English Dub Review: Berserk: The Golden Age Arc – Memorial Edition “Wounds”

Overview:

It’s been a year since Guts left and Casca is now leading the Band of the Hawk. However, someone makes an unexpected return.

Our Take:

Last week, we saw Guts leave the Band of the Hawk and Griffith get captured and tortured. This week, it’s a year later and it seems like a lot has happened. Griffith is basically a shell now and we barely see him in this episode. He’s in the opening scene, but it’s not entirely clear what’s going on.

Casca is now the leader of the Band of the Hawk. They’re all under attack and Casca’s about to be killed. That is, until Guts makes his triumphant return and saves her. Naturally, Casca is angry at Guts for leaving and essentially causing the band’s downfall.

No matter how mad Casca gets at Guts, she can’t deny that she has feelings for him. They finally come out in this episode. The two have sex in the forest until Guts starts to strangle Casca. This leads to guts opening up and explaining his past. He reveals that he killed his own father. Despite having killed so many people since then, that’s the one that always sticks with him. Casca understands Guts more now and it’s safe to say the two are madly in love with each other.

I’m glad to see that Guts and Casca are finally together. It was only a matter of time since it’s been obvious how they feel about each other. There was a long sex scene in the last episode and there’s one in this one too. I know this show is for mature audiences, but again, sex scenes just aren’t my cup of tea. Guts bringing up his father’s murder is an interesting twist, but it also feels like it comes out of nowhere. I was a bit lost when it came up.

In fact, I was lost for quite a bit of this episode. Time skips happen a lot in anime, but it’s nice when the events that took place in the interim are summarized. They are not here and I’m struggling trying to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. There were so many things that were touched upon in the last episode that weren’t brought up at all here. Maybe they’ll come up later, but it made for a messy episode. It’s not a bad episode by any means. I like seeing Guts return and finally get with Casca, but it could be better if it filled in some more blanks.