Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.
Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.
I love all of this. And can I say that the whole thing with his flashback and Casca and him saying sorry to Gambino broke my heart? It hurt so much that he felt any guilt about it. If I remember correctly Casca at first says something like;
“And he assaulted you?”
And Guts is like;
“No. Yes? I killed him. I killed my father.”
That whole thing just broke my heart and the fact that we know that it’s what they have in common that tears them apart hurts to think about. I wonder if Guts reminded Griffith of anyone?
Oh maaan yeah that exchange is so good and sad. Verbatim (bc I have the page handy and I absolutely love this dialogue) it’s:
“Gambino assaulted you… so you killed him?”
“No! Gambino was different! I never meant to kill him! He took me in when I was a baby and almost dead. He taught me the sword. So why…?! Why’d he sell me out to that pig-bastard?”
which is just so heartbreaking. Then it’s a page later that he tells her how he accidentally killed him and finishes with, “I’m sorry… Gambino. Father…”
And good question. You have to wonder, with Griffith’s love at first sight thing, what it was about Guts that had him so entranced from the start. He talks about his tenacious ‘throwing himself into danger and then fighting to survive’ fighting style, but it does make you wonder if that’s all there is to it. If Griffith had slowly grown to love Guts i think i could fully understand why, but dude was fixated and risking his life for him from the very beginning.
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