Skellig Island

 🔥sabel 🔥‏ @sabelstyle

Everyone’s wounds disappear when they stay overnight in Flora’s mansion (Ch 203).

 The night before (Ch 202), you can see that Guts in particular is still, as always, covered in tiny little marks, no matter what distance he’s drawn at.

All of them are gone by the time they’re leaving, except for two. The Brand of Sacrifice, and the little one across the bridge of his nose.

Schierke’s wording in the first picture becomes important when you think about it: what has disappeared are ‘minor’ wounds and ‘recent’ wounds. That she bothers to point out the difference means that it SHOULD heal scars. But it hasn’t, here. And if it hasn’t, then the reason it hasn’t is that the ethereal body that the physical body should be matching up with is ALSO wounded.

That the Brand of Sacrifice didn’t disappear is unsurprising, of course: Flora herself can’t erase it, and it was left on Guts by a being that can directly wound ethereal bodies. Slan pulls this same trick later on when she leaves the wound across Guts’ chest.

But why wouldn’t a scar as tiny as the one across his nose not be suddenly gone?

(Ch 222)

Simple. Though it’s a small thing, it’s still significant to his soul. The two biggest traumas in Guts’ life are the Eclipse and everything surrounding Gambino: dealing with the reality that his adoptive father sold him to Donovan, tried to kill him, and was killed BY him. Before the Eclipse occurred, deep-seated hurts relating to Gambino popped up a lot. Just off the top of my head I can list things like Guts’ outright stating to Casca how laughable it is that he can’t get over killing Gambino, his touch-aversion, the recurrent nightmares that feature Gambino with his head hanging half off and telling Guts he should have died, the unsubtle parallel between Guts and Gambino’s relationship and Adonis and Julius’ relationship and how badly killing both of them messed with him because of it.

The wound Gambino left on Guts runs much deeper than the little scar he put across his nose, it’s something that Guts has been carrying forever, and STILL carries: it’s just not had as much attention paid to it since the focus of the story shifted to the effect the Eclipse had on Guts. Even so, something like that upbringing doesn’t just magically go away.

then say? I'd like to read some more but there hasn't been a lot to catch my interest. my free time is about as common as new Berserk captures.

I like you quite a bit so for you I’ll give out a couple of recs. Mind you, these are not 1:1 similar to Berserk series, they’re not gloomy semi-medieval fantasy series, they’re just titles that are excellent by themselves and deserve more people to love them.

1. Lady Snowblood - This is probably the most Berserk-like title I can recommend; essentially, this is what people want Casca to be. Set in the Meiji Era, Yuki is an assassin looking to complete her mother’s grudge against a group of people who destroyed her family and life. If you like Berserk for it’s violence then this is a series you should give a try, Yuki is quite a notable heroine (anti-heroine?) and I’m surprised she doesn’t feature in more “favorite female character” lists. There’s also a live action movie (haven’t seen it though). The manga was translated and published in the west by Dark Horse comics, the same ones that publish Berserk! What a nice coincidence~!

2. Petshop of Horrors - If the themes of human emotions, trauma and horror are what draws you to Berserk then this series might catch your attention. Count D is a mysterious man who manages a pet shop in Chinatown where he sells everything from common pets to mythical creatures. The series is somewhat episodic, featuring a new pet and whoever adopts it managing to overcome their different problems. On the other hand there’s also the cat-and-mouse relationship between Count D and Detective Leon Orcot, who just knows that there’s something fishy about the shop. There was a 4 episode OVA that adapted 4 chapters directly from the manga, it’s pretty good but I would recommend reading the first chapter of the series first for some context. The series was translated in its entirety by Tokyopop (anybody remember that publisher?) though it might be a little hard to find good scans. There’s also a sequel called Shin/New Petshop of Horrors (Petshop of Horrors - Tokyo, in the west) so if you like the series there’s still a lot more to enjoy.

There’s a couple of anime series I’d like to recommend but I’m just gonna go with “Made in Abyss”. Again, not a Berserk-like series at all but the anime has some very high production values, the animation and music are excellent, the story is unfinished still but it’ll leave you wanting for more.