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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Tuesday, 01 April 2008 16:00 |
 Life is getting difficult for Guts - between doing Griffith's dirty work for him and finding himself in an unusually difficult situation in battle, things really aren't going to plan for him. But while he's beginning to realise that Griffith may not have his best interests at heart, he's also maybe found someone else within the band to fight for...
10 - Noble Man
If Guts has any misgivings about carrying out Griffith's request to kill Yurius, he's not letting it show, and after sneaking into the Count's castle late at night he soon gets his chance - and after seeing how the count treats his son, Adonis, he becomes even more convinced that the assasination must be done. But while he's able to despatch the count with few problems, Guts is interrupted while making his escape, and inadvertently kills Adonis. It's one thing to kill an evil nobleman - it's quite another to have the blood of an innocent child on your hands, and Guts soon finds his will to fight wavering. Griffith, meanwhile, continues his wooing of Princess Charlotte...
11 - The Battle
Charlotte's falling in love, and on the eve of Griffith's departure for battle, she gives him a lodestone necklace - paired with her own, it's a good-luck charm to ensure that he returns alive. But her feelings for Griffith are becoming obvious to others in the royal court, including her mother, and her dalliance with a man or 'lower origins' isn't going down well. Out on the battlefield, meanwhile, Guts is determined to prove himself as Griffith's equal, while Caska has to deal with some in-combat male chauvanism...
12 - Together
The morning after the battle before, and Caska awakes to find herself stranded in a cave with Guts - and not entirely pleased to find herself naked, either. When she flies off the handle at him, Guts' comments about it not being his fault she'd been born a woman strike a raw nerve and threatens to make the situation worse. Once they've calmed down, though, they get to talking about why Caska joined up with Griffith's band in the first place...
13 - Prepared for Death
Aware that enemy search parties are out looking for them, Guts decides it's time to move on - although Caska's still not in any condition to make any sort of decent speed. To Guts, it's just a woman's lack of stamina, and he's scathing in his comments to her about it - and regardless of the reasons for their tardiness, it's not long before the searchers catch up with them, and they find themselves in battle once more. The longer they fight, though, the more Caska realises that she's holding Guts back, and that the best way she can help him is to run away...
Episodes 12 & 13 are quite possibly the best episodes of Berserk so far. They're not entirely free of combat - Guts gets to really let rip on a few occasions - but there's a lot of time spent on giving Caska a real personality, beyond the hard girl image that's been built up for her over the course of the series so far. That's done by both flashback, showing how she came to join up with Griffith's band in the first place, and through current events, where her simply being a woman is enough to get her onto the wrong side of some.
On the fringe of the story, there's also some interesting information about Griffith, showing the lengths he had to go to to keep the band together back before they joined up with the Midland military. You certainly can't say that he isn't motivated - but the more the series goes on, the easier it is to see the subtle changes that will eventually turn Griffith into the beast who was seen way back in episode 1.
On the more brainless side of the story, Mr Brainless himself from episode 8 makes a return - a living example as ever of why the Chuder kingdom are on the losing end of this war, this time he's chosen to make a rod for his own back by mocking Caska and going directly up against Guts. The results aren't pretty - being a nobleman he's at least smart enough to send his minions to their deaths instead of going into battle himself, but that fact that he's still on the scene around the end of this disc is more through good luck than good tactics. He truly is a character where the enjoyment comes from seeing just how stupid he can be, rather than how much of a threat he can met.
With all that said, though, events on this disc drag out for longer than they really needed to - there may be four episodes here, but filling them all has turned out to be a challenge for the writers, and one that they didn't quite manage to pull off. While it's got moments where it'll really catch your attention, for most of this volume you're more likely to be wondering why everything's taking so long to resolve, and the disc gets marked down a bit because of that.
Worth a look, then, but expect a little frustration along the way.
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