I’m feeling it, mostly from Guts’ post-eclipse pov for some reason even though you’d think it would fit post 2nd duel Griffith best. Idk, either way it’s nicely fitting and depressing, ty.
ok i’m having a hard time responding to this bc frankly this reads as salty that i didn’t include her, but i want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just curious about my thoughts on Casca’s terrible way of dealing with her feelings.
so for the record I’m not obligated to do a version of every post i make for every character in berserk. i focused on guts and griffith bc
a) their shitty ways of dealing with their feelings drive the plot and are related to their dreams/coping mechanisms of choice and story arcs, unlike Casca’s which is entirely incidental and separate from her dream/coping mechanism (ie, supporting others’ dreams) b) they parallel each other in several ways c) i have more pages featuring guts and griffith’s denial/avoidance saved so I didn’t have to search for examples and d) they’re my faves
but if you are just curious and i’m reading your tone wrong, then here you go: Casca is queen of lashing out imo
punching guts several times, attacking him by the waterfall, physically lashing out at corkus a few times, screaming in outrage a lot, and you could maybe argue her suicide attempt counts as lashing out against herself, but honestly i don’t think I’d count it based on how it was depicted.
but yeah to me this reads as less a carefully considered individualized and plot-and-theme-relevant character trait and more “haha women are so irrational, amirite?” on miura’s part so I’m hard-pressed to lay it all out like it’s a solid writing choice the way i did w/ the other two. I mean
come tf on Miura.
i fucked up. why did i stop at the golden age??? both those posts are clearly perfect set ups for this:
Seems like a fair take. I mean becoming Femto was very much shown as a rebirth – you could definitely say he was reborn into a new family, the godhand, to begin a new life. I always particularly loved this panel as an illustration for this ngl:
the very image of a newly hatched (evil) baby bird right there.
But yeah like, the chapter where the hand begins to unfold to reveal Femto is called “quickening” and the next chapter is “birth.” There’s no doubt it’s def a monstrous gestation thing.
Makes me wonder about NeoGriffith’s similar birth tbh. It gets a series of chapters titled “birth ceremony,” he hatches from an egg there too, rapidly grows from fetus to adult, etc.
Though we don’t know enough about NeoGriffith to conclude whether it means there’s significant differences between him and Femto/it’s another new start in a way. But I mean the parallels and contrasts between the Eclipse and the Conviction Arc’s shadow Eclipse were hammered through the reader’s head for a reason right? There’s got to be something to it.
i guess it’s more like supernatural charisma, which is probably tied to being a manifestation of humanity’s desires, but close enough since most of the focus ends up being on how pretty he is.
Also the placement of the panels where Guts is angrily swinging his sword around at the same time Griffith is being given peerage has a lot of fodder for that as well. Griffith is kissing a noble’s sword when the one he really wants to be kissing is being kept on the outside of his dream by design…..
YES lmao, this reminds me of this half joke half serious post i wrote a while ago
but yeah there’s no way that imagery is accidental. i mean ignore the phallic symbolism if u want, but those swords are deliberately being contrasted, + it foreshadows guts and griffith’s mutual self-imposed isolation from each other thru their dreams as symbolized by those swords right there
i keep wanting to put things in the berserk tag before chickening out and tagging with ‘berserk meta’ instead lol
yk what this works as a d/s joke, a masturbation pun, and as serious analysis
like the chapter title actually does seem like a potential reference to guts dedicating his sword to him now that you mention it. and lol i saw this reply right after posting a long thing about how that moment basically is what motivates guts for the rest of the story
hmmm
ohhh man re-reading those chapters in particular and like
there’s such a clear little mini-arc. This isn’t brand new information at all, but I love seeing it laid out like this so I’m going to talk about it.
Chapter 6 starts with Guts trying to visit Griffith while brooding about Casca’s “it’s your fault!”
He’s prevented by social status.
Casca punches him out and Guts leaves and sulks, and the rest of the Hawks have this exchange:
So we start with the statement that everyone’s feeling a little distanced from Griffith thanks to his promotions, and this is very much affecting Guts too, which is why he threw a couple guards down the stairs and made an ass of himself while trying to visit him.
Then we go straight to Guts angrily swinging his sword on the staircase.
He’s pissed off about Casca making him feel like an outsider. This is a dude who has clearly defined issues when it comes to being blamed for bad shit happening. See, eg, Gambino blaming him for the death of Shizu, calling him “cursed,” along with the rest of his first mercenary band.
Three years with the Hawks, and Guts is mostly content and happy, but there’s still this doubt, still this sense that he’s a little on the outside looking in, a little distanced, and Griffith more recently drifting away from everyone puts that background feeling into sharp relief. This is why we begin our narrative, after the three year gap, when Griffith gets promoted into the nobility.
Guts angrily swinging his sword, alone, probably brooding over Casca accusing him of not caring about his comrades since this scene is placed right after that confrontation, while Griffith gets promoted, rising away from him.
Chapter six returns us to Guts swinging his sword angrily and alone while brooding over his feelings of being an outsider. His place is with the Hawks, but is it really? When it’s “his fault” Griffith nearly died, when he’s accused of not caring about anyone but himself?
And then Griffith seeks him out, joining Guts at the midpoint of a staircase, for that extra bit of symbolism.
He talks about how much he hates the other nobles, talks about how nightmarish their encounter with Zodd was, but how it was also interesting theologically lol. A bit of philosophy, a bit of personal connection and emotional opening up. Guts asks the question.
And the turn of this little mini-arc is, of course, this:
The end of chapter six.
It’s Griffith completely assuaging those fears of being an outsider, of losing him to the nobles, of being looked-down on. It’s Griffith negating his deep-seated belief that his only worth is as an asset.
Three years ago Guts began this sentence:
And now, in chapter seven, he’s finally reached a place where he can finish it.
Idk basically this is the pinnacle of Guts’ search for belonging, and I love how well it’s built up to by emphasizing Guts’ outsider status first, through Casca’s angry tirades and through Griffith’s promotions.
Which ofc also provides a solid foundation for the dissolving of Guts’ feeling of personal fulfillment in another few chapters. Honestly it provides a solid foundation for literally everything that comes after. This is the skeletal structure of Berserk – Guts’ longing for love and acceptance vs Guts never quite feeling like he has it. Except right here and right now.
“Even so, incidentally, I found someone I really wanted… to have look at me.”
That feeling goes as easily as it came, with a few words, but it’s what motivates Guts at least until chapter 130 (potentially til chapter 182), after which trying to forget that feeling and focus on what he does have is what motivates him (”I came this far by letting go of my obsession…”) And we’ll see how that goes.
huh, i just noticed that the post-zodd chapters w/ guts and griffith’s conversation on the staircase and ending w/ guts dedicating his sword to griffith are called “Master of the Sword” 1+2.
which seems fairly loaded since these 2 chapters are the direct opposite of guts leaving the hawks to become a master of the sword.
feels like a subtle little acknowledgement that the place where guts can find genuine personal fulfillment is with the hawks, wielding his sword “for his sake.”
I think it’s really cool that Berserk is basically taking this theme of darkness/light, isolation/connection, and portraying it on both an interpersonal scale and a like, grandiose cosmic scale.
With Ganeshka and Griffith the darkness is the isolation of being singular, unknowable even to oneself, and the light is another being existing on the same plane as you, seeing the world the same way as you, seeing you as you truly are. This sense of cosmic understanding.
With Guts and Griffith there’s nothing objectively grandiose or cosmic about it, it’s just a relationship between two dudes that fell apart and still haunts both of them. But their connection is meaningful enough to them that existing without the other is comparable to being a solitary eldrich abomination who can barely even perceive others.
Griffith’s existence as a monster “beyond the reach of man” is basically a symbol of choosing to isolate yourself rather than surrendering to the vulnerability of loving and being loved, and that’s underscored at the climax of the Millenium Falcon arc just as he achieves his dream (both through that moment of connection up there and through Ganeshka’s backstory of paranoia feeding into isolation which is placed right before that moment).
Like for real, all this untouchable, unknowable, eldrich abomination jesus figure stuff is essentially a metaphor for Guts and Griffith breaking up.
And like, I always get a huge kick out of this concept of playing with scales when it comes to interpersonal connection. This isn’t a groundbreaking thing, this is a relatively common fantasy friendship/romance trope – yk the world only gets saved after the couple confesses their feelings, love is the key to achieving X goal, a single person can’t do the magic thing but when their friends join/support them they can do it, Spock running away from his feelings for Kirk is a parallel to a godlike machine’s inability to understand emotion, etc etc etc.
And Griffith and Guts’ moments of connection are like finding the one being you can see and understand in a world of isolation, and losing that is like becoming a monster in a sea of darkness. See also: the Black Swordsman arc and the Berserk armour for a slightly more down-to-earth fantasy metaphor.
Idk sometimes I have a problem where while I’m making a post and adding pictures, it takes a few seconds to upload during which the “post” button is yk unclickable. And sometimes it glitches out and won’t finish uploading, and it makes the post unpostable forever. Is that the problem you’re having?
Because my only solution is to save as a draft after adding every pic or two just to make sure if it does glitch on one of them I have most of the post saved. You might have to copypaste the text and start again with a new post, and try uploading the pics again.
If what I described isn’t the problem you’re having then idk you might just have to contact tumblr support. Good luck 🙂
To be fair almost every family in Berserk is either terrible or ends horribly, from blood relations to adopted families to found families. Give or take the found-family rpg group, Farnese and Serpico, and the suggested Casca Guts and moonlight kid thing, but I’m willing to bet on two out of three ending in tragedy there too. Overall I think it’s more a Berserk thing than a Griffith-specific thing.
But yeah Griffith doesn’t have a great track record there at all lol.
you're the only one 