griffith/guts: *sees a smudge the vague shape of a person in the distance* thats my lover 🙂
one more for the road:
they got a telescopic zoom lens where the other is concerned
you know what doesn’t get enough attention in fandom?
they’re literally across a huge ass ballroom from each other, and guts is outside and barely visible when they exchange tender smiles.
it’s like this:
but this is what he actually saw:
like
I love this as an introduction to Griffith so, so much.
It establishes the bare bones of his philosophy and his motivation in the first two pages, in a way that’s not untrue, but also exists to start the audience off with an assumption that Miura then complicates as we learn more about Griffith. We start off thinking of him as driven by grandiose thoughts of destiny, and wanting to be part of this true elite, beyond nobility. Again, not untrue, but as we learn more about him, we learn how much of a driving role guilt plays in this philosophy. “Martyrdom for a merciless God. What a waste. On the battlefield, the life of a common soldier isn’t worth even a single piece of silver.” We see later how much this weighs on him, how driven he is to make that martyrdom not wasteful.
But even better than that, this brief scene starts with philosophical questions, but the real point, the real establishing character moment, is, “you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this.” It’s such an effective contrast that sums up Griffith’s entire narrative arc throughout the Golden Age. The dream vs Guts. We establish the dream here, but even more important than that, we establish that Guts is singular to Griffith.
The keys speech builds to that final statement, it practically serves as a handy preamble to our first direct depiction of what Guts is to Griffith, and I love it.
oh yea i assume the same bc of guts central role but also i think people are definitely unwilling to extend understanding towards griffith that isnt one dimensional…
yeah and it’s absolutely not only because Griffith’s narrative is shown in less intimate detail. people go out of their way to avoid sympathizing with him.
also. ot to tangent here but HOW do people work around that guts clearly
gave more of a fuck about griffith and saving him during the eclipse he
didnt even think once about casca until she showed up for the plot
trauma convenience. wow what an epic romance.
i’m so baffled by it. it’s even weird in the manga, like, you’d think if miura hooked guts and casca up solely to make the eclipse more dramatic he would like, show that guts gives a shit and have him prioritize her at some point during the Eclipse before being literally forced to watch her suffer, and yet.
“guts had a harder life than griffith” uuuuuuuuuu why cant people read lmfao
ikr
idk i think it boils down to the fact that we’re with Guts more, we see his traumas and hard times in detail, while we’re generally told about Griffith’s rather than shown, and with him we only see the after effects.
but like any way you slice it i feel like a year of constant torture and permanent loss of the use of your limbs and ability to speak is worse than Guts’ eclipse trauma, which largely revolves around stuff that happens to other people (dead friends, traumatized girlfriend). Yeah Guts lost a limb but he got a canon to replace it, and it’s his choice to go out and shoot monsters with that canon instead of taking Godo’s sage advice and chilling out with the friends he has left.
tbh I agree that this is part of why people respond more positively to Guts and negatively to Griffith. Griffith’s narrative ended in succumbing to despair and becoming a monster, while Guts’ nickname is “struggler” lol. People absolutely respond more positively to a narrative about fighting and persisting against all odds than a narrative about losing everything and essentially selling your soul because you feel like you’re out of options.
However, that said, I think this misses a few important points.
Like for one, to describe Griffith as embracing Femto while Guts resists the Beast of Darkness is kind of, well, loaded and not entirely correct. Griffith didn’t embrace Femto, he embraced his dream and the guilt it caused and seized the one chance he had to make tens of thousands of deaths that weigh on him meaningful.
Like, one thing I love about Griffith’s narrative is that his motivation – to ensure that thousands of people didn’t die for nothing – is heroic. In most stories that would be considered noble. Berserk twists that, because Miura likes to play with morality this way. Griffith’s noble, quite respectable goal, and his relatable and sympathetic emotional motivation (guilt) are what lead him to darkness.
Miura isn’t showing us a character who cheerfully embraces his own inner darkness, he’s showing us a character who becomes a demon ironically because of his desire to be a good person. What ultimately convinces him to make the sacrifice isn’t the promise of power, or rejuvination – it’s to ensure that so many people didn’t die for no reason.
Griffith and Guts’ narratives are different. They exist to pose different questions about what it means to be evil/human/good. But they aren’t comparable on a characterization level.
Guts hasn’t had a moment of pure despair where he’s given a choice to live out his life wholly dependant on others, mute and helpless, wracked with irreconcilable guilt and about to lose the last thing that matters to him, or sacrifice people for the sake of a goal they, among thousands of others, chose to die for, to make those deaths meaningful.
Instead, Guts has a sinister jiminy cricket telling him to murder and rape people. And Griffith doesn’t have a particularly vocal and belligerent hawk taunting him, he has a moment of despair, ordained by causality, orchestrated by the Idea of Evil for the sole purpose of having him choose to make the sacrifice.
Guts and Griffith are different people, but Guts is not inherently better or more moral than Griffith. Griffith frets about killing people for his dream, Guts tells him murder is nbd. Griffith prioritizes Guts over his dream several times before that final moment of pure despair during the Eclipse, and Guts prioritizes revenge over Casca several times before finally giving up on revenge after NeoGriffith blows him off. Griffith prostitutes himself to a pedophile at a young age to prevent as many deaths in the line of duty as he can, while Guts doesn’t really give a fuck about people dying unless he personally knows and cares about them (or if they’re children). Guts describes his dream to Casca as “I just did my own thing,” while Griffith describes his dream to Casca as, “for the sake of the dead… if there’s something I can do… that thing is to win.”
Ultimately, Griffith’s narrative illustrates a man succumbing to evil in the pursuit of good, while Guts’ narrative illustrates a man struggling to balance the good and evil within himself. The only relevant personality difference between them is that Griffith is driven towards a goal by guilt, essentially living for the dead, and Guts is living for himself and the people he personally cares about.
And to address another of your points, Guts has not had a harder life than Griffith. Maybe he’s had a harder childhood – we don’t see much of Griffith’s but it’s a fairly safe assumption – but after killing Gambino?
The narrative takes the position that during the Golden Age, Guts actually had it fairly easy compared to Griffith. Guts’ years with the Hawks are his happy place. Griffith on the other hand had a huge emotional burden on his shoulders, his guilt caused him to self harm, he had the aforementioned encounter with a pedophile bc he was driven by guilt, he had to hone himself to his limits to achieve his goal. Constantly dealing with nobles, constantly fighting at the head of his army, figuring out battle plans, carrying out assassinations that added to his guilt, maintaining an immaculate image of himself, and emotionally closed to everyone except, rarely, Guts. I mean like, the stakes of the climactic battle of the Golden Age is the risk of Griffith being captured as a sex slave lol, and he not only knows it, he incorporates it into his battle plan, like, dude is under a lot of pressure.
And of course, that’s nothing compared to a year of constant torture. Even after the Eclipse, Guts has never experienced anything on that level. Griffith was only barely sane at the end of it, totally physically helpless, mute, he’d lost everything he valued including, he thought at the end, Guts. He tried to kill himself right before the behelit opened.
Like, sorry, Guts has had a hard life, but it doesn’t compare to Griffith’s year of hell. Especially considering that, post-Eclipse, Guts had the option to bow out any time and live in relative peace and comfort with Rickert and Erika (which everyone and their dog points out to him), and now has the option to hang out in peace and comfort in Elfhelm that he probably also won’t take.
Idk basically this is a long way of saying that yeah, thanks to the thematic purposes of their narratives Griffith’s is about succumbing to evil in pursuit of good and Guts’ is about trying to find a balance between good and evil, and at a shallow glance that makes Guts look more respectable than Griffith, but that doesn’t actually reflect on their personalities, their morals, or their personal struggles.
Hey there! I’m always happy to get asks and I’m so glad you enjoy the blog :”)
** rape mentions below, obviously.
I think what you’re proposing is a really safe guess as for what the phallic monsters are supposed to represent. Her rape by Femto is definitely supposed to be the “capstone” to what lead to her regression, and so the phallic monsters being a reference to that experience is more than likely. However, I personally (am hoping, really) that it’s not such a narrow reason. There’s the obvious fact that she was raped by multiple apostles before Femto during the Eclipse, but there’s also how being treated as a sexual object by men has resulted in her molestation throughout her entire character arc.
I tried to compile a list of men who have tried/succeeded in assaulting her throughout Berserk off the top of my head, but I think I’m missing too many instances to even post it, LOL. I’d try to go through and do a definitive count, but that’s… so depressing. I don’t think I need to explicitly count and name every man to harm Casca for anyone who’s read Berserk to understand that Casca has endured endless abuse at their hands. Men have regularly viewed Casca as a sexual object, at whether she be young or old, mentally “there” or not, shitty background characters, villains, and protagonist alike. While the Eclipse is the most likely and perhaps largest contributor to these phallic visions that haunt her subconscious, it would be unfair to call that her only instance of major trauma. GOD would I love for a callback to wow, that one time when regressed!Casca killed three men who tried to assault her, just to be held down and touched (cough and bit cough) against her will by Guts? Her expressions once he “comes out of it” are genuinely heartbreaking.
Casca has been through a LOT of bullshit at the hands of specifically men* and so I really hope the dick monsters are representing that as a whole (and that said “coverage” is a topic broached in upcoming chapters). We’ll see whether or not Miura will take that route, or act like it never happened like he did with Guts’s CSA trauma post-Eclipse.
Disclaimer because admin isn’t cis: yeah a dick doesn’t determine manhood but I don’t expect anything woke from Berserk when we can’t even get basic feminism, so I’m leaving it on the assumption that all of the individuals depicted to have assaulted Casca thus far are cis men and have dicks
I’m not the most eloquent writer without half a dozen drafts first, so I’d like to direct this ask at @bthump as well, in case she has a different take or any extra input! ❤
I 100% agree and tbh this is probably a better, more thoughtful response than I would’ve given. Casca’s entire narrative existence is defined by rape, rape attempts, and rape threats, and honestly it’s kind of fucked up how utterly fitting the damn subconscious dick monsters are.
I would be very glad if they represent not just Femto’s attack, and not just the apostles during the Eclipse, but the way her entire life revolves around sexual violence, from her first kill to her current mental state to her fear of Guts. I mean the dick monsters are a helluva crass way of showing it, but this is Berserk. The most I hope for is acknowledgement lol, to ask that it be treated with care and respect is way too high a bar to clear lol.
And at the very least Miura definitely knowingly used Casca as his commentary on misogyny and how hard it is to be a woman surrounded by rapey men, so I don’t think it’s unlikely that all her other experiences with assault will be taken into account. I thought some of those phallic monsters might’ve been purposefully based on Wyald, eg.
I often feel fans of righteous characters are more problematic and scary than fans of villains. They have this tendency to see villains in the worst possible light because it makes the good characters look even better. And some of them just prefer villains that’re totally evil, they find such good vs evil narrative more satisfying, it’s simple, black and white, no debate, no ambiguity, pure feel good story.
lol i completely agree.
under a cut bc i went on a long barely relevant rant about The Discourse lmao
Holy fuck, the thing about “discourse” being a result of women being expected to be the arbiters of morality (presumably in the only area that their woman brains can handle, art) drives me batshit crazy.
Women as artists and consumers are expected to accommodate for everyone in their tastes or even just their ideas about the thing they’re consuming. I certainly am critical of things that I enjoy all the time so this is no evocation of the “P.C. Police” or whatever the fuck. But “discourse” isn’t really about analysis.
It’s bizarre to me that something like engaging with a piece of fiction in a through way is seen as blanket approval or that it ought to be. It is no surprise to me that a lot of the more pernicious moralizing has to do specifically with sexual and queer content given that a lot of the emotional labor in our sexual culture is done by women, femmes, and queer people.
It often comes out as nothing more than a repackaging of victim blaming in the case of “problematic ship discourse”; that wanting to understand sexual trauma through fiction makes one as “perverse” as an offender.
I often feel fans of righteous characters are more problematic and scary than fans of villains. They have this tendency to see villains in the worst possible light because it makes the good characters look even better. And some of them just prefer villains that’re totally evil, they find such good vs evil narrative more satisfying, it’s simple, black and white, no debate, no ambiguity, pure feel good story.
lol i completely agree.
under a cut bc i went on a long barely relevant rant about The Discourse lmao
i keep trying to turn this into an organized essay about how much i hate tumblr discourse, villaincourse in this case, but tbh i just don’t have the stamina to dig into that subject properly lol. so just like, suffice to say, hating obviously flawed and/or villainous characters and their fans while loving less obviously flawed and/or heroic characters, and calling that a moral position to take, is really fucked up and just demonstrates such a total inability to actually engage critically with fiction that idk how ppl take fans like that seriously.
and when i say “inability to engage with fiction critically” i mean they take things at such face value it’s ridiculous. The narrative says this character is good, therefore they’re good. The narrative says this character is bad, therefore they’re bad. This generally fails to take into account things like rampant gay coding of villains, heroes demonstrating mainstream conservative ideals, “loveable misogynist” protags who often still get the pure cinnamon roll treatment, the fact that pretty much all mainstream media is going to be unprogressive at its core because it’s literally “mainstream,” american exceptionalism propaganda everywhere, women reduced to love interest roles, women objectified by the camera, lack of diversity, assumption of a straight white man as the audience, assumption that anyone other than a straight white man is harder to identify with, villains who are “evil” because they take resistance against the privileged class too far, stories where the heroes and villains do the same thing but when the heroes do it it’s justified or excusable and when the villains do it it’s a sign that they’re evil, stories where ugly = bad and beauty = good, stories where ugliness is foreignness (to britain/north america/majority white countries) and beauty is white, the way there hasn’t been a blockbuster film with a textually non-straight main character ever, mental illness symptoms as signs of evil, monsters as unknowable other, etc etc etc etc
anyway all that shit has v little to do with berserk (tho some def applies), i just had to get some of it out of my system lol.
my basic point is just that, to bring this back and use an example from Berserk, if someone can’t see that eg it’s fucked up that Griffith is not only a gay coded and textually feminine antagonist, but gets even more gender non conforming looking when he becomes Femto, and it’s fucked up that the protagonist sexually assaults his girlfriend and we’re still meant to root for him, etc, then they absolutely do not have the necessary skill set to call other people out for problematic taste in fictional characters with any authority.
If you can’t or refuse to see the ways the thing you like is problematic, the last thing you should be doing is calling fans of other things problematic. Log, eye, etc. Tbh even if you can critique your own faves you shouldn’t be pointing fingers imo – you can’t know exactly why someone likes the thing they like, whether they’re aware it’s problematic (maybe more aware than you), whether they’re able to compartmentalize that fact and why, and those are all things you need to know before declaring a group of fans Bad for what fictional entertainment they like.
tl;dr
everything is problematic. golden retriever cinnamon roll characters are problematic, your favourite blockbuster is problematic, hollywood is problematic, anime is problematic, cartoons are problematic, magic fantasy oppression parallels are problematic, guts is problematic, griffith is problematic, casca is problematic, tumblr demanding that women be arbiters of morality is ironically problematic (misogynist) as fuck, etc etc. at least ime villain fans tend to be a little more aware on average that what they like is problematic, as opposed to people who think it’s intrinsically more moral to like heroes.
I wrote what basically amounts to a response to this a little while ago (focused on why ppl hate Griffith more than Guts), so rather than just re-writing that I’ll link it. (tw for discussion of rape)
But like, in addition to that, ikr?
I mean one of the central premises of Berserk is that everyone is capable of great evil and humanity is kind of a hot mess, and that’s exemplified in both Guts and Griffith. Like just like Griffith always had the potential for Femto in him, Guts has the Beast of Darkness, and both manifest in violence and rape. Guts is absolutely no better than Griffith, and I’d personally say he’s worse considering that he assaults his traumatized, infantalized, sort-of-girlfriend twice without transforming into an embodiment of evil first.
like look at this
In Berserk the behelit helps certain chosen ones gain power, but you don’t exactly need it to be evil, and part of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he’s getting pretty close to indistinguishable from a monster, behelit or no, magic armour or no.
But he’s the protag, fans identify with him, and while Griffith’s fucked up acts lead up to a magical transformation into a monster, Guts’ fucked up acts seem likely to be leading to redemption and growth. There’s nothing intrinsic in Guts and Griffith’s characters that leads one to monsterism and one to self improvement, it’s not like one has more good qualities and the other has more evil qualities – it’s literally just circumstance and the fact that Berserk’s God chose Griffith as his jesus figure, not Guts. But it affects how readers see them and respond to them.
I mean ffs we see Guts do worse things than several apostles. Right now, based on what we see them do in the manga, fuckin Zodd is a “purer” character than Guts lmao. The idea of mixing fandom purity politics and Berserk of all things, which at the end of the day amounts to getting judgy based on which sexually abusive character someone likes more, is incredible to me.
I’m doing an essay in my Comp class and I chose to argue that people shouldn’t say “Griffith did nothing wrong”
I’d like to get a little survey done, so could you reply to this post saying “Griffith did everything wrong”, “Griffith did some things wrong”, or “Griffith did everything wrong”?
I won’t judge any answers and you don’t have to explain your viewpoint, just please help me out with this?
tl;dr: I need feedback to see how split the fandom is over Griffith and his actions for an essay
(please help, I’m begging you)
It’s a redundant topic since Berserk is about grey morality and Griffith definitely did wrong and bad things, so I guess my answer would be “Griffith did some things wrong”.
Griffith did some things wrong.
i feel like ‘griffith did nothing wrong’ is a purposefully inflammatory meme more than anyone’s earnest argument. like i hang out with a lot of griffith fans and i’ve personally never seen anyone genuinely argue that griffith did nothing wrong, even if you don’t include femto in that.
until now!
griffith did nothing wrong – because in the world of berserk he has divine right, his choices and actions have been predetermined by the world’s god, which fulfills humanity’s subconscious desires. griffith is the chosen saviour or doomer of humanity, chosen by humanity’s god, which is a manifestation of the collective will of humanity, and therefore everything griffith and femto and neogriffith does is humanity’s will.
nothing he can do is therefore wrong within the context of Berserk’s reality, because everything he does is what must happen according to God.
I mean from this perspective you can argue he did some things wrong from a moral standpoint bc he’s basically the avatar of humanity and humanity is kind of fucked up. but yk from a purely fictional theological standpoint, griffith/femto/neogriffith is doing everything exactly right.
(disclaimer: griffith did some things wrong, femto is an evil monster, and neogriffith is mysterious but also kind of a dick by any standard of logic or morality.
my 100% earnest answer for your survey is Griffith did some things wrong.)
casca knowing what’s what
he’s so into it
i really want to know what guts told rickert. like i want to know how guts phrases the explanation, what he mentions or doesn’t mention, how he describes it and what he emphasizes, etc. i feel like we were kind of robbed by skipping it, even though it does make sense to skip bc an explanation of something we already saw is redundant.
but idk it could’ve been a good character moment bc we’ve never actually seen guts rly talk about the eclipse and griffith etc. especially not to someone who also knew griffith.
Casca had her place at Griffith side, nursing her crush on Griffith, then Guts showed up and took that place with much greater success than Casca had. Then Guts overheard the dream speech, decided to vacate his place and hand it back to Casca, which he does by encouraging Casca and Griffith to get together romantically.
And idk this is just a good parallel to illustrate some of that.
Oh absolutely.
among the other parallels I sometimes visually compare how Guts and Casca keep exchanging positions as the series goes on.
For example in the panel when Griffith gets shot on the hunting trip, Casca immediately rushes to cradle Griffith (helpless expression) and Guts draws his sword and stands facing outward(looking protective) in front of them, looking for the source of the threat.
Later after griffith’s rescue from the tower when Wyald grabs and drops him, Guts is the one who rushes to cradle him (helpless expression) and Casca draws her sword and stands over them (looking protective).
And I love this.
The second scene is also one of my favorite moments of all three of them in general. Because Casca is in full lioness gaurding her Cubs mode. And Guts literally just let go of his sword in a threatening situation for the first time ever and it’s all just very significant to me.
straight side of tumblr plz explain this
also guts thinking griffith is so godly and high above him is such a good self fulfilling prophecy
tbh this rollercoaster of crying out in the rain and then making cute disarming jokes and then like full on dissociating within 3 pages is wild
consider the following:
Until that day. The day you showed up.
vs
Until Guts overheard Griffith’s dream speech.
Casca had her place at Griffith side, nursing her crush on Griffith, then Guts showed up and took that place with much greater success than Casca had. Then Guts overheard the dream speech, decided to vacate his place and hand it back to Casca, which he does by encouraging Casca and Griffith to get together romantically.
And idk this is just a good parallel to illustrate some of that.
lol so this response is going to be kind of long because you made me want to talk about her story role and speculate a bit lol, so ty for sending this.
I think there’s a difference between having whatever Casca does when she gets her mind back further the relationship between Guts and Griffith, and having Casca function as solely a plot device for the sake of the Guts Griffith story.
By which I mean secondary characters should serve the central protagonist’s story, but they should do that while also having their own satisfying arcs that serve their own characters as well. So a well-written secondary character would have her own arc, her own issues, her own stuff to work through and her own reason and way of developing, and that could still shed light on the protagonist as a parallel, or foil, or simply by weaving their stories together and playing them off each other.
When Casca was an active character during the Golden Age, there were a lot of problems I had with her writing, but she did have her own story. It was a story about being obsessed with first one man and then another, and how much it sucks to be a woman surrounded by attempted rapists, and having emotional breakdowns, etc, so like, not a great story, but she had her own issues, she made mistakes based on those issues, she changed based on her experiences.
Eg when she and Guts slept together they were both using the other as a substitute for Griffith, so at least it wasn’t just Guts using Casca, they were using each other. (And I don’t mean using in a cruel way, just in a there’s-other-stuff-going-on-for-both-of-them-than-just-wanting-each-other kind of way.) That scene didn’t only further Guts’ internal story, it also furthered Casca’s. Ofc Guts’ story was furthered by working thru trauma and starting to recognize past mistakes while Casca’s was furthered by switching which dude she’s obsessed with, so like, still a shitty story for her, but c’est la berserk.
So yeah I don’t think her writing was that great during the Golden Age, but it cleared the bare minimum bar of giving her her own motivation and character arc at least, even though her own story was pretty weak compared her more blatant, main function of serving the relationship between Guts and Griffith.
Then after the Eclipse she became a complete plot device with absolutely no story of her own, only existing for Guts to play off of and project onto.
So I guess what I think is most likely to happen is that when Casca gets her mind back, she’s going to have her own motivations and goals again. She’s going to do something active, based on what she wants. But whatever it is she does is also going to further Guts and Griffith’s story, and lbr it’s still going to revolve around her relationships with the men. So hopefully she won’t be so much just a plot device, and her own choices, goals, actions, etc might even be stronger and more central to the plot than they were during the Golden Age, but Guts is still the protagonist so Casca’s story is sitll going to further his story and his relationship with Griffith.
My guess, based on where she was when she was traumatized to insanity, and where the story has gone since then, and where I think (hope lbr) the story goes, is that she’ll come back and be similar to where Guts was right after the Eclipse. In the last 200 or so chapters Guts grew, he worked at refocusing on his own emotional growth rather than revenge, he made friends, he chilled out, he’s in a much better place mentally than he was during the Black Swordsman arc.
But the story is still about the dark places trauma and desire for revenge take you. I think it would be interesting to shift the revenge theme to Casca. It would kick the plot into gear and make things happen because Casca would have a goal, this way we could bring Guts and Griffith’s narratives back together without having Guts’ development backslide into revenge obsession again, and it would make Casca an interesting foil to Guts – if she’s at the place he managed to work past, she’d be like a reflection of himself at his worst. Now Casca would be able to drive the plot, her goals would be the ones furthering the story, and Guts’ narrative would shift in focus from his own goals (revenge, fixing Casca) to reacting to Casca’s actions.
She would still serve the main story about Guts and Griffith by being the catalyst that brings them back together, by being a dark mirror to Guts, quite possibly by embodying the dark sexual undertone to revenge in a more blatant way than Guts did (bc lbr she’s always been the one to illuminate Guts’ desires by virtue of being a woman and making them hetero), and maybe by forcing Guts into making a choice between helping her and trying to stop her (either for her own sake or because he’s still ambivalent about killing Griffith or maybe both). But now she’d be serving the story by working towards her own goals based on her own experiences and her character, rather than by being a passive mindless object for Guts to interact with.
“What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” The fact that NeoGriffith instinctively saving her demonstrates a very strong disadvantage against her. The fact that the main characters all get to kill their own rapists/attempted rapists/abusers/etc. The way Guts decided he didn’t really have the right to avenge his comrades after abandoning the Band but you know who didn’t abandon the Band? The way revenge in Berserk isn’t always a bad thing, and it could be interesting to explore how it’s bad for Guts because he was basically using it as a form of self harm, but maybe for Casca it’s earned. The behelit which, if Casca is the one to use it, would open the door for more parallels between her and Griffith for Guts to play off of.
So I guess my overall answer to your question is that yeah, I think she’s still going to exist to further Guts’ story and relationship to Griffith, since that’s still the axel on which Berserk turns, but hopefully she’ll at least get to have some agency and motivation of her own while doing it, and if we’re really lucky her own internal story might be more important to the plot now than it was during the Golden Age.
But of course there’s always a horrifying chance that she’ll wake up and just be Guts’ love interest/narrative reward for moving beyond revenge, continuing to exist purely as an accessory to Guts rather than as herself, while something else moves the plot forward, but yk, prayer circle that that doesn’t happen. And like others have speculated with dread, there’s even a chance that she’ll join Griffith and make Guts return to rage and revenge in the worst possible way. I think it’s a tiny chance, like I really don’t expect that to happen, but you never know
(also the whole revenge speculation is just my preference bc i want casca to have the chance to get angry about what happened to her, and it seems plausible, but there are probably other routes for her story to go that would bring back her agency and have her affect the plot in satisfying ways.)
i’m not over how ridiculously hot griffith is in this love triangle dynamic establishing scene
like he’s so obviously the point the other two are competing for i can’t handle it
i mean the page right after just says in words what the art says in art:
like
the point of chapter 1 is to establish where the characters are at 3 years later and the important things we see are:
hawks kicking ass and rising up during the 100 years war
casca and guts both fixated on an extremely desirable griffith, griffith’s clear preference, casca’s resentment
Yes all of this. And as much as I dislike this theory: I think when Casca gets her mind back Muira will continue use her as a plot device to add more drama + drive the plot, because I find Casca has a weird connection with the Moon Light Child (her son) and he share the same body with Neo-Griffith, so she may mistaken she still has feelings for Griffith? And that will throw Guts of the edge more somehow when he finds out? It’s just a theory tho…
this sounds like such a worst case scenario and i really really hope it’s incorrect, but yeah you never know. I do have to wonder how the moonlight kid figures into everything, and it doesn’t seem entirely impossible that miura would go there.
romantic:
“That’s also why you used to hate being touched by anyone, isn’t it?”
Sorry if this is a disappointing answer, but not in the slightest.
Griffith/Charlotte is a complete sham from Griffith’s side, he’s just using her to become king. His seduction of her was completely calculated, except when he was distraught after Guts left, and the way his dream and Charlotte are conjoined and presented in opposition to his feelings for Guts makes his relationship with Charlotte read as a very strong symbol of unhealthy emotional repression imo.
Also Charlotte’s obsession is so intense it seems very unhealthy, like, embroidering Griffith’s face over and over for two years is a little much lol. We don’t get much of Charlotte’s side of it but what we do get is basically a naive girl totally taken in by Griffith’s fake seduction, and it’s kind of sad to me.
As for Guts and Casca, to me their relationship reads 100% as both of them redirecting their feelings for Griffith to each other. There are very strong parallels to both their relationships with him during the scene where they hook up, they both acknowledge that they’re not over Griffith afterwards, and after the Eclipse Casca basically functions as an outlet for Guts’ feelings about Griffith.
Casca’s issues with her lack of independent identity – becoming Griffith’s sword after Griffith saves her, then becoming Guts’ sword after she sleeps with him – are not a good start to any relationship, and the licking wounds description seems very apt. It was never a grand, epic romance, but it’s not even a particularly happy or healthy hook up. They fuck right after Guts lets Casca stab him while thinking about how abandoning Griffith was maybe a bad idea, and right after Casca tries to kill herself. Then Guts has a flashback and strangles her during, and Casca is just happy to finally have someone receptive to her attempts to comfort and support them.
Afterwards Guts invites her along in as non-committal a way as possible, like ‘idk maybe you coming with me will suck and you’ll throw off my groove and i’ll end up ditching you anyway, but i want more sex so let’s give it a shot.’ Which I honestly find hilarious in how unromantic it is.
And even as a low-key licking wounds hook-up it feels very narratively forced to me (which makes sense since Miura said he had them get together just to make the Eclipse more dramatic).
Like Judeau has to practically shove Guts at Casca for him to even consider it lol.
Then of course after the Eclipse you have Guts abandoning her in a cave for two years, assaulting her twice, and redirecting his feelings for Griffith to her again – not even just in the hound scenes but also when he decides to save her directly because he compares abandoning her in a cave to abandoning Griffith in the snow, and when he decides to stick with her only after Griffith abandoned him lol.
Plus Casca is terrified of him for good reason, and the idea of their relationship turning romantic again after Casca gets her mind back is something I find fairly horrifying after how he treated her.
She’s been reduced to nothing more than a symbol of Guts trying to keep his hold on humanity, she’s suffered for it, and if she gets her mind back and gets back together with Guts as a narrative “reward” to him for suffering through a shitty life, like I think a lot of Berserk fans want, I would be extremely disappointed.
(I have a very, very long post that goes into detail on Guts and Casca’s relationship and how it largely revolves around Griffith here, if you’re interested, but I’d only recommend reading it if you’re not a fan of their romance. it’s also about griffguts and gay subtext but so is most of my blog content lol)
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