Berserk Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Overview
Image Gallery

Rosine is a female apostle[6][7] and a major antagonist in the Conviction Arc.[5][8]

Appearance[]

In her preferred form, Rosine is a green-blue "elf" being of comparable height to her original, human self with insect-like eyes, two antennae and wings that grow from the sides of her head and enable fast flight.[9][5] When she introduces herself to Jill, she takes a slightly different, more human appearance in which her face appears less like that of an insect and lacked antennae. She reverts to her base form when Guts ambushes and slices off part of her wings.[2] She also takes this appearance when having fun with Jill[10] and before her death.[7]

In her true apostle form, she takes the form of a giant moth with several protrusions from below where her humanoid form appears, along with several legs reminiscent of those of an insect, and two antennae, as well as a stinger.[8]

According to Kentarou Miura artwork, she was a fair-skinned human with light blue eyes. Her hair was reddish-blonde down to her back.

Personality[]

During her time as a human, she was rather tomboyish and adventurous, spending long hours playing in the woods and enjoying herself and catching small animals.[1]

Jill posits that Rosine's motivation for becoming an elf was identifying herself with and loving the legend of a child named Peekaf who ran away from his village because he looked like an elf and thought he did not know his real parents.[11] When remembering how serious and impressed she looked once Rosine told her she, too, was an elf, Jill notes that Rosine was forcing herself to be cheerful.[1] After becoming an apostle, she refers to herself as "the queen of the elves"[1][12] and her true form is a giant female luna moth.[8] Dwelling in the Misty Valley, she terrorized nearby villages, in which her elf-like pseudo-apostles ate their livestock and people,[13][1] as well as capturing children[13] whom she transformed into more "elves" via cocoons.[14]

These actions were done out of a morality which she adopted from the cruelty she went through whilst living in her village.[14] She grew up regularly being beaten,[1] and fun things were always outside the village, a place threatened by hunger, cold and war. Therefore, Rosine believed she was showing kindness to the children. This is shown when she wants to turn Jill into a pseudo-apostle so that no one could hurt her.[5][14] Rosine shows a possessive streak toward her, repeatedly hugging the girl and claiming she's "hers".[2][10][12] She does on the other hand seem to truly care for Jill and love her as a friend,[1] keeping her away from harm.[2][4] She is also seen flirting with Guts during their combat.[12]

Abilities[]

Poison Dust: Rosine produces a toxic from the dust of her wings.[5]

Pseudo-Apostle Siring: she had polymorphic capabilities for transforming the children she captured into insect-like minions whom she dubbed as elves.[5] She achieved this by pupating them inside cocoons in emergence grounds.[14] She is also shown to be willing to transform co-operative adults into 'guardian' pseudo-apostles, whose duty is to protect the forest and its child inhabitants.[15]

Enhanced Speed: in her true apostle form, Rosine is able to reach supersonic speeds in flight. This greatly enhances her killing ability and keeps her out of range, but her accuracy suffers. In breaking the sound barrier, she creates sonic booms that are able to knock her targets off-balance even if she doesn't land her hit.[12]

Enhanced Proboscis: combined with her blistering speed, she demonstrates the ability to use her moth-like proboscis as a lance for skewering enemies[12][7] or as a makeshift rapier for slashing and evisceration.[14] In her first encounter with Guts, she easily deflects his throwing knives with only the proboscis.[5]

Background[]

Jill Rosine Together hq

Rosine with Jill.

Originally from a village, Rosine was born sometime after her mother, along with some of the other women in their village, were violated by enemy men who took part in a big conflict. As a result, Rosine's father questioned if she was his biological daughter. This resulted in her parents fighting, with Rosine avoiding them altogether by spending her days playing in the woods and streams, catching bugs and small animals while collecting items she found lying around, up and including a strange stone she found on a river bank. She befriended the young Jill, telling the girl her own version of the story of Peekaf and considered herself an elf despite knowing they did not exist. One night, keeping up the farce that she was an elf, Rosine decided to run away from home to the elvish land said to be in the Misty Valley. Before leaving, Rosine told Jill that she could have everything she collected over the year except for one item that she took with her: the strange stone.[1] After gleefully reaching the Misty Valley, she sat alone, knowing full well elves didn't exist, but maintained the illusion that they did to justify her leaving the village. Days later, and having set up search parties to find her, Rosine was found by her parents, with her mother glad to find her. Her father, however, struck her, berating her decision to leave. He yelled about how humiliated he was that the villagers troubled themselves with finding her after she left. He asked if she had left due to his not being her real father. Her mother intervened, but he struck and beated her like he did to Rosine. As she watched, deeming such behavior unbecoming in the valley and wanting them to go away, her beherit activated and the girl sacrificed her own parents to be reborn as an elf-like apostle.[7] From there, Rosine began to kidnap children and turn them into her "elves"[13], while transforming lost men from the surrounding forest into guardians for her domain.[15][16] It was then that Rosine's elf-like pseudo-apostles started attacking her home village[13] as well as other villages.[1]

Story[]

Golden Age Arc[]

RickertButterfly

Rosine hovering in the distance over the lake.

The night before the Eclipse, Rosine is among the apostles who slaughter the wounded members of the Band of the Falcon, Rickert seeing only a quick glimpse of her blurry image while gathering water, just before the killing begins.[9] Upon returning to the camp, Rickert finds all of the wounded had been killed, and is cornered by Rosine, some of her insect-like pseudo-apostles and the Count, only to be spared when the Skull Knight intervenes and drives the apostles back. Rosine and the others then resume their journey toward Midland's border.[6]

Conviction Arc[]

FlyingWithJill

Rosine spiriting Jill away.

Rosine encounters Guts when he trapped a group of her familiars in the barn and set them on fire.[17] After poisoning Guts, Rosine dismisses Puck as Peekaf and tries to kill him when he reveals her pseudo-apostles as children before falling back when she sees Jill, who refers to her by name.[5] The following early morning, when Jill accompanies Guts to see her again, Rosine appears before her friend to invite her to her realm, the Misty Valley. They are stopped by Guts, who partially slices one of Rosine's wings. Her rage was cut short by the pleas of her childhood friend, and both girls fly away. As Rosine and Jill fly high above the ground, Jill is entranced by the beauty of the landscape beneath her. Rosine offers Jill a chance to fly all she wants provided she becomes "one of them". When the girl shows uncertainty at the prospect of becoming an elf, Rosine accuses her of having a crush on Guts. She then wonders aloud whether Guts will follow them, and reassures Jill that the Misty Valley has adult guards who protect its inhabitants from those who would hurt them.[2]

As Guts fights through the insectoid guardians she placed around the Misty Valley,[18][15][16][19] Rosine tempts Jill to consider becoming an "elf" like her. Jill isn't sure, disappointing Rosine, but she allows Jill the time she needs to come to a decision.[20] But when Jill runs away after seeing the other kids kill each other in a war game, she ends up in which Rosine deems as an emerging ground, where the human children are turned into their elf forms. When Jill points to how her elves were killing each other viciously, Rosine is perfectly aware of the fact, writing it off as "playing" war. She says that human children always play war, but it only stops becoming scary upon becoming an elf. The apostle says that her elves are therefore merely playing human, and if Jill were to return home to the beatings, the cold and the hunger, she would also have to face real human wars. Rosine once again offers Jill the comparative paradise of life as an elf. As Jill begins to tear up, Rosine pulls her into a hug, telling her that she'll make her a powerful, beautiful elf that no one could ever hurt. Her wings wrap around herself and Jill, the latter of whom is slowly being coated by strings, a cocoon forming around her. Puck yells at Jill, telling her to resist the temptation to become an elf. Rosine turns to him and, addressing him as Peekaf, claims he gave her "strange ideas". She uses her forehead antenna to attack him, but the strike instead cleaves a nearby cocoon in two, and from its halves falls a child that has not completed its metamorphosis. Jill notices it and screams. Just then, the nest is engulfed in fire, destroying the cocoons. The silhouette of Guts, holding a torch, is barely visible. Rosine orders her elves to attack, but Guts swings his sword through one of the pillars supporting the roof of the cave. The fiery cocoons overhead fall to the ground just as the elves pass beneath them, setting them on fire.[14]

RosineMeetsPuck

Rosine dying.

Though Rosine keeps on sending more pseudo-apostles his way,[14][21] Guts kills the last of Rosine's "elves" while using the cave to render her poison ineffective by the flames and mitigate her speed by the cramped space. Rosine responds to this by assuming her true form, attempting to kill Guts for burning her "elves" and land alike before starting anew with Jill by her side.[8] After a long fight,[12] Guts manages to land a fatal blow on Rosine by using her friendship with Jill to his advantage. Reverting to her usual form, with her left arm gone, Rosine starts to remember how she became an apostle and silently begs for her parents' forgiveness. As Jill runs to her out of concern for her, Rosine admits she never truly believed in elves. Then, Puck gives her peace of mind by formally introducing himself and explaining that his kind did indeed live in the Misty Valley long ago.[7] After the Holy Iron Chain Knights drive off Guts as he was about to finish her off against Jill's pleas, a now delusional Rosine takes flight one last time to "return to her parents". Within minutes of leaving the Misty Valley, Rosine plummets downward toward a hill and dies remembering the good time she had with her mother and father.[3] Some time after, the Skull Knight arrives to the charred remains of Rosine's tree and takes her beherit.[22]

Notes[]

  • Without counting Charles or Niko, Rosine is perhaps the youngest apostle introduced in Berserk.
  • She also appears in the 1997 anime along with the other apostles from the first three volumes of the manga, and in a small cameo in the third Golden Age movie, flying in her apostle form right into the camera at the end of the Eclipse.
  • Rosine, the Egg of the Perfect World and Rakshas are the only apostles that are not shown to have a human base form.
  • Because of the nature of apostles and their spawns reverting to human form upon death, Rosine indirectly played a role in demonizing Guts in the eyes of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, as they came across Rosine's spawns, now as deceased children.[19]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Berserk :: Volume 15, "Girl I Remember"
  2. ^ a b c d e Berserk :: Volume 15, "World of the Winged Ones"
  3. ^ a b Berserk :: Volume 16, "Road Home"
  4. ^ a b Berserk :: Volume 16, "Between Man and Demon"
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Berserk :: Volume 15, "Queen"
  6. ^ a b c Berserk :: Volume 10, "The Eve (2)"
  7. ^ a b c d e Berserk :: Volume 16, "Firefly"
  8. ^ a b c d Berserk :: Volume 16, "Flying Demon"
  9. ^ a b Berserk :: Volume 10, "The Eve (1)"
  10. ^ a b Berserk :: Volume 15, "Misty Valley (1)"
  11. ^ Berserk :: Volume 15, "Red-Eyed Peekaf"
  12. ^ a b c d e f Berserk :: Volume 16, "Bloody Night Sky"
  13. ^ a b c d Berserk :: Volume 14, "Coming By Flight"
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Berserk :: Volume 15, "Cocoons"
  15. ^ a b c Berserk :: Volume 15, "Guardian (1)"
  16. ^ a b Berserk :: Volume 15, "Guardian (2)"
  17. ^ Berserk :: Volume 14, "Evil Insect"
  18. ^ Berserk :: Volume 14, "Elves of Misty Valley"
  19. ^ a b Berserk :: Volume 15, "Pursuers"
  20. ^ Berserk :: Volume 15, "Misty Valley (2)"
  21. ^ Berserk :: Volume 16, "Monster"
  22. ^ Berserk :: Volume 16, "Beast of Darkness"

Appendices[]

Advertisement