Anyone seen this anime series before? It's awesome. The series is basically about a mercenary named Guts, who ends up joining a highly recognized mercenary group called The Band of the Hawk.

The first episode starts off at the beginning of his quest as the revered Black Swordsman, which is set after his quests with the Band of the Hawk, but then quickly turns back to years before, and so the series shows all the events that lead up to the first episode.

Guts is quickly recognized for his mighty strength, which has pretty much been forged by the fact that he was born into having to fight to survive, and also because he was forced to fight in battle using a sword ridiculously too big for him from a very young age, thus Guts ends up getting use to using an overly large blade, and then continues only using a sword that is twice his size.

One of the better series out there. I wished the first episode would have fit in better after you had watched the entire series. That was the first thing I did after watching the whole thing was rewatch the first episode. The first time I saw it was like "cool, but what's going on" and after watching it the second time was like "this still doesn't make sense." Well, it did make sense, but just didn't fit together correctly. A lot of anime does this.

I know how you feel The anime series ended on such a cliff hanger that I just couldn’t stand it and had to get my hands on the manga comics so I could see where the story went.

The manga comics start off with Guts wandering as the Black Swordsman, set some time before the first episode of the anime series. So far there are 33 translated issues, each issue being roughly 300 pages.

In the 4th issue, the story back tracks to Gut’s origin and shows all the events that transpired in the anime series until roughly around issue 13 when it finally continues on to the good stuff.

All the chapters of the comic book series that are showed in the anime series are almost identical with the exception that in the comic book, Gut’s origin is set earlier and gives you bit more of a brutal insight into what he went through with Gambino.

The comic book also has more characters, the more pivotal of them being The Skull Knight: A mysterious skull faced horseman who seems to know everything but tells you nothing through riddles when he shows up to help Guts in moments of dire need, and Puck: A fairy that has healing powers, who won’t leave Guts alone and acts as a moral compass while bringing some comic relief in all the chaos.

If you liked the anime series, you’ll love the comics; you’ll probably find that the comics will shed light on anything that didn’t fit right or make any sense in the anime.