This chunk of Berserk is perfect. Like, legitimately. This is my favorite arc in the series and it’s only supposed to be the introduction to Conviction!
Lost Children is a short but powerful display of everything that makes Berserk so special. It’s dark and gruesome, horrifying and depressing. Yet it’s exhilarating, uplifting, and even inspiring! I’ve never read anything like it!
One night, a little girl named Jill is taken to be sold by bandits. But then things take a turn for the insane when a swordsman dressed all in black appears, along with his elf companion. The pair quickly turn Jill’s life upside-down, bringing her along for a gruesome adventure with demons, holy knights, and horrors beyond imagining. One that will bring her in contact with a friend long lost.
“Wait a minute,” I hear you saying. “What’s this about Jill? Isn’t Guts the protagonist?” Well, yes. And he still technically is. But the majority of the story is told from Jill’s perspective, and her character arc stands front and center.
Lost Children is a story about the horrors of life. Jill is our moral center, the child living a terrible life in an abusive home. Then there’s our villain, Rosine, who ran away to indulge in her fantasies. Finally, there’s Guts, the man who went to war with the world. Jill clings to both of them, trying to figure out which of them has the right solution.
Only to discover that neither one does. But we’ll get to that at the end. First, we need to talk about our villain.
Rosine is the most tragic villain in all of Berserk. She does some truly horrific things, some of them being on-par with the worst Griffith has ever done. Yet you can’t help but wonder: does she really understand what she’s doing? Monster she may be, but she’s still a child. One who has lived through some horrors so deep that she’s retreated entirely into her fantasies to escape.
At least, she did until Guts came in to give her a bloody, fiery taste of reality.
This arc is where Guts is at his most dubious when it comes to morality. For every good deed he does here, he does another three that are just plain evil. Dude gets so savage in his hatred of Rosine that Jill legitimately wonders which of the two is the real monster. And so do we, the audience.
The result? Some of the most jaw-dropping evil-Guts panels in all of Berserk! Seriously, when he goes full-silhouette with the one glowing eye, I always get excited! It’s the perfect blend of cool and terrifying!
On one hand, we understand why Guts is doing what he does, so we can’t really blame him. But on the other, he pushes that sympathy really hard sometimes. In his attempts to push Jill away, he says and does some truly cruel things to her. To this child.
Yet she doesn’t leave. She clings to him, so desperate to escape her life that she’s willing to follow him, even after experiencing his life. In this moment, Guts realizes all his cruelty and harsh comments are not going to keep her away.
So he does the only other thing he can: he shows her the truth.
This scene is a shining example of why I love Berserk. Not for the violence, but for moments like these. Moments where a man drowning in darkness and despair wraps a child in his cloak and gently gives her the harsh truth. A small moment of honesty and kindness from a man so dangerously close to becoming a monster. He pushes her away, giving her the encouragement he needs as he leaves her life forever.
And then we get this.
He disappeared into the darkness. In the end, I still didn’t know who he was. Just like when he appeared, he took the demons with him. I was the only one left behind.
I still don’t really know what these past days of fear, sadness, and shock were to me.
The mist cleared away. The mist that would never go away was pushed out by the flames. The clear sky now peeks through. But it’s by no means a spectacle that makes my heart leap… like when I flew in the sky with Rosine. It’s savage. Lonely. Cold. But such a vivid sky! It’s a clear sky like the kind after a storm blows through.
I don’t have wings… so I guess I’ll look up at this sky and crawl along the earth. Maybe the fluid from that cocoon he doused me with, mixed with Rosine’s blood, washed away my childhood.
Elves really do look best in the blue sky.
In a tiny village nestled in a ravine, difficult to see even from the air… I think I’m about to start my own tiny battle.
Jill, ‘Blue Sky Elf’
Jill can’t run away like Rosine. Nor can she go to war with the world like Guts. Having seen firsthand the nightmares that come as a result of either attempt, she is forced to rethink her life.
Fitting, then, that the final scene of the arc is shared between her and Puck. Looking up at a clear blue sky, her childhood officially ended, Jill declares her intentions to stand her ground and fight to make her life better. Puck, being the ball of mischief and optimism he is, gives her a few gifts before flying off, determined even now to help Guts.
There are so many things I didn’t touch on. I didn’t even mention the Holy Iron Chain Knights or Peekaf the Outcast, or how both of those things work around into the ending perfectly. Lost Children has so much more going for it than this already long article can describe. It’s a wild ride, one that’s perfectly paced from start to end.
And I haven’t even mentioned the art yet!
Style wise, this is my favorite era of Berserk. Sure, the stuff we’ll get in later arcs is jaw-dropping! But there’s something about the look of the series here that just works for me. It’s the perfect blend of style and detail.
Oh, and this arc has THE coolest action scenes in Berserk. The fights here are legitimately on the same level of Mortal Kombat in terms of brutality. Guts straight-up uses the recoil from his arm cannon to build up momentum and swing the Dragonslayer, and nothing in my life will ever be as cool as that!
Nor will anything be as messed up or hilarious as Guts dangling an actual human child from the end of his sword like he’s going fishing.
Finally, the horror. Berserk is already horribly dark and uncomfortable. But seeing all these terrible things happening to children is even worse. Especially when Rosine’s ‘elves’ take the stage. Their ‘play war’ scene is some serious nightmare fuel!
I could gush on and on and on about how much I love this arc. From start to end, it is a perfect package. Violence and horror, tragedy and beauty, it’s got it all. This is a perfect Berserk story. It’s no wonder everyone separates it from the rest of Conviction.
Including the anime adaptations. And honestly, I’m fine with that. Just imagining what 2016/17 would have done to it sends shivers down my spine.
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