This is interesting though. Since every major person in Guts life has at some point been ‘weak’ and in need of care which Guts has in reality always offered with enthusiasm.
Whether with Gambino, Shisu, Griffith or Casca
I seriously love this about Guts during the Black Swordsman and Conviction arcs, bc like, he is actually a natural caretaker and… yk offerer of comfort and help. It’s the very first act that defines him when he’s 3 years old and steps up to take Shizu’s hand. He genuinely has a pressing urge to help people in need, from overworked suicidal people to tortured ex bfs to parental figures to like, flowers.
And from the start Miura wasn’t trying to show a dude just letting his inner asshole shine through bc he’s had a bad time, he’s depicting a dude actively suppressing his own caring nature partly because anyone who gets close to him is probably going to die thanks to the brand, partly because it’s a distraction from his goal of revenge, and partly because he has some serious issues revolving around betrayal that got reawakened recently and he’s guarding his heart.
Like the second chapter when he decides whatever he’ll let this priest and this kid give him a ride and who gives a fuck what happens to them feels like a deliberate attempt on his part to Not Care About Them that totally fails.
And it’s why it’s so fitting that the very last thing he does in the Black Swordsman arc is instinctively save Theresia even after telling her to kill herself, and then cry about the fact that he just ruined this kid’s life and turned her into a proto-him.
Ooh actually to take that a step further, the hound is basically something he actively created himself, out of the darkest parts of his nature, as a form of self-protection. So it’s like, super fitting that it got transplanted into a living suit of armour.
i love that guts canonically has a string possessive/protective streak wrt griffith like dont touch his boy especially if youre evil and gross and / or another rival handsome muscle boy
The wiki isn’t all that reliable. I pegged Griffith as the oldest, Casca second and Guts is the youngest.
That’s fair, I guess if the only info we have is Guts’ age + him thinking Griffith is about the same age as him, which could still mean a small age difference, it’s all up to the reader
i’ve read the wiki timeline enuf times to remember that he’s apparently 3 years older than casca and guts? idr what in the manga points to that that tho, time to do some skimming
lol yeah i’ve seen that 3 years older number mentioned but ihni where it would’ve come from
3 years older than casca i could see, since he looked visibly older than her when she was like 8 or w/e, but then i wouldn’t necessarily think guts is the same age as casca
eta: oh just noticed your 2nd reply lol. that’s weird if it’s not on the wiki bc 3 years is def what i’ve heard so i’m sure it was thrown around somewhere.
do we ever get any hint about how old griffith is other than guts (at age 15) thinking “he’s about the same age as me,” a weekish after they first meet?
idk i feel like i’ve seen an assumption that he’s older than guts quite a few times but i never got that impression and i wonder if i missed something
i have to laugh when people talk about the plot of berserk like it’s heading towards guts killing griffith w/o a second thought and getting his hetero happy ending with casca because they’re completely missing clues like these
ikr there’s just so much you have to skip over or ignore or willfully misunderstand to assume that
ngl sometimes i get cynical and start thinking like, but what if everything i love about berserk was just a fluke and miura intended to write a basic maybe slightly downer grimdark revenge story and just accidentally filled it with really interesting complexity? but then i re-read a chapter or two and i’m like ‘lol nvm’
“You should have known. This is the man I am. You of all people.”
NeoGriffith’s “you of all people” imo is a reference to “ain’t this part of the path to your dream? You believe that, don’t you?” The moment the Godhand shows Griffith to convince him to make the sacrifice, because Guts was prioritizing his dream more than Griffith was and telling him to do whatever’s necessary to achieve it. And the moment that made Griffith believe that Guts saw how dirty/cruel/etc he was and decided to leave him because of it.
That’s what Griffith thinks. NeoGriffith seems a little bitter about it, probably thanks to that beating heart making him less unemotional than he’d like.
Guts doesn’t actually think that. To him the kind of man Griffith was was someone who cared about people, who did some fucked up shit for his dream but felt bad about it and needed reassurance, and who was driven to a point of desperation where he’d sacrifice his friends bc Guts left him and he was tortured for a year (”[Was I] the one who drove you…? Was I the one who brought all this upon you?”)
I find it rly curious that “You of all people,” leads directly, on the same page even, to Guts thinking about NeoGriffith saving Casca, and looking like he’s wondering about it.
It’s obvious that Guts still sees NeoGriff as a monster, given how pissed off he was about his ‘lol idgaf’ attitude towards the Eclipse and the fact that it’s still a struggle not to slip back into revenge mode. But he did watch NeoGriff save Casca from falling rocks for no apparent reason, and now he’s thinking about it while thinking about NeoGriffith saying he should’ve known what kind of man he is.
I mean if you go along with my explanation that part of why Griffith was so devastated when Guts left is bc he was convinced that Guts saw him the way he saw himself,
as a cruel and filthy monster climbing over corpses to get to a castle,
then what Griffith did when he made the sacrifice is choose to transform into and fully embody that version of himself, wiping away everything about him that belies it (or trying to). “You should have known. This is the man I am. You of all people.”
tl;dr Guts left because he admired and loved Griffith, Griffith thought he left because he was disgusted by him, and NGriff is referencing his belief here.
In that final page I think Guts dismisses the issue and decides to focus his attention on Casca – after this as far as I remember he doesn’t think about NGriff’s weird contradictory behaviour again. But I have to wonder if it’s going to come back with a vengeance, alongside the fact that Guts and Griffith both have very different perceptions of what kind of man Griffith was.
i can’t handle this lmao, like the fact that guts is fucking pouting and charlie-brown-walking away because neogriffith didn’t give him the time of day, actually directly comparing it to when he walked out on Griffith and ruined his life, is incredible to me.
like what do redditbro types, the ones who see berserk as an uncomplicated tale of a dude who hates another dude who ruined his life and wants revenge against him, do with this bit?
But also while i’m on this, while I find it absolutely delightful if I don’t think too
hard about it, on another level this moment really pisses me off lol, because
it’s yet another instance of the narrative showing us how gay for Griffith
Guts is by throwing Casca under the bus. Guts just met the dude he wants
revenge against in part for raping Casca, and his reaction is 😦 i
feel abandoned 😦
And it’s great when I ignore the Eclipse as
I usually do, because it’s more fun to enjoy moments like this rather than seethe about them, but when I take it into account it’s like, fucking
seriously? we’re supposed to sympathize with this asshole who cares more
about his evil senpai noticing him than the fact that he’s an evil demon
who raped his friend/lover and just said ‘lol idgaf’ about it?
i can’t handle this lmao, like the fact that guts is fucking pouting and charlie-brown-walking away because neogriffith didn’t give him the time of day, actually directly comparing it to when he walked out on Griffith and ruined his life, is incredible to me.
like what do redditbro types, the ones who see berserk as an uncomplicated tale of a dude who hates another dude who ruined his life and wants revenge against him, do with this bit?
sufjan stevens needs to Stop
Love
Take me to your room
I want to be your friend
Will you walk me home at night?
Will you send me showers of light?
I want to be your friend
Will you kiss me on the lips?
Will you fill my lunar eclipse?
I want to be your friend
Will you touch me in the car?
Will you say that I am your star?
I want to be your friend
Will you keep me safe from harm?
Will you hold me close in your arms?
I want to be your friend
And I have no appetite
And I can not sleep through the night
I want to be your friend
I’ve got pictures in my head
My own thought of you in my bed
I want to be your friend
With terror you may find
For I fear I’m losing my mind
I want to be your friend
And my heart is such a mess
And I feel that I am possessed
I want to be your friend
yeah that’s basically what i thought it was, unless by symbolic you mean not actually there? ig that’s a possibility too. but shit you’re right it can also be seen as two parallel lines …… i literally never noticed that. miura speak the fuck up what’s the truth
yeah I mean not actually there bc Guts’ sword didn’t actually hit him, but we see it bc Griffith basically wishes he had a scar from Guts. Which also works rly well to me bc it mirrors Casca later wishing she had a scar from Guts and is therefore even gayer.
tbh at this point it’s all guess work and headcanon lol, so like, I just go with whatever I’m feeling in the moment. lbr miura + clarity is like oil and water sometimes.
yk i mentioned b4 that the first two arcs, black swordsman and golden age, feel like a complete story
big angry dude has serious issues, then we learn what caused those issues. if the story had ended after guts declared war on all demons or after he’d suited up to go a monster huntin, well, i would’ve desperately wanted more, but tbh i think it would’ve worked
the black swordsman arc shows us guts mirroring griffith in like a million ways: self harming, walking over people on his way to his goal and justifying it to himself, feeling guilty about that, being described as someone out of a story, being obsessed with a dream, being larger than life, and of course, he picks up a behelit.
the conclusion would’ve been foregone – guts would eventually use the behelit just like griffith did, and the whole story would basically be a depressing cycle effectively told out of order.
(to make it really work it could use some editing ofc. delete the random fetus, have casca die during the eclipse rather than be raped into insanity as a dangling plot point. get rid of the godhand saying guts isn’t ordained by fate and therefore can’t become one of them. add a significant shot of the behelit at the end of the black swordsman arc. but yk in broadstrokes this is a solid tragic narrative.)
For days you continue to hunt your prey running through the wilderness. You hide alone deep in the forest, night after night, until you lose any sense of time, and then… before you know it, you yourself have become a beast as well.
I find this panel really interesting because it kinda foreshadows Guts inability to look at an unideal situation and say it is unideal when changing it seems beyond his capacity.
lol yeah my first reaction to it was, really, Guts? tbh idk if it’s so much denial as a kind of ridiculous amount of optimism and looking on the bright side. I feel like it’s not so much Guts going ‘everything is great this is super nice’ after hearing about all the shit the Hawks have gone through in the last year, and more Guts focusing on the fact that the core group is still together and he’s happy to see all his bros again.
Bc yk despite everything, Guts is a serious optimist. And I kind of love that about him even though it’s the source of like, half his problems (I’ll just take off and become Griffith’s equal and surely this will be fine and cause no problems at all. Griffith is perfect he could never lose his composure. Everyone’s still alive and together therefore things are fine oh shit Casca’s 30 seconds away from killing herself fuck. Griffith will be ok he’s just like his old self everything will be fine. Griffith totally wouldn’t sacrifice everyone this is all a mistake. I can and will murder everything and nothing’s gonna stand in my way. Casca will be all right trapped in a dank cave for the rest of her life w/e. Maybe Griffith regrets what he did now that he’s more human-y. I can take Casca to get healed nbd I don’t need anyone’s help. etc etc)
So yeah ia with what you said, it’s part of how Guts’ optimism isn’t necessarily a good trait all the time. Because sometimes when he doesn’t know what to do (eg how to help post-torture Griffith), or when he doesn’t want to do something (eg deal with Casca after the Eclipse), he does pretend that everything is fine and will just work out somehow. It’s a very endearing flaw to me lol, but still a flaw.
the thing that i find confusing is it’s not 4 scratch marks from 4 fingers, it’s one scar that’s thicker than his individual fingers. when i was first reading the manga and noticed the scar i was like “wait, he got wounded? i thought the whole point was that guts stopped just before the blade sunk in” and then i went back and re-read the duel and confirmed that there was no wound so i was like??? maybe griffith purposely did it in that spot because guts did not wound him
your theory is way better it just does not look like scratch marks it’s one giant scar, right where guts almost hit him
I’ve heard this a lot and tbh I used to think that it was one inexplicable big scar myself but if u look at the 2nd to last image i posted in that thing, where he’s tracing it, you can see how both “sides” line up exactly with his two fingers. So I still think it’s def 2 parallel scratch marks from 2 fingers. Just like, drawn slightly confusingly.
The movie actually turns it into 4 red scratches. Not sure what the anime does if it depicts it, I should check that lol, I’m kind of curious now.
Though the theory I’ve heard that goes with the “it’s one big scar” that I like is that it’s a symbolic depiction of Griffith wishing Guts’ sword had hit him. It makes most sense to me that it’s scratch marks but that’s also quite a nice concept imo.
i was browsing thru all the pages i have saved looking for smthn to talk about and this one here hit me with the sudden thought:
what if those scratch marks aren’t from that day, but earlier?
idk the way we’re in the midst of the sex scene and then Griffith’s first startling, intruding memory isn’t Guts leaving but Guts saying “you believe that, don’t you?” back after the assassination, followed by the reveal of the marks on Griffith’s shoulder made me go hmm.
Last time I talked about those scratches I mentioned that Griffith showed up at Charlotte’s window in the same clothes he was wearing during the duel so if the marks came from that day you have to imagine him holing up in his room, taking his clothes off, self-harming, and then redressing – which is fine, but it’s an extra step you have to add yourself as a reader, and therefore a little counter-intuitive.
Whereas the placement of panels here feels like cause and effect to me.
Last time we saw Griffith self harming it was while talking about his “blood-soaked dream,” after doing something that makes him feel dirty for the sake of that dream. This time we see SI marks after a panel in which Guts reminds him about that dream and calls his resolve into question, after doing something that makes him feel dirty for the sake of the dream (the assassinations).
Why does Guts question his resolve? Because Griffith needed emotional reassurance from Guts – he needed Guts to tell him he wasn’t cruel for involving him, for “dirtying” Guts by proxy, essentially (”I involved you in this filthy scheme… and I didn’t even get my hands dirty.”) Like I think he needs reassurance that he isn’t dragging Guts down or making him feel dirty himself by virtue of being close to him, and involving him in the darker aspects of his rise to the top. And Guts’ response to that is only to remind him that it’s necessary.
So my point is that “do you think I’m cruel” is another version of “is it… too dirty?” Is he dirty, are people going to feel disgusting too if they get close to him, if they know about what he’s done?
So imagine: Guts tells Griffith, hey, w/e man all this fucked up shit is necessary for your dream. You believe that, don’t you? Griffith does this:
And then he thinks about Guts’ words while he’s getting ready for bed that night or bathing the next morning, thinks about what he’s done and what he’s had Guts do for the sake of his dream, thinks about Guts asking, “you believe that, don’t you?” and tears up his shoulder, convincing himself that he does believe it, the same way he tore up his arms in the river as he talked himself through how necessary it is to dirty himself for his “blood-smeared” dream.
(And it’s been a month since then but lbr if he’s scratching as deep as he did last time those marks would still be very visible here.)
And then Guts leaves. And Griffith thinks it’s because he feels dirty by proxy, because Griffith revealed too much of himself and Guts didn’t like what he saw, because of his dream.
Griffith remembers, “you believe that, don’t you?” and he remembers Guts walking away.
He’s remembering when he hurt himself and why, he’s telling himself, “yes I believe it, it’s necessary, even if it’s why you left my dream is worth it. This is the evidence.” He traces those marks but this time he doesn’t scratch himself.
He’s finally lost his conviction, because losing Guts isn’t worth it and there’s no way he can convince himself that it is.
(this is kind of built on a lot of stuff i wrote here lol, hopefully it makes sense without that but just in case there’s a pseudo part one.)
ps if griffith already had those self-inflicted marks on his shoulder when guts won the duel a hair’s breadth away from wounding griffith exactly on that spot… well griffith self harms as an expression of his feelings of guilt and to drive himself towards his dream. feels symbolic of guts obliterating that dream and being a stronger force than griffith’s guilt, at least for a while.
Griffith and Guts with their egg child Mordred. Don’t ask unless you really want to know.
Please do not edit or repost. Thank you.
Absolutely beautiful.
And I really do want to know, so consider this to be me asking!
Hi there! I hope you don’t mind me answering on my main blog, since the story behind this picture has more to do with my rps with @the-black-swordsman.
Thank you very much for your kind comments and interest! I drew this for an incredibly ridiculous cracky verse I have, where Neo Griffith and Guts basically…had an egg baby. 8′D It started off as a joke that Neo Griffith and Guts had a hate fuck and because Neo Griffith is magic, it resulted in a child, which he made into an egg because Hawk Jesus powers. He of course then tried to convince Guts that it was theirs and then other people got involved, and now it’s become its own verse, where Guts is begrudgingly staying with his egg family in a cabin somewhere while Neo Griffith runs back and forth between the cabin and Falconia. Neo Griffith also regained his emotions because the power of cracky shenanigans love.
Oh, and Casca didn’t get violated because fuck that noise, so she’s off doing Black Swordswoman badassery and discovering her own path, where she meets competent commander Farnese and they’re having their own beautiful romance away from the narratives of men. ❤
Of the current core cast of apostles I think he’d be fairly indifferent to Grunbeld, Locus and Irvine. They’re honourable killer types just doing their thing. He’d hate them only as much as he hates any given apostle, and less than most I think.
Raksas I think he’d hate a bit more, because Raksas is a gleeful dick who likes to fuck with people before killing them and if Guts had to fight him I think he’d get annoyed with his hiding in the shadows being creepy thing. Also if he ever found out somehow that Raksas promised to kill Griffith he’d hate him more because I think Guts would feel proprietary towards Griffith’s death lol. I can see Guts as the type of in-love-deep-down-enemy who’s like, “the only one allowed to kill you is me.” Maybe not at this point in the narrative while he’s trying to shake those feelings, but if he ever backslid, yk.
I think Zodd wins though because they have a history. I actually think he respects Zodd as an enemy, but Zodd’s gotten between him and NeoGriff a few times and is the apostle Guts has seen carrying him around, and Zodd gave him the cryptic Eclipse prophecy multiple times, and Zodd saved his ass a few times too so that he’d be around for the Eclipse and I could see Guts resenting that. Plus they’re sort of designated counterparts and Zodd is his NeoBand replacement which I could also see him resenting. Especially if he sees his own potential to become a monster reflected in Zodd.
Though the bantering familiarity they kinda sorta had when they fought Ganeshka is a point against that actually…
You mean like, people throwing around the phrase as an accusation or insult? bc if so yeah lol. I try to avoid a lot of Berserk fandom other than my awesome little tumblr circle here so I don’t see it happen a lot thankfully. It seems like it’s mostly an accusation thrown at Griffith fans by people who are bad at nuance, compartmentalization and/or the concept of fiction and therefore believe everyone else is too, and so they think if someone likes Griffith as a character and/or empathizes with him then they must support all of his choices and actions.
Idk if it’s meant to include Femto’s actions or not lol, but either way it’s a meaningless buzzwordy phrase that doesn’t describe any kind of Griffith fan I’ve ever seen.
you're the only one 