Berserk Volume 14: Goodbye Golden Age

We open Berserk’s fourteenth volume with a brutal opening. Guts and Casca’s baby has been destroyed because of Griffith. That alone starts the volume. Somehow Griffith has become more of a terror for our struggler.

After this, we get plenty of set-up as Guts get’s prepared to take on demons. Sadly, poor Rickert is left all alone again as Guts decides to go on his own. While that may be for the best, you can see how this may affect this kid after losing all his family in the most horrific way possible.

We are now finally introduced to the brilliant-character of Farnese whose character only really becomes clear much later, but trust me, she is not a character to forget. She is chasing down Guts, but we cut to two years later and arrive at the Lost Children section of Berserk. While certainly under-appreciated, this arc is a tad more forgettable as it would’ve probably worked better in the  Black Swordsman arc than Conviction.

There is a town that is haunted by elves that eat children, and it connects to this girl Jill, who Guts saved previously, as her friend is a ring-leader of these human-eating elves. This section is largely undeveloped in this volume, but mostly works with how Guts is handled. This is the Guts of the Black Swordsman arc and seeing him act as he did before gives different reactions with the knowledge we have of his life going forward. In that way, making this arc after Golden Age was a smart choice. It helps you to reconsider your views of Guts from long ago, and revisit those opening volumes. But nonetheless, I find how Miura delved into this part of Guts life sloppy. In later editions, I would’ve preferred if the opening volumes were switched around here so it was chronological. Not much would’ve been lost.