people assume that griffith saw guts as a tool or whatever tbh…i tend to lean towards the ignorance one but like self aware griffiths are valid to some extent i just feel like the first makes all his actions more romantic and im a glutton.
lol i should’ve phrased that as ‘what do most people who have even the tiniest understanding of griffith as a character think’
yeah i think even if he is aware that he’s in love by this point like, that’s still after a year of torture and lying in the dark thinking about his life and his choices lol, for me it’s hard to see him as aware of his feelings before this point at all. Like I think he could be, I could see an argument where he’s known he’s in love for three years and just steadfastly refuses to deal with it/compartmentalizes, but idk I like totally-disconnected-from-his-own-emotions-Griffith lol. Griffith like, buying his own con, portraying his distant leader/knight in shining armour image so well that he believes it himself, shocking himself by his own irrational actions wrt Guts, etc. ia it does seem more romantic that way too.
tho now i’m thinking about if griffith is still unaware that he’s in love – he knows he feels overwhelming things for guts but doesn’t associate that with romantic feelings – even up to and including the point where he sacrifices him, what if neogriffith is the one who makes that connection…?
yk i like the ambiguity of this monologue because griffith could either be asking
q: why do i feel overwhelmingly strong stupid feelings for guts and only guts? a: because you’re in love with him.
or
q: why did i fall in love with guts of all people? a: reason doesn’t apply to love.
like it leaves griffith’s level of awareness of his own feelings kind of up to the reader, which is handy.
i tend to default to the first interpretation, bc i like my griffith stupid as fuck, but the 2nd interpretation is at least as legit, especially since like, the anime (or at least the dub) had him throw ‘love’ into his list of feelings, and even the manga’s ‘hunger’ is pretty suggestive.
like at this point i can easily imagine him as either aware of his emotions but still not able to label them as love, or completely self aware about how he feels, and just asking himself rhetorical “why the fuck did this happen to me” questions.
I think Griffith traumatised himself for losing the duel, so he simply hurt himself on the same place Gut’s sword “hit” him. It’s the pain of losing the battle.
yeah i could also see that as an explanation, and it’s actually what i used to think. like ngl i really like the idea of griffith scratching himself because guts’ sword didn’t even touch him. nicely fits the sexualized scar discussion later on between guts and casca too lol. “I too want a wound that I can say you gave me” js.
these days i’m very solidly on my tombstone of flame related explanation, but yeah yours is also gr8.
Okay, this is totally overkill, I know, but your ask has motivated me to just lay it all out, so ty!
Yeah, I can see why people look at this image and see it as one huge raised scar. It’s fairly ambiguous looking, and it’s the visual interpretation the anime went with, which reinforces this common perception:
But look at this:
You can see when he traces it that the “outline” of that “wound” fits his two fingers exactly. It’s not one scar, it’s two self-inflicted parallel scratch marks.
They’re not in the same place as the river scratches, there are only two instead of four, and they’re also older and therefore either mostly healed scabs or scars which he’s tracing instead of tearing open in that moment, which is why they’re not the same as the bleeding open wounds we see in chapter 17, but they are definitely two separate marks, not the edges of one giant scar.
Tbh I think Miura put them on his shoulder instead of his arms this time mainly for dramatic effect so Griffith is more curled in on himself when he traces them.
imo the movie is closer to the spirit of the manga in making them scratch marks and showing Griffith seemingly tempted to add to them. It’s still a little weird considering their placement further back, and idk what they expected new audiences to think since they cut out every relevant aspect of those marks being there, ie his backstory and the night Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and co. But whatever, it’s close enough for me.
And to just briefly explain those scratch marks a bit further, basically, as much as it looks a bit like a big scar in the manga, like you said, it really makes no sense for it to be.
If Guts’ sword had hit him in the second duel he’d either have a gaping wound or a discoloured bruise later that day, not a scar, and if he got it somewhere else that we never get to see then he has absolutely no narrative reason to trace it and cry while thinking about Guts. It would be nonsensical and meaningless for him to trace some random mysterious scar that has no relevance in this highly emotionally charged moment.
On the other hand we know he has a history of self-harming by scratching himself, and we’ve seen him viciously scratch himself under circumstances very similar to Tombstone of Flame Part 2 – the moment Griffith flashed back to just as we see his bare shoulder with those marks on it for the first time in that first image up there: “You believe that, don’t you?”
Griffith has done something he considers “dirty” for the sake of his dream, asks someone else what they think of him (”Am I dirty?” // “Do you think that I’m cruel?”), both Casca and Guts inadvertantly reinforce his belief that he’s dirty/cruel with their responses (”N- why… why were you alone with him before?” and “Ain’t that part of the path to your dream?”), and in the river in front of Casca he self harms while talking himself through the necessity of dirtying himself for his dream, so it feels safe to assume that sometime shortly following his conversation with Guts in Tombstone of Flame he also self harmed while telling himself it’s necessary to be cruel for his dream.
Now that Guts has left in what Griffith believes is a rejection of the “cruelty” and “dirtiness” that he let Guts in to see, he traces those old scratch marks and tries to convince himself again that it’s worth it for his dream. And the point of this moment is that he can’t convince himself this time. Instead he just curls up and sobs, because in the face of Guts’ apparent rejection, it’s not worth it.
Like I said lol, this is overkill as a response to your ask, but like I saw an excuse to explain my take on this moment in its own post, instead of buried in a much longer post, so I took it.
Great analysis, I would like to add a couple of points, if you don’t mind.
Guts didn’t want to hurt Griffith during the duel, he stops his sword before it hits him: he doesn’t have cut hair, nor clothes. No signs of bleeding whatsoever too (he didn’t change his clothes when he got to Charlotte, so he would’ve been soaked with blood).
And since Miura is very precise with what he draws, we can clearly see the hypothetical sword wound would’ve gone from his neck to his shoulder, not from his back to his collar bone:
The way the scar it’s drawn still bothered me, so I searched for it in the other chapters, and in chapter 39 it looks the same, while in chapter 40’s cover it looks like two separate scratch marks:
So either Miura changed his mind about its origin or he noticed people didn’t understand what it was supposed to be.
I’d like to think the movie got the “corrected” version, but we’ve seen they took some liberties with stuff such as Griffith’s tortured face, so who knows. I prefer the scratching as an explanation for that wound.
ty for the addition!
yeah i really wish Miura would’ve made it say, three scratch marks instead of two for the sake of clarity, but oh well.
I could even mb see an argument that maybe it’s meant to be ambiguous and deliberately looks reminiscent of a scar, maybe to emphasize that Griffith came away from that duel wounded emotionally, if not physically. Buuuut that’s a huge stretch and almost certainly not intended lol.
was that the same thing where he like described her as a medieval version of a business woman or something like that lol?
tbh… idk. as far as female characters in Berserk go Farnese is the best imo. she’s got character depth and agency and a full arc and is only threatened with rape once lmao, which is sadly v refreshing after the golden age. it’s nice that her narrative isn’t “the sad plight of being a woman,” like her gender is important to various parts of her narrative like her engagement and her early physical helplessness having never learned to fight, and probably the way Casca trusts her, etc, but she’s not solely defined by being a woman, which is also refreshing after Casca’s golden age narrative lol.
like i’ll roll my eyes at the idea that miura only added another female character to the cast because he has female readers, and if his audience was entirely men he wouldn’t’ve bothered, but w/e. Farnese isn’t written like The Token Chick or like a 2 dimensional stereotype so I don’t really mind, i love Farnese and whatever his reasoning i’m glad she’s there.
Okay, this is totally overkill, I know, but your ask has motivated me to just lay it all out, so ty!
Yeah, I can see why people look at this image and see it as one huge raised scar. It’s fairly ambiguous looking, and it’s the visual interpretation the anime went with, which reinforces this common perception:
But look at this:
You can see when he traces it that the “outline” of that “wound” fits his two fingers exactly. It’s not one scar, it’s two self-inflicted parallel scratch marks.
They’re not in the same place as the river scratches, there are only two instead of four, and they’re also older and therefore either mostly healed scabs or scars which he’s tracing instead of tearing open in that moment, which is why they’re not the same as the bleeding open wounds we see in chapter 17, but they are definitely two separate marks, not the edges of one giant scar.
Tbh I think Miura put them on his shoulder instead of his arms this time mainly for dramatic effect so Griffith is more curled in on himself when he traces them.
imo the movie is closer to the spirit of the manga in making them scratch marks and showing Griffith seemingly tempted to add to them. It’s still a little weird considering their placement further back, and idk what they expected new audiences to think since they cut out every relevant aspect of those marks being there, ie his backstory and the night Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and co. But whatever, it’s close enough for me.
And to just briefly explain those scratch marks a bit further, basically, as much as it looks a bit like a big scar in the manga, like you said, it really makes no sense for it to be.
If Guts’ sword had hit him in the second duel he’d either have a gaping wound or a discoloured bruise later that day, not a scar, and if he got it somewhere else that we never get to see then he has absolutely no narrative reason to trace it and cry while thinking about Guts. It would be nonsensical and meaningless for him to trace some random mysterious scar that has no relevance in this highly emotionally charged moment.
On the other hand we know he has a history of self-harming by scratching himself, and we’ve seen him viciously scratch himself under circumstances very similar to Tombstone of Flame Part 2 – the moment Griffith flashed back to just as we see his bare shoulder with those marks on it for the first time in that first image up there: “You believe that, don’t you?”
Griffith has done something he considers “dirty” for the sake of his dream, asks someone else what they think of him (”Am I dirty?” // “Do you think that I’m cruel?”), both Casca and Guts inadvertantly reinforce his belief that he’s dirty/cruel with their responses (”N- why… why were you alone with him before?” and “Ain’t that part of the path to your dream?”), and in the river in front of Casca he self harms while talking himself through the necessity of dirtying himself for his dream, so it feels safe to assume that sometime shortly following his conversation with Guts in Tombstone of Flame he also self harmed while telling himself it’s necessary to be cruel for his dream.
Now that Guts has left in what Griffith believes is a rejection of the “cruelty” and “dirtiness” that he let Guts in to see, he traces those old scratch marks and tries to convince himself again that it’s worth it for his dream. And the point of this moment is that he can’t convince himself this time. Instead he just curls up and sobs, because in the face of Guts’ apparent rejection, it’s not worth it.
Like I said lol, this is overkill as a response to your ask, but like I saw an excuse to explain my take on this moment in its own post, instead of buried in a much longer post, so I took it.
Reading this got me so upset ngl. Having all of those easily answered questions all in one place. Like UGH my god Guts! Like I understand why he didn’t want to jump to the painfully obvious reason as to why Griffith would risk everything for him, like maybe Guts doesnt see himself as valuable or as something someone could genuinely care for, Thanks a lot Gambino you permanently gave my baby trust issues.
ikr it’s so depressing when you think about why guts keeps asking 😦
tho to be fair there was like a period of… who knows how long, probably no more than a month or two and maybe less, but it was a period of some amount of time when he felt loved and valued as a person
then griffith’s dream fucked that up, but yk, it was nice while it lasted
post eclipse guts similarly asking himself why femto didn’t kill him during the eclipse….. the drama the angst the parallels….. bitch that’s my SHIT!!!!!!!
yesss man i’d love to see the post-eclipse version so much
i mean we kinda saw it with ngriff wondering why the fuck he’s feeling feelings and the awkward way femto lowers his hand instead of killing guts lol, but i didn’t include them bc there was no “why” phrasing
also like i want neogriffith to make a stupid decision when he and guts cross
paths again so one of his apostles or whoever can be like, “ummm why did
you do that?” and griffith can avoid answering.
@bthump omg that is sooo true! Even if Serpico were to hear the promrose hall speech he still would’ve stayed by Griffith’s side.
yeeeah v true. on the flipside tho idt he has enough spine/determination/intrigue for griffith to fall for him. they’d make for an interesting dynamic tho.
also @madchen lmao it wouldn’t work out anyway. they both want big brawny dudes lbr.
lmao now there’s a ship that i never would’ve thought of, and yet almost makes sense. serpico and farnese kind of had some griffguts parallels going on, serpico just has 100x more chill than guts does.
Oh damn I didn’t think of that either! god, Femto like, say, straight up ripping Guts’ arm off would be so good with that comparison to the first duel, I love this.
Like tell me reminding Guts of how they met and how Guts first joined him while genuinely intending to torturously destroy him wouldn’t completely fuck Guts up.
and like the idea of Femto playing with Guts like a cat w/ a mouse right up til Skull Knight saves him? Done the right way that could be v effectively horrific imo.
ugh sorry for being such a nerd lol but that scar is an anime only thing, in the manga it’s two parallel scratch marks
which makes more sense imo bc like, there’s no way he’d have a scar from a wound he got earlier that day, and it seems like Guts’ sword doesn’t quite touch him. so I basically think the anime production just interpreted the image wrong.
BUT me being an annoying pedant aside lol I think the idea of Femto personally wounding Guts is interesting and def more compelling, and it kinda makes me wish Griffith did get wounded in one of their duels because the concept of them both having scars from the other is gr8.
And tbh while I actually kind of like the silent menacing vibe we got in the Eclipse, rape aside obviously (so like… the 3 pages of Femto looking cool and badass I guess lmao), I also loved the smug asshole vibe we got in the Black Swordsman arc, and I could easily see Black Swordsman Femto dickishly goading/forcing Guts into a hopeless fight. Would’ve also had that echo of Gambino trying to kill him, and I love parallels like that.
I still hope to see a third duel at some point but having one during the Eclipse would’ve been waaaaay better than what we got, it’s a cool concept. ty!
you got luca’s statement on guts and casca, followed by, on the same page
nina being a helpless baby
then followed by nina meeting joachim again and doing a 180 which it seems we’re supposed to consider a good thing, and deciding to take off with him instead.
this is interspersed with farnese deciding to follow guts and calling him her saint and prophet.
like, is this going somewhere? unequal relationships, guts and casca, guts and farnese, farnese and casca… anything?
we’ve got guts paralleling griffith in a bunch of different ways, from gaining followers by telling them “do what you want,” to wills being admiringly compared to fire, to being compared to a hero out of a fantasy, to even very recently
but it seems like none of this is… depicted as negative really. is following guts good because he struggles to live and miura thinks that’s cool while following griffith was/is bad because ??? is it just a double standard at work?
or is some payoff coming?
what is the deal w/ the conviction arc
guts and casca being at the tower of conviction together as 2 sacrifices drawing up malicious spirits etc is what sets the mock eclipse off, kills like over a thousand people, and ultimately brings about ngriff’s resurrection.
neogriffith’s existence is a direct result of guts rescuing casca
if it was fated that neogriffith show up and and eventually defeat ganeshka and create falconia etc, and it sure seems to be, then it was fated that casca not be burned at the stake there, that guts defeat mozgus and co instead of being killed, etc etc. because if either guts or casca were killed, those evil spirits would not have been able to show up and kill thousands of people as a sacrifice to bring neogriffith into the world.
so why is skull knight’s “maybe you’re like a fish breaching the water’s surface” repeated over guts kicking mozgus’ ass and isidro rescuing casca? neither of them were fated to die, they’re not defying fate by surviving.
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