Berserk, Volume 18

Story now splits into two lanes.

In one we follow Guts as he visits the old smith who decides to help Guts and renew his sword, although he is very sick and de defacto on deathbed.

In the other, We find Casca in the vicinity of the ominous tower, Babel-tower-like construction, where people of Midland are flocking to in order to find refuge from monstrosities crawling at night. Casca is taken under care of Luca, a prostitute running a brothel in the refugee camp. Since camp is full of people from all walks of life, Casca is masked as "sick-nephew" and thus left alone.

And then, on stage, enter the cult with very, very wrong vibes, followed by Inquisitor Mozgus with his freak entourage, together with our Holy Knight Order who got reassigned show more to help the Inquisition in chasing heretics and with direct orders to stop any further pursuit of Guts.

Things are cooking, all right.

Highly recommended. show less

This is the 18th volume in the Berserk series. We didn’t see Guts in this book as much as in previous ones. We did met a new young boy named Isidro that ends up following Guts. Most of the time is spent with Lady Farnese as she accompanies the Inquisitor on his missions. The Inquisitor is a very disturbing individual who has a twisted sense of mercy and believes heavily that torture is the way to go.

We also spend some time with Casca and Luca (the prostitute who has taken Casca in and is protecting her). Luca is trying to implement some civilization to the craziness around her by providing for those who don’t make as much as she does.

At the end of it all Guts is visited again by the Skeleton King who lets him know that the Hawk of show more Light will rise again and another event, very like the eclipse during which Guts was branded, will take place again soon. He also spouts a whole bunch of other stuff I didn’t quite understand.

Overall this was an excellent continuation of this series. The story makes huge progress here and a lot happens. We meet some excellent new characters as well. I would definitely recommend this series to mature fans of horror fantasy manga. show less