work but guts isn't stopping he swears he will never let moscos touch koska again the surviving peasants begged mazgis to defeat guts as the blob gets closer still convinced he's the one man who can stop the horrors from devouring them all the fight between guts and mazgas remains a pretty tight stalemate the dragon slayer unable to break through the armor guts getting the wind knocked out of him and mozgus using this chance to bring his attention to all the terrified people begging them to sacrifice koska should thousands die to save one woman the rest of the cast pondered the question isidro doubting his claims but puck actually wonders if maybe moscos has a point maybe if the people with the brands leave the area things will go back to normal we know this is [ __ ] since it's actually the egg apostle that caused everything to go to hell it's part of a larger scheme by the god hand but these guys weren't there for that story still guts doesn't seem to give a [ __ ] anyway the way he sees it the villagers were idiots for putting their faith in a single woman anyway they could have run away or tried to escape but instead they chose to bow down and wait for someone to save them so [ __ ] them mosques is pissed off at guts for insulting their faith and unintentionally exposes his weak spot the spot where the dragon slayer hit the bible dug into moscos creating a vulnerability in his armor guts is beaten senseless so badly that he seemingly knocked out cold only limply putting one hand against moscow as he falls to the ground even then he's not given any relief the demon priest slamming him into the floor again and again mazus tries to give a speech about how guts will never win because he doesn't believe in jesus that's basically what it amounts to but it turns out he's a bit more clever than the evil preacher gave him credit for he put a handful of bombs right in the weak spot right where the bible saved him before they explode and open a huge hole in moscow's chest and guts go straight in slashing at the new wound and tearing him open gut says one final message for his opponent before he dies if you see god tell him to leave me the hell alone if you're a reddit atheist that's probably the tightest [ __ ] ever the fight ends with guts driving his sword namaskus's neck going straight through and bursting out the back his scales flying off from the force it's finally over mazgus and his men are all dead his final words of prayer as fire bellows out from his wounds he tries to pull guts down with him but the guy isn't having it flinging mozgus off his sword and straight to the ground everyone watching as the attempted savior lands in the middle of the crowd they have no one to save them now and the blob is getting closer it's a scene of complete carnage people consumed in a tidal wave of death all the hate and despair of the dead now coming to get its revenge on the living the refugees begged the party to kill koska as the blob devours them whoever is left by the wall is now absorbed and melted down by the monster koska convulses as something upsets her and puk sees the vision of the eclipse but she slaps him away before he can get a good idea of what's going on in her head the only thing that seems to stop her shaking is guts pulling her into a hug they're finally reunited the ceremony is nearly complete all of the villagers are being absorbed into the blob the egg apostle thinks about what is to come happy with his revenge and glad that he can die with purpose he talks to the demon infant inside of him now looking a lot more human than before meanwhile azan tries to lead what's left to the survivors but the situation is just a complete hellstorm the refugees retreat into the tower even though there's also some of the blob monster inside the holy iron chain knights are trying to cover their escape the gate to the tower is lowered and those outside are left for dead azan feeling betrayed as he and his men are essentially abandoned by the people they tried to save we see nina is still alive though she broke her ankle in the fall she knows the monsters are coming and it would be a really good idea to start running away but her injury limits her movements she tries to use a broom as a walking stick but falls to the ground just in time to see the panic mop of villagers running straight for her the only thing that saves nina from being trampled is luka jumping to a rescue getting her out of the way the river of people just in the nick of time the two are happily reunited but the blob isn't giving them any time to celebrate luca knows that nina can't run with her injury so the plan is to hide her in a barrel it can only fit one person however so they have to separate besides someone needs to seal it shut nina is terrified of being left alone but luka is the only one who can put the cover on for her so she tries to reassure the coward that all she has to do is stay put and act scared and she might actually end up making it out alive after closing the barrel tight luca is left to find a solution on her own the monster inching closer the rest of the party remains safe on top of the wall but they're expecting that to change as the beast gets closer for some reason some of the villagers actually survived the blob monster by sticking close to moscow's corpse which is still on fire and burning so they come to the conclusion that maybe it avoids fire guts waste no time tossing a pile of lumber to the ground jerome wants to see if they can escape into the tower seeing as they're completely exposed where they're at but gut swears that's a bad idea with all the villagers running into one spot that's where the monster is going to end up going their only chance is to stick to one spot and fight until sunrise where the blob will get burned away farnese can barely handle how calm guts is acting going from terrified to the guy to damn near worshipping him in a matter of seconds while she's scared of everything this guy just treats these horrible things as routine in a weird way it's comforting for her almost like she's leeching off his bravery guts also has a discovery of his own ever since he became the black swordsman guts has been worried that everything he's been through has been for nothing that's been pointless and there's no hope left but now he knows there's something to stay alive for guts has a reason to keep going a slight glimmer of hope deep inside with that our party gets down to business burning away any part of the blob that gets too close guts has to protect farnese from a chunk of the monster that comes down for her and despite basically insulting her for needing the rescue she's inspired by how fearless he seems in the face of that [ __ ] thing and here is where sort of a weird moment happens as if things didn't get strange enough farnese closes her hands around her torch and tries to pray and guts yells at her for it saying if she prays she can't fight if you're praying your hands are closed now i get the idea of what he's saying don't waste time shut up and fight but for some reason this quote is like historic for farnis not to spoil what happens later but this quote in particular comes up once or twice when she thinks back on what happens here now it's a pretty awesome scene in general but i don't really get why this quote is enough to stick out for her it's fine it's not like it's bad it's just i don't know it's kind of clunky to use as the line you think something like you won't touch that woman again or if you meet god you know one of those but i understand that this is supposed to be important for farnese it's supposed to be what sticks out for her and her character still it's just sort of a weird quirk and really the idea is to get her to knock off the same [ __ ] that got all the villagers killed don't wait for someone to save you save yourself our party is now fully dedicated to burning away the monster also nina is still in the barrel she's panicking like never before she's terrified she's gonna be crushed to death or that the monster will leak in and devour her but she coughs up blood in her hands and it kind of steals her thoughts she remembers that she's still sickly and could die at any moment but all this does is make nina latch onto life even harder as much as she claims to hate luca she was right the more scared she is the harder she'll try to stay alive so she'll sit tight in the barrel just like her mentor told her to it's definitely the smart choice considering everyone else is dying horrifically so yeah just try to fall asleep or something also guts was right when he guessed the inside of the tower was a bad idea and matters only get worse as the blob tears down what's left of the stone in the tower replacing it all with the hand-shaped mountain we saw during the eclipse guts koska even puck are overwhelmed by the presence of so much undead the collective consciousness of the living and the dead are demanding one thing the desired one the egg apostle was forming into a complete face proud of his work hatching the perfect world the realms are merging as one even guts as baillet is reacting to whatever is happening to cause all this sudden pain force guts and koska to the ground they can feel something is here is coming into their world and guts calls it god we see the inside of the egg apostle one last time the demon infant now turning into a very familiar shape the living balet dies as he hatches his purpose finally complete the ritual is over the blob explodes running back down to the earth below guts calling out for griffith as the prophecy is repeated one last time when the sky falls at the holy ground with blind sheep gather and erect a pillar of fire it will come the grounds around the temple are completely in ruins the tower is destroyed a cloud of dust smothering everything in sight the morning sun illuminating the destruction and chasing away the demons the rest of the prostitutes are amazed to see the place produced to ashes what was once a spot revered by the holy see and the one chance villagers fleeing war and plagues could go is now a pile of rubble our parties survived the night thankfully isidro jerome farnese serpico puck and of course guts and costco nina survived too who's honestly shocked that she made it out okay they all reunite and set out to find luca the one party member unaccounted for and just as she worries that her mentor is dead they hear her calling from a well nearby she jumped in to avoid the blob and was stuck there for the rest of the night it seems like a happy ending everyone made it out okay oh [ __ ] it's these guys the cushions decide now is the best time to show up not when the horrible monsters were eating everyone in sight and our group is surrounded by the enemy led by salat it turns out an oracle gave them a prophecy that led them to saint albion and they're searching for a specific figure that might have survived shockingly it might not be guts instead the kushans decide to capture everyone in hopes of finding the one they're looking for a full-blown melee begins everyone trying to fight off the sudden ambush though having just spent an entire night trying not to die from horrible creatures kind of made everyone understandably a bit tired some of the cushions trapped the women intending on using them as bargaining chips but that's when we see azan survive the night as well and he is ready to beat ass everyone prepares for another wave of enemies only for nosferatu zod to explode out of the rubble the sudden appearance of the actual monster gives everyone the chance to slip away from the fight but that's when guts sees skull knight pointing at something in the distance this entire ritual the mock eclipse and mass sacrifice was specifically designed to bring a certain somebody back into the mortal world griffith he's back the [ __ ] just came back right in front of guts it really was a complete mirror of the eclipse the original one turned griffith into a demon and the parallel eclipse turned him into a human or at least gave him a physical body i won't really call him human everyone is just staring at him as nosferatu zod approaches and bows his head griffith was the prophesized one that the entire world wanted to summon the god hand manipulated reality itself to bring him back for a moment guts is consumed with hate wanting to rush over and kill him like he's been dreaming about for two years but he's pulled back from the edge by koska's cries reminding him that his new goal is to keep her safe not hunt after griffith the cushions try and capture griffith salt desperate to accomplish his mission in order to restore his clan to glory but nosferatu zod demands they cease their [ __ ] violently the rest of the parties slip away during the slaughter gatsenkoska too consumed by the image of griffith to even move guts in complete shock okaska is almost instinctively trying to get close to him for some reason the others managed to get away from the battle seeing a massive army of cushions a mere few feet away the war party marches by as the group tries to go by unnoticed isidro is pissed off at the idea of leaving guts and costco behind but they can't go back for them and they all watched zod fly off the newly resurrected griffith riding on his back then a commotion kicks up from the ruins it's guts he's still one of the cushion horses and is riding out of there koskinen puck and toe killing anyone that gets in his way the party is sure that the trio would survive their escape easy drove certain that he would see them again and they also see that some villagers did survive the ordeal the ones who booked it out of the slums as fast as possible all the devoted believers who panicked and tried to sink sanctuary in the monastery were devoured but then non-believers who put survival above all outs made it out luca gathers flowers mourning the egg apostle and offering what little tribute she can even if he was a monster who killed thousands he was still a pitiful soul who died completely alone having at least one person remember him is enough though whatever world he wanted to create has yet to be seen the ark comes to a close with our characters going their separate ways isidro chasing after guts still desperate to be his apprentice and nina is conflicted on whether or not she wants to stay with luca if she does she'll always be protected and she'll feel safe when she goes down to the river to soak her foot she runs into yawkem turns out he was hiding in the mountains after leading the knights to the hideout despite everything all the horror and suffering he still really does like nina he admits he was afraid and that he hates himself for being a coward causing nina to realize that the two are pretty much the same deep down they're scared people looking for someone to give them comfort so maybe they'd be all right together barnes thinks about everything that happened after she met guts at the tower of conviction fell apart like a sand castle she spent her entire life dedicated to religion only for it all to come crashing down she admits her faith was only a shield to hide from her problems from her fear and parts of herself she can't stand azan despises himself for surviving the whole ordeal in the first place he was buried by rubble but saved from being crushed by his club and he mentions that a similar incident happened before where he was abandoned by the people he was trying to save in fact he says it's why he became a part of the holy see in the first place i would say this goes places but that'd be a lie let's just rip that band-aid off right now yeah it never gets covered who this dude was barney surprises him and serpico with her announcement she's leaving the holy see abandoning her position and dedicating to her new quest she'll follow the black swordsman but not to hunt him to her guts represents a new way of life the chance to become brave to finally face the fear she's dealt with since childhood hell she refers to him as her saint serpaco decides to go along not about to abandon her now azan has the chance to run away himself to abandon his life as a knight and choose a new road like his comrades but somebody has to bear the brunt of what happened and it's also possible he's dealing with some survivor's guilt so he kind of wants to be punished for surviving because as far as we know it the holy iron chain knights are all dead these are the only guys left standing jerome and the girls are stuck waiting for nina unaware of her choice to leave with jakum as much as she loves her friends and especially luca nina wants to try being with jakum being with someone stronger than her just makes her resent them present herself so she'll stay with somebody just as flawed and cowardly as she is she wishes them all goodbye hoping she'll get to see them all one day luca seems to pick up on what happened simply calling nina a troublesome girl the last image of the conviction arc is skull knight staring at the rubble from afar talking about how the shape of the world has started to come apart holy [ __ ] [ __ ] this was a massive arc if the time length hasn't been obvious i can't even begin to imagine how long this video has been think about this guys the the beginning of the video is about the prototype do you remember eyepatch guts do you remember jill do you remember the demon tree in fact i'm hoping you guys picked up on why i didn't want to just cover lost children for a video but conviction at large it's because if we ended right at lost children that'd be a pretty [ __ ] grim ending for this part granted that's a lot of berserk but seeing how conviction ends with an honestly bittersweet ending above all else might finally show what i've been talking about berserk is a dark series with a lot of pain and suffering but there's fragments of humanity that shine through thousands of villagers were eaten alive by a horrible blob monster assuming they weren't ripped apart by demonically possessed people or were tortured by mazgas or got the plague or got murdered by cushing's still despite everything all that pitch black nihilism and worst case scenarios you saw the good in people luca was a great character very selfless and kind easy draw is a good addition to bounce off of guts you basically have naruto thrown into this bleak very violent and adult world his personality being so braggadocious and over the top compared to the let's face it grim giant dressed in black is a good contrast farnese and serpico went from two-dimensional bad guys just [ __ ] zella to want to hunt guts to fleshed out characters on the road to redemption hell guts himself went through a redemption arc he's finally owned up to his mistakes and dedicated himself to the woman he loves it's a great shift in his character and it's not even done yet plus the scale of the story just got thrown into outer space with the invasion of the cushing empire and all the god hand shenanigans yeah we are at the beginning to that the beginning griffith just came back into reality and is running off with zod to go do whatever it is they're gonna do instead of beginning and ending on child murder i want you all to see that berserk is more than just tragedy every arc so far has ended in horrible things happening but conviction is the first time you see our characters win well and truly win you might not like them all some people really want to see nina die but not ending with another everyone dies slash ends up traumatized deal is refreshing to say the least and the cliffhanger is enough to keep anybody this deep into berserk going because if you thought [ __ ] got crazy with conviction you have no idea what's about to happen but that's all for part 4 covering the war of the millennium falcon that is the actual name of it that that i'm not making a joke that is the actual name and it's also the longest arc in all of berserk oh dear sweet [ __ ] christ still this has been a long time coming and i hope you guys enjoyed the ride i can't even begin to tell you when part four is happening this sucked a lot out of me and i'm probably gonna distract myself with some other videos just to get a break from this hell i might split the next part into two parts just not to get overloaded it's gonna be it's gonna be fun we're gonna have a lot of fun are you guys ready for the fun still i'm happy that everyone's enjoying this nevertheless it's time to close out part three until next time please remember to like comment and subscribe see you guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] life [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] me [Music] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] no [Music] [Music] you

Channel: TheAlmightyLoli

Views: 1,063,416

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Id: 91s7XFSrUPQ

Length: 276min 40sec (16600 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021