Berserk volume 6 breaks bonds and creates new ones
No one who has been paying attention to Berserk up to this point expects Guts’ life to be easy. Even when he manages to find a group he can consider a family and has the time to begin to process the trauma he suffered as a child, his life as a mercenary means that he can never leave that pain behind. Not when someone like Griffin is pulling the strings.
Just like in previous entries in our Berserk deep dive, we’ll be tackling some tough topics here. Terrible things happen fairly often throughout the manga, with this volume specifically portraying child victims of sexual assault.
Griffin’s plan moves forward in Berserk
Volume 6 of Berserk starts by setting up a different sort of conflict. Rather than the purely physical contests that have been the focus up to this point, we see Griffin gaining the ire of his political rivals in Midland. As his star rises with the king, Griffin has to contend with jealous nobles and those who don’t think a commoner should be given any sort of rank or station.
The fact that the king’s daughter, Princess Charlotte, seems to be taking a shine to the mercenary doesn’t help things and soon a plot between the king’s brother and one of the ministers of the kingdom hatches. On a hunt, they intend to kill the leader of the Band of the Hawk using a single poison arrow to the heart.
It’s a plan that is so simple that it actually has a chance to succeed were it not for the fact that Griffin seems to be favoured by the gods of this world. Coincidence is rife in this part of the story, either to give Griffin the opportunity he needs, such as when the princess stumbles and he gets to save her from a nasty tumble down the stairs, or to save his life by having the poison arrow hitting the Behelit that Griffin wears around his neck rather than pierce his skin.
You could chalk it up to a healthy dose of plot armour since we know Griffin is going to play a bigger role in Berserk than we’ve seen yet, but here it is used effectively to give the young knight a sense of destiny surrounding him. Of course, these things will happen to a man like him. The fact that Griffin never seems surprised to always find himself in the right place at the right time only adds to his mystique. More than even the most monstrous creatures we’ve seen in Berserk, it makes Griffin feel like a force of nature as much as a man.
Of course, just because he survives doesn’t mean that Griffin won’t take action against those who tried to take his life. He sends his most trusted fighter to exact revenge on the king’s brother, casting Guts in the role of an assassin while wearing the same docile smile on his face. Once again, the almost angelic way that Griffin is drawn and the obvious malice he acts with are perfectly balanced to make him the most unsettling person we’ve encountered in Berserk, and several of the monsters Guts has fought have literally eaten people.
Despite usually being so intelligent, it is curious why Griffin sent Guts to kill his enemy. Guts is many things, but stealthy isn’t usually one of them. He makes too much noise upon entry and has to fight his target, which ends up bringing the man’s young son into the room. Without thinking, Guts impales the child on his sword.
One thing Berserk does well is focusing on the consequences of violence. Guts is never shy about inflicting violence in the name of war, but even he is shocked at how easily he was able to kill an innocent child. As the victim of violence and abuse as a child, Guts is terrified of his actions. He flees the estate and seeks out Griffin, who has spent the evening at a party with Princess Charlotte.
The scene where Griffin waxes poetic about who he would consider a friend is interesting in how casually cruel it paints him as. With Guts, who is still bleeding from the wounds he got while murdering Griffin’s enemies, listening in, he explains that the only ones he could only be friends with those who are his equals.
This doesn’t include the troops under him. In fact, Griffin holds them with a certain amount of contempt, knowing that they see their purpose as merely following another rather than finding their own way in the world.
This volume of Berserk is mainly focused on driving a wedge between Guts and Griffin, but it ends with building the next most important relationship in Guts’ life. During a battle against an opposing army, Casca is caught off balance because, I kid you not, she’s having her period at the time. It’s a frustrating development, not least of which because we’ve not seen Casca win a fight yet. Others talk about her being a great fighter but we’ve yet to see it in action.
Let the badass woman be badass, damnit.
When Casca is forced off a cliff by the misogynistic commander of the enemy army, Guts moves almost immediately to save her. He keeps her warm after they plunge into the river together, using his body heat to keep her alive. The two are presumed dead by the rest of the Band of the Hawk, though in reality, they’re in a cave, sharing trauma stories.
We finally learn how Casca fell into a mercenary band after Griffin saved her from being raped by a noble as a child. It is another example of how Berserk uses these terrible events to show how they help shape us as we get older. Casca was targeted by the noble for the simple fact that she was a girl, so she’s done everything in her power to cast off everything that she thinks makes her female and, in her mind, at risk of being attacked again.
While you can argue about effective or heavy-handed this exploration is, I enjoy the fact that Berserk never seeks to glorify these acts. It is all about what they do to someone rather than the act itself. As much as everyone praises the art in Berserk, which continues to be some of the best in comics history, the writing is what is really blowing me away.
If you can get passed the terrible things that are depicted in it, Berserk is one of the most celebrated manga series you will ever find. You can pick it up digitally or in paperback on Amazon.
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