I'm as surprised as you, honestly it doesn't make sense to me, but I heard it from psalt of r/berserk who bought the new guidebook and that's what it said. I'm going to get my own copy this week and see for myself.
Actually wait, his age does make sense if you look at it on its own. Guts was 15 when he defeated Bazuso and entered the Band of the Hawk, and if he's five years older than Rickert, that means Rickert was 10 when he joined and 14 at the time of the Eclipse. It's more the fact that Farnese isn't older than Rickert that I can't figure out. Actually, I think that creates a continuity problem. If she's five years younger than Guts, that means she would have been 14 at the time of the Eclipse, and she didn't join the Holy Iron Chain Knights until after she had turned sixteen. Volume 14 says "two years later" after the scene where she discovers the pool of carnage left by the Eclipse, so if that happened immediately after the Eclipse then she is two years too early to be leading the H.I.C.K.S. Miura rarely makes mistakes because of his attention to detail, but the fact that he makes things up as he goes means it's not inconceivable that he let a contradiction slip in. I'm also not sure what level of involvement he had in producing the guide book.
It also doesn't help that Rickert's physical appearance didn't seem to change one bit throughout the Golden Age. All that time I actually thought he was no older than Adonis (rest that poor boy's soul). A late growth spurt, I guess? But yeah, it's Farnese's age that definitely feels wrong. I'd say she should be somewhere around 21 or 22 instead.
Edited by 9thOutworldsManYeah, and now that i think of it, it isn't plausible that Griffith started the band of the Hawk when he was only twelve years old, unless he was 14 and they didn't count the years he didn't have a physical body when calculating the total. Imma have to call bullshit on some of these numbers.
Looking at some of these numbers, it seems Miura-sensei just decided to "divide them by groups" and age them apart like "school batches" or something. I mean, maybe it's not impossible... but I also find it a little bit too contrived that Guts, Casca, and Griffith are all the exact same ages (give or take maybe a few months in gap). I always figured the latter two, (especially Griffith) were older than Guts by at least 3 to 6 years. And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Casca supposed to be considerably younger when Griffith first met and rescued her? Sheesh... The only good explanation I think is if Miura really did choose not to count the years Griffith spent between the Eclipse and his "rebirth". At least Isidro, Schierke and Isma's are varied...
Edited by 9thOutworldsManThe way i see it, the numbers might have been made up by some editor at hakusensha rather than Miura himself, and maybe he didn't contradict them because he was never too sure himself. It's an established fact that Casca was 12 when Griffith found her, she said so herself. She doesn't explicitly say Griffith was older than her, but it's heavily implied. I think six years older than Casca is too much, but if he's not at least two years older than her, it beggars belief that he would already be leading a group of bandits when she meets him. He sure looked at least older than 13 when he found her. The kids i can believe, but I'm gonna make it my head-canon that the two years didn't count and Griffith is chronologically 26.
Edited by TheBigBopper27 or 28 for me. Guts' child soldier badassery I can totally buy given how thoroughly explored his harsh backstory was. Until Griffith gets a similar introspective look, I just can't imagine him as having already achieved THAT level of success at 12 or even 14... unless we're talking pure Gary Stu levels of charisma and fighting talent...
Edited by 9thOutworldsMan
Rickert's officially the same age as Farnese? Not debating it or anything, but I was just caught by surprise. Figured he would be 15 at most.
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