In the second movie of the egg of the king, griffith literally eats out Charlotte with Guts in mind. He’s literally thinking of Guts as he comes and if that’s not gay, I don’t know what is.
I find it really cool that Griffith was the one thinking about using a move which would most probably kill guts if he lost the slightest control, but ends up completely missing the mark.
Whereas Guts is the one who ends up winning by using a move which would have most definitely killed Griffith if he had an iota less control over his monster blade than he did.
And he doesn’t even consider the possibility of what could happen if it goes south. There’s no- “Oh god how can I do that, it might kill him” moment.
Which is
ALSO incredible because Guts is actually not at all used to holding back his hacks in any way. He’s never had to before. His fighting style is kind of the reason the manga is called ‘Berserk’
So there was more precedent for him to lose control than Griffith, whose style is ALL about precision and control.
I may also be implying that sure, Griffith’s ‘I’m willing to risk your death if you don’t stay’ reasoning is messed up.
But so is Guts ‘im willing to risk your death if you don’t let me go.’ reasoning.
Of course it’s subconscious for him.
But STILl
man there’s so much to love about the duel. the contrast between Guts and Griffith’s states of mind, both between each other and their usual selves in battle, is so good.
and now that you mention it it’s rly striking that Griffith is the one considering the possibility of killing Guts and… not exactly waffling, but talking himself into going for it anyway, while Guts is like, “it’s Griffith so I can’t let my guard down, but I’m weirdly super chill rn, nice.”
I think Guts’ confident control is partially bc his strike was basically that drill he does where he swings his sword and stops it level 200 times in a row, but it’s still interesting to me that he didn’t even consider the possibility of accidentally killing Griffith.
moments like these are depressing bc if i wasn’t supposed to find them cutely shippy i’d love them
like imagine guts and casca’s relationship without the veneer of slapped on romance. guts comforts her non-sexually after casca tries to kill herself, they renew their tentative friendship that began a year ago, they begin working in sync as comrades.
moments like these are, rather than romantic, symbolic of guts’ place as a hawk and the fact that he’s at his best with his friends – casca and guts are both badass warriors and part of a larger family which guts once abandoned.
imo without the romance berserk would actually be tighter thematically. casca would just be the last remnant of the hawks, because she was their leader in place of griffith – the way judeau said as he tried to rescue her. the whole pseudo ex girlfriend thing only complicates it and dilutes the theme of the hawks as guts’ family, and saving casca = atoning for leaving them.
like how many times post-eclipse does guts think of her as the last remnant of the hawks, the last ‘feeble flame’ left to him off the hawks’ campfire, vows not to abandon her after remembering leaving griffith, yadda yadda yadda? his sexual relationship with her is vastly de-emphasized (except when the beast of darkness starts throwing his feelings for griffith into the mix, hmmmm) bc it’s just not important to the point of the story.
Oh yeah, I remember Flora asking Guts whether the betchi is his or he’s just a carrier, so I guess it’s possible. Ughhhh I can imagine all the tension between Guts and Casca, no thanks, Miura don’t do that. But on the other hand Casca will surely have a lovely relationship with Farnesca, since they got really close. I can’t wait till they finally have a proper conversation.
yesss no matter what happens I can’t wait for farnese to interact with sane casca, plz miura i desperately need them to talk.
Can she use a behelit if she’s already a branded sacrifice? The two don’t have to necessarily cancel each other, but I don’t think it’s probable.
The godhand said early on that you can’t sacrifice someone who’s already been sacrificed, but nothing about whether a sacrifice can use a behelit. Since we’re meant to think the possibility exists for Guts to use it it stands to reason the possibility exists for Casca.
But it’s just my theory because I want something epic and game-changing ito happen soon with Guts and co, and if it makes G*tsca much less likely to happen or become a sexual tension will-they-won’t-they get back together thing, that’s an added bonus lol.
I really can’t wait for the inevitable fight between Guts and Casca when she gets her memories back, she’d totally break up with him and want to stay away, though I think she won’t just leave the group because, like in her mind scape, she understands fundamentally that he did try to help her. Guts is already resigned and I think he’ll be “I totally deserved that, but it still hurts”.
I’d be pretty much down with this happening tbh. It would be awful if they just got back together no harm no foul, though I doubt that will happen. This seems like the happiest possibility, really 😀 And yeah the fact that he’s the dog dragging her around in her head does suggest that she sees him as helping her.
My biggest hope is that she wakes up, and reacts to her years-delayed trauma in some way that advances the plot. My main idea is that she uses chekhov’s behelit, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that drastic. And she could do something important after hashing everything out with Guts.
It can get really messy if Casca not getting her memories back leads to her leaving Guts because she remembers him assaulting her and go to Griffith because she doesn’t remembers his. That would be poor taste though, I’d much rather like Casca working through her feelings and memories.
Like if she only gets partial memories back, but doesn’t remember the eclipse? I actually hadn’t thought of that possibility, but yeaaaaah I def would not want that to happen. As well as being bad taste I think it would be cheap frustrating drama, and Casca would still be a plot device for conflict.
I’d also way prefer if she gets all her memories back and has to work through the trauma in some way, whether that means Elfhelm therapy or going on a rampage, I just want Casca to be an active character with agency again.
I think it would be rly disappointingly anticlimactic after all this ominous build up if Casca ended up not getting her memories back (tho that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen lbr), but yeah now that you mention it ia that there’s probably going to be at least some inner conflict w/ Schierke and Farnese when they reach the Eclipse about whether they should continue on, or whether making Casca relive those memories is too cruel, etc.
After all those warnings Guts got it would make sense to have Farnese and Schierke doubt whether they’re doing the right thing or not. Plus they’re fighting mind monsters and stuff too that get stronger the closer they get to the Eclipse, so I think it’s likely that things won’t go perfectly, especially if they’re conflicted. Idk but I bet it’s going to be tense.
Forgot to mention this when it comes to Griffith + Casca parallels (Guts leaves for a year/two years to pursue a dumb dream, abandoning someone who needs him, then he comes back, realizes he may have fucked up, and rescues them):
Im glad im not alone on this. Its so weird that casca was guts’s last chance to make the right choice but he still messed up in some way.
Ooh yk when you put it like that, what I find striking is that he did make the right choice, pre-Eclipse. He realized he shouldn’t’ve left and decided to stay with Griffith despite getting told multiple times to leave by Casca and Judeau.
It was Casca telling him to leave that fucked Griffith up lol, not Guts wanting to leave or being reluctant to stay.
Whereas with Casca he makes the same mistake again, and directly compares leaving Casca alone in a cave to leaving Griffith, but when he gets Casca back he’s his own worst enemy when it comes to sticking to his resolution to stay with her.
First he plans to leave her in the cave again anyway
and when it caves in he knows he’s not just gonna abandon her in a field somewhere but he’s reluctant af to postpone his revenge quest for her
and then when he decides taking her to Elfhelm is the thing to do he does it still fully intending to return to his revenge quest eventually. (Plus, yk, the fucked up Beast of Darkness shit that happens before he gathers some extra babysitters.)
I don’t really have a point other than Guts taking one step forward with Griffith and ending up like five steps back when the situation is repeated with Casca.
And I mean yeah a lot of shit went down in the interim and he has a pretty good reason to be obsessed with revenge, but the comparison between leaving Griffith and leaving Casca is made over and over by both Guts and the narrative so when you sit down and actually compare them it’s striking that Guts is still like, struggling to rise to the level of caring about someone over his “dream” (fighting stronger and stronger enemies/vengeful rampage) that he’d already reached once with Griffith right before the Eclipse.
I just noticed the parallel with Guts putting his cloak around both of them.
It’s so … quaint.
Also you’re absolutely right. While he sort of makes the decision to stay in both cases. In Griffith’s case it was a final decision he came to after going over his ‘this is where I belong after all’ and consciously admitting to himself that his dream side quest was stupid and unnecessary anyway. And he sticks by that realisation even after Judeau and Casca’s speeches. Casca telling him to leave wasn’t significant because it made Guts’ reconsider his decision, if I remember correctly we aren’t even shown Guts’ face in that panel- it’s significant for Griffith to hear and believe .
If anything Guts had already made the subconscious decision to stay waay before the raiders ran to him.
In the tent/wagon with Griffith he talks about the future once Griffith heals. “ We’ll be able to see that soon enough” he says we.WE.
Whereas with Casca his decision to stay always seems to be in lieu of there either being no other choice or in response to someone else’s prodding. Staying with Casca seems to be a means to an end where he can leave her in a safe and wholesome place and state and move on with a clear mind.
The only time there seems to be a real resolve behind his decision to stay is when he’s directly substituting the situation with already having failed at it with Griffith.
Even his “even if you put something back together piece by piece it may never be the same.” Dialogue ties in with this. He says this after his Griffith fueled Casca endeavor has sort of failed.
And yeah.
After Casca tells him “if you’re Griffith’s friend and equal… you have to. Even if it’s alone… you have to go” we get the “why do I always see these things… after they’re done and gone?” line. It seems p clear to me that that Guts is referring to his realization that he had his “dream” in the palm of his hand and threw it away by leaving to pursue it, ie he broke Griffith’s heart by leaving, though granted it’s not the plainest of statements.
But anyway yeah to me that sounds like Guts is absolutely unwavering in his resolve that he’s going to stay and he thinks leaving in the first place was a great big fuck up.
tbh I do wonder what Guts is thinking will happen when Casca gets her mind back, considering his brooding about the warnings he got. “She went to pieces because she can’t fully cope with it. What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” Like is he hoping she’ll join the trail of revenge with him? Is he planning to just play it by ear – take her with him if she wants to go, leave her in elfhelm if she wants to chill somewhere safe, etc? Cross his fingers and hope she doesn’t do something drastic?
I was kind of wondering if he’s hoping that getting her back the way she was will be enough motivation for him to take Godo’s advice and stay with the “irreplaceable things” instead of going back for revenge, but like I said, even on the ship he was still doing his “when this journey’s over, I’ll [not actually be able to finish this sentence]” thing, so I don’t think there’s much indication of that.
idk i’m just thinking outloud. it all comes back to griffith’s pull being like, the strongest force exerted on him lol, for both good and bad. devote himself to griffith, or leave to become griffith’s equal, or stay with griffith, or ditch casca to chase griffith, or stay with casca while comparing the situation to one with griffith, gritting his teeth, and anticipating being able to chase griffith again.
i wonder if it’s not so much that he’ll overcome the pull of griffith on him as the nature of it will shift again, from revenge to maybe realizing that his desire isn’t actually for revenge, but still to be griffith’s equal. maybe he’ll actually untangle some of his feelings at some point, considering things like “the instant I saw him… I forgot my urge to kill.”
I kinda wanna start devilman properly. Where do I start
this awesome fan wrote a devilman guide to help sort everything out bc there’s lots of sequels and spinoffs etc
it’s much, much sillier and cheesier with way flatter characters than berserk, and also way shorter, but it’s fun and surprisingly entertaining. i wouldn’t recommend the sequel, devilman lady, because it’s 90% offensively terrible with a few great moments, but she also has a devilman lady post that talks about it and links to some of the good parts. there’s a link somewhere in the devilman guide post.
tbh i really like guts and casca’s early rivalry and i wish we saw more of it ngl
like lbr here the reason guts and casca hated each other for 3 years is they were fighting for griffith’s attention
they finally warm up to each other only when guts figures he lost and decides to leave, so he’s able to be magnanimous and throw casca at him
like casca is so obviously a substitution for himself while guts is doing his weird matchmaker thing. hey casca you have a dream, you’re worthy of griffith, so you should ask him to dance.
guts may not have consciously realized it like casca did, but they were such romantic rivals, that’s their dynamic
hell they hook up after casca goes over point by point the ways griffith isn’t available: first guts, but then princess charlotte, then in a dungeon, now may not even be alive. and as soon as griffith becomes maybe possibly available after all, the jealous rivalry starts mounting again.
like i’ve talked about how casca telling guts to leave in requiem of the wind is bc she’s prioritizing his dream now and telling him to fulfill it, and i think that’s still the case buuuuuuut i can definitely see an interpretation where she tells guts to leave because now charlotte’s out of the picture, now griffith is dependant, now she can give back to griffith and comfort him the way she always wanted to and never could, and she doesn’t want guts to get in the way.
that’s kind of what the scene between her and griffith in the wagon is about rly, come to think of it. afterwards she cries about how weak he is and how there’s no way she can leave him like that, and before she muses about how his strong hands used to comfort her but they’re so small in actuality. whatever griffith’s motivations for literally flinging himself at her, it’s casca’s reaction that’s most important, casca putting her hand on his shoulder and realizing he needs her.
say she tells herself and guts that he needs to leave because his
dream is just So Important but deep down it’s bc she knows they’re still
rivals, the three of them together would get fucked up and destructive real quick, and if she can’t leave griffith and try to move on with guts then she wants to be the one to stay with him.
like it’s not a flattering interpretation for casca but i don’t want flattering interpretations for casca, i like flaws and selfishness etc in my female characters, especially as opposed to casca being a stupid selfless martyr for guts’ dream bc she slept with him so now that’s what she cares about.
i never noticed this b4 but guts looking pissy yet blushy while casca describes griffith as awe-inspiring and otherworldly is perfect
you're the only one 