Berserk Volume 9: Nearly as Good as the Previous Volume

So this volume kicks off with this kind of art. You know when the art is this spectacular you are in for something.

So this volume gets right to the point, foreshadowing. I sense Miura was so crammed with telling his audience he had direction for his narrative, something he was missing in the Black Swordsman arc, he ended up tirelessly telling us things are gonna happen without ever showing us. While later, yes, a lot of craziness will ensue, at the present, I find Miura is relying too much at hinting at things to come.

But after the Guts segment, cat caught my tongue as Griffith is going downhill. Or staying stagnant. Mentally, Griffith is likely following a plan, a crazed one, he made official the moment he failed to stop Guts. He sleeps with Charlotte. As I see it, he is rushing his careful plan as a way to show Guts he can do it without him, but making purposeful mistakes secretly to prove himself wrong. Which is why he never considered someone looking through a peephole, or he did but was over confident as a way to cope or get revenge or Guts by harming himself. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Griffith suspected Charlotte’s father of being a creep and did this to become what he hated. People who take advantage of others to spite someone. It’s clear Griffith sleeps with Charlotte because of Guts. This could be his form of attacking Guts love for him, showing he has moved on. Additionally, he could’ve saw this a a way to show the father that he owns his daughter, just as how he viewed Guts. And he wants him to respond to it, out of curiosity as he is a hopeless thinker with no motive.

Later, we see Griffith getting horribly tortured by the King to his boredom. And that is Griffith. He is powered individual with Guts, but without him, he is a bomb, relying on memory and indistinct. A blind animal with no remorse or regret, which is the biggest threat to a King who wants control. It’s like having a person who reads no laws, he is a ticking bomb to all those who feel comfort in following all the rules. In a way, he’s become Guts. An outsider.

The King’s evil indistinct’s could be as a reaction to Griffith, as Charlotte as appalled to see him, meaning this could be the first time he did an act like this, or first time with her. In a horrific way, as will become evident later, Berserk is like a fairy tale, where the the knight in shining armor is a monster by design. To the princess, she is a horrific world and needs her Griffith to save her, but in reality, she is all she has. We see Griffith as he says his situation has no worth, nothing has worth to him so he’s doing the least rewarding thing. Like doing the most boring thing since everything is boring now. His fairy tale ended days ago and now he is waiting for nothing. Or he’s waiting for Guts to see him now, to seize control again, as he is pathetic when it comes to love, which is why he avoids it.

That creep Griffith killed, I wonder if he secretly re-incaranted himself as for a time when he would be desperate like this or did it just appear. As if he needed to learn how a hungry animal works and tried to do that with the Hawk but couldn’t, especially with Guts, as it was natural love but after Guts left he became him, like a personality. So he used that personality to try and claim Charlotte, similar to how the King assaults Charlotte. They’re both the same, but in different form. One monster looks like the King the other Griffith.

This moment is filled with dower moments, as Casca and the Band of Hawk wait for Griffith before realizing it’s a trap. Reading through, I happened to noticed I lacked much insight into Corkus or Rickert. As I see it, Corkus is a simple example of a follower, and only a follower. He supports Griffith for Griffith, and the benefits. He follows every reason Judeau listed as to why people follow Griffith, and nothing more. Yet I feel he is one who would stick by Griffith enough to fight for him and him alone as he respects him as a friend. For Rickert, I find him an example of a naive follower. Like Thorfinn from Vinland Saga, he is a young kid who seemingly ended up in this life style of killing, but unlike Thorfinn, found family in it. He sees violence, but seems like someone Miura points to who is use to it. If he saw a arm fly off, he would scream but not long enough to not help put the person out of their misery. And Miura show’s this very patiently, and you can see this in later volume when he meets up with Griffith again. He is affected by the lifestyle yet balances it. Similar to someone who puts on a smile and means it.

We see as Griffith’s torture ensues his keychain is taken off, which is quite essential for later. The next chapter is quite banal, generally Guts showing what he was doing this whole time and discovering what happened to the Band of the Hawk at the very end. I prefer the later chapter where you can see Casca is taking this situation hard which affects her combats skills enough to need to be saved by Guts. But rather than feeling like she was saved, it can be interpreted as her giving up. As she sees it, all she fought for as failed. She failed to be his sword when he needed her, and she is all alone.

As many times as Judeau tries to comfort her, it can’t repatch things. Guts arriving is like the situation to her becoming real yet too real. One of my preferred chapters is when Casca and Guts are able to have a moment alone and Casca attacks him. She uses him as a vessel for everything she blames herself for, if she does this in her mind Griffith is alive, she is right, and things are back to the day’s when she blamed him for Griffith getting hurt. But she can’t and he stops her. She finally releases herself and says without him Griffith is nothing. In her view, Guts and Griffith became one and the same, they made each other and he selfishly ruined the love, and she blames herself. While Casca never directly states it’s her fault, her pain and the job she undertook of being Griffith’s sword more than imply it. By the end, she decides suicide as a option but is saved by Guts. Seeing Guts is hurt because of herself, she calls him a fool and it comes full circle. She hates to love him and loves to hate him cause it’s all nostalgic. She misses the past so much, her behavior incidentally becomes a recreation of it. She reacts like a child and uses various methods to cope but in the end she finally lets herself go to him and he accepts.

We then focus on Casca and Guts making love and Miura dedicates this time to use their love making as a way to show them confronting their past, specifically Guts. He is forced to face when he was raped, and his struggle with love. You even see him choke Casca as he hears Gambino saying he should’ve died, seeing Casca as his old self. He is self-hating, and uses his hatred of himself like he does in battle as what carries him in love. The telling moment is when he opens up to Casca and she hugs him, and licks the wounds. What makes this scene beautiful is how it subverts your traditional sex scene as a way to come to terms with Guts past. Both Casca and Guts keep their pain and recognize it, and move forward with their lives together. Never in this Berserk have I been left so speechless by what Miura accomplished.