This really picks up in the final (sixth) volume. With better art, FAR better dialogue and character development, and plot beats that aren’t just battles-for-pacing. But that also is not the case until the very end of this omnibus. Perhaps the last 100 pages, if I was being generous. Overall, I expect the next one to be of 4 star quality, though, so I’ll be pushing on, for sure.

There is a definite misogynistic, juvenile tinge to this that is a product of its time. It’s going away though. Slowly but surely, it is getting more mature. Even Casca is finally getting some character development. Stagnant Guts, too.

In this volume, there’s some interesting questions being begged of the reader: Is this future, then, a nightmare born of Griffith’s ambition? The toad-like, glutenous count is mirrored in the nobleman who helps plot the attempt on Griffith. A demon? possibly? As seen in the future, makes a first appearance here and elides the fight because of the Necklace Griffith has, which we’ve seen in the future. I think Guts’ was wearing it maybe, but I can’t recall now.

If this future is completely due to the whims of the powerful attempting to co-opt Griffith, even as he looses his ambitions to transform it into a living hell—that actually is pretty interesting as a concept. Thematically, it would at least be attempting to say more than most dark fantasy, the genre tending towards writers who tend to have really juvenile ideas about pessimism and related areas, and communicate them via their “dark” world just being about rape and murder and almost always just trying to say morality isn’t “real”. Here’s hoping this aspires to more. It seems to.