We’re getting into the real meat and potatoes of Conviction now! Just a little more table-dressing to take care off, and the Festival can begin!
Today, we’re covering:
- Ambush
- The Cliff
- Captives
Guts and Casca have finally been reunited! But there’s no time to celebrate. With Apostles on one side and the Holy Iron Chain Knights on the other, their reunion has already devolved into an all-out brawl for survival! Can Guts overcome destiny yet again to protect Casca?
Right off the bat, we’ve got a short but exciting fight: Guts VS the Goat Demon. The goat hops around at high speeds too quick for the Black Swordsman to keep up with, and all Guts can do is watch and wait for his opportunity. Honestly, though, as amazing as the art and paneling is for this fight (it’s Berserk, those two things are always incredible) the battle itself is extremely forgettable and underwhelming. It’s only purpose is to introduce Guts’ new weapon, the mini-explosives Rickert cooked up, and to slow him down a bit.
Meanwhile, Farnese is watching her men get brutally slaughtered and is forced to retreat. This scene is meant to highlight how inept of a leader she is. But honestly? I don’t think that’s fair. It’s hardly her fault that the cult turned into a horde of crazed murder zombies!
After that brief scene, we get one of my favorite fights in the arc: Guts VS Serpico.
This battle is more creative than the average Berserk gore fest. Serpico knows he can’t take Guts in a straight fight, so he plays dirty. He uses the small space of the cliffs to render the Dragon Slayer useless, he keeps back and uses the reach of his rapier to pressure him, he uses his slim and agile figure to hop up and down to attack from different angles, he even talks smack to get into his head! Serpico did everything he could to rig the fight in his favor.
But of course, wits can only do so much against an unstoppable force. Guts is such a monster at this point in the series that he manages to push forward through with brute force and reflex alone! In the end, Serpico is forced to use those wits that put him at an early advantage just to escape with his life!
While all this is happening, Isidro, Puck, Nina, and Casca face their most perilous challenge yet: a cliff. Which Casca manages to scale with ease. Perhaps the Commander of the Hawks isn’t all gone after all.
Just one problem: the Holy Iron Chain Knights just so happened to retreat to the very spot where they came down. Coincidence? Or is Destiny out to screw our protagonists yet again? Who can say? Either way, Casca and Nina are captured and taken to the tower.
And poor Isidro is left behind to tell Guts the bad news.
I love this scene. There’s almost no dialogue. Just expression work. We see Guts close to flying off the handle, just barely managing to contain his rage and stop himself from killing the boy. Isidro, meanwhile, has gone quiet for the first time. Cultists, demons, and knights he can handle. But in the face of Guts’ fury, he is scared completely stiff. It’s a short scene, only two pages long, but it does so much with so little for both characters!
Our two damsels are officially in distress. Now it’s up to Guts, Isidro, and Luca to get them back. A strange alliance, but an interesting one.
One with a dark, unfriendly pair of eyes looking down on them.
Meanwhile, Nina is having a complete nervous breakdown. One minute she’s yelling at Casca and shoving her away. The next, she’s weeping and apologizing and hugging her cellmate like she’s the last thing in the world. When their jailers appear, she thinks that she should step up and protect Casca, but she ultimately gives in to her cowardice and stays silent. An act which inadvertently puts her in danger’s eyes, not Casca.
I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll say it again: Nina is a fantastic character. Not a likable one, but a brilliantly written one. She’s a coward and she hates herself for that. You the reader will hate her for it too, since her cowardice consistently puts far more likable characters like Luca and Casca in immediate danger. But can you really blame her for being afraid? She’s an ordinary person trapped in a waking nightmare!
We get a good, horrifying look at what kinda torture is in store for her. Beds of spikes. Rakes to the pack. The flail. Pincers squeezing and pulling breasts ’till they bleed. Limbs being drilled open. Each panel gets progressively smaller and more gruesome, as though the darkness of the black page is swallowing Nina whole. Finally, the door to the dungeon snaps shut and the chapter ends.
Tell me honestly: if you were in that situation, would you not even consider taking the easy way out?
Consider the stakes set. Casca is trapped alone in enemy territory, her only ally being a selfish coward. Guts marches to her rescue, his only help being a prostitute and an adolescent boy. A pair of dark eyes watch them all wherever they go, pulling the strings, bringing us closer and closer to catastrophe. Will Causality take yet another loved one from Guts? Or will the leaping fish disrupt the flow of fate?
Buckle up, everyone. Shit is about to hit the fan.
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