Wake up, kids! It’s time to go to church! Gee, I sure hope a dude with a giant sword doesn’t chop us in half after traumatizing us for life!
Today, we’re covering the following chapters:
- The Spider’s Thread
- Those Who Dance at the Summit, Those Who Creep in the Depths
- Hell’s Angels
- One Unknown in the Depths of Depths
‘The Spider’s Thread’ begins like a bizarre nightmare. Casca is enveloped in the vengeful blood spirits. But rather than melting and dying, she sleeps peacefully. Before her hovers the Demon Infant, glowing with a faint white light, shielding its mother from the darkness. It’s a truly gorgeous panel that has rightfully gone down as one of Berserk’s most iconic images.
Definitive proof that Guts’ kid is absolutely a mama’s boy.
Father Mozgus is not so well-protected. Not that he cares. Man is in full-on psycho mode. However, his eyes are so fixed on the monster in front that he completely misses the monster behind. And then… Prick.
Meanwhile, Isidro, Luca, Nina, and Jerome flee up the tower stairs to escape the bloodied mass. Just as it’s about to devour them, a column of fire rips through the goo and saves them. It even frees Casca! Hooray! It’s a miracle!
Oh. It’s Mozgus. He and his cronies have been made into demons, ala the goat cultist from a few chapters ago. Now the Demon Infant has been roasted, and a helpless Casca is in the Father’s hands. Being the gentle and pious man that he is, he’s in the mood for a good ol’ fashioned witch burning.
Naturally, Isidro and the others don’t like the idea and get ready to fight. Just as naturally, the Father’s priests don’t like that idea and they get ready to fight. A hole gets knocked into the tower, and Luca falls through. Luckily, she’s caught by… Nina.
I think we all know where this is going.
Up on the tower’s roof, a familiar shadowy form looks down at the chaos below with wicked delight in its eyes. But that expression doesn’t last long. Just as the creature looks down on our heroes, a familiar horse-bound skeletal silhouette bears down on the Apostle. All the while, a desperate Guts shoots up the stairs, Puck lighting his way, Farnese panting behind them.
‘Those Who Dance at the Summit, Those Who Creep in the Depths’ is one of my favorite chapters in the arc. Namely because it focuses on two of my favorite Berserk characters. Possibly the most unexpected but welcome pairing in the series.
Up on the roof, Skull Knight raises his sword to strike. Below, Nina struggles to hold Luca, panicking, her thoughts quickly turning to cowardice and betrayal once again. Before she can cave beneath her fear, however, Luca willingly lets go to save the others.
At which point, she herself is saved by an unexpected savior.
Up in the tower, Guts finally arrives, and he’s literally coming out swinging! We don’t get the full fight just yet, but we do get some pretty sick action panels.
There’s one I especially love where Guts swings the Dragonslayer down, and to emphasize it’s speed and size, the sword literally escapes the borders of the panel! This naturally takes our eyes downwards, to the guy Guts is supposedly attacking. Only for him, and therefor us the audience, to realize that it was actually a feint and Guts is now rushing straight towards Mozgus! It’s paneling like this, combined with his jaw-dropping artwork, that made Miura such a master of his craft!
Down below, surrounded by lines and lines of withering corpses, Skull Knight asks Luca a question: why did she choose to die? She awkwardly explains her desperate idea that the tower’s structure might shorten the fall; it might have actually worked, but luckily for her, the coolest character ever decided not to take the risk.
*Side note: I love how Luca reacts to Skull Knight. She doesn’t scream or pass out or anything like that. Instead, she calmly accepts that she might be dead, starts calling him Death, and kicks up an awkward but friendly conversation. It’s hilarious, cute, and completely fair; if you jumped off a tower and a skeleton on a horse gave you an Uber, what else would you think?
The chapter ends with the promise of confrontation. Skull Knight dismounts and prepares to face our shadowy Apostle. Meanwhile, Mozgus and his goons sprout wings, and Guts gets ready to live up to the manga’s title.
I love the duality of this ending. Down below, Skull Knight and Luca face a demon surrounded by darkness and death. Up above, Guts and the others face twisted angels wreathed in light and fire. It makes for some really cool imagery!
‘Hell’s Angels’ is largely dedicated to the fight between Guts VS Mozgus’ priests. As such, it doesn’t have much going on in terms of dialogue or narrative. It’s fighting, fighting, and more fighting.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty going on. Isidro and Jerome have some fun banter. The priests all fight with their preferred tools of torture, which makes for some pretty creative choreography. Plus, their disfigured forms combined with their angelic appearance makes for some really creepy and intriguing visuals. It’s a great chapter!
‘One Unknown in the Depths of Depths’ starts with a confused Luca trying to wrap her head around what she’s seeing. It’s not even that she’s terrified; her inner thoughts describe it as feeling as though she’s wandered into a bizarre dream, and the world as she knows it is starting to crack. Pretty blatant foreshadowing for what’s to come disguised as introspection. Fitting for a character as thoughtful as Luca.
Anyways, Skull Knight and the shadowy Apostle throw down. It’s not an especially exciting fight. Which is kind of the point. Unlike the Apostles we’ve seen up until now, this one isn’t a fighter.
It’s a ticking time bomb.
After getting cut up a bit, the Apostle kidnaps Luca and runs away. Bringing her to its lair, we ease off the action and floor it back to horror. Dozens of candles burn around a shrine made from the skin and bones of dead priests. In the shadows, a creature with a voice like death begins to speak. Y’know. Standard Berserk fare.
*Side note: a little detail I love in the hardcover print is how the font sometimes changes for some characters. Skull Knight’s dialogue is all in a harsh black font, giving the sense of a dark and powerful voice. Meanwhile, the Egg Apostle’s voice is in a thin and wiry font, creating the feeling of a quiet, straining voice, as if the speaker has never spoken to anyone before. It’s a tiny extra level of detail I don’t often see in manga translations.
Here, we finally learn about the Apostle we’ve seen running rampant all arc. Long ago, he lived in the shadow of the tower. A lowly wretch, utterly rejected by the people around him, forced to live in a deep, dark hole with his only possession: a Behelit. As if that wasn’t bad enough, people eventually began to dump corpses into his hole, burying him alive beneath a mound of the dead.
Then the God Hand appeared before him. They showed him the world beyond his dark little hole, in all it’s wonder and horror, then offered their usual services. Unlike other Apostles, however, this one had no one to sacrifice in order to become a demon. So he did something else entirely: he sacrificed the world itself in order to fulfill his wish for a ‘perfect’ world. The Apostle emerges from the shadows, revealing to Luca his true form at long last.
In short: he used a Behelit to become a Behelit.
In case you hadn’t figured it out, this is where Berserk starts to get even weirder than normal.
One detail I love is how we never see the Apostle’s human form. That particular bit of horror is left to our imagination. It makes the sequence much, much creepier.
Not only that, but it draws an interesting parallel to Mozgus and his priests. In case you’ve forgotten: all of Mozgus’ men are freaks and rejects. If not for the Father, they’d have withered away in the shadows, like the Apostle. Both were lifted from their darkness by figures of divine authority, the priests Father Mozgus, the Egg the God Hand. Perhaps that’s why the Egg chose them. Or maybe it was just destiny at work once more…
With that, the stage is finally set for the grand finale. Our villain is finally revealed, and his scheme will soon be revealed. Now all that’s left is to await the hatching of the Egg of the World.
Set your calendars, folks. We’ve got another Eclipse coming up.
Jonah's Books & Rants 
Leave a comment