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The line between think and desperately, desperately hope is thin lol, but yes. Also completely agree that the best outcome would be Guts killing one or more of his friends himself in beast of darkness mode.
The theory I’ve been pushing and will continue to push until Miura proves me wrong is that Casca’s ptsd despair is going to open the behelit, she’ll choose to become an apostle, and consequently Guts will succumb to the armour in his grief and outrage. Also symbolically it’s nice because something has to cause Guts to lose himself to the armour, we know this because of fifty pieces of foreshadowing, and Casca becoming a monster would work great for that since she basically symbolizes his tie to his humanity right now.
But anyway, whatever ends up happening, I hope it really shakes things up, raises the stakes, and causes serious permanent consequences, because we need a dose of darkness soon imho, and Guts’ fix Casca quest ending in tragedy would just… work so perfectly for me. I want it so bad lol.
guts needs someone who’s obsessed with him bc he wants to be wanted super bad serpico just can’t provide the level of mutual ownership of the other in a relationship guts needs that’s just how it is
Unsolicited opinion here lol, but I think another reason Griffith might be pretty again in his domestic nightmare sequence has to do with his internal self-image. Like, I have long hair now, but always envision myself with my old short hair.
He might have been envisioning himself the way he used to look, even if he was still disabled in the dream. (Also this is stupid, but until now idk if it really registered in my mind that he was disabled in the dream whoops)
Oh yeah this is totally a legit reading of the scene too, and it makes sense and is what I typically assume to be the case. Like it does seem like a stretch to assume Griffith wouldn’t even have any scars (tho the way the scene’s illustrated his face does have kind of a… like an ambiguous look to it the way it’s shadowed and shaded throughout?
like I’ve always vaguely wondered if we’re supposed to read some scarring into the way Miura shades his face in this scene. But idk. I also think it’s thematically appropriate for Griffith to picture himself without scars here regardless of whether that would actually be the case in reality, yk, his beauty being a thing, the sort of heteronormative picturesque nightmare here, etc. So really I could go either way.)
I know the movies went full missing skin + exposed face muscles, but I complain about the patches of missing skin thing being stupid too much to just accept that lol. (Also if that’s the case why the hell wouldn’t you bandage his face too? what were you thinking, ova people?)
But idk whatever the case is it doesn’t really change my feeling that Guts’ reaction to seeing his face is a little too intense to be taken fully at face value.
tbh yeah it does seem like such an over the top reaction, especially since in griffith’s nightmare of the future he’s pretty again so whatever happened to his face is probably not permanently disfiguring to a huge extent (yeah it was a dream sequence but it was deliberately meant to be a realistic one). but imo there’s also a legit answer.
Guts’ kind of extreme, omg this can’t be griffith, omfg, reaction is less “oh no he’s ugly now” and more “wow i’m being confronted by the extremely painful, horrific, and undeniable fact that griffith is actually not a god, he’s human and vulnerable and broken and it’s my fault.”
it’s putting an image to Casca’s words:
Guts being hit over the head with the fact that this image:
is bullshit.
And I love that it happens when Guts takes off the mask, not before when he’s checking out his cut tendons and cut out tongue, because the mask is such a strong consistent symbol for the image Griffith hides behind.
tbh it doesn’t really matter what Griffith’s face looks like, it’s the fact that Guts takes off the mask and sees the real, human Griffith, and it hits him how false his idea of him, the idea he based his decision to leave around, was.
And it’s a nice set up for this moment later:
Guts is symbolically accepting the real Griffith here, but Griffith isn’t able to drop the image and be vulnerable yet. Another tragic missed connection.
(And yeah like @chaoticgaygriffith has said, from a character perspective Guts is still dancing around reality here, and it’s not til another few chapters that he really fully acknowledges how immensely he fucked up (”why do I always see these things… after they’re done and gone?”) but yk. it’s a baby steps attempt lol. the tragedy is that they both suck at this.)
Also an additional detail because I love it
Guts’ eventual acceptance of Griffith’s humanity mirrors Casca’s realization that her feelings for Griffith weren’t just distant awe and respect, but actually romantic, I’m just saying.
tyvm, I appreciate the message! honestly Berserk fans can get so vile with like, some of the shit you mention like rape jokes. not surprising considering the canon, but unfortunate, and I’m glad I can help provide an alternative.
also I’m tacking this on bc it’s a similar topic and I’m trying not to spam everyone’s dash lol:
all of this …. and it’s baffling to me how
many workarounds ppl come up with to argue the opposite
god same, it’s to the point where people might as well have their fingers in their ears going ‘la la la.’
like
the sheer number of berserk fans who don’t acknowledge/actively deny
that, say, Griffith valued Guts more than his dream, or Guts left the
Hawks to become Griffith’s friend and not to like, escape his sinister thrall lol, is mind
boggling. these aren’t interpretations, these are cold hard facts
directly stated many times.
like eg because I read the tv tropes
page before re-reading the manga for the first time in years I went in
assuming most of what I love about it (ie Griffith and Guts’
overwhelming feelings for each other) was subtext and just one potential
interpretation of many, rather than like, the hammered home point of
the story lol.
It really does feel like there are two completely different stories out there. And some of it is probably bc of scanlations, and anime vs manga fans, etc, but still. the fundamentals of the story remain the same, but you wouldn’t know it looking at fandom.
I love getting questions! And I haven’t really discussed this as far as I remember.
But I think that moment makes a lot of sense tbh.
Griffith’s feelings towards Guts in his torture chamber monologue are incredibly intense, but not exactly positive. He’s all-consumingly in love with him, but he doesn’t want to be. Being in love with him is what lost him his dream and got him tortured for a year, which is a hell of an experience to resent someone for.
And the way his immediate response to Guts suddenly showing up is to try to strangle him seems like a very solid prelude to the sacrifice imo. Being in love is not fun for Griffith, it ruined his entire life, made him incredibly vulnerable, and made him emotionally dependant on a man who may very well leave him again and whose feelings Griffith has no reason to believe match his own.
If killing Guts can take the edge off those feelings and maybe return him back to factory settings when his dream was the most important thing and life made sense, in the irrational frame of mind he’s in after a year of torture, that would definitely seem like a good plan.
Add a side of plain old lashing out because he’s blaming Guts for the fact that he’s in that torture chamber, and I think it works very well that Griffith’s first act here is attempted strangulation.
What’s really incredible to me is that all it takes is Guts starting to cry and Griffith just welcomes him back, life destroying feelings and all. Like being in love is one thing, accepting that love and deciding to try to roll with it right after those feelings made him want to kill Guts is… wild.
This
to this
in a page.
So there’s also something to be said for extreme emotional instability after a year of torture, and a lifetime of repressing his feelings. He has no practice dealing with his feelings constructively, so when he can’t repress them he does some extreme, stupid things (like the duel, like the night with Charlotte, like self-harm, like reaching up to strangle Guts.)
OH AND ALSO it’s worth noting that Griffith is very aware that his hands don’t work anymore. He has no physical ability to kill Guts, and while in a moment of irrational overwhelming feeling he might try, I wouldn’t count this as a genuine murder attempt because somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he can’t actually strangle him. Like if, say, he had physical strength and access to a knife, I don’t think this moment would translate into suddenly slitting his throat without warning. Maybe more like holding the knife to his throat threateningly before dropping it and collapsing into his arms lol.
So tl;dr imo in this moment he’s spent a year hating Guts because he loves him and that ruined his life, so he’s lashing out and potentially trying to/wishing to cut those feelings off at the source the same way he does soon after during the Eclipse. But he just loves Guts so much he ends up holding his hand instead.
God I love this ship.
Anyway ty for sending this and your kind words, I hope you also have an awesome day!
cut for people who don’t want to see discussion of monster sex lol
i feel like there’s still room for this though! like this is one of those concepts i keep coming back to and i always envision it as neogriffith using sex as a way to keep the apostles in line and not preying on humanity, yk like, one taste of yr god and you realize that humans just aren’t worth risking getting kicked out of falconia for
except it’s actually completely unnecessary and more low-key a convoluted ott expression of his self-destructive streak while telling himself it’s just another rung on the ladder to his utopia dream, because griffith is a dramatic disaster in all incarnations
or you want it less fucked up and weirdly angsty then maybe it actually is just part of how he keeps them tame (a la Ganeshka’s “if he touches me I’ll sacrifice all -”) and he’s lowkey into it. or he lets his loyal generals gang bang him as a reward bc they’re apostles and apostles respond better to base lust than bags of gold, and in this scenario he’s getting fucked from a position of power as a show of generosity and knows he can’t be truly harmed bc fate, so it’s still a contrast to sex when he was human
i’ve said this before but still like, literally both g/c sex scenes began with the dude saying “hey here’s a great way to stop thinking about painful, painful reality” right after being devastated by their belief that they destroyed their relationship with the other dude, like they both seek out sexual connections in the face of losing their relationship with each other!
Like I don’t think anyone would deny that this is clearly what Griffith is doing.
But Guts does it too:
“The dead or broken” refers back to Casca’s “the almost broken dream of someone who might not even be alive” incidentally, so you don’t even need to make your own connections here, they’re delivered in a neat little bow. It’s about Griffith being in a dungeon right now because of Guts.
There’s a big empty space very clearly defined where Guts and Griffith should’ve fucked each other, and because they didn’t the Eclipse happened.
That’s the thesis statement of Berserk as far as I’m concerned.
this is a given but all this really drives home that him and guts could’ve had it all including the first actual healthy and mutual romantic + sexual experience either of them would have
ikkkkkkkkkkkkkr
like i s2g griffguts is the keystone to berserk, it’s the missing piece, everything is built around it and everything falls apart literally because it’s a missed connection, i’ll argue that forever. and it always fits like no matter which angle you’re looking at the characters from
I’ve never really paid attention to the difference between the manga art and color pages/covers, other than enjoying the oil pastel look, but yeah w/ those examples I do see a difference. Maybe it’s the medium, or just spending more time and effort on the covers. Idk art is a mystery to me lol.
i’m no art expert but that cover example has that kinda “round” look that i love about miura’s old art, vs the more square, woodblock look of his new art, and the primary way he achieves that look is by hatching so it makes sense that when he paints it comes out, yknow, softer
look at guts trying his damnest to be casual with griffith and make him feel even a little bit better about his situation (and also to distract himself from his guilt)
i’m honestly willing to think this wasn’t just a stupid, slightly insensitive naive moment from him but, in fact, an actual pathetic attempt at re-establishing their intimacy which he fucked up by leaving
he doesn’t look hurt when griffith kinda sorta refuses (i.e. changes the subject) but he’s still in the trying to act casual/make him feel better/distract himself mode
# i feel like griffith asking for his armour instead of taking off the mask kinda marks a switch for guts from the attempt at intimacy # and beginnings of real acceptance of griffith’s like… vulnerable humanity and the fact that he isn’t a god # to kinda following griffith’s lead and piling on more denial lol # like guts is a dumbass but he almost got it right here
ia i just think the elephant in the room is too big for guts to try to be this casual to start off? like it’s so transparent? and i get that what went down isn’t something he can just dive into without prepping either of them, especially considering the consequences it had for griffith and the guilt he feels over that, but like the way he handled it (following griffith’s lead like you said and all that) they didn’t get to talk about it* at all, which is imo so much worse
*of course it would have been one-sided bc griffith can’t talk but you know, better than nothing
tbh yeah true actually, at this point Guts falling to pieces and just screaming some real genuine words like the rambling guilt ridden monologue that’s been occasionally running through his head for a few days would probably be a step in the right direction more so than more dancing around everything
yk I think the number one reason Griffith had to lose his tongue, narratively, like you were talking about the other day, is because in the lake when Guts was running towards him if he could talk he would’ve finally broken and said everything. like I think to that point he would’ve kept repressing and not actually started the relevant conversation, but there is a breaking point when it would’ve come out then
but Guts, who could talk, never reached that breaking point
the breakup dialogue (PS4 edition) and extensive fucking nonsense rambling
I find the wording choice in all iterations of this scene very interesting. it’s always /slightly/ different than the next. These are all inner monologues;
Guts:It all started with a duel, and now it will end with one … Fine by me. I think it fits me well.
Guts: This says to me, that for you, I’m still worth spilling blood over.
Griffith:Do you want to go?! Is this … how badly you want to leave my grasp?!
Griffith: … you can’t. You can’t! I won’t have it! I won’t let you!
(Casca’s thoughts have her realizing she wants Guts to stay. But, guess what bitch. I think if Miura hadn’t gone for shock value and instead went for better characterization, she would’ve come to this same conclusion for Griffith’s sake. She fucking knows how he feels about Guts! and she loves griff, she wants him happy imo … but I digress because djjdjdd it’s pointless, and we all know Casca will never get good writing like she deserves. And Judeau’s weird foisted in complicity in the so-called triangle has always felt off to me too, the fuck. I refuse to go off rn its 5am.)
Guts: You look like you’re staring down an enemy. … Well, I can’t complain if you resent me for this.
Guts: But still … even if … you will come to hate me or think of me as a traitor …
Guts:That’s why … That is why … I have to go. To me, you are …!
interesting scripting choice … i love (and fucking hate [because it’s their undoing ultimately]) how it’s always hinted at and never fully addressed. i feel like it’s gotta be a metaphor or something (or maybe it’s more obvious than that even) but i’m too tired to think much on this rn and i probably give miura too much credit anyhow lmao.
i keep saying this but berserk is a cautionary tale of repressing emotions and the dangers of toxic masc, abusive relationships and heteronormativity. there were hardly terms for these things when it was new but it’s rife imo … berserk is littered with these concepts. but yeah, back to my point (sorry) griff and guts had years together! yes they had a mountain of issues but certainly there would’ve been time to talk. oh, god, they frustrate me so. i’ve never read a story that frustrated / shredded / intoxicated me so thoroughly. do you think he timeskipped this part to avoid that being a possibility? i don’t understand his choice of a timeskip during the golden age! guts and griff were at their personal best (note i did not say they were doing well … just on a scale of each individual learning how to cope and survive) during this part and getting better. UGH.
((furthering that thought … there’s still plenty he could do with that by way of flashbacks, like with chitch. i’d much rather see some golden age guts and griff interaction than whatever the fuck is happening in falconia rn lmao … we all want some casca rn but who knows when that’ll come back around.))
and while i’m here, i don’t think i’ve posted this thought here (i think it’s still in my mountain of drafts), but i think miura … probably wanted them to talk. miura probably wanted guts to apologize. he probably wanted griff to be more open about his feelings. i think he really did love his characters and wanted resolution, even if he knew the path canon was gonna take. the inner monologue in guts’ head on his way to rescue griff was laid out, raw, plain as day, he accepted his guilt, finally, his role in sending griff off the deep end, and seemed ready to face it (though nobody expected griff to be ruined like that … and that, i’m sure, threw away any inclination of “simple” discussion. i imagine after the initial shock they’d all just be in dissociation hell … but fuck it wouldn’t be too bad of a defense mechanism considering the alternative). griff’s thoughts of guts were just as brutally revealing. they were sustaining, complex, and oddly symbiotic (tho everything about guts and griff is symbiotic tbh, that’s the core of berserk). miura put that shit there like that so we know exactly how both of them feel, since they don’t/ can’t talk. but if they’d talked, at ANY point, about their feelings, it might’ve opened a door leading away from the eclipse. away from griffith’s mind breaking (tho tbh idk how he kept it together at all after that encounter w wyald … BUT if they’d talked at all during alllllll that time, none of that shit would’ve happened!).
berserk fucking hurts, it was designed to hurt, and i hate how easily it did this to me.
This is a topic and a half lol. Ok, I have many many thoughts, and I’ll try laying some out.
To start, I’ve seen the heacanon that his mother was a prostitute a few times and tbh it makes a lot of sense to me and seems v plausible.
But also I don’t really get any indication that he views sex as a way to control/own others, at least not pre-Femto. I’d actually argue the exact opposite, that throughout the Golden Age sex for Griffith is indicative of his own powerlessness relative to others. Sex, to Griffith, is something that he can trade to people more powerful than him for something in return – or something people take from him.
(I mean you can argue that seduction and trading sex for power/security/etc is a way to control people, but everyone Griffith does this with has more societal power than him and Griffith never pursues sex with them for its own sake, so to me the dynamic comes across as less rakish rogue using sex to get what he wants and more csa victim with a warped view of sex as something to trade for the things he needs.)
under a cut for length and yk the whole topic
Gennon was straightforward prostitution, plus Griffith was a literal child whose guilt was taken advantage of by a pedophile. And as Griffith’s first sexual encounter we see, it certainly sets a tone and establishes the beginning of a pattern.
Later, as a villain, Gennon’s goal is literally just to rape Griffith, and Griffith is very aware of this, since he incorporates it into his battle plan. There’s also some indication that he’s been overtly getting his creep on for years on end, possibly explaining how Griffith knew Gennon would shoot himself in the foot just to get to him:
So Gennon is both a sexual threat and someone with power who gives Griffith something in exchange for sex.
Charlotte is a princess he has to seduce to realize his dream.
And when he does have sex with her I’d argue that it’s basically an attempt to escape from his feelings (rejection, need, self-loathing, being in love with Guts) through refocusing on his dream (which is consistently his alternative to and escape from Guts), essentially irrationally trying to prematurely seal the deal on the “transaction.”
It’s the sex version of this:
And it also negates every scrap of power he clawed his way up to and lands him in a dungeon.
Next you have the torturer and his incredibly creepy suggestiveness, which makes Griffith’s sexual victimization here technically subtext, but I mean, “we were like husband and wife,” the Gennon-like fixation on Griffith’s beauty, the tongue thing, the uh speculum he was holding in his introduction… it’s not subtle subtext.
Then when Griffith makes a move on Casca in the wagon he’s offering himself to her because he’s entirely out of options and kind of desperately grasping at something, now sunk from trading sex for a kingdom to trading sex for a caretaker, painfully highlighting his complete and total lack of power at this point in his life, and the future he envisions should she take him up on that offer makes him suicidal.
So like, four out of four sexual encounters we’re aware of pre-Eclipse focus on his vulnerability and powerlessness, then he turns into an evil demon and expresses his newfound power and invulnerability(/frozen heart) thru rape. So yk, there’s a thread there to pick up theoretically.
I mean I honestly have a really difficult time ascribing any meaning
to the Eclipse rape beyond assuming Miura wanted a cheap + shocking way
to piss Guts off, write out Casca, and presumably get himself off
judging by how he drew it, but yk… take the rest of the Golden Age and
the general concept of Griffith’s inner darkness raping Casca, the last person he felt that sexualized powerlessness to, while
ignoring the depiction of the actual scene, and you can read some amount of depth/cycle of abuse stuff into it. That was probably at least part of the point, if I’m being generous to Miura and his writing.
(Really given the amount of content in Berserk that
revolves around sexual violence you can read a million things into the
Eclipse rape. But yk if Miura wanted me to do that, he shouldn’t’ve
treated it like a sudden detour into actual porn. Ok mini rant over.)
(Oh I should probably add that obviously Casca was in no way complicit in Griffith feeling vulnerable to her there lol and I’m not suggesting she bears any responsibility at all. Griffith in the wagon and his subsequent dream was basically him projecting a bunch of issues on her. I feel like that goes without saying but I want to cover my bases.)
Then you get NeoGriffith with his magically heightened literally untouchable, beyond the reach of man vs an army of monsters is basically in love with him stuff.
There is approximately 0 chance the placement of that “hunger and thirst” panel is accidental js.
But now Griffith has all the power. His beauty and magical sex appeal can be used as a tool without Griffith ever having to make himself vulnerable.
(Also speaking of using sex to control others… like I don’t think it fits human Griffith based on what we see in canon, but imo there’s plenty of room to explore that with NGriff.)
This isn’t a real threat, Griffith can just go “lol” and completely destroy him without breaking a sweat. Now Griffith has switched from he who is taken from to he who takes.
Like, the stakes of the Battle of Doldrey, for instance, was the threat of Griffith being captured as a sex slave. Some of the tension came from Casca’s suggestion that Griffith volunteering for the battle may not have been a rational decision, because his rapist is the commander of that army. We don’t learn Griffith’s full plan until partway through, there are cliffhanger moments during the battle chapters where Our Heroes look like they might lose, and the sequence is tense and nervewracking as a result.
The war against Ganeshka has absolutely no tension at all. There isn’t even a moment where the outcome is not absolutely certain. And that’s a strong way of showing that NeoGriffith may face the same threats he did as human Griffith, but he’s no longer vulnerable to them.
Uh I guess my point is basically that NeoGriffith’s kind of sexualized untouchability feels like a narrative response to human Griffith’s particularly sexualized vulnerability. Enemies and monsters still go on and on about how hot he is, but they can’t act on that now.
But there’s still Charlotte. Like, despite all this godly distance and inability to be harmed and pointed contrast to human Griffith experiencing sex solely as a bargaining chip or a weapon, he’s still gotta marry her to make his dream official.
I feel like it’s unlikely that Miura intends me to read their relationship like this, so it’s not gonna be addressed, but ngl it’s something I find theoretically interesting. Like I see a lot of people assume that NeoGriffith is going to like, murder Charlotte after they get married, and tbqh I think that’s generally stupid, but if there’s one angle you can look at the story from and conclude “yeah NGriff may just off Charlotte with extreme prejudice as soon as possible” it’s this imo. Not to prove how pointlessly maliciously evil he is lol, but because she still has a form of sexualized power over him.
But I think it’s more likely that NGriff doesn’t give a fuck anymore, or if he does he won’t admit it to himself, because he carved out most of his emotions and it’s gonna take more than that to get him to admit it didn’t completely work.
Also speaking of Charlotte there’s the whole like, heteronormativity and repression aspect while we’re talking Griffith and his relationship to sex. The related fact that he deliberately performs a certain image/makes himself a symbol. And I barely even mentioned Guts. Agh actually there is a ton more to say about Griffith + sex, but I don’t want this to be even longer lol.
So ok, those are my thoughts on Griffith + sex + power specifically.
I’ll just link you other stuff I’ve written which kind of covers a wider variety of topics re: Griffith and sex, if you’re interested.
I’ve never really paid attention to the difference between the manga art and color pages/covers, other than enjoying the oil pastel look, but yeah w/ those examples I do see a difference. Maybe it’s the medium, or just spending more time and effort on the covers. Idk art is a mystery to me lol.
honestly it’s a very good decision, writing-wise, to have griffith’s tongue cut out during his torture and have him be silent in all the chapters leading up to the eclipse
bc it took some control and influence away from him and allowed the events to roll out completely out of his hands
(not that he would, lol, but) he wasn’t able to tell guts how betrayed and devastated he was when he left, he wasn’t able to have any sort of heart-to-heart with him, he wasn’t able to reassure either him or casca or any of the hawks, really, with his words, he wasn’t able to beg guts to stay ……………….. like, nothing. there was nothing he could do, it made him that much more helpless and almost invisible in certain moments, when they were all making decisions with no regard for him
like, in a way, words are one of griffith’s strongest weapons, and yet right up to the moment when he sacrificed all of his friends for his dream he could not say a single thing
look at guts trying his damnest to be casual with griffith and make him feel even a little bit better about his situation (and also to distract himself from his guilt)
i’m honestly willing to think this wasn’t just a stupid, slightly insensitive naive moment from him but, in fact, an actual pathetic attempt at re-establishing their intimacy which he fucked up by leaving
he doesn’t look hurt when griffith kinda sorta refuses (i.e. changes the subject) but he’s still in the trying to act casual/make him feel better/distract himself mode
you're the only one 