What Happens
The Unseen
Puck steals the keys and frees Guts (after wringing out a thank you). They sneak back to Farnese’s tent to get Guts’s things and knock her out, but a guard spots them and forces Guts to take her hostage to escape. He sets her tent on fire and lets the horses loose, but Serpico follows behind him in the confusion.
When Farnese regains consciousness Guts tells her he’s not letting her go until she answers some questions, dangling her over the rocky ground when she refuses to cooperate. Puck tries to apologize for Guts’s behaviour but realizes she can’t see him. Serpico, however, seems to see the spirits that fly past him.
Night of Miracles
The spirits swarm Guts and the others. Farnese can feel their touch if not see them. The horse stumbles and throws them off, into a pack of wild dogs the spirits promptly possess. Farnese refuses to believe her eyes, but Guts tells her that’s why it’s a miracle as he starts killing them.
Past and Future
Farnese tries to mount the horse and run, but it’s possessed too, and almost does things the other way around. Guts rushes back and decapitates it. Puck wonders why that provoked him so much and receives an impression of Casca’s rape.
As the sun comes up Farnese is shaken by the fact she was unable to call on God the entire time.
Morning of Truth
From the shadows a spirits taunts Farnese, reminding her how much pain, both her own and others, arouses her, though she denies it using lies like duty or punishment for her sins. It reminds her that she’s hollow and knows it, using her vested authority to make herself feel powerful. Possessed, she strips naked and goes over to Guts, sitting on the edge of his sword and telling him to cut her in two from the crotch up, slowly so that she can savour the pleasure. He’s about to knock her out when the sun finishes rising and the spirit within her is banished.
When Serpico finds them she orders him to kill Guts. He declines – it’s against their orders and he doesn’t fancy his odds anyway, so she slaps him and storms off. He almost gets the jump on Guts, who reacts in time, and the two only managed to nick each other with their swords. Satisfied, Serpico lets Guts go.
Meanwhile, Farnese vows to kill Guts to avenge her humiliation.
Revelations, Chapters 1-3
Things are rotten in the state of Midland. Plague and famine spread throughout the land, but the King has fallen ill and remains obsessed with finding Griffith. Princess Charlotte refuses to leave her room, and the nobles seem concerned only with self-preservation. But everyone has had a dream where great calamities are followed by the emergence of a shining hawk. The priests say it is an omen that heralds the coming of a saviour…
In Windham, cathedral bells begin to toll. The King is dead. As the citizens mourn his passing in the streets, one little girl chances to look to the hills beyond the city and remarks “the mountains are moving.” Because she’s never seen an elephant before…
Both Zodd and Guts receive visions of a prophecy: “when the sky falls at the holy ground where blind sheep gather and erect a pillar of fire, the desired will come.” In Guts’s vision Casca is tied to the pillar…
Cracks in the Blade
Guts returns to Godo’s home only to find out Casca’s missing. Erica took her outside at one point and she wandered off when the former wasn’t looking. Guts is furious, but Erica angrily reminds him that he’s the one who ditched them for two years.
Godo warns Guts that he’s using fighting and his personal vendetta to hide from the fear and sorrow he feels. Guts says that’s because he lost everything he cared about, but Godo reminds him that he left behind what he cared about most two years ago.
A Feeble Flame
Rickert shows Guts a memorial he made for the Band of the Hawk using swords he forged himself. Guts realizes he’s moved on. In the ore cave that night he insists to himself that he can’t run from what he saw during the Eclipse; he has to finish what he started. But he also accepts that Godo was right and vows to never abandon Casca again.
To Holy Ground, Chapters 1-2
With his sword repaired, a fresh set of armour, and a new repeating crossbow, Guts is ready to go looking for Casca and asks Rickert if there’s any holy ground or gathering place for shepherds nearby. The only thing Rickert can think of is a nearby monastery called St. Albion’s, where refugees have been gathering lately. There are rumors of heretics among them, and the Holy See plans to send an inquisition.
One month prior, the Holy Iron Chain Knights arrived at St. Albion’s amidst growing crowds of refugees. Serpico and Azan discuss the reports that a large army from Kushan to the east may have taken Windham, but Farnese is absorbed in the humiliation of failing to capture Guts and being relieved of it by the Holy See.
The Knights are protecting a massive, iron-plated wagon. A band of armed commoners attack but are defeated by a group of masked, deformed men who emerge from the wagon. Behind them is their leader, the inquisitor Father Mozgus, who’s built like a stone statue and just as intractable. The attackers wanted revenge for their families, who were killed through Mozgus’s orders when their village asked to withhold its tithe to the Church temporarily to avoid starvation. Furious that what he considers just punishment given in God’s name would be defied, Mozgus orders the survivors killed and their bodies strung up on wheels.
Amongst the crowds, a young woman named Luca takes Casca into her care.
Commentary
There’s no denying that this is an extremely violent series, or that that violence is bloody and in-your-face, but that doesn’t mean it’s being glorified, or there for its own sake. Rather, we are shown multiple times it’s most definitely not a good thing. Not only are Guts’s battles against demonkind constantly depicted as gory, unpleasant, and exacting a massive toll on his psyche, war in general is shown to have repercussion that echo beyond the actual fighting. First there was the Black Dog Knights – there’s no way someone like Wyald would be let loose barring really desperate circumstances (and that’s before the fact he’s an Apostle), and now we see that war often leaves as big a mess as it causes once the victory celebrations are over.
Midland may have won, but victory came at a price. Hills were stripped of trees and stone to build forts for the war effort, which deprived creatures like rats of their homes and food sources, which caused them to migrate into the towns and spread plague, which forced the townspeople to flee, and get caught in a landslide because the soil on the hillside is wet and loose from the lack of trees. No glorious victory here, only a vicious cycle where actions that were probably necessary at the time end up making things worse down the road. And for what? Don’t forget, we still have no idea what the Midland-Chuder war was even about. Partly that’s because the main viewpoint characters were mercenaries who make a living off of fighting and aren’t necessarily concerned about the whys and wherefores, but it also serves a larger point – violence costs much, often loses its original purpose if it goes on for too long, and you end up with little to show for it; and what you do is rarely pretty.
Way to go Guts. Just ditch your sort-of girlfriend for two years even though she needs your care and killing all those demons isn’t going to cure her mental state. It’s just like Godo said, he’s sharpening the sword called vengeance in blood “to fix the nicks called sorrow [in his heart].” Except so much sharpening just makes a sword rust more and need more sharpening, until “all that’s left is a pile of rust and scraps.” It’s an apt metaphor for how his quest for vengeance is wearing away at his humanity. Consider his need to insist that those who get caught in the crossfire deserve what happens to them, or the warnings about the Beast of Darkness. He’s not completely gone yet – he doesn’t always believe what he says, he tried to protect others when he could, and he’s able to admit Godo has a point, but if he keeps this up there’s no telling how long his humanity could take the strain.
Agree with it or not, it‘s at least understandable why he’s driven the way he is. He felt powerless during the Eclipse because he was unable to stop Griffith or save any of his friends, especially Casca, and he wants to make things right. But as much as Griffith needs to pay, or how gratifying it is to see him take down beings who cause so much suffering, he‘s using it to hide from his sorrow and pretend it will make everything better, which it won’t. It’s great that he wants to see justice done, but it’s coming at the expense of both something he still has and his own humanity. Maybe Rosine isn’t the only one who didn’t understand the warning of Peekaf’s story. At least he still has a chance to learn his lesson.
He really should take a cue from Rickert. The latter didn’t see the Eclipse in all its demon buffet glory, but he saw enough of the supernatural to know it was involved, and everyone is still dead regardless of how it happened, but he’s hasn’t gone looking for revenge; he built a new life for himself. He really is up there with Jill in terms of maturity when it comes to handling grief. Seriously Guts, teenagers are handling this sort of thing better than you are! Not that he’s much older – he’s only twenty unless I’ve missed my count, but he’s been through so much more than they have, so you’d expect him to handle it better. It does feel kind of unfair to be criticizing Guts when I’ve never been through anything remotely like what he has. I have no clue how I’d react, but there’s no denying that it’s not healthy.
But Guts isn’t the only one who has trouble facing his problems. I doubt Farnese secretly wants to be cut in two, but she’s definitely repressed herself something serious and is trying to use religion and her external authority to compensate for her own lack of an inner life. It won’t let her accept that she’s flogging Guts (or herself) because it’s a release for her pent-up emotions (or a sign she’s secretly into BDSM, I suppose), and that she has to constantly try to prove herself – the manhunt for Guts was her idea, and deny anything that doesn’t fit that very narrow worldview – hence why she can’t see Puck. But since it’s not something she genuinely believes she’s unable to rely on it when it’s put to the test. And since not wanting to believe won’t make something untrue, she’s now got some ugly questions she can’t avoid forever. She may blame Guts for it now, but that’s misguided; it’s her own failings that caused it – the shattered worldview, not almost getting raped by a goddamn horse. That at least is definitely not her fault and I can’t blame her for feeling pissed off, and rather humiliated, after something like that. That she was being dragged around topless because he caught her during her self-flagellation probably isn’t helping her opinion of him either. That had nothing to do with why he captured her, but it’s probably another way she felt vulnerable regardless. Things may have started because of a prophecy in the scriptures, but now it’s personal.
It’s not a very healthy way to use religion, but at least you can say that’s just her. Not so with Father Mozgus; this guy has Holy See endorsement. And he is not a nice man – really, it’s not like those villagers just up and refused to send their tithes, they asked for permission first. I guess the mere notion that they’d even think of asking something like that of a sacrosanct institution like the Holy See seemed suspicious to him. Unlike Farnese, however, his conviction looks genuine and absolute. It doesn’t say much in favour of an organization when they feel this is a guy worth employing.
Neither’s a very flattering portrayal of religious authority, and that’s pretty problematic, given how much religion means to so many reasonable people in the real world, or when it’s (very blatantly) modeled on the Catholic Church. Given the Church’s long history and status as an organization, it’s way too easy to vilify. But like everything else, it’s more complicated than that. There’ll be more room to discuss it next time.
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