Well this was bloody and horrendous and .... disturbing (again). As Band of Hawk gets slowly decimated during the Eclipse Griffith slowly begins his ascendance to daemonhood. Only survivors seem to be Guts and Casca, one enraged to such a degree that he cannot be stopped by anything and manages to kill so many daemons using only small shard of his blade until forced to watch the humiliation of the only thing he holds dear.

With Guts barely alive and Casca totally mentally shattered this volume closes down with omens of terrifying things crawling into our reality.

Excellent read, highly recommended to all fans of horror, bloody and gritty fantasy tales. ( )

Iconic volume .. planning to reread the whole series again since I only remember the big events ( )

4 stars for crazy metaphysical horror. You already know what it is. That's my shit right there.

-1 star for That Scene, the rape of Casca, pivotal as I can already see it is, being somewhat botched in my eyes. I think that's a fair docking, as it takes up something like 44 pages.

A lot's already been written, and I hardy even feel qualified to get into every aspect of it, but I'll just say that at no point previous in Berserk did I feel I was nearly reading porn; a huge amount of it was gross, and not in the way it was, or should have been, meant to be. The aftermath is hard to read for all the right reasons; the event itself for all the wrong ones.

Despite the series' initial equal-opportunity approach to rape, that balance seems to have swung, and moreover, none of the men are having their clothes (and armour!) regularly ripped off like tissue paper. The women to a one, however excellent their character may have been established and built, when denuded, turn out to have nearly identical tits, big and perfectly, unnaturally round (that is, until they need to be in motion) and perfect, large, oft-protruding asses.

The men, too, are idealized, no doubt, but there are no dicks on the horizon. Maybe you're allowed to draw a vagina dripping with cum but not a dick; I don't know mid-90s Japanese censorship laws. I have my suspicions, though, that that wouldn't be the deciding factor when it comes to a sexless, self-proclaimed hikikimori writing primarily for a men's magazine.

All of this sort of leads into my thoughts so far: 'Wounds' worked wonderfully as a long-form, emotionally-charged sex scene; this, what should have come off as the most hateful display of absolute power ever committed in this world (and this world), didn't. ( )

This is the 13th volume in the Berserk series and is the volume where everything changes. This is also the volume where the original anime series wrapped up at.

Griffith has been remade as demon kind and the fifth member of the Godhand. He has let the Band of the Hawk be labeled as Sacrifice for the hungry demons of the shadow realm he opened.

As the Band of the Hawk is destroyed one by one, Guts is desperate to save Casca from the violations of the demons. Things take a slight turn for the better when the Skull King arrives but after this volume nothing will ever be the same again for Guts or Casca.

The illustration in these volumes continues to be fantastic. The story makes a ton of progress and is fascinating. We get a lot more explanation behind this shadowy realm and the Godhand.

As with previous volumes this remains a manga for mature audiences only. There is a lot of violence, gore, rape, and nudity in this volume.

Overall this was an awesome installment in the Berserk series. This book follows the events in the final installment of the original Berserk series, so I don’t know the story from this point on. I am eager to see where things go. I would recommend to mature readers who enjoy fantasy horror manga. ( )