mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
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Happy New Year everyone, I’m ringing it in by finally posting the fruits of me getting way too into a vid that was only supposed to be a fun evening of playing around on Premiere.
It’s set to an Avril Lavigne song and it’s earnest about it. Enjoy!
It was the last time Griffith decided to keep what’s most precious and preventing him from reaching his goals.
oh man, you know especially considering the godhand had already pretty much explained everything (you’ll sacrifice everyone here and become a god, cool huh?) this really is like, the last time Griffith chose him over his dream.
Idk if this is a prediction or wishful thinking lol, but if I had to lay down a bet I think she’s going to wake up, have all the Eclipse related betrayal and despair and trauma hit her, and use the behelit, then go for revenge herself. I’ve been theorizing this for a while and tbh I haven’t come up with anything better yet so I’m still going with it.
My hopes for her getting a happy ending away from Guts are essentially zero, especially since reading in an interview that Miura only had her survive the Eclipse so Guts wouldn’t be able to fully move on.
And I’m assuming that Skull Knight’s warnings are going to come to something other than Casca being prickly for a while before hooking back up with Guts or w/e, then getting killed to make him want revenge again. Dramatic shudder.
So what I really want is for her to finally, finally react to what happened to her, and for that reaction to be epic as fuck.
I also think it’s plausible because:
there’ve been a lot of ominous shots of the behelit recently
flora specifically suggested guts might be carrying it for someone else
guts revenge quest was bad for him partially because it wasn’t his right to avenge the hawks after abandoning them, but if anyone earned some vengeance it’s casca
griffith instinctively acted to save casca once, giving him a huge weakness against her
“What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” Just sounds so delightfully ominous and suggests Casca actively doing something Guts wouldn’t like.
guts’ revenge quest is played out imo, time for something new. also seeing casca decide to go full monster in her rage would probably fuck him up and wake up the beast of darkness, so it would still motivate him to do something
honestly there’s some great stuff with morality and apostles just waiting to be explored and seeing a beloved character turn into one would be really interesting
Casca’s strong, badass, and her anger manifests in violent lashing out making her a perfect candidate to take over the revenge stuff.
I think Guts hasn’t really given up on the idea of revenge yet – he was still fantasizing about going back after Griffith while on the boat – but it would be pretty anticlimatic if Casca just stuck around in Elfhelm to recover while Guts went “ok side quest over, back to the main quest now,” so I’m sure there’s going to be something more to it.
And I like the idea of Casca taking over the revenge quest and Guts maybe re-evaluating himself, his motives, etc, while fucked up once again because things went south and he did something with mostly good intentions and everything got all fucked up anyway.
Like tbh I think that the conflict as it’s set up now, ie revenge = bad, helping Casca = good, is much, much too simplistic for a story like Berserk. It’s boring lol, whether it ends up tragic and Guts backslides back into revenge, whether he continues doing the “right” thing and chooses Casca over it, it’s still black and white. In the Golden Age there were no easy right or wrong options – eg Guts thought he was doing the right thing by leaving, turned out to be a huge mistake that fucked everything up, and I really liked that. I think the current arc has the potential to be similar which would be great imo.
Guts isn’t helping Casca solely out of the goodness of his heart, he’s doing it because he wants the old Casca back despite misgivings and warnings that he might be going about it the wrong way – and he’s doing it to distract himself from revenge, and also from the fact that he’s not so gung-ho about revenge now that Griffith looks human again. Imo. It doesn’t have to be as simple as revenge = bad, magical therapy = good, and looking closely at Guts’ motivations makes me wonder and hope that, like the Golden Age, a seemingly positive choice could have negative consequences, and the secret actual right choice is dealing with your many issues, Guts, instead of running off for a dream, or revenge, or to “force” someone’s sanity back.
@metalbutter that’s the going assumption but i have an extremely unlikely pipe dream that maybe she could sacrifice moonlight boy
it
would feel more symbolic of losing whatever romantic family potential
w/ guts there theoretically was, whereas sacrificing farnese just feels
like the only possible choice available and therefore not significant
enough on a narrative scale, since Guts can’t be sacrificed twice. plus
there’s this sequence of panels way back when:
i mean that’s kind of ominous right?
plus apostles sacrifice some weird shit sometimes, like eggman sacrificing “the world.” a ghost kid doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch after that.
Idk if this is a prediction or wishful thinking lol, but if I had to lay down a bet I think she’s going to wake up, have all the Eclipse related betrayal and despair and trauma hit her, and use the behelit, then go for revenge herself. I’ve been theorizing this for a while and tbh I haven’t come up with anything better yet so I’m still going with it.
My hopes for her getting a happy ending away from Guts are essentially zero, especially since reading in an interview that Miura only had her survive the Eclipse so Guts wouldn’t be able to fully move on.
And I’m assuming that Skull Knight’s warnings are going to come to something other than Casca being prickly for a while before hooking back up with Guts or w/e, then getting killed to make him want revenge again. Dramatic shudder.
So what I really want is for her to finally, finally react to what happened to her, and for that reaction to be epic as fuck.
I also think it’s plausible because:
there’ve been a lot of ominous shots of the behelit recently
flora specifically suggested guts might be carrying it for someone else
guts revenge quest was bad for him partially because it wasn’t his right to avenge the hawks after abandoning them, but if anyone earned some vengeance it’s casca
griffith instinctively acted to save casca once, giving him a huge weakness against her
“What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” Just sounds so delightfully ominous and suggests Casca actively doing something Guts wouldn’t like.
guts’ revenge quest is played out imo, time for something new. also seeing casca decide to go full monster in her rage would probably fuck him up and wake up the beast of darkness, so it would still motivate him to do something
honestly there’s some great stuff with morality and apostles just waiting to be explored and seeing a beloved character turn into one would be really interesting
Casca’s strong, badass, and her anger manifests in violent lashing out making her a perfect candidate to take over the revenge stuff.
I think Guts hasn’t really given up on the idea of revenge yet – he was still fantasizing about going back after Griffith while on the boat – but it would be pretty anticlimatic if Casca just stuck around in Elfhelm to recover while Guts went “ok side quest over, back to the main quest now,” so I’m sure there’s going to be something more to it.
And I like the idea of Casca taking over the revenge quest and Guts maybe re-evaluating himself, his motives, etc, while fucked up once again because things went south and he did something with mostly good intentions and everything got all fucked up anyway.
Like tbh I think that the conflict as it’s set up now, ie revenge = bad, helping Casca = good, is much, much too simplistic for a story like Berserk. It’s boring lol, whether it ends up tragic and Guts backslides back into revenge, whether he continues doing the “right” thing and chooses Casca over it, it’s still black and white. In the Golden Age there were no easy right or wrong options – eg Guts thought he was doing the right thing by leaving, turned out to be a huge mistake that fucked everything up, and I really liked that. I think the current arc has the potential to be similar which would be great imo.
Guts isn’t helping Casca solely out of the goodness of his heart, he’s doing it because he wants the old Casca back despite misgivings and warnings that he might be going about it the wrong way – and he’s doing it to distract himself from revenge, and also from the fact that he’s not so gung-ho about revenge now that Griffith looks human again. Imo. It doesn’t have to be as simple as revenge = bad, magical therapy = good, and looking closely at Guts’ motivations makes me wonder and hope that, like the Golden Age, a seemingly positive choice could have negative consequences, and the secret actual right choice is dealing with your many issues, Guts, instead of running off for a dream, or revenge, or to “force” someone’s sanity back.
Pardon my bad writing English isn’t my language I’m not fluent, cheers from Ukraine.
Yes! At least that’s absolutely how I understand his character, and it’s like my favourite thing about him.
I get what you mean about Griffith being suprising, like if you assume something about him a later action will contradict it. I feel like to me he makes perfect sense, but only after reading the manga twice in a row and spending way too much time thinking about his narrative lol.
At face value he seems very contradictory because he tends to lie to himself, and the way he gets more complicated as the story goes on also tends to throw people off. Yk like we start out with this impression of him as a powerful charismatic leader driven towards a goal and willing to kill to get there, distant and above everyone else, but the more we learn about him – about his past and his insecurities and guilt and self loathing and feelings for Guts etc etc – the more layers we uncover, and the more we see that first impression is… not wrong exactly, but there’s a LOT more going on beneath the surface, and most of it is pretty depressing.
And like, he’s an unreliable narrator about himself, which can also make him hard to figure out. Imo Miura did a great job writing a character who doesn’t even understand his own motivations and emotions and making him understandable to the audience, but it’s still really easy to miss a lot of the complexities.
Also same! I really feel like we’re heading towards a big emotional reveal for NeoGriffith and I can’t wait.
tbh I’m thinking I might write a much more thorough meta post about his narrative/character soon. I want to talk about this more lol it’s like my favourite Berserk related topic. And it’s been a while since I got in-depth about something here, so keep an eye open if you’re interested!
And not to mention those moments that were cut were supposed to humanize Griffith and make him more relatable and fun. Anime and films made him look just cruel and cunning.
yeahhhh
tbh i feel like there are a lot of rly minor, seemingly insignificant tweaks that end up making the story feel much flatter overall. In the anime I mean, the movies just full on cut most of Griffith’s character out lol.
But like, little things like how he looks angry rather than regretful when Guts is about to kill the hired goons in tombstone of flame, or how we don’t see his face on “do you think I’m cruel?” or losing the moment where Guts remembers him asking him not to tell the Hawks about the assassinations, etc, all add up to less depth and less understanding and sympathy.
Also Guts tends to look way more dour imo, like his default expression is much pissier in the anime than the manga, which makes him seem low-key resentful constantly and kills a lot of the chemistry between Griffith and Guts in significant scenes. Also a bunch of his super fond wistful thinking-about-Griffith smiles are gone lol. I’m sure that helps contribute to the idea that anything between them is one-sided.
And then there are the filler scenes added just so Guts can do something useful and Casca can act like a tsundere, playing up Guts and Casca in a rly cliched way.
Also no flashback to Guts during sex with Charlotte, and his scratch marks are interpreted as a giant scar which doesn’t make any sense – there’s no reason for him to be clutching a mysterious scar and crying, but we’ve seen him self harm before so like, whoever made that call fucked up.
Ooh the torture – the scene that happens after Griffith has spent about one day in the dungeon in the manga instead happens right before Guts returns which really makes his suffering in the anime seem diminished in comparison.
Also Guts’ sparks speech to Casca is turned into half an episode of him chilling with Godo, which means that his dream of fighting people and swinging his sword forever is treated as completely noble and manly by the narrative, because we don’t get Casca’s immediate “you sound like a fucking asshole” counterpoint. Casca’s angry reaction is instead solely a reaction to Guts saying he’s leaving again, not to his whole “dream,” which also makes her look worse.
Idk this turned into a list bc I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently lol. The anime does a lot of things rly well too, but idk I definitely feel like I interpret the story pretty differently to whoever made it.
the thing with berserk is I’d love more fan content and there is stuff out there in the non-tumblr portion of the internet that’s mostly discussion, which would be great but I don’t think I could be more scared of cis-male opinions on berserk tbh
I’ve barely read any and but I feel like I can… picture it based on what little I’ve seen and I do not want. strongly.
this is the only thing that springs to mind as something from straight dude-centric berserk fandom that i mostly agreed with. it’s been a while since i watched it and i’m sure i’ve refined my own opinions since then so idk if i’d still be going ‘yeah you’re not wrong’ at most of his points, but it’s probably still worth a watch
but yeah in general i avoid everything outside my little tumblr circle, greater berserk fandom is the absolute worst
a) oh hell yeah, thank you! the title of that video is even interesting and it’s actually come up recommended on youtube for me a few times and is one of the ones I was scared to click on and
that’s the kind of thing I want to avoid but at the same time if it’s a downplaying or an alternate explanation I can live with it– I think the only thing I’d come close to accepting is that there’s something more “profound” that motivates him, or well. no accepting, but I can fully understand why people would take that view while also completely disagreeing? there’s at least justification for that in some ways. (although I think that view in itself is as you said, no homo-ish, but also accepts something the narrative pretty explicitly explains is a Bad Idea: making griffith into something “more than”, or someone on a pedestal, who is incomprehensible in nature, is one of the deepest reasons for griffith doing what he does imo).
and c) I’ve now had like my first ever unexpected negative anon (a transphobic one to boot! wow amazing) from this fandom. oh. dear.
(also just watching now and “the less you look at griffith, the worse he seems” is a pretty observation though. yes good).
but also accepts something the narrative pretty explicitly explains is a
Bad Idea: making griffith into something “more than”, or someone on a
pedestal, who is incomprehensible in nature, is one of the deepest
reasons for griffith doing what he does imo
yk this is a great point actually. part of the point of griffith’s narrative is that he’s only human. like, i do think his feelings are incomprehensible to him, at least until he spends a year doing nothing but being tortured and examining those feelings, but they’re not particularly grandiose or more-than.
I actually really dig that as a thematic thing now that you’ve brought it up – Griffith’s feelings for Guts should be plain old ordinary human love and sexuality, because Griffith is an ordinary human who just like… sucks at recognizing/accepting that he is, and sucks at being recognized as an ordinary human.
and the same goes for femto/neogriff since despite being a demigod demon in berserk all these monsters and gods originate in recognizable ordinary human feelings.
like damn that just neatly tied one of my favourite berserk themes to griffith and guts’ love, that’s perfect.
(also tbf I may be misrepresenting what he says about griffguts since I don’t remember the one i linked very well and I haven’t actually watched his video about it, I’m just going off a few comments on it that I read while trying to figure out if it was worth watching lol)
ps lol i went for a good like 8 months without getting any anon hate
despite regularly posting controversial opinions, but now there’s one
anon blowing up my inbox, and it’s def the same person who sent you
those messages lol. sorry about that, she probably found you thru me.
god every damn time i think of that wyald scene i see red, ugh
like, guts pauses while fighting wyald to crack wise, sexualize casca and then yell at her to go away, and then afterwards when the fighting is over and done it’s casca getting teary over guts’ wounds, rather than guts showing any compassion or empathy at all.
like this is a narrative problem, casca doesn’t even get a reaction to her own assault there, and when judeau comforts her it’s while she’s crying over guts fighting wyald, not what happened to her, so it’s hard to hate guts for this when it’s more of a miura problem, but still. it’s so so so bad.
(funny enough the closest thing we get to acknowledgement of casca’s assault was griffith trying desperately to tear himself away from the men holding him to somehow help her as soon as wyald starts stripping her. so like, incidentally, there’s another point to throw out there when people start going off on their griffith is a sociopath arguments lol)
actually that post reminded me of a quick thing i was gonna write a while ago and forgot about
so i’ve mentioned before a few times that Guts and Judeau’s conversation here is kind of weird because Guts swivels from ‘what the hell are you talking about’ to ‘actually yeah I should totally fuck Casca, I just need to become Griffith’s equal first’ within about a minute
In other posts I suggested that this was an awkwardly written way of bringing a romance with Casca to the forefront. This seems to reframe Guts’ motivation for leaving as at least in part to become worthy of Casca, despite this never occuring to Guts before.
Now I’m thinking that this scene isn’t actually about complicating Guts’ motivation for leaving at the last minute – I’m thinking it’s set up for Guts’ motivation for romancing Casca.
Meaning, he doesn’t want to become Griffith’s equal so he can feel worthy of Casca’s love, he wants to win Casca to feel like Griffith’s equal.
And I’m js, that reading fits with the way the Guts/Casca “romance” is written throughout the rest of the story, ie, as secondary and serving the relationship between Guts and Griffith, and often falling by the wayside next to it, rather than vice versa.
Like when Guts says he can accept the fact that Casca is still obsessed with Griffith because he’s even more obsessed. Like how (as I thoroughly explained in the post linked above) their sex scene revolves around their relationships to Griffith. Like how Wyald almost raping Casca is treated as an opportunity not for compassion or comfort but for one-liners by Guts (his reaction is to tell her to go away because she’s distracting with ripped clothes !!! like !!! fucking hell). Like how Guts is focused solely on Griffith during the Eclipse, up to and including a moment where he looks down, sees the Band being eaten by monsters, and goes right back to trying to hack Griffith’s egg open, without even sparing a thought for Casca. Like how he abandons her in a cave for two years while hunting Femto down. Like how he only realizes that was a bad decision when he compares it to leaving Griffith kneeling in the snow. Like everything the Hound says. Like Miura’s direct statement that Casca only survived the Eclipse to keep Guts pissed off about it. etc etc etc
Basically I’m not saying it’s better writing this way, but it’s bad in a different way. It’s not clunky so much as plain old misogynistic, but hey p much everything regarding Guts and Casca’s relationship is misogynistic either way, so at least if the romance with Casca was never an end in itself but rather a means to the end of being Griffith’s equal, it’s consistent. At least it means we’re not supposed to read this bullshit and think “aw true love,” yk?
I don’t really have much to say about Charlotte tbh, nothing about her character really grabs me, but if anything comes to mind or she gets more meaty content in the story eventually, I’ll def write something. Though I don’t really think Casca’s reaction to trauma should be used as a benchmark for how strong anyone else is lol, because her reaction was v unrealistic and pretty much just Miura’s convenient way of getting her out of the way and explaining why she wasn’t around during the Black Swordsman arc despite being alive. I don’t think it means she’s suffered more than anyone else (she may have, but it’s not relevant), or that she’s emotionally or mentally weaker than anyone else.
Charlotte is pretty resilient though, totally agree.
Yeah I’m assuming we’re not far from seeing some revealing emotional NeoGriffith moments, after his interaction with Rickert, but we’ll see I guess. I have my doubts that it has anything to do with the magic baby, but again, we’ll see.
Though speaking of, one thing I can say is that I don’t think it will be a tantrum because things aren’t going his way. We’ve never seen that from human Griffith – when things get bad for him, he’s serene about it. He deals with people plotting against him easily, he uses something that could be very distressing (facing Gennon at the most important battle of the war) and turns it to his advantage, he faces Zodd with calm battle tactics and determination even when the odds of him succeeding are nil, when he’s captured after fucking Charlotte he reaches for his sword and then peacefully gives up when he remembers he’s unarmed, he smugly taunts the king after losing everything and being whipped, and the torturer even comments on how quiet and non-responsive he is during torture, at least during the first day or two.
The only circumstances we saw that made him lose control emotionally were sex with Gennon/guilt + self-loathing, and Guts-related stuff (including Femto failing to kill him and NeoGriffith’s heart going off).
So when NeoGriff does eventually show some emotion, my bets are on it being because of Guts.
Yk I wonder if this is part of what motivates him to leave. Like maybe if he hadn’t heard this speech he would’ve given up, continued to fight for Griffith as a soldier but never felt up to potentially becoming his friend/equal. But, even if he doesn’t connect the dots that Griffith’s speech was stupid and he in fact is loved, this chapter must still reinforce the fact that Griffith is irrational around him, does seem to value him moreso than anyone else, etc.
So maybe this gives Guts the confidence that becoming Griffith’s friend is an actual achievable possibility for him and something he should work towards.
It’s like during the 2nd duel, when Guts was thinking, well I’m glad he wants to fight me, this tells me I’m still worth spilling blood over. He gets it, he just doesn’t get how gone Griffith is for him. And in fairness, neither does Griffith, so.
fandom needs to give Casca more credit for her earnest, premeditated murder attempt here. Like Griffith’s was a split-second decision to make a move that had a risk of potentially killing Guts, while still aiming only to wound, and it’s taken as proof that he’s been evil all along. Casca’s straight up aiming to kill here, but no one takes her seriously.
Which is partly Miura’s fault for not taking Casca seriously as a threat to Guts, but the intent is here I’m js and I like it because it’s dark and fucked up and shows Casca’s very own interesting inner darkness. I don’t want to just condemn her for it bc I’m into Casca’s violent rage, but I hate how she gets infantalized both by Guts not even bothering to draw his sword and by fandom treating this less like a murder attempt and more like a cute hissy fit.
She went full force on him taking out all her anger on him because she EXPECTED him to dodge her attacks, and also EXPECTED not to hurt him as a result. And that’s also why she was so shook when she did:
I mean: If she REALLY had the SERIOUS intention to kill him she wouldn’t have cared about him getting hurt like this. I think she intended to use Guts more as a punching bag to let out her frustration on (Remember, she prevented Guts from drawing his sword)
She did hate him and the situation with the hawks made her frustration even worse. And part of that hate was because she cared so much about both Griffith and Guts.
She’s also the third best fighter in the Hawks who we’re told can take on ten men at a time. We’re certainly not shown it here, which is one of my issues with this scene, but her threat to Guts should be more significant and dangerous than any other non-monstrous threat, aside from Griffith and Boscogne.
Yes, she was shocked when she did stab him, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was actively trying to and from what we’re told about her skills she had a decent shot at it.
Guts’ running commentary tells us “she’s serious,” she’s really trying to kill him, so Guts at least, based on her fighting style, believes she’s aiming to kill, and I see no reason to doubt him. Her shock and the way she immediately ends the assault when she lands a hit tells us that obviously she’s not committed to killing Guts and she was just irrationally lashing out in anger, and it throws some freezing water on her rage, but nothing about her attack to that point was half-hearted or feigned.
And from what I could tell she didn’t prevent him from drawing his sword at all – she tells him to draw his sword twice, she aimed at his neck, and he barely deflected with his blade still partly in its hilt. He eventually does draw his sword to defend himself.
I’m not saying she’s evil lol, especially in the world of Berserk mercenaries where friends fighting each other seems to be par for the course, based on Judeau’s reaction to Guts and Griffith’s fight and also Casca’s knife-throwing when they’re in the cave being treated as comedy and not drama, but it’s still a very dark, very fucked up outlet for her rage that shocks and does endanger Guts, and it’s a disservice to Casca’s character that it’s not given any weight on either a narrative or a fan reaction level, imo.
So anyway I stand by semi-seriously describing it as a premeditated murder attempt even if she didn’t follow through, because Casca’s hardcore and her skills shouldn’t be dismissed, despite Miura’s writing often doing just that. It’s not a cold “I want you to die,” it’s an emotional “I am going to fucking kill you,” but it’s also not spur of the moment since she lead Guts to this clearing specifically to hack at him with a sword.
Also I’m not trying to say she hates Guts or anything? My point is only that her anger manifests in legit trying to kill people, and I love that as a dark and intense character note, but it’s unfortunately downplayed and brushed off which disappoints me.
“Stay away from me… if you touch me now… if you so much as touch my shoulder… I’ll never be able to… you and I will never be…”
you know how much i love that the moment of despair that opens the behelit is the moment guts touches him but man, preceeding it with “you and I will never be…” is one hell of a choice
like the manga translation of “I’ll never… I’ll never…!” is functionally meaningless as far as I can tell. Maybe I’ll never forgive you? But it’s not the point, the point is Guts’ touch sending Griffith into despair. Griffith’s words just draw attention to it. Despair + touch.
“You and I will never be…” on the other hand, like, that’s nothing but a statement on Griffith’s abject horror of being touched in that moment by a man he can’t have, right? How else can I interpret that? Add “I’ll never be able to” and all I’m getting is something along the lines of, “I’ll never be able to let you go but I’ll never have you either.”
anyway how do ppl interpret Griffith’s horror at being touched by Guts and subsequent despair, regardless of specifics of translation? I’ve always kind of wondered but I don’t think I’ve seen any meta or interpretations or anything about it at all.
I didn’t know the manga version was so different, that’s interesting. Maybe the reason the dub extrapolated to “I’ll never be able to…” is close to what the manga intended. “I’ll never be able to… have you again,” maybe?
I think you’re bang on with never be able to let you go/have you either, because that’s pretty clearly what happens. all of griffith’s despair is essentially that at that point, he can never keep guts and he wants to get away from everything he’s ruined but at the same time he’s clearly still got the same old horror of guts leaving/not being able to hold/own him anymore
I guess it also has a question of how much he instinctively knew what the behelit would do or not?
i can’t remember the original japanese phrasing so just based on the
manga translation i interpreted it as “i’ll never get over you” though
fully knowing that i’ll probably NEVER get to find out what he actually
meant. i mean, we can intuit the basic meaning, but still. god damn it
miura
Yeah regardless of how the sentence might’ve technically ended, I think the meaning of “I’ll never be able to get over you/let you go/that kinda sentiment” makes the most sense and is definitely my favourite interpretation lol.
And yeah since in that moment he believed Guts wanted to leave again, honestly I feel like a visceral emotional understanding of Griffith’s despair at being touched by him (which tbh is rare for me in fiction lol). Like as a response to these circumstances – he’s so consumed by love for this dude that he spent a year thinking about him while being tortured to stay sane, but he thinks this dude is going to leave him, and then Guts’ physical touch as like the final proof of how vulnerable Griffith is to this love and how he can be destroyed by it – the behelit screaming representing Griffith’s despair as Guts touches him just feels so damn right.
Also I tend to think Griffith doesn’t know anything about how the behelit functions, but imo it still works super well narratively with Griffith’s resulting decision to basically cut that love out of him by sacrificing Guts.
lol sorry I’m just so into this scene rn I had to go on another spiel about it.
“the only woman guts ever loved” as if guts has ever come within breathing room of any other woman since the only one he knows personally is on account of her being his coworker and thus forced to share space with his smelly b*tch ass….
lmao true
also luv that w/ het ships ppl can declare shit like this with utter conviction despite guts never speaking or thinking of casca in terms of love, and despite the writer saying that casca and guts hooked up for extra eclipse drama and casca’s only around now so guts can keep being bitter.
but anything gay? clearly fake and just reaching
so it’s been stated that casca didn’t die literally to fuel guts angst (which, let’s leave aside how disgusting THAT is for a second) and bitterness, which leads me to believe that basically
without casca there as a very heavy reminder
guts would have 100% just forgiven griffith pretty much asap after seeing him again? ha
lmao right?
I mean yeah if Casca died with the rest of the Band during the Eclipse then sure Guts absolutely 100% would forgive Griffith/Femto immediately because it’s pretty clear that he never blamed him for sacrificing everyone in the first place lol. He was sad, sure, but he wasn’t angry about Griffith choosing to make the sacrifice. If anything he’d’ve blamed himself. But if say Casca died during the Conviction Arc, should we assume Guts would’ve gone ‘ok w/e fuck it idc anymore’ and moved on?
Actually yk what considering his “forgot my urge to kill” moment and how sad he was about NeoGriff ditching him it’s actually not that hard of a sell.
But damn either way I wish Miura would do something with Casca’s character other than continue making her an accessory to Guts’ desire for revenge.
anime dub adventures continued
“Stay away from me… if you touch me now… if you so much as touch my shoulder… I’ll never be able to… you and I will never be…”
you know how much i love that the moment of despair that opens the behelit is the moment guts touches him but man, preceeding it with “you and I will never be…” is one hell of a choice
like the manga translation of “I’ll never… I’ll never…!” is functionally meaningless as far as I can tell. Maybe I’ll never forgive you? But it’s not the point, the point is Guts’ touch sending Griffith into despair. Griffith’s words just draw attention to it. Despair + touch.
“You and I will never be…” on the other hand, like, that’s nothing but a statement on Griffith’s abject horror of being touched in that moment by a man he can’t have, right? How else can I interpret that? Add “I’ll never be able to” and all I’m getting is something along the lines of, “I’ll never be able to let you go but I’ll never have you either.”
anyway how do ppl interpret Griffith’s horror at being touched by Guts and subsequent despair, regardless of specifics of translation? I’ve always kind of wondered but I don’t think I’ve seen any meta or interpretations or anything about it at all.
ALSO speaking of ppl trying to kill Guts
fandom needs to give Casca more credit for her earnest, premeditated murder attempt here. Like Griffith’s was a split-second decision to make a move that had a risk of potentially killing Guts, while still aiming only to wound, and it’s taken as proof that he’s been evil all along. Casca’s straight up aiming to kill here, but no one takes her seriously.
Which is partly Miura’s fault for not taking Casca seriously as a threat to Guts, but the intent is here I’m js and I like it because it’s dark and fucked up and shows Casca’s very own interesting inner darkness. I don’t want to just condemn her for it bc I’m into Casca’s violent rage, but I hate how she gets infantalized both by Guts not even bothering to draw his sword and by fandom treating this less like a murder attempt and more like a cute hissy fit.
It’s… so confusing though, a close friend of mine watched the series based partially on my rec and him wanting to see it for ages and he misunderstood… basically… everything??? HOW DOES BERSERK FANDOM OUTSIDE TUMBLR FUNCTION???
honestly same, I really don’t get it. Like I can see general homophobia making ppl desperately want to downplay the gay vibes leading to as little emphasis on Guts and Griffith’s relationship, and especially Guts’ (extremely and wholly positive) feelings for Griffith as possible. Like describing Guts’ decision to leave the Hawks as “he does not want to be caught up in Griffith’s dream anymore” is technically accurate, and yet completely downplays the fact that the reason he doesn’t want to be caught up in Griffith’s dream is because Griffith is “dazzling” and he wants Griffith to “look at [him]” and he wants to feel like his equal and be regarded as a True Friend. In the terrible episode description it’s instead framed like Guts is pissed off about having to assassinate people lol.
And idk I think it might also be partially this weird desperate need to have a Hero and a Villain and have Guts prevail over the villain and ride off into the sunset with the Rescued Love Interest, because a lot of people are frankly boring and like boring stories and can’t conceive of good stories outside those basic parameters. So they twist the narrative in their head until it fits that shape, despite Guts and Casca not having anything like a traditional true love romance and Miura saying he only had Casca survive the Eclipse to keep Guts focused on revenge, despite Griffith not being a pure evil villain even after the Eclipse and certainly not before (like Miura’s directly talked about NGriff’s moral ambiguity and the way he’s not a traditional evil antagonist), despite the clearly complicated emotions that still exist between Guts and Griffith/Femto/NGriff, etc.
At my most generous I think part of the reason people choose to believe Griffith was evil all along is because Femto’s defining act is rape and people are uncomfortable seeing any good in a character who eventually becomes a rapist, tho personally the fact that he magically transforms into a demon first kind of mitigates that for me lol. (And, and I’ve ranted about this before but still, it’s also a double standard when so many of the same people go out of their way to excuse Guts when he sexually assaults Casca.)
But still idk it’s weird. Like, eg there’s so much you have to ignore to believe that Guts leaving the Hawks was fine and dandy and a good choice and Griffith was just a dick who overreacted. Pages and pages of Guts fretting about it, Casca yelling it at him, Guts regretting leaving, Guts realizing he was wrong in thinking Griffith looked down on him, Guts comparing abandoning Casca to abandoning Griffith multiple times, Guts determined not to make the same mistake again, etc etc. You can support Guts’ choice and blame Griffith all you want, but the narrative clearly does not, and it’s honestly baffling how ppl can ignore that when it’s not only discussed many times in direct words, but the whole story revolves around the fact that Guts made a mistake when he left.
Like what do you think the Golden Age is about if it’s not about a stupid misunderstanding between 2 dudes who both rly like each other and fail to realize their feelings are reciprocated and overreact and make dumb decisions because of that misunderstanding? I don’t understand what most Berserk fans see, it genuinely feels like we’re reading 2 different stories lol.
Browsing through the rebirth chapters and it just leaps out at me how utterly sexualized Griffith is, especially in comparison to Casca, who is (at least by Miura’s standards) totally desexualized.
Guts’ internal conflict is essentially desire vs responsibility, ie revenge vs escorting Casca to Elfhelm, ie Griffith vs Casca, and the visual depiction of that conflict is straight up, extremely loud and clear, naked sexy Griffith vs Casca all childlike in a shapeless cloak
yk what I was partly wrong here and over simplifying things
it’s not that Guts’ desire for revenge is sexualized through Griffith, it’s that Griffith’s sexualization is actually at odds with Guts’ desire to kill him. You can’t rly ignore “the instant I saw him… I’d forgotten my urge to kill.”
Revenge and sexual desire aren’t rly equated yet. Guts wants to kill faceless masked bird boy with great prejudice
he does not want to kill sexy naked Griffith.
Now that he’s actually reachable I’m having second thoughts oh no what the fuck.
So when the hound says he’s longing for Griffith and tells him to give him a heap of raw iron, what’s actually going on is less sexualization of revenge, and more… revengalization of sex, yk?
Sexual desire and violent stabby revenge are being equated by the hound to encourage Guts to pursue Griffith. Guts wants to stick something in him all right, and he should still want revenge, so it’s best if that something is a literal sword. As opposed to his desire for revenge becoming sexualized, the inherent sexualization of Guts’ desire for Griffith is what the hound seizes on and twists to lead Guts back to revenge.
Anyway basically Griffith’s desirability is still hardcore contrasted to Casca’s lack thereof, but honestly I think it’s less a metaphor for wanting revenge vs being stuck babysitting and more plain old straightforward gay subtext which is then utilized to give an added layer of complexity to Guts’ desire for revenge (and desire to desire revenge.)
ik this comes across as fake jokey analysis and/or giving the subtext too much weight so I can reach super hard, but tbh idk how to read this part without it. i mean you could just say that Guts fantasizing about Griffith’s pretty hair and ass and forgetting his urge to kill and whining about being stuck with Casca and Griffith abandoning him and the hound’s many innuendos are all unrelated or accidental but
l b r
I’d actually love to see a dead serious analysis of this like you’ve done but deliberately disregarding any gay subtext just to see if it could make anywhere near as much compelling sense? I don’t think there’s a way this makes sense without at least some gay subtext– nor does basically the majority of berserk in general, which makes me curious but also scared to branch outside of tumblr for people’s meta on it.
tbh i’m kind of curious too lol. i’ve seen bits and pieces of non gay meta/opinions/etc on brief forays onto reddit and skull knight etc but nothing involving Guts and Griffith’s characters/relationship that I didn’t immediately think of counterpoints to.
and like for a thought experiment i tried wracking my brain to come up with a heterosexual explanation for one of the most homoerotic moments
and the best I got is that Guts is picturing NeoGriffith like that to serve as a strong contrast to Femto, yk all naked with flowing hair as opposed to the exoskeleton + helmet look.
and it still doesn’t explain why an image meant to convey a sense of humanity is the most sensual image of a person we’ve seen in 176 chapters of Berserk give or take actual sex scenes, and that’s including Griffith’s resurrection (in which he’s described as “the desired”) a few chapters earlier.
like idk at the end of the day I think Berserk does mostly make sense if you assume Guts and Griffith’s feelings for each other are 110% platonic, at least the plot does, but i def think the homoeroticsm adds more depth and richness, plus it’s a simple cohesive explanation for a lot of stuff that is otherwise pointless or weird, from Casca’s jealousy to a bunch of images of Griffith to their intensity-at-first-sight vibe to why Griffith didn’t answer when Guts asked if he was gay, etc etc, and it’s disingenuous to ignore it imo.
Browsing through the rebirth chapters and it just leaps out at me how utterly sexualized Griffith is, especially in comparison to Casca, who is (at least by Miura’s standards) totally desexualized.
Guts’ internal conflict is essentially desire vs responsibility, ie revenge vs escorting Casca to Elfhelm, ie Griffith vs Casca, and the visual depiction of that conflict is straight up, extremely loud and clear, naked sexy Griffith vs Casca all childlike in a shapeless cloak
yk what I was partly wrong here and over simplifying things
it’s not that Guts’ desire for revenge is sexualized through Griffith, it’s that Griffith’s sexualization is actually at odds with Guts’ desire to kill him. You can’t rly ignore “the instant I saw him… I’d forgotten my urge to kill.”
Revenge and sexual desire aren’t rly equated yet. Guts wants to kill faceless masked bird boy with great prejudice
he does not want to kill sexy naked Griffith.
Now that he’s actually reachable I’m having second thoughts oh no what the fuck.
So when the hound says he’s longing for Griffith and tells him to give him a heap of raw iron, what’s actually going on is less sexualization of revenge, and more… revengalization of sex, yk?
Sexual desire and violent stabby revenge are being equated by the hound to encourage Guts to pursue Griffith. Guts wants to stick something in him all right, and he should still want revenge, so it’s best if that something is a literal sword. As opposed to his desire for revenge becoming sexualized, the inherent sexualization of Guts’ desire for Griffith is what the hound seizes on and twists to lead Guts back to revenge.
Anyway basically Griffith’s desirability is still hardcore contrasted to Casca’s lack thereof, but honestly I think it’s less a metaphor for wanting revenge vs being stuck babysitting and more plain old straightforward gay subtext which is then utilized to give an added layer of complexity to Guts’ desire for revenge (and desire to desire revenge.)
ik this comes across as fake jokey analysis and/or giving the subtext too much weight so I can reach super hard, but tbh idk how to read this part without it. i mean you could just say that Guts fantasizing about Griffith’s pretty hair and ass and forgetting his urge to kill and whining about being stuck with Casca and Griffith abandoning him and the hound’s many innuendos are all unrelated or accidental but
l b r
consider: Berserk Armour vs Femto designs
versus
I just rly like how Femto’s exoskeleton can be drawn to either emphasize
Griffith’s face underneath the helmet or obscure it. It’s such a
good way to either depict Femto as a godlike otherworldly demon or a
petty asshole who can taunt Guts but can’t bring himself to kill him – or
like the bottom pic where after several epic godlike shots from
Ganeshka’s awed point of view, we see his face when he’s doing something
much more Griffith-esque: predicting what Skull Knight will do based on
logic and tactics rather than magic knowledge of fate.
Guts’
armour is more literal – when his face is hidden beneath the helmet,
he’s lost himself to his darkness. Femto’s is symbolic as his helmet
doesn’t change, only the angle we see him from changes, but imo it’s
really well-utilized to emphasize or de-emphasize whatever remains of
Griffith. And I think it’s definitely a trend – not 100% the case in
every panel, but overall when we see Femto’s whole face, it tends to be
in moments of weakness or pettiness, in moments where he’s demonstrating human feelings, however twisted they’ve become, and when either his eyes or his
mouth or both are obscured, it tends to emphasize his distance from
Guts, his godliness, his monstrosity.
Also, and tbf this I’m
less sure about bc I can’t remember every moment where Guts thinks about
Femto, but in general I think it holds true: Guts tends to picture
Femto with face partially or entirely obscured when he’s feeling the distance/difference between them and/or murderous rage
and face very visible in moments that emphasize Guts’ similarity to him, and danger of becoming him
idk i just think it’s neat
lol i didn’t notice before how griffith immediately leaves to check “losses” (ie did guts survive) surprising casca and the dude he’s talking to with his abruptness. i love the little details that really show how unprecedented guts is and how quickly he effects griffith.
also i love how in the arrangement of this page femto is to griffith what griffith/femto is to guts
it’s not like it’s news that guts’ dark side is made up of rage and revenge and feelings of betrayal with a solid dose of longing but it’s a nice illustration of it
i love these moments because they all seem inspiring and badass but they all have those ominous undertones – guts’ rage stemming from fear that he is just like the ghosts who want revenge, the shot of the behelit, guts’ inability to let go of the prospect of revenge, and the way his “war declaration” puts him a step closer to being griffith’s equal.
it’s guts repeatedly refusing to acknowledge how very thin the line that divides him from ghosts and monsters and evil gods is imo
so this is p much guts being terrified that he’s going to die because his ambition of getting revenge is too great, but i kind of also want to choose to read it as a behelit/griffith reference, calling the sacrifice a form of self destruction too. he did pick up the behelit before this and knowing his other major frame of reference for great ambition I feel like it works as at least an accidental reference to the Eclipse.
Miura was cockocking them with plot armour and miscommunication tropes. Let them fuck Miura you coward!
ikkkkkkkkr
the golden age is straight up a slow burn mutually requited pining story except instead of eventually figuring their shit out they ruin everything forever
like
they love each other and they can’t see that they’re loved in return and if miura just let them fuck everyone would’ve lived happily ever after
There are two important parallels during the waterfall scene, when Guts and Casca fight, then fuck.
The first is this parallel to Guts and Griffith’s second duel.
Casca is the new leader of the Hawks, taking over Griffith’s role. She
challenges and fights Guts when he returns, in a mirror of Griffith
challenging and fighting him before he leaves. Then she falls to her
knees and has a self-destructive
breakdown. The last time the leader of the Hawks had a breakdown after
fighting him, Guts walked away. The scenario has presented itself again,
and this time Guts makes a different choice, one that might have
changed everything a year ago: he comforts her.
Sex with Casca is Guts subconsciously (from a character perspective) or symbolically (from a narrative perspective) trying to fix past mistakes, imo.
Throughout the fight by the waterfall, Casca is screaming at him that he broke Griffith by leaving, that it’s his fault. This scene is all about Griffith and their feelings towards him. For Guts, it’s the beginning of his eventual revelation that leaving was a mistake because Griffith didn’t look down on him after all – because Griffith’s “no good without” him.
The fact that Guts lets Casca stab him as she screams this tells us that her words hit home and he feels guilty, even as he denies it. It’s a pattern of behaviour for Guts that we’ve seen before and will see again, eg, when he let the zombie child stab him in the second chapter because he blamed himself for her death, and then denied feeling responsible to Puck afterwards (”If you’re always worried about crushing the ants beneath you… you won’t be able to walk.”)
He represses that guilt and doesn’t manage to acknowledge his mistake until about five minutes before the Eclipse, unfortunately, but this is how we know he feels it regardless, and this is how we know it’s informing his choices now – specifically, his choice to comfort, kiss, and have sex with Casca.
Guts’ denial of guilt while clearly feeling it is reminiscent of another character too:
This is the second parallel, to Casca finding Griffith in the river.
Casca eventually yanks her sword out of Guts, admits to him that she’s romantically in love with Griffith, proceeds to list all the ways Griffith is wholly unavailable (he needs to marry Charlotte, Guts took the place she wanted at Griffith’s side, and now he may not even be alive), bequeaths Griffith to Guts, and tries to kill herself. Griffith Griffith Griffith – the lead-in to sex revolves around him. Guts thinking about how he abandoned him in the snow, Casca thinking about how Griffith doesn’t need her, and Guts beginning to realize that Griffith needed him.
So Guts saves her from her suicide attempt, then comforts her through sex.
And Casca does the same in return:
She couldn’t comfort Griffith, she couldn’t be Griffith’s “woman,” she couldn’t be be something indispensable to Griffith’s dream, but she can comfort Guts, she can have sex with Guts, she can help Guts achieve his dream.
The situations requiring her comfort are even v similar – Guts has just had a flashback to his rape, and Griffith was calling himself “unclean” after selling himself to a pedophilic rapist. Griffith buries his feelings and refuses to be comforted, but Guts pours his heart out to Casca and lets her hold him.
My point is that Guts and Casca having sex is not about the other for either of them – it’s about their respective relationships to Griffith. Guts is presented with a similar scenario to the morning he left the Hawks, and after being told by Casca that he fucked up then and broke Griffith, he chooses a different course of action this time, and comforts and has sex with Casca. Casca is presented with a similar scenario to finding Griffith in the river after Gennon, but instead of being shut out she’s able to comfort the man in emotional turmoil this time.
tl;dr they’re both on the rebound from Griffith here, giving to each other what they didn’t or couldn’t give to him, and there are deliberate visual and situational parallels to illustrate this.
anyway speaking of moments where Griffith desperately needs someone to reassure him.
also now i’m doubling down on my theory that Griffith’s scratch marks here came shortly after “do you think I’m cruel?” rather than the day of Guts’ departure.
I spend months talking about this damn manga and Griffith and his need for validation and self loathing etc etc and I only just fucking noticed that Casca doesn’t actually say no here. She starts to say “no” automatically, then cuts herself off and asks what he was doing with Gennon. Like damn that’s actually a pretty clear “yes.”
Not that I think Casca meant it that way ofc, her heart’s in the right place and she’s a kid who’s totally out of her depth, but still, ouch. That’s like, “no! wait were you sleeping with him? bc actually my answer is dependant on your answer to that question.”
Like add this to the list of reasons Griffith sucks at opening up to people.
I think on a character level it was wishful thinking on Griffith’s part. He saw that Charlotte was still enamoured of him when she took that poison dart for him, and he seized on that fact p desperately, but deep down he knew his plan to be king was fucked and he probably wasn’t going to see her again. It’s perfectly consistent with Griffith’s characterization, he fuckin loves his denial.
Plus it tells us that he hasn’t given up. He’s still him. That moment comes right before he saves them all from an explosion by pointing out the thin wall to Pippin, and it works with that to show us that Griffith is still tenacious, still smart and ambitious and sane, and he still wants to be king even if it’s an impossible dream now. And it also sets us up for his later desperation and despair after Wyald makes his helplessness impossible to deny.
On a narrative level it’s v useful foreshadowing.
In no way does it make sense that he was planning the Hawk’s sacrifice lol, he didn’t even have the behelit at that point, even if some people for some reason believe that he knew how it worked and intended to use it.
Like… I’ve seen people take a lot of little character moments like that and twist them into “proof” that Griffith is diabolically planning to make the sacrifice, and none of them ever make sense because the idea that Griffith has been planning to sacrifice them at any point before he says “I sacrifice” undermines the entire emotional thrust of the story.
Plus it contradicts many, many stated facts, like eg you can only sacrifice people you love so much it’s like they’re a part of you, the Godhand’s explanation to Griffith, Griffith prioritizing Guts over his dream several times, Griffith’s confusion when he starts seeing demons and Eclipse references, the fact that the behelit only opens in a moment of pure despair (why would he feel despair if he knew he was about to become a God), the fact that he tried to kill himself immediately prior to the Eclipse, Griffith desperately trying to catch Guts as he falls from the big hand, and Griffith’s clearly explained motivation for making the sacrifice – like the entire sequence leading up to the sacrifice where the Godhand are talking to bb Griffith in his head makes no sense if he’s been planning it all along. How do people manage to ignore that????
Anyway tl;dr that theory’s dumb, hope this helped lol.
you're the only one 