A Guide to Guts's Armors, Part 2.2

A Guide to Guts's Armors, Part 2.2:

The Lost Children Armor

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of "A Guide to Guts's Armors." I've actually found that doing one armor at a time has been going well for me, so that's how it's going to continue. I encourage you to first read Part 1 and Part 2.1 if you're just arriving now, as this episode assumes that you've learned the terminology previously explained, and are familiar with the costume parts previously featured.

Today our highlights are going to be the new Dragon Slayer chain suspension system, lots of pouches and containers, and Guts's fancy new leg armor.

As usual, all images used are the work of Kentaro Miura, unless stated otherwise.

The Lost Children Armor: Introduced in Volume 14, episode 95, "The Black Swordsman, Once More"; replaced in volume 17, episode 131, "To Holy Ground (1)"

Previously in the timeline, when Guts staggered away from his confrontation with the Slug Count, he seemingly lost a large part of his equipment. Where he got all this new armor and a new crossbow is a mystery, since we know he didn't go back to Godo's workshop in the meantime. The armor itself isn't such a problem, since we can assume there are more armorers than just Godo who can make protection of this type, but the repeating crossbow seems like a Godo original that not just anyone could reproduce without a model to copy. Either he retrieved his crossbow from the Count's castle without us seeing, or he was lucky enough to meet a weapon maker so talented that they could create an exact copy from nothing but a verbal description. Or maybe Godo isn't the only one who makes this sort of crossbow, despite Guts's being the only one we ever see. Since Miura was still new to the challenge of creating a long-form manga when he ended the Black Swordsman Arc, and had no way of knowing back then what he was going to do with Guts eleven volumes later, I forgive him for fudging the details.

The new armor that Guts is sporting in the Chapter of Lost Children is basically an improved version of the Snake Baron Armor, which also takes aspects from the Raid Captain Armor and Silat Armor and translates them into the new style. The pauldrons are unchanged from the Snake Baron Armor, except that the buckles attaching them to the cuirass are now visible on the outside when he's not wearing his cape. 

The cuirass is of the same shape, but with some new details. There are decorative rivets around the neck opening, while the strap ends have a more artistic shape than the previous and use the conventional hook-and-pin fastenings seen on the Raid Captain Armor. 

One of the neatest changes is to his equipment suspension, which we thankfully see when Guts lets Jill borrow his cape. He now has two baldrics that cross his body like an "X", with hooks attaching them to rings on the waist belt both in front and in back. I'll call the one over his right shoulder the main baldric, and the one over his left shoulder the secondary baldric. Now he has pockets for six throwing knives on the on the secondary baldric with their points facing down, unlike the previous armor which had six knives on one main baldric, sheathed point-up. The old way looked as if the knives could fall out under gravity, so this is an improvement. Each baldric has a point over the upper chest where a chain is attached to it, and the chain extends up over the shoulder, passing through a leather retaining loop on top of the shoulder as it does so. The main baldric has rivets along the edges, but the secondary baldric doesn't.

The chain that goes along the main baldric over his right shoulder, which I will call the main chain, ends with a hook behind that same shoulder. That, of course, is the same place where the sword-hanging hook on Guts's Snake Baron Armor was. The chain link on the Dragon Slayer's hilt allows it to be hung from the main chain's hook behind the right shoulder. The new aspect of Guts's harness system is the part which keeps his sword hanging at a nice diagonal angle: The secondary chain over the left shoulder (highlighted in blue) is much longer, with a hook on the end and a rectangular strap of leather in the middle. 

This picture is of the same sword suspension on a later armor;
please ignore the incorrect pauldron.

When Guts is carrying the sword on his back, the secondary chain comes down from over his shoulder, crosses the blade diagonally, and then wraps around under the blade, finally attaching by its hooked end to the securement ring (green) on the left front side of Guts's waist belt. Note that this is the same ring that the hook of the main baldric (red) attaches to in front. The edge of the sword rests on the leather portion of the chain so as not to damage the edge, and the secondary chain is of just the right length to hold the Dragon Slayer at the desired diagonal angle across Guts's back.

To draw the Dragon Slayer, Guts first uses his prosthetic left hand to unhook the secondary chain from the front ring, thus unwrapping the blade.

With that done, he uses his right hand to lift the Dragon Slayer off the hook of the main chain (red): it only takes a few inches of movement to get the sword off the hook, and the rest is complete freedom. I think this is the best sword suspension system for the back that Guts has had so far, because it secures and stabilizes the sword while avoiding any parts that could get the blade stuck when he tries to draw it. There's no scabbard throat that the point has to clear, and he doesn't have to fiddle with things behind his back. I suppose a potential problem is the blade could get jostled off the main baldric hook during Guts's typical evasive maneuvers, since this hook doesn't have the carabiner-like closing mechanism that the Snake Baron Armor appeared to have, but it all works out for Guts somehow.

Once unhooked in front, the secondary chain flaps around loosely in Guts's wake. This is just like the old "devil's tail" scabbard from his mercenary days.

Moving down to the belt and baggage, this belt has a different ornament on the front shaped like a circle with four teeth pointing inward. There are diamond-shaped rivets all along the upper and lower edges of the belt. Short straps that hang over the thighs serve as attachment points for the buckles that hold up the leg defenses. The codpiece is of the same pattern as his Raid Captain and Silat Armors, with laces across the front and buckled straps on either side that attach it to the waist belt above.

When Guts is wearing the suspension for his dagger and baggage, two thin belts cover the upper and lower edges of the waist belt. When worn like this they tend to partially hide the diamond rivets.

Unlike previous armors, this version has a leather flap hanging down from the back of the belt which covers the buttocks. I don't know if this is supposed to be armor too, but in any case its rather "anatomical" shape makes me chuckle. In the days of plate armor, a section of plate to protect the rump was called a culet. I'm going to use that term for the sake of Guts's dignity, since it sounds less risible than "butt flap". Another strap passes between the legs, connecting the codpiece in front to the culet in back.

As usual, Guts has a lot of baggage. The 1998 Berserk calendar provides a lovely tableau of all his stuff laid out on the ground. As before, there's a strapping system to hold up all these things that Guts wears under his cuirass.

This is how the items look when Guts is wearing them. The four main ones, from right to left, are the large side pouch, the crossbow bolt container, the crossbow, and the small side pouch.

Guts has his usual large side pouch at his right side, which contains the Slug Count's Beherit, what could be extra throwing knives, bandages, some small vials, food items such as bread and cheese, his gunpowder flask, and oftentimes his elf sidekick Puck. It's unclear to me whether he's still keeping his cannonballs or crossbow magazine in here, but if that were the case they would be buried under many other items and not easy to access.

To the left of the large side pouch is the crossbow bolt container, which unlike the previous cylindrical bag is now made of leather in a rectangular shape, with a flap for a lid. 

This bolt container is also designed to hold the crossbow by means of a leather loop on its left side. The front stirrup of the crossbow can fold down for storage, and the two halves of the forearm bracket partially fold up. At Guts's left hip is his small side pouch, which I haven't figured out the contents of.

In addition to all these things Guts has hanging from his lower back, he's got a satchel bag for some extra capacity. This has a very mundane design, with no connection to his harness system, only a carry strap that lets it hang from one shoulder. We see him wearing it on the road in the 1998 calendar, and when Guts first shows up in Jill's village. He quickly leaves it behind, though, and it was clearly never designed to be worn during combat.

Here's another picture which I think shows the same satchel. Strangely, it's depicted with the contents that are usually in his large side bag.

Moving on down, we come to Guts's leg armor. The main foundation is a pair of stitched leather chaps, which take the form of separate leggings that go over his black trousers and buckle to his waist belt above. Each legging only covers the outer thigh up near the hips, but the edges of the legging grow progressively closer together as they descend towards the knee, where they finally meet and buckle together.

Built into the leggings directly below the waist belt are a pair of tassets, segmented into four lames. The tassets don't extend any further down than the codpiece or culet, and most of the thighs are only protected with leather. 

Guts's leg armor includes poleyns, the European style of plate protection for the knee. The knee was sometimes a tempting target in medieval combat because it didn't have significant muscle or fat on it as a buffer against trauma, and a person could be permanently crippled if this joint was cloven or crushed by a weapon. Simple one-piece poleyns of iron or hardened leather started appearing in Europe in the 13th century, usually worn over mail leggings: mail would protect against the slicing action of cuts, but was too flexible to protect such bony parts of the body from blunt trauma without some rigid reinforcement. The poleyn could either have straps on it to be buckled onto the knee, or be built into a set of quilted thigh guards (cuisses).

Detail from sculpture of a man in armor, Musée de l'Œuvre
Notre-Dame, Strassburg. Photo taken by Brunswyk on 
January 25th, 2014, hosted on Wikimedia Commons

Further into the 14th century it became common to wear iron cuisses that had the poleyns built into them, while the keeping the greaves (calf or shin guards) as separate pieces. The articulated form of poleyn consisted of a main plate shaped like the knee cap, usually with a wing that wrapped around the outside of the joint to protect against blows to the side of the knee. One or more lames articulated with rivets were added to the top and bottom, so the poleyn could expand when the knee was bent and contract when the knee was straightened. The upper lames were riveted to the cuisse, while a plate called a demi-greave would hang from the lower lames and overlap the greave. On the example below from the Royal Armouries, the upper lame underlaps both the main plate and the cuisse, while the lower lame underlaps the main plate and overlaps the demi-greave.

Detail of Right Cuisse and Poleyn, Italian, 1420. Royal Armouries, III.1285

Guts's poleyns have a simple wing on the outside. Besides the main plate they have one large upper lame, and three narrower lower lames that extend down to the top of his boot. The lower lames go down so far that they form a sort of demi-greave by themselves.

The upper portion of the poleyn is anchored by the leather legging it's attached to, while the lower part is secured by a strap around the back of the calf.

Guts also has sabatons, or plate protection for the feet. Sabatons first appeared in the 14th century. During the 14th and 15th centuries they tended to have pointed toes, in imitation of the pointy-toed shoes which were fashionable at the time. Sabatons had to be very flexible in order to accommodate the flexing of the foot, so they were made of many lames. The rivets that held them together could be set in slightly elongated holes to provide some extra room for expansion. 

The sabatons below from the Royal Armouries have lames that overlap upward from the toe to the ankle; sabatons with lames that overlap downward, or in which different parts overlap in different directions, can also be found. If a sabaton had a heel plate to cover the back of the foot, it would be able to swing open on a hinge so that the foot could be inserted before the back was closed and buckled. Straps across the underside of the shoe would prevent the sabaton from separating from the shoe.

Pair of Sabatons, Milanese, 1445-1455. Royal Armouries, III.1348 

Guts has sabatons which are pointed in a pseudo-Gothic style that suits his dark image very well. They have no heel plates, and are attatched by one strap under the sole as well as two straps around the back of the foot. From toe to heel the lames overlap upward, but there are two additional lames extending a short distance up the shin which overlap downward. It would be unexpected in medieval times to see sabatons that extended higher than the ankle, but then again Guts does not use greaves. Presumably if he did, he wouldn't be able to wear these sweet bucket-topped boots.

If we look under Guts's foot, we'll see that there's only one strap across the arch of the foot, when you'd expect to also see at least one more further forward to hold down the toe. In real life you would want to add this to prevent the toe of the sabaton from curling upward independently of the boot. We also see how the toe of the sabaton is pointier than the boot underneath it.

In this Chapter, Guts manages not to lose any pieces of armor. However the armor doesn't prevent him from getting some of the worst beatings he's ever taken: much of it takes the form of wounds to the head and arms, or blunt trauma and falling damage to the whole body. At one point he deliberately lets the insect Apostle Rosine stab him through the right forearm to set up his chance to shoot her with his hand cannon. When he shoots too low and she refuses to go down, he needs to bandage his right hand to the hilt of the Dragon Slayer to keep his grip on it. Good thing he had those in his pouch!

Finally he manages to mortally wound Rosine, first by stabbing her from behind, and then letting her impale him through the cheeks so he can chop her human body from shoulder to waist. While she falls to Earth, Guts lands in a body of water. As he bursts to the surface, the bottom lame of his left pauldron falls off.

As he's about to finish off a dying Rosine, Guts gets shot with a crossbow bolt in the lower right ribs by Jill's father Zepek, and then in the left shoulder by one of the Holy Iron Chain Knights who have come to arrest him. A third crossbow bolt bounces off his right pauldron, but the two square hits on the breastplate manage to perforate it. 

In real life I think a breastplate being perforated by a crossbow would be very unlikely because it's one of the two thickest parts of any armor (the other being the skull of a helmet), but at least it's safe to say that Guts's breastplate reduces their penetration so that lungs or arteries aren't punctured. He retains enough stamina to run away, and afterwards can be seen yanking out the offending bolts. 

To interject again, in real life you could do almost as much damage recklessly trying to yank out an arrow as the arrow originally caused going in—especially if it turns out that the arrow itself was serving to plug the wound and reduce the bleeding—but surviving this just goes to show that Guts is one tough sunofabitch.

Ironically, the fight against Rosine proves to be so brutal and exhausting that he struggles afterwards to defend himself against the mere humans of the H.I.C.K.s. At first he only blocks and punches using his iron hand, and when he does swing the Dragon Slayer the wound in his sword arm spurts blood again. He also takes another crossbow bolt in the left thigh, showing that the leather can only do so much. Realizing he needs to end the fight before his endurance runs out, Guts makes a desperate attack against Commander Farnese. Lacking any kind of skill, she blindly sticks her sword out in front of her, a move which Guts is about to easily deflect with his iron hand... until her servant Serpico throws a perfectly-aimed piece of wood that strikes the bolt in Guts's leg, causing his leg to buckle and drop his shoulder right into the path of Fernese's point. Because of the cape it's hard for me to tell whether the blade goes in between the pauldron and the armhole of the cuirass, or in through the neck opening, but in any case that's the last straw which makes him collapse altogether.

Guts is arrested and stripped of his armor, but with the help of Puck he manages to regain his strength, retrieve his gear, and escape. Thus he ends the adventure with practically all of the equipment he started with, minus one lame and plus several holes.

See You Next Time in Part 2.3!