reflected fire light helping out w/ the metaphor too
i will never be over how damn suggestive it is that judeau, the resident dude who won’t stop throwing guts and casca together and who dictates the entirety of the guts/casca relationship based on whispering in guts’ ear, doesn’t want rickert to tell guts how fucked up griffith was over him.
so the other day i looked at a scanlation version of the beast of darkness scene in chapter 187 and boy oh boy they threw around the word “love” to describe guts’ feelings for casca a lot (eg ‘yet you love her?’ instead of the dh version which is ‘yet she’s precious?’)
which just made me think of so many fandom arguments i’ve seen in my brief experience as a fan of gay anime and manga ships about how nothing is ever a straightforward non-platonic love confession between 2 dudes or women unless, idk, you use some outdated phrase no one uses anymore or smthn, at least based on recent mikimiki wank lol.
but everything is a straightforward declaration of love if it’s a man and a woman ofc.
Ain’t this … … part of the path to your dream? You believe that, don’t you?
So what’s with this crap? Now, of all times …
… … You’re right …
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
お前の夢につながる道 → path tied to your dream (or, apparently, possibly also “path that leads to your dream” ??)
何言ってやがる → やがる is used to show contempt/anger, and is often translated using curse words as intensifiers. imo the official translation is really elegant because it conveys that annoyance while not making it too rude, because we all know that’s not guts’ tone here.
今さら → i like this translation too, but i wanted to point out that the original expression carries a meaning of it being too late to do/say/change/fix something. like, you would use it too say, “well even if you turn in your homework now, it’s no use. the deadline was a month ago.” and, actually, in the translated manga the “now” is bolded and italicised.
and like. idk but the やがる combined with the 今さら must sound really accusatory to griffith, who is already feeling pretty vulnerable + shitty about himself right now. you done fucked up, guts.
I won you with this. Your fight and your death, I hold both.
If you want to leave my grasp, then it’ll be the same as that time … Wrest yourself away by your sword.
勝ちとった → there’s a lot of this in japanese, where two verbs are put together to form a new one. in this case, it’s 勝つ (to win) and 取る (to take), forming the verb 勝ち取る, basically meaning “to win [sth]”
お前の戦場もお前の死もすべてオレのものだ → so, here griffith lists guts’ “battlefield” and his “death,” and then he says, literally, “everything is mine.” the “everything” does refer to the two things he listed, but i still would have went with “it’s all mine” or “i hold all of it” tbh
もぎとって行け → もぎ取る does literally mean “to wrest away from/wrench free,” it’s not just the official translation folks getting creative
i’m vaguely musing rn on touch, guts’ early and post-eclipse aversion to it, griffith always initiating, never willingly receptive (except to guts), guts starting the eclipse by touching griffith’s shoulder and then being the one to let go of griffith’s hand the final time they ever physically connect, hands on shoulders and emotional vulnerability and power dynamics, guts growing more comfortable again with his rpg group while neogriffith is “one who is beyond the reach of man,” femto almost pointedly refusing to allow physical contact between them even thru a sword w/ his telekinesis, zodd standing between guts and neogriffith
the only solid conclusion i have so far is that guts needs to physically touch neogriffith at some point
i honestly can’t believe that we’re not supposed to see griffith as both in love with guts and unable to easily come to terms with it because his frame of reference for same-sex attraction was gennon
and vice versa for guts and his formative trauma w/ donovan
it’s just all there, laid out so neatly. like i feel like it’s not a stretch to call it the essential point/theme/plot of the golden age. two dudes love each other and completely fuck it up because they’re traumatized. like yah i’ve written an essay about this b4 but man sometimes it just hits you. like right now.
ugh it just kills me how griffith comforted casca here, even though he must have been sick to his stomach as well
and then later. you know
agh a while ago I was going to post about how the fact that Griffith’s hand on Casca’s shoulder bookends this chapter, except the second time he is very clearly repressing his feelings to seem like a strong perfect person and reassure Casca, sheds a whole lot of light on how he was probably feeling the first time he put his hand on Casca’s shoulder in chapter 17 here.
and then I forgot and this reminded me and now I’m sad again.
like ok this visual reference doesn’t really bring anything new to the table since we already know that Casca’s heart is full of dark negativity but yk
i still like it
wish this obvious imagery got ppl to realise that evil is within all humans including their precious protagonist and that the only reason griffith is what he is now is the fact that his humanity was suppressed by magical means. it’s such a simple fucking point that miura hits you over the head with at every given opportunity and yet they still divide the characters into perfect cinnamon rolls and irredeemable evil scum
also i think guts’s sword fixation has a lot to do with how much he humanizes the sword and dehumanizes himself. iirc miura makes a point about guts using the sword to protect others instead of fighting for its own sake, at which the sword is no longer a meaningful subject in itself but a means of protecting bonds he’s forged. the unhealthy part of it is, again, the way he objectifies himself through it (and one of berserk’s themes is human objectification)
it’s sort of a coping mechanism
backfiring on him. the sword is just an object; the unhealthy aspect of
it is that guts has been using it as a means of self-actualization for
his entire life. part of his development in the golden age is to derive
meaning and significance from his relationships with others, but he
never really addressed his issues so once the eclipse happens and
casca’s mental state is revealed he almost instantly reverts back to
that coping mechansim
Hmmm I think I pretty much agree with you. By objectifies himself through his sword do you mean like, when the Berserk armour takes over, when he becomes monstrous and consumed by rage even without it, etc? Because I definitely think there’s a strong theme of Guts becoming dehumanized through his sword, and the way you put it in contrast to Guts humanizing his sword (like considering it an extension of himself I assume?) is something I’ve never really thought of but it makes a lot of sense to me.
(lol I guess dehumanization is actually kind of a loaded term in Berserk where everything from monsters to gods are expressions of aspects of humanity, but ikwym and it’s definitely a theme regardless of semantics.)
Haha, sorry anon but you’ve gone where I can’t follow. I don’t see Serpico’s feelings towards Farnese as sexual (he was the one who turned down her unknowingly-incestuous advances after all), though the rest is all fair I suppose. Maybe not really necessarily anything more than coincidence, and I’m not sure what meaning could be imparted by paralleling the two characters, but if you have an idea I’m curious.
I mean I guess if you do see Serpico’s feelings for Farnese as sexual you could argue that he fights Guts that one time out of misplaced jealousy or possessiveness rather than genuine protectiveness, but I can’t say I see it myself.
like ok this visual reference doesn’t really bring anything new to the table since we already know that Casca’s heart is full of dark negativity but yk
i still like it
also i’m still on my casca using the behelit bullshit ftr
I JUST SAW UR OTHER POST LOL FUCK!!!! IF THE FALLING AND SHATTERING ISN’T A DIRECT REFERENCE ILL SHIT… holy fuck. i never really got the “gave away too much of the plot too early” reasoning behind the removal of the chapter but like THAT COMPARISON really puts it in new light and makes me genuinely hopeful
I’m so torn between being like lol this would never happen miura is not that good to me and being like, but what if tho
I mean ok I don’t think a fix Griffith quest is likely, that would be a little too impossibly good a thing to happen for Berserk lol. And Casca was traumatized while Griffith was like, literally and willingly transformed by magic and evil so it probably doesn’t work exactly the same way. (Someone should write this fic though omg, anything’s technically possible since it’s all magic anyway.) But exploring Griffith’s mental landscape? mayhaps? and again, tiny Griffith? theoretical potential to fix Griffith giving Guts some devastating Hope™ and ruining his stop obsessing over Griffith resolution?
i’ve always assumed the ‘gave away too much of the plot too early’ thing referred to griffith being essentially the avatar of humanity, but honestly knowing that in advance only improves everything.
griffith being in uh literal pieces in that panel? really makes u think
@miura give us tiny griffith
ALSO
like ok this visual reference doesn’t really bring anything new to the table since we already know that Casca’s heart is full of dark negativity but yk
i still like it
cut for controversial theorizing and also lost chapter spoilers
I want this to be purposeful for two reasons:
1. what if there’s a tiny griffith living somewhere in neogriffith
2. i fucking hate the visual metaphor of casca being a ~broken doll~ and the only thing that could even come close to salvaging it for me is if it’s a deliberate griffith parallel because at least then it seems less grossly gendered
you're the only one 