The brutality ramps up, but this, taking place in Guts’ past, does some work on humanizing him. Having already witnessed his cruelty, things are making a bit more sense as to why. And the larger thematics revolving around trauma are more interesting than juvenile arbitrary plot beats, such as a man’s wife gets corrupted and cheating on him with some weird god thing, and the events afterwords.

It also syncs up with my memories of the anime, which are disjointed with his being a merc here, running into Griffith and band, but also his battle with a creature in a previous volume - so I guess I saw a bunch of it and it’s all jumbled up in the noggin’, since it’s been decades.

Anyway, it is improving, so I will continue with it. I don’t think we’ve gotten into exceeding expectations (4 star territory), though. As an improvement to something I would have put down if I wasn’t urged to continue does not mean it’s great, as yet.