when i first technically started my reread back in january i typed up summaries of each chapter as i went, making note of things i thought were particularly interesting. gonna put them here under a cut and honestly probably continue takin notes, as it rlly helps to have something to go back and reread exactly what happened when LOL
BERSERK
CHAPTER BY CHAPTER NOTES
“1″: BEGIN BLACK SWORDSMAN
Guts is fucking a demon lady. Demon lady moves to kill, but Guts blows her head off.
The men of Koka Castle are harassing Puck, who’s tied up. They’re throwing knives at him in a bar. All the bar people are put off, but do nothing, because “nobody can touch the men of Koka Castle”
Guts thinks that’s BS and shoots them all up w his arrows. He tells the lackies to tell the Koka Castle dude that the “Black Swordsman has come”. He then proceeds to cut ppl the fuck up w Dragonslayer
HEAP OF RAW IRON STATEMENT 1
Puck follows Guts out, kinda peeved that Guts didn’t help him more. Guts slaps him away, as per usual Guts
Guts is taken captive by a bunch of guards and is cut up in a dungeon for a lil while. (He doesn’t make a sound.) The Lord Mayor pauses the whipping. He tells Guts that because he murdered the men the town will probably be fucking demolished. “You have no idea how horrible the leader of those men is … no one can kill him… at least, not anyone human.” Guts is like “ya so thats why u made a deal w him right? thats why ur feeding him wagons of women and children?” The Lord Mayor is like fuck u and has the big guy continue torturing him.
The Snakey Dude is informed of Guts. He gets kinda excited
The Lord Mayor goes to beg forgiveness from the Snakey Dude. It does Not go well.
Cut to Guts unable to move in the dungeon. THERE’S DEMON FETUS! Guts is freaked the fuck out and fetus cries and squiggles away. Now it’s Puck’s turn. He’s got the keys. Guts has is usual rant about not wanting to be touched, but Puck convinces him and uses his fairy dust to heal Guts.
Fairies have a strong sense of duty and a lot of powers. They can sense emotional energies.
Puck asks about Guts’s brand, which he does not take kindly to. Guts is chill about being imprisoned tho - he’s ok with the castle dudes coming to kill him burning down the whole town. He’s gonna kill Snakey Dude and as long as he does, that’s all he cares about.
Puck is rlly upset by Guts’s weaklings-should-die-perspective n leaves Guts in the cellar. Guts self harms? He scratches his arm? And then his brand lets him know demons are on the way. He freakily licks the blood off his own fingers.
Rampage of the Snakey Dude time! He’s drinking blood straight from the child! Guts pops out from under a pile of bodies and starts shootin up the swarm.
“To think that a mere mortal can oppose us isn’t anything but folly!!”
Guts gets bodyslammed by Snakey Dude’s tail. Realistically Guts would die here
Guts blasts Snakey Dude’s head off and cleaves him in half. Snakey Dude doesn’t know where the Godhand is so Guts leaves him to burn.
Puck watches Guts walk away through the burning city.
“2″
Puck finds Guts again with the help of a white bird. Puck says he wants to join Guts on his journey because all the monsters and shit are interesting, but Guts has another one of his “weaklings should die” tangents. Guts leaves Puck in the dust.
It’s raining and Guts is walking down the road. That Old Guy and his Daughter roll up in their carriage and invite him aboard. He tells them its a bad idea but they’re like “We’ve got God so we’ll be ok” so he’s like “fine w/e”. Puck is there
They talk about Guts’s sword and shit. “I use it for my cooking” Guts says.
Talk about mercenaries and living by the sword. Old Guy finds it distasteful and talks about his dead nephew. Guts thinks that even though he’s dead, he died doing what he wanted, so he was probably happy.
Guts goes to sleep. He has a dream about running through a corridor with high walls… the ground is watery… he’s being chased. He’s balls nude. He steps on a spike and empales his foot - and a huge Fetus child looms over him. He screams.
He awakes. An incubus is giving him bad dreams and feeding off his energy.
His brand alerts him to the fact that there are definitely shittons of demons all over the fucking place. The skeleton guys. Colette gets stabbed bcause she cares for horses too much
While Guts is busy fucking up a bunch of skeletons, Colette’s body is possessed and she beheads her dad. Guts is shocked by this young girl…’s body. She stabs Guts. Guts plays baseball with her torso.
Puck is very upset and cries while Guts fights the skellies until dawn.
They look at Colette’s body. Puck tells Guts it’s not his fault, and Guts busts a gut. Cue Guts being a dick
Voices start to speak to them… claiming ownership of Guts and his body… and his heart. Guts shoots the air.
“This is the world Guts lives in…” Puck remarks to himself… and follows Guts.
“3″
opens with the beheading of a lady. The Lord Mayor is trying to appease Slug Guy.
Guts PICKS UP THE HEAD and looks at it wtf Guts?? The brother of the lady beheaded cries and makes a scene while guards harass him. A guard asks Guts for the head and Guts spits in his face. Guts throws the head at Slug Guy and he catches it. The severed head has a brand on it.
Slug Guy takes this as a declaration of war and crushes the head. Guts wanders off but is pursued by soldiers who say some shit about heretics. Guts slices n dices when they make a move at him.
Puck shows up again to help Guts out. Just after, Lord Zondark threatens to bust up Guts’s sword with his war hammer but Guts has soo been through this shit before. He busts Zondark’s helmet off, leaving his face pierced with all kinds of shrapnel. Guts presses his face into the ground by stepping on his head. He kicks him in the face and wanders off, leaving the mutilated Zondark to cry “kill him! Kill him!”
Guts follows the Ugly Old Guy into his cellar of wonders. When the old guy asks him questions, Guts shoves him to the ground. Guts asks the questions. It comes to light that the nasty old man is missing a leg and like half his face…because apparently mr Sluggo ate them… and also Old Man has a behelit in his cellar!
“4″
Guts starts to choke out the old fucker, but he’s like “it’s not my behelit! I stole it from the count!”
The ugly fuck’s name is VARGAS. He explains how the Count used to just be a rude fucker, but ever since he got the behelit 7 years ago he’s downright nasty - his inquisition of heretics is just an excuse to gather up more bodies to torture and fuck and eat. he ate Vargas’s wife and sons, and also half his face. Vargas took a drug to fake his own death and slipped out of the castle with the behelit.
Guts explains what a behelit is! “a key that opens a portal to another world that overlaps with their own… it summons demons from that world that have been manipulating the dark side of human history since ancient times. The Godhand.”
Back to Lord Zondark, who’s losin his mind with his fucked up face. Sluggo comes in and tells everyone to get lost and leave Zondark (who’s bashing his head against a pillar) and he alone.
Sluggo tongues his Daemon into Zondark. Sluggo tells Zondark that it’s time for him to enact his revenge..
Cut to Puck who’s studying Vargas’s behelit. Guts berates Puck for calling it art and tells him that it’s a living tool, but he doesn’t know how it works.
Guts asks where Sluggo got the behelit - apparently from travelling merchants years back who knew nothing about it themselves, but thought it came from the east.
Vargas tells Guts to take a secret entrance into the castle and avenge him, but he makes the mistake of touching Guts, which Guts SHITS over. He says he looks like a monster etc etc, Puck gets mad - but Vargas says as long as Guts kills Count Sluggo, he doesn’t care.
Just then, Zondark busts in!! Guts gets busted up too. Guts immediately understands that he’s not human anymore. He slices one of Zondark’s arms off… but it immediately starts to regrow. Zondark starts to whip his axe around so fast it can’t be seen… but Guts still manages to block every blow. Guts moves to strike and cuts off Zondark’s OTHER arm, and a large part of his head.
Sluggo’s Daemon crawls out of the skull hole. He gives a little speech about how great Guts is, but he’s only mortal, so he’s fucked. Then Slugdark gets crushed by rubble anyway. Guts, Puck, and Vargas escape. Guts demands the behelit and then just, leaves.
Puck feels bad and tells Vargas that it’s important to keep living. He tells him that living for the future is more important than trying to avenge the past.
Puck leaves, and then an eely arm slithers out of some water and grabs Vargas. Eyes in the darkness.
Puck is mad at Guts for being mean, as always. Guts says allying with the maggoty creep would just lead to his own demise. Same w Puck.
There’s word that there’s going to be another execution as a warning. Puck flies off. Guts thinks on how Vargas talked about how Sluggo took his eye… took his wife and sons… how he was nothing but a prisoner of fear. Guts gets so emo he punches some bricks out of a wall.
Vargas is going to be executed. Sluggo figures that Guts has the behelit. Puck is trying to figure out how to stop the execution. He sees Guts and gets excited!! But Guts only came to watch him die.
They have a long dialogue about Guts and his motivations and why he’s such a horrible asshole. Puck thinks Guts is actually just afraid, afraid of admitting he’s fighting a losing fight too, that he came for a better reason. Guts threatens him and he flies off.
Guts questions whether or not he should feel compassion.
Puck tries to interrupt the execution himself. He fails. Vargas makes a call for the Black Swordsman to kill Sluggo and hold up his head before them all. Vargas is beheaded.
Guts slips away, making sick sounds. He sees… fetus child. With Vargas’s “face”. He is, of course, freaked the fuck out. He thinks on Vargas’s dying words.
Sluggo is thinking on Guts’s absence.
Some dudes are out in the night tossing Vargas’s body on the corpse pile. Guts shows up and kills both of them, telling Vargas’s lifeless head that he won’t fail like he did.
Being out at night at a corpse pile of those executed isn’t a good idea, as Guts learns. He gets possessed by an angry spirit, because of course. However, he steels himself and falls to the ground. He refuses to have anything in common with deadass spirits, even revenge. He’s gonna kill the Count Sluggo with his very own flesh and blood.
“5″
Puck is being held captive by Sluggo. He’s crying about Vargas - he feels guilty that he couldn’t save him. He imagines his fate where he’ll be put in a cake.
Puck is presented to a mysterious pretty girl. She’s Sluggo’s kid! Puck is a gift to her, Theresia. Sluggo tries to touch Theresia and she shudders and shrieks. Sluggo is very put off and in a horrible mood after his own kid recoils from him.
Slugdark slithers up to Guts. He is back and more slug than ever. Guts remarks on his beauty. He pumps Slugdark full of arrows. Slugdark whips his arms around a lot but Guts dodges. Guts moves to strike and cuts Slugdark up. He thinks he’s won - but Slugdark’s tendrils come back with a vengeance. Slugdark makes some comment about how Guts can’t kill him unless he cuts off his head - and in the very next move, the head has been severed.
The half-head clings to Dragonslayer, trendril-ing its way up it towards Guts, attempting to feed off of him. Guts flattens it between a brick wall and Dragonslayer.
The dying head whispers that the remainder, Sluggo, is waiting for Guts upstairs. Guts is weak and weary from bloodloss - but he pledges to trudge on until he kills Sluggo.
Back to Puck and Theresia in the castle. Theresia tells puck that she knows what it’s like to be caged and that Puck can come out. She tells Puck how her mother died when she was but a baby, but that her father, Sluggo, told her it was a group of heretics that did it, sacrificing her alive. She says that Sluggo may have been a tough ruler, but he was loved by all, even as a father… but then he got worse and started hunting down heretics like nothing else mattered - and now nothing else does matter, because it’s like he enjoys hurting people. It’s like he’s not even a person.
Cut to Guts who has snuck into the castle. The Lord Mayor is there with a ton of men who warn him that he’ll be killed if he moves any farther. Guts tells them simply: Move.
They try to shoot Guts up but he blocks with Dragonslayer. They try to stop him and he cleaves em to bits. Even Gerico, who’s supposed to be tougher than Zondark, gets DEAD. Guts busts him right through a stone pillar. Guts is left alone with the Lord Mayor.
Cut to Puck and Theresia, who are totally buddies now. She asks Puck what it’s like to fly. Puck can’t tell her because it’s a normal thing for him, nothing special. Theresia has apparently been locked up in that high room for seven years - Sluggo never lets her leave.
There’s a commotion outside and Puck figures it’s Guts. He tells Theresia he’s gotta go, she has a mini break down, and then regains her composure. Puck says he’ll be back, and that next time, he’ll take her with!
Guts is in Sluggo’s chamber. He approaches - and Sluggo’s actual body erupts from the ground. He’s huge.
Puck doesn’t even know where Sluggo’s headquarters are, but finds out when rubble erupts away from a wall, revealing lots of Sluggo skin. The simple act of becoming his true self is so powerful that the castle starts to crumble, allowing Theresia to slip outside her room.
Sluggo is fucking massive. He’s doing all he can to crush Guts, but instead crushes the Lord Mayor, allowing Guts to get a hit off on him. He cuts off some eye stalks.
However, it’s a surface wound. Sluggo goes on a mortality rant. He grabs Guts and whips him around, hard enough to shatter stone.
When the chapter ends, Guts is like…. legit dead.
“6″
Chapter opens with Guts KO’d with Sluggo looming over him and Puck a ways off, shocked. Puck swoops in and calls for Guts to get up, but Guts is OUT.
Sluggo mocks Guts for being a weak human, and Puck calls him out on the grounds that Sluggo himself was once a weak human, and that he’s just become a monster now to escape his own pain. Rats Theresia out. A behelit falls on Puck’s head and he dashes off with it, to Sluggo’s great upsetness. Sluggo takes Puck out with a rock, but before he can totally crush him, Theresia shows up.
Theresia is DISGUSTED by Sluggo. She shrieks and cries and runs. Sluggo also cries. He is Very Upset. His sadness is converted to anger almost immediately. He’s gonna murder the fuck out of Puck.
If not for Guts being somehow alive enough to combat Sluggo, Puck WOULD be dead! But Guts is in fact still kicking.
Guts charges towards Sluggo, and Puck tells him not to be reckless and die, but Guts just smiles.
Guts takes more hits without death, somehow. Before Sluggo can land a finishing blow, Guts grabs Theresia and shields himself with her. He uses the momentary distraction to take a second to blast half of Sluggo’s face off. His hand gets broken somehow? So he just. Wields Dragonslayer in his mouth. Totally possible. He beheads Sluggo like this.
Guts starts to cut up the severed head with a knife while Theresia watches.
Theresia cries for Guts to stop. Puck cries for Guts to stop. Guts threatens Puck’s life if he tries to interfere. He continues to mutilate Sluggo’s head as they watch, noting how he just won’t die. Guts keeps going until he breaks the knife and Guts falls to the ground, spent.
He sits himself up and laughs for a long while.
Sluggo’s bleeding out and pleas to not die… trigger the Behelit. The group is sent to the hell-stairs dimension and the Godhand is there.
"7″
A vortex has opened over the castle in this town. The Godhand is present. Femto is jacked.
Guts is instantly triggered. Femto mind-throws him to the ground.
Femto says some shit about Guts being pathetic. He begins to turn away and Guts practically begs for his attention… but Femto does not spare it.
The Godhand turns to Sluggo’s mutilated head. He begs them to take Guts’s life in exchange for his own. They tell him they can’t, because his desire is lacking any actual hatred for Guts. He’s only afraid of death.
Even though Guts has killed tons of apostles, it’s inconsequential to the Godhand. They don’t give a shit about Guts.
Guts thinks this is just hilarious. He gets up despite all his wounds (impressive to the Godhand) and has a go at Femto, who again says he’s nothing but a “squirming sacrificial offering”.
Guts can’t even get close to Femto. The pain associated with his brand is way too strong, and he keels back over… but not before he swings his great sword. Femto throws him across the room. When Guts hits the wall, the rock crumbles. Everyone assumes he’s dead.
However, the Godhand still won’t use Guts as Sluggo’s offering, because he’s already been offered, and Sluggo has no real ties to Guts. Offerings must be someone very important. Femto points to Theresia.
The Godhand exposes that Sluggo actually sacrificed his wife after discovering her in a Pagan orgy fucking a goat-headed god… after killing all of the people at the orgy. He couldn’t kill his wife, however. But he could sacrifice her when his despair activated the behelit.
POINT - those sacrificed… unable to take their lives by one’s own hand… the ones loved and hated the most… so that one can bury their fragile human heart.
The Godhand threatens to brand Theresia… and Guts asks Puck for him to heal his right arm.
"8″
opens with GRIFFTH pulling Guts out of a pile of bodies……
“Martyrdom for a merciless god. What a waste.”
Griffith is giving Guts one of his token existential speeches. Guts is like “… …”
Griffith tells Guts that he’s the first person he’s ever spoken to like this. Guts thinks he’s beautiful.
Snap back to reality. The Godhand is demanding Sluggo’s answer. Guts continues to beckon Puck, who is torn.
The Godhand reminds Sluggo that even if he dies, he won’t rest in peace. He’ll go straight to hell to disappear into the sea of other souls that get caught up with demonkind.
holy FUCK CONFIRMED that if Guts dies he goes to hell. Puck looks at Guts and Guts is fearful of this realization.
The Godhand tells Sluggo that only two paths remain- hell or sacrifice.
Sluggo takes too long. The dead and damned come for him… and Vargas is there to personally drag him down to hell.
Theresia cries and reaches out for her father, but it is in vain. The dead grab at Guts, too. Femto looks and turns away from him. Guts manages to shoot his cannon arm at him. Femto explodes the ball before it can reach him. Guts watches as the Godhand departs.
Puck tries to go to Theresia, but she shrieks and cries. Sluggo’s mutilated body is before her. She wants to go back to her room. She wishes she were dead.
Guts tells her to kill herself.
Puck slaps him. Guts continues on, telling her that she’d probably go to heaven anyway, though both her parents are in hell.
Theresia considers slitting her wrist, but stone crumbles away beneath her before she can. Guts offers his sword for her to grasp, and she does. Her hands bleed. Guts flings her back to safe ground.
Guts is emotionally impacted by his own actions.
Puck goes to heal Theresia’s wounds, but Theresia whips around to face Guts. She projects all of her recent misfortune onto him. She swears that one day, she will kill Guts. Guts tells her he’s ready whenever she is and walks away… but really, he’s CRYING. Iconic pepe look.
Puck sees he’s crying and Guts bats Puck away.
END BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC
