Author: hawkville

Exist in me (scary all over flip) by Zaya Worldstar Money by Joji I definitely suggest watching the lyric video for the last song

ty! lol this kind of music is so different than what I usually listen to, it makes for a nice + interesting change. Also while they’re both rly abstract wrt lyrics, I’m feeling them for griffguts vibes. First feels like Guts pov post-Eclipse to me, and 2nd feels like Griffith pov from the duel to the Eclipse.

griff-guts
replied to your post “R u familiar with the Castlevania series by any chance? Sorry that…”

i think they might be referring to the video game series?? which is what the anime is based off of. the game series is like on par with dark souls almost in terms of levels of berserk vibes lol

oh if that’s the case then I’m only technically familiar with the series in that I know it exists and I vaguely recall watching my brother play one on nes when I was like 6 lol.

ihni what the later games are like tho now i’m kinda curious since I’ve heard a lot about how Dark Souls is extremely Berserk-y.

R u familiar with the Castlevania series by any chance? Sorry that this isn’t Berserk related, but wanted to hear your thoughts on this series if you know it.

The netflix one? Yeah I watched it, and it was good, but it didn’t really grab me tbh. The animation and voice acting were good, and it was engaging enough that I watched it in one sitting, and the characters were fun, but idk if I have much else to say about it other than that. I’ll probably watch season 2 when it comes out, and probably ship Trevor/Alucard until the inevitable het takes over lol.

(Also tbf it’s slightly Berserk related since I remember reading that Berserk was an inspiration for elements of the show, tho I forget what. But either way I don’t mind getting non Berserk-related asks lol)

What’s your opinion on the Berserk movie trilogy? I just finished watching them today and I have mixed feelings on them. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t great either lol. I gotta admit tho they really did a good job with Griffith’s character design. They captured the whole ethereal beauty thing really well imo.

Yeah I kinda feel the same. I love the character designs to pieces tbh, I feel like they totally nailed everyone’s look, evoking Miura’s late Golden Age art, aka his best art imo, without copying it completely.

And I really liked some of the adaptation choices, like obviously the deliberate emphasis on the griffguts subtext was a lot of fun. Loved every change they made to the scene where Griffith shows up at Charlotte’s window – the way he’s completely out of it and nearly collapses on her, going ‘wait what the hell am I doing I should leave’ and having Charlotte ask him to stay, etc. Liked how they streamlined it to Griffith showing up personally after the 100 man fight. I really liked how they moved “the crystalization of your last tear shed” to after Guts’ post-Eclipse breakdown, and the whole violent history of humanity sequence during Griffith’s transformation was p great too. And in general I liked how they depicted everything they didn’t change from the manga, at least in the first two movies. There were a lot of good subtleties, it looked good aesthetically give or take some cgi, etc.

But I will never not be salty about losing Griffith’s backstory + Tombstone of Flame, and therefore like his entire motivation and character in general. I mean come on, Griffith’s self-harmy rant to Casca and “do you think that I’m cruel?” are absolutely necessary.

Instead they went for more of a Griffith is a shallow ambitious asshole who happened to fall in love with his bff, ruined his life because of it, and then decided not to make the same mistake twice angle. Like, the appearance of the pile of corpses in Griffith’s mind when Ubik’s convincing him to make the sacrifice doesn’t even work in the movies, it’s too little too late to show us his guilt issues now, especially without an actual focal point like the dead kid, or any visceral demonstration of how he feels, like the prostitution or the self harm. It all just comes across as shallow. They might as well have cut it out and had Griffith agree to make the sacrifice as soon as Void mentioned giving him wings and his dream back lol.

In general I actually feel like they did a fairly good job keeping the basic themes of Berserk intact while cutting out a ton of it lol. eg they lost 90% of Guts decision to leave, but Casca got a line towards the end about how people are weak so they cling to dreams and other people. So like, despite the fact that they cut out a huge amount of important stuff about Guts and Griffith’s dreams, I know they got the basic point and managed to convey it.

Tho ofc a lot of those scenes they lost are necessary not just bc of the information they convey but because of the emotional impact, so eg cutting Guts’ post-Zodd rooftop scene was still a terrible decision even if technically it doesn’t tell us anything absolutely necessary that we couldn’t’ve figured out from Guts angrily thinking about Casca calling him a mad dog followed by Griffith saying he had no reason to risk his life for him. It’s still a ~moment~ and it’s important to the impact of the Promrose Hall speech.

Also the third movie especially is kind of a mess imo. The rape scene was practically comedic w/ the music they added and way too long, the pacing was overall awful, they had Griffith overhear Guts wanting to stay for some reason which really muddies his whole subsequent breakdown, and they completely butchered the best and most important moment in the story:

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Like, this is coming from someone who thinks that like, half of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice was just to get rid of Guts lol, I have no problem with him feeling spiteful here, but my god, this is cartoonish. Look at the original:

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Even the anime caught more nuance of feeling and it was never that great at conveying subtle emotions thru expression:

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Idk this is long and disorganized lol.

tl;dr I also have mixed feelings. I enjoy the experience of watching the movies, and I feel like the people who made them probably have a lot of the same takes on Berserk that I do, which can make a lot of details they included fairly rewarding (eg one I often cite is showing how Griffith lies about not feeling emotion by having him back his horse away from Gennon after claiming he doesn’t gaf), but overall I disagree with a lot of their adaptational decisions and it’s fairly frustrating lol.

sobadpink
replied to your photo

I hope she comes back as a kickass villain friend

lol i’m never sure if replies to things i’ve reblogged are meant for me or the op but either way, super agree, theresia showing back up to get revenge would be amazing

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lol this just sums up the guts-griffith-casca love triangle so perfectly.

Like… it sets up both the way Guts and Griffith use Casca as an intermediary for physical (and emotional) intimacy with each other, making her life a living hell, and the way Casca’s whole existence revolves around her gender in contrast to the men surrounding her, and ties those two things together.

Plus, with Guts’ nightmare and subsequent relief that it’s a woman rather than a man with him, it adds trauma to the mix. It ties everything together.

And man it is thematically neat as fuck.

Like what I’m saying is that if you choose to believe this is purposeful, then what the Golden Age is about is two dudes who are both attracted to each other and can’t act on it thanks to internalized (trauma)*** and externalized (heteronormativity) homophobia, and this fucks up both the dudes in question, and the woman/en (? Charlotte isn’t shown to suffer from this, but I imagine being in a one-sided relationship will eventually take its toll on her) they end up turning to instead out of that internalized and externalized obligation.

Casca’s story is almost entirely about dealing with misogyny, and this makes heteronormativity a part of that. It’s not just a woman’s duty to warm a man – another man can’t. Men can’t be physically intimate with each other, only with women, and more, they have to be physically intimate with women to attain like, an artificial sense of self-actualization – in Berserk, their dreams. And this harms both the men in their enforced isolation from each other and the women in their enforced intimacy with men.

Like, Guts even references Casca warming him here after they have sex, again, tying physical intimacy with her to his trauma.

And while Charlotte is Griffith’s means to achieving his dream, Casca is Guts’ – because attaining Casca’s affection, being “good” for her, means he’s more like Griffith, and closer to his goal of being Griffith’s equal.

I mean Guts leaving Griffith because they couldn’t share their feelings with each other, and Griffith sleeping with Charlotte as a means of denial (“take all those sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire”) and then Guts sleeping with Casca as a means of denial (”don’t think about those things. Right now all you need is to feel alive”) both lead directly to Griffith choosing to destroy his feelings so he can live solely for his dream. Draw your own conclusions about how this culminates in the most destructive display of heterosexuality in the story.

Once the nature of Guts’ dream switches from abandoning Griffith to pursuing him in rage things get murkier on Guts’ side, but this reading still works if you consider that Guts’ problem isn’t exactly his lingering, twisted feelings for Griffith, but his refusal to actually examine and untangle them, with revenge as just another distraction.

And to be perfectly crystal clear I’m not saying this is purposeful, or that even if it somehow is purposeful Miura doesn’t still go about it as offensively as possible. Like, by this reading internalized homophobia is essentially positioned as a result of evil gay pedophiles, to a much greater extent than any vague reference to societal norms. Both these dudes succumb to inner darknesses and assault a woman explicitly because of their feelings for the other dude. I’m not giving him a round of applause here lmao. It’s probably actually less offensive if it’s all accidental.

And lbr it’s probably a side-effect of writing a) a female character whose life revolves around misogyny, b) a homoerotic relationship between 2 dudes and c) a half-assed het subplot between one of those dudes and the aforementioned woman

But like still, it just fits together so freaking well. It’s ridiculous how neat this reading is during the Golden Age.

***to be clear i’m not saying internalized homophobia is always a result of trauma lol, I’m saying that’s how the story does it.

madchen
replied to your post “I’ve heard there are some similarities between Berserk and Captive…”

tbh that’s it besides some quirks with laurent and his history him and griffith are pretty different imho. damien and guts are way different besides being big and more physical
like imho damen has his shit together way more than guts lol

ty, yeah I didn’t really see any personality similarities between damen and guts. i don’t know anything about laurent yet tho so i can’t judge there, but I’m not really expecting serial-numbers-filed-off-berserk-fanfiction I guess lol.

there’s a second opinion for you anon!

I’ve heard there are some similarities between Berserk and Captive prince. Can you tell me the similarities-you see in the book

I only just started reading it so not yet, but sure when I finish the first one I’ll make a post and tag it anonymous for you. might not be for a while, I don’t read every day lol.

Tho I can say that so far the only similarity seems to be blond/brunet gay + political scheming in a made up historical kingdom lol, but again, I’m only a couple chapters in.