4 out of 5

If volume 4 of berserk shows anything, it’s that Miura is an amazing, multi-skilled draftsman.  His progression in terms of action sequences has grown by leaps and bounds – Guts’ unbridled fury is drawn with an appropriately madcap blurriness – and as his cast of characters similarly grows, his ability to express personalization in a snap is proven from portrait to portrait.  But then there’s the jaw-dropping moments: Moments of sudden peace, with Guts looking out at the stars, or incredible detail, such as the Where’s Waldo-esque battle landscapes.  It’s enough to make you shake your head at the memories of how this story started as, seemingly, about a guy who gets angry, swings a sword, and lops off bloody body parts.

Volume 4, through the look alone, lets us know there’s a whole lot more here.

The story, proceeding with the massive (and thrice anime adapted…) golden age arc, gives us the first stages of teen Guts’ time with The Band of the Hawk, and Griffith… Who, in the comic, we’ve already met.  What’s interesting about the arrangement of events in the manga is how it potentially alters perceptions: We’ve now seen that Guts brittle exterior was, in part, formed by violent and sexual approaches from older men in his youth; when meeting Griffith, he brusquely asks if he’s a “homo” – which is implied in the anime but never spat outright – and here’s hoping Miura plans to evolve that theme and wasn’t just using it as lazy writing or, yeesh, a joke.  While all of this is a wonderful change of pace from sword-swingin’ demon hunting, and matches the conceptual “deepening” of the story’s themes, the text – as did the show – struggles to properly escalate the initial Guts / Griffith / Casca conflict.  It feels a bit forced, and there are some beats where it’s not clear what Miura wants us to see or think.

But this is very much water under the bridge in what has quickly become a very sweeping story, and one with a clearly more epic scope than we may have previously suspected.