Berserk, Volume 23, Welcome to the New Berserk

We start of this volume with dilemma plaguing Guts: he can’t take care of Casca on his own. The journey he has led plus the effort it takes to care for her are just too much, he needs community. And the more he yields his sword, the more he struggles to hesitate for her. She’s practically a child, and finding his love when seeing her is pure torture. In this form, Guts is your standard hero, saving the defenseless, but he is the least rewarded mentally in return. He, like Casca, is a shell of his former self. And his hunger for revenge isn’t helping. He can take the Griffith out of the present, but he can’t take Griffith out of the moment.

And it’s not helping that the demons following him only help his urges to attack Casca. And it gets worse and worse as he starts to loose control and Casca reacts fearfully and angrily in return. For Guts, it’s as if she sees through him, and sees Griffith. Casca is soon assaulted, and before Guts can reach her she reverts to her previous fighting skills and kills her attackers. And when she sees Guts, she sees another one, and she turns out to be right. Guts, not being able to take the situation, snaps and tries to make love to Casca, which helps his urges proposed by the demons to re-emerge as he roughly assaults her. While he stops, the results speak for themselves. Meanwhile, Isidro, Farnese, and Serpico met up with Guts were Farnese makes a pledge to make amends. And to reflect the process, she cuts her hair. The focus goes back to Griffith and his successes on the battlefield, but I’ll wait to discuss that till genuine interesting developments occur. At the present, the chapters with Griffith are far less sublime than the ones with Guts and his new crew.

We see further developments in Guts crew as the dynamic gets settled. Guts is like a father to Isidro, Serpico is a protective-brother to Farnese, and Farnese is a soul sister to Casca. But Farnese at the present struggles with this responsibility if she would call it that. She is not the fighter she saw herself as, she lacks the control. She is a leaf next to a gust of wind who always that they were made of stone. But she is learning to live with it, and enjoy herself. Freedom is a gaze into the abyss, but you will never when it will stare back at you. You are too minor for it. But the beauty of such a wide world is enough. The little time we share with Farnese makes this volume worth a re-read after you carefully plough through it.