yeah and for me, since we already had the flawless original, this just felt like a soulless copy. idk. i’m notoriously salty about miura’s art “progression” and i guess i’ll continue to be. i don’t know if i trust him enough to believe it was an intentional tonal shift but even if it was the tone is far from all that’s bothering me about it so yeah. but here’s to hoping ig
legit af, but man i just want to cling to any hope that the final confrontation between guts and griffith isn’t gonna look like this lol
I do not, but this is a good question and one I’m also curious about. I can say that the anime replaced it with “love” (whether the word itself changed or the translation, idk) so it wouldn’t surprise me if it sounds just as suggestive in japanese as in english, or more so.
@chaoticgaygriffith no pressure to answer this, but do you have any insight on the word? (i’m sure you know exactly the page we’re talking about but just in case, chapter 49)
And actually while I’m wondering about this I’ve always been curious, is it the same word Ganeshka uses on this page? (chapter 282)
oh wow this is so cool to hear, i’m so glad something i wrote could motivate someone to get into this story! thank you for letting me know 😀
But also before you read too far please let me know if you have any triggers or just want to be warned for any types of dark (and sometimes offensive tbh) content in general, because Berserk seriously has it all, and as much as I still love the story I’d hate for anyone go in and be blindsided by some of it. I’d be happy to give you a rundown if you want to be forewarned.
Oh and the official translation of the manga is what I’d recommend, there are some pretty dodgy scanlations floating around that aren’t nearly as accurate. Here’s a link if you happen to need one:
yesss the moment of the sacrifice probably is my second favourite scene too. and also special mention to guts’ monologue about how he wants griffith to look at him.
and it’s true even those brief meetings/eyes meeting across a plain lol have such a weight to them because of both how miura portrays those scenes and because of their history informing them. like there’s a reason guts keeps thinking about griffith on that hill now even though he was barely a speck on the horizon to him. their connection is just that intense.
no offense to the anon but i’m gonna disagree and say that it didn’t look like his old art style at all. like yeah it was detailed and it was dark sort of by default just by being a drawing of a tortured body. but for me personally, and art is subjective of course, it lacked like … all heart. it was technically impressive and that’s all, which cannot even compare to what miura was able to do. so i’d say maybe don’t get your hopes up
anyway the art style shift was at least
partly due to miura switching to digital … other possible culprits are:
assistants, editors telling him to moe it up for wider readership, or
even an injury/health issue of sorts (though i haven’t heard anything
like that)
hm yeah ikwym, i feel like that spread of griff hit a v dark tone, but not a particularly emotional one. griffith’s tortured body was emphasized, but unlike the original scene it was less about the tragedy of seeing a beloved character in that state and more… simple ominousness.
but i feel like it was maybe fitting for the context of casca flashing back to something she found horrific as a lead-in to a potential breakdown.
but yeah ty for the addition. one thing i really hope is that it isn’t just a case of miura absorbing that moeish style and vomiting it back out onto the page. i’d much rather blame assistants or digitalization or a deliberate shift to fit the cutesy elfhelm and idyllic falconia tones.
I feel like this should probably be a harder question to answer because there are so many amazing scenes, but honestly it’s easy: Griffith’s torture chamber monologue.
It’s the absolute heart of Berserk and it’s everything I could possibly ask for in a ship.
Griffith starting off with the pages on his dream. The brightest thing he’d ever seen. Then darkness. And every single time I turn the page from this
to this
it takes my breath away lmao.
It’s a monologue about how Guts holds Griffith’s heart in his hand.
And like look at this shit!
The sole sustenance keeping him alive oh my god. Why just him? Why indeed.
And the monologue that begins with showing us the dream Griffith dedicated his entire life to pursuing ends with this:
I just fucking can’t handle it. This is seven pages of absolute perfection, and these seven pages are what Berserk’s about, both literally and thematically, and that’s why I’m stuck in this fandom no matter how many other aspects of the canon disappoint me lol.
Like, a few of my favourite ship tropes are: love/hate, someone ruining their own life because of love, power dynamic reversal due to desperately intense emotions, someone forced to choose between love and the thing they value most in life, betrayal and obsession/desperate need, two people who are singular to each other, etc and this scene hits every branch on the way down.
how bout you, if you have a favourite scene you want to talk about?
I just wanna say, there are 2 possible reasons Guts wants to keep feeling the pain Griffith caused him.
1. Because he wants to want to kill him, and it’s a reminder of why he wanted revenge in the first place. His rage needs fuel.
2. Because Griffith (Femto) deliberately wanted to hurt him. yk as opposed to NeoGriffith saying he doesn’t give a fuck and leaving him moping in the snow. He’d rather be looked at with hatred than not seen at all.
The trio in an Academy AU me and @farnese-de-vandimion have been fiddling with. In the AU, everyone attends an Academy for gifted youths, which includes all age groups until college level studies. Griffith is a star fencer. Guts is the captain of the rugby team, the “Raiders”. Casca is the captain of the volleyball team, the “Falcons”. Farnese, Roderick, Serpico, and Charlotte are all on the Student Council as President, Vice, Secretary, and Treasurer respectively. My plan is to knock out the designs for them next, which will be fun because those four will be in Academy uniforms.
All references were taken from google searching the characters’ sports, with Casca’s pose being a direct homage to the beautiful Shiho Yoshimura.
What is it he desires so much that he’d be reincarnated …
… as the Guardian Angel of Longing, and then transform the world this way?
Can you tell me?
you may recognise the word 渇望 (かつぼう／katsubou; craving, longing) from theseposts. it’s (sort of) the word that the beast of darkness used to describe guts’ feelings toward griffith in chapter 187. well, the kanji was that word anyway, but since manga writers like to complicate things the furigana used was a different word with a similar meaning. still, though.
ik every instance of the same word being used twice doesn’t necessarily have to be intentional and have some secret deep meaning behind it but tbh it’s just like. so easy to read into this because guts and griffith mirror each other, especially when it comes to desire/longing, so much already in canon
also i love how the narrative even poses this question, because that makes it clear that griffith motivations were never clear-cut and obvious. it was never just about the “kingdom” lol, like that would be nowhere near enough to go the length he went.
also of note is that “guardian angel” is written with the kanji for “lord,” “head,” “master” (主) instead of the typical kanji for “guarding,” “protection” (守) but idk what to make of that really. it might even just be an actual alternate form, or possibly even a different word, just with a similar enough meaning, that i don’t know about
man what do I do I’m caught up with berserk and jojo
i am so sleepy + i have no idea what i’m really going for here but like
i think trees and branches are like, symbols of connection or reaching for connection or smthn like that. or like, at least when they’re white
“since when was it that despite her bent shape lady farnese came to have feelings for me beyond those of a mistress for her servant?“
ok those branches aren’t white but i just like the similar phrasing lol
like i just glanced at a couple pages of serpico’s backstory and was like, woah that’s a lot of branch imagery lol. and there’s obviously the whole creation of the world tree, ganeshka’s loneliness breakdown, etc.
i am putting a pin in this for if i think of more significant seeming tree imagery. or yk pending how the whole fantasia arc goes. world tree fast travel system branches, casca having a breakdown beside danann’s cherry tree, yadda yadda yadda.
i mean it just seems to fit this whole idea i got where like half the fantasy content of berserk works as a metaphor for interpersonal relationships and all that jazz.
yk I also wondered/hoped that. I mean idk the Griffith panel was pretty stand-out in detail and realism compared to the rest, and the tone was fairly dark at times in Casca’s dream but I still wasn’t into the art, so I’m not super hopeful that the style will completely shift back to something more say Golden Age-y or early Millenium Falcon arc.
But the shift from the Millenium Falcon art to the Fantasia art seemed weirdly abrupt to me, so it does give me hope that at least some of the style now is deliberate rather than just natural art shift, and maybe he’ll at least shift styles again to something different and hopefully better lol. I want to believe.
also i’m in absolute awe of the sheer number of varying degrees of nearly-same-sentiment facial expressions miura pulled off in this single panel
lol for real
and in the same vein one thing i love about miura’s art (give or take the earliest and latest stuff) that jumps out to me in that panel especially is the lack of sameface in his female characters, even in the background
ia, guts/serpico has some real interesting potential imo
like i’m a griffguts otper for sure so i can’t get into any guts/serpico happily ever after scenarios myself lol, but they’d be a perfect fling or temporary rebound or weird one night stand
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