mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
Tag: a
i’m still not over skull knight calling griffith half of guts
first and last glimpse
also speaking of comparing the torture chamber and griffith becoming femto:
idk seems like a fitting illustration of how by sacrificing guts, ie the light within him, a fissure opens up into which evil surges. even if it’s coincidental
[Insert Ganeshka’s backstory of isolation and fear here.]
eh? eh?
ok honestly I’m just throwing shit at the wall but Ganeshka’s lonely freakout really really intrigues me, that plus the talk of light and dark reminds me both of Griffith in the torture chamber and Griffith as he’s transforming into Femto, and while yeah NeoGriff’s “within darkness that true light is discovered” bit is much more metaphysical (yk more to do with the fact that Griffith had to become Femto to become the saviour of humanity, probably), the fact that it’s in response to Ganeshka’s total loss of himself and everyone around him, the fact that the light Ganeshka longs for has shifted from something he considers his enemy to the only connection he has in an unknowable lonely world just… resonates man. I love it.
“You can see. Because he who bears the light exists in the deepest shadow.” Ganeshka can see NeoGriffith’s true form because he’s the only one on the same plane of existence of him, and that plane is defined by despair – despair opens the behelit that makes him an apostle, despair in the face of an inevitable loss sends him into that reincarnation thing to become a god, and his brief existence as a god is defined by existential terror and isolation. In a way he and NeoGriff are both made out of the same stuff the Idea of Evil is made out of. that’s the “darkness” imo.
And despair is the darkness of the torture chamber (give or take the lightning blazing within him that is Guts) and it’s what Griffith succumbs to when he sinks into darkness and becomes Femto.
Also
while the “light” referred to might more literally be Griffith-as-godly-saviour, bringer of peace to humanity or whatever, I’m thinking it works as a symbol of that longing for connection.
like idk the way I take Berserk’s use of light and darkness as symbols is, essentially, darkness is the despair that opens the behelit and light is what you sacrifice. darkness – the swirling negative emotions that make up the idea of evil. light – connection, love, joy, family, peace, brotherhood yadda yadda yadda. or at least the potential for those things.
Griffith/Femto appears right after Ganeshka’s backstory of being unable to connect with anyone around him because of his paranoia – loneliness and fear. He gives Ganeshka that brief sense of connection before his death as the light envelops him.
I’m basically just thinking outloud in a disorganized way here bc tbqh I have such a hard time sussing out what “It’s within darkness that true light is discovered” means in the overall context of Berserk. Like, other than Griffith going ‘lol I’m evil but also saving the world.’ that’s too reductive. But I think longing (darkness) for connection (light) maybe works for me? thanks to Ganeshka’s whole thing being isolation.
@bthump Very true. For some reason I imagined Shisu being fragile before she lost her baby but I’m not sure that really makes much sense given the life she was living. With Miura it’s hard to tell if he expected us to imagine she recovered. Most of us seem to not have and that’s definitely more on him than on us as readers.
yeah absolutely. tbh i doubt miura ever thought of the answer to this question lol. i definitely also got the impression that shisu never recovered, but i guess that’s bc there’s nothing to go on and all we see of shisu is her not mentally well and then dying, so yeah. logically maybe it makes sense if she recovered but the writing tells us nada.
since Shisu was not in her right mind…who really took care of Guts as a baby?? cus that boy need to learn to talk, walk, eat…i know damn well it wasn’t shisu. i mean she probably played and talked to him but didn’t teach him to walk and all the other stuff. i think it was the handmaidens…now all i want is a chapter dedicated to them taking care of guts
I never thought about this, good question. Yeah the handmaidens or whoever they were seems like a reasonable explanation. Guts probably learned a lot through imitation too, even without direct instruction, but yeah I’d fall back on the women with Shisu probably pitching in.
And I guess we don’t really know how out of it Shisu was – could be that between finding Guts and dying 3 years later she recovered mentally. It would make more sense for her to be in a depressed dissociative state for a few days rather than totally driven insane by a miscarriage imo, though Miura is kind of weird about trauma and mental regression with his female characters.
I’d like for Griff to sacrifice himself for Guts, throwback to him being reckless when Guts is in danger like when he was human. It’ll break my heart but I’ll be happy too
yeaaah totally, this would be the ideal. especially since now that i think about it we already saw femto hesitating and failing to kill guts, so repeating that won’t have quite the same oomph
Good points. As much as I like Griffith character, I think he will die in the end. But will remembered as a hero nonetheless.
ty! and yeah tbh this seems likely to me. A hero in the eyes of the world at least. Maybe not the audience so much, but if we see a glimpse of humanity first I’ll be satisfied. (tbh I want to see him hesitate while fighting Guts or something.)
I feel like it’s a pretty sure bet that at least his feelings for Guts survived the various transitions, but yeah I’m still waiting to find out how much of a relation NeoGriffith has to human Griffith. I don’t really think he’ll be technically redeemed either way, especially since his narrative seems kind of outside conventional morality what with Berserk’s take on God and religion and Griffith being the saviour of humanity etc etc, but the more of human Griffith, his feelings and character etc that remains, the better and more cathartic an emotional climax to the Guts and Griffith story is going to be, so yeah. I need that.
Like if he’s totally inhuman and all human Griffith’s feelings are dead and buried and it’s just fetus feelings left, the emotional catharsis can only be one-sided on Guts’ side, and meh. I’m seriously invested in NeoGriffith revealing some remaining emotional depth, and if he does it’s going to be amazing.
But lines like “my blood should have been frozen” and “this is the crystalization of your last tear shed” seem to hint at Griffith’s lingering emotions with the potential to be reawoken imo, so I’m assuming eventually that’ll get some good payoff.
I just thought it was Miura’s art progression,
but nope, those were real child soldiers alright
yeeep. tbh guts’ age progression is actually rly laid out in detail so i think while reading it doesn’t strike you as much bc you see him grow up progressively, but going back after seeing 24 year old guts is jarring.
they look so smol here! I didn’t really notice that reading the manga for the first time, but it really cements the fact that they are all so young
yeah that really struck me while re-reading it after getting used to adult guts lol, they really do look 15ish at the start of the golden age. like they’re barely older than isidro, lol, it’s kind of wild.
Yeah ikwym I wish there was some hard and fast canon on Griffith’s age like there is for Guts. But yeah I’m pretty sure the source for that is just behind the scenes adaptation material, so I wouldn’t call it canon. I like to think of Griffith as close to the same age as Guts myself.
tbh I don’t remember any other mention of Griffith’s age (or Casca’s for that matter) except Guts thinking Griffith is about the same age as him. But I def don’t remember everything, so I could definitely be wrong about that.
And yeah ia I don’t really like that implication either. But lol I think that’s mostly bc I like to think that Griffith’s feelings/personality/etc has the potential to be unfrozen, and “dead” sounds disappointingly final to me.
the only source I’ve ever seen for Griffith’s age is the film book. the only indication of his age we get in canon is Guts saying “he’s about the same age as me,” after Griffith’s naked speech, as far as I remember, so idk if we really do “know” that Griffith is older than them.
Of course I could be misremembering. Do you mind telling me where you got your information on their ages? I’ve been curious for a while if there’s actual canon somewhere telling us or if it’s just supplementary material from the behind-the-scenes of the adaptions.
If it is from the behind the scenes info, then it seems likely that the ppl who adapted it consider Griffith the character to have died when he transformed into Femto, if they cut his age off then. But that’s not necessarily canon.
Especially since even if you consider Griffith “dead” after going through a thorough magical transformation that destroyed most of his personality, he still experiences time so it’s kind of weird to cut his age off at 24 imo. I guess you could restart the count and call Femto 2 years old, and NeoGriffith one year old lol, since he goes through a magical “rebirth” every time, but that seems pedantic.
Under a cut because I don’t like to be rly critical of Berserk out in the open lol.
iirc the context of me using that specific phrase was both the Eclipse rape and Griffith’s night with Charlotte.
I think the Eclipse rape was absolutely terrible writing (well, storytelling, let’s say, because a lot of what’s bad about it is in the art) for several reasons:
1. destroys Casca as a character to make Guts feel bad and motivate him.
2. objectifies and eroticizes Casca during the rape (v sexualized angles, lots of t+a, overlong and overly graphic, etc), either to titilate the straight dude audience or bc Miura doesn’t know how else to depict the sexual assault of women.
3. totally overwrites Guts’ own childhood trauma – now his worst memories, the stuff that makes him feel the “worst he ever feels” is something that happened to someone else, who doesn’t even get a reaction to her own pain because her mind is basically wiped. I find this really unfortunate because I liked that Guts had actual personal trauma instead of the more typical for dude protagonists trauma-by-proxy. And it’s not realistic that he would get over it after one flashback and confession to Casca, but that is what we’re shown happened – because after that his childhood trauma is never referred to again, except in one flashback chapter featuring teenager Guts. It’s lazy writing imo, and it ruins an interesting and personal traumatic backstory that manly dude protagonists almost never get by replacing it with a dime-a-dozen misogynist fridged girlfriend backstory.
4. tbh it is really jarring and fucked up how you spend 2 emotional chapters with Casca, in her head from her point of view, as she fights and runs with Judeau, and then the 2nd chapter ends with a bunch of tentacles ripping her clothes off and suddenly you’re back with Guts and you never get Casca’s perspective again. tonally it’s a mess – heartfelt tragedy to pornographic objectification within a page – and it’s just so emblematic of how Miura treats Casca as a character. Her main function in the story is to be objectified and assaulted and saved by men, and when she gets good, relatable and empathetic character moments they’re short-lived before she becomes a damsel again.
4.5. and speaking of perspective, it’s fucked up that this horrible experience that breaks Casca’s mind is shown from Guts’ perspective. We’re meant to be relating to his horror at seeing his former best friend raping his girlfriend, we’re not meant to be relating to Casca in this moment. During her previous rape attempts we at least got her perspective on it, we were shown her fear, we heard her thoughts. But not here – here she’s just a violated body existing to traumatize Guts.
5. Based on Miura saying he had Guts and Casca get together just to make the Eclipse more dramatic it strongly suggests to me that not only was her rape solely there to make Guts feel bad and give Femto something to do to make everyone hate him, he wrote her out as a character afterwards because he didn’t know what to do with her – she wasn’t around during the Black Swordsman arc so he had to throw her away for a while, then turn her into nothing more than a symbol of Guts’ humanity, with no character of her own. (Actually tbh Miura didn’t even need to say he threw Guts and Casca together for drama, that comes across pretty clear to me in the writing lol. When I read that my reaction was pretty much just a sense of validation.)
6. Also regressing into a walking infant is not a realistic reaction to trauma, it’s just storytelling convenience, and Casca’s current character as basically a child with an often still sexualized adult body skeeves me out.
Okay that’s enough about the Eclipse rape. I really, really hate it tbh lol.
I also mentioned the scene where Griffith and Charlotte fuck, and more briefly I think that’s bad writing because Miura literally wrote a rape scene – Charlotte said “no” – and then he treated it as consensual sex narratively because Charlotte got into it partway through. Which is very typical male writer bad writing, it’s something you see a LOT – prim virgin has to protest to show that she’s pure and proper, but the dude is good at sex so she soon realizes how great it is and everything’s okay – and it’s really misogynist and fucked up. It’s offensive writing, and it’s just plain bad writing because what we see depicted (rape) isn’t what we’re told happened (consensual sex that Charlotte enjoyed and has no misgivings about and the negative part is that Griffith is a self-destructive idiot who seduced her too soon and ended up in a dungeon for it, not that she said no).
If there was even a hint that Miura recognizes it as rape, some context showing that Charlotte’s feelings about it are complicated, anything like that, I’d be more okay with it, but there’s really nothing. Charlotte adores him to pieces afterwards and the king is angry because he’s a rapist creep, not because he’s protective or anything. Tbh I wholeheartedly approved of the film version’s choice to give Charlotte more agency and have her ask Griffith to stay and move his hand to her chest herself. It seems more in keeping with the spirit of the scene and Charlotte’s feelings about it.
In a more general sense, basically I think Miura as a storyteller has a lot of strengths, but he also has a lot of flaws. Like overall I find Miura’s strengths as a writer are enough to keep me going through the bad stuff, but sometimes it’s a struggle lol and I like to complain about it occasionally. Not all his flaws revolve around rape or offensive writing choices (like eg I think he walks a fine line with tone and sometimes his lighthearted moments come across as jarring, interrupting the flow of action, or awkward), but those are the ones that really stand out and that I’m most likely to describe as shitty writing lol.
ok wait ignore that last post, while trying to find out more about him i read miura’s tv tropes page, which lists his stated influences on berserk and
Kaze to Ki no Uta
everybody go home, gay mystery solved
ok so i talk a lot about how gay berserk is but i tend to qualify that as my author is dead opinion regardless of miura’s intent which could be anything yadda yadda yadda, and like i exaggerate a lot too and deliberately find subtext that I don’t think is intentional. and like eg when i wrote that big gay analysis I was v careful to say that I’m making no guesses or assumptions about Miura’s intentions.
but yk what i do have some thoughts on Miura’s intent, especially right now after seeing a few ppl in succession complain about how berserk isn’t gay omg, so here’s what i genuinely believe. i’m not saying this is like, 100% inarguable truth lol, this is theorizing, but this is my earnest belief, like, if you asked me my real opinion on Miura’s intent wrt the gay content, this is it:
I think Griffith is absolutely intented to be read as gay, or at the very least in love with and sexually attracted to Guts.
I also think Serpico is intended to be read as gay for that matter though it’s much less relevant and I’m more tentative about this. Like I def get gay vibes from him and fully expect him to never exhibit sexual interest in a woman but I also wouldn’t be too surprised to be proven wrong.
And I think the undertone of sexual desire wrt Guts’ feelings for Griffith is very intentional. I don’t think the general Berserk audience is meant to read Guts as anything other than heterosexual, but yeah I think the gay subtext applies to him as well, purposefully. I think Miura’s intention with that was to a) heighten the intensity of his relationship with Griffith, both friendship and enmity, and b) add to the sense of missed opportunity in the griffguts relationship.
And yeah speaking of, I think the relationship between Guts and Griffith is purposefully layered with romance and suggestions of physical attraction. I don’t think Miura intended it to, say, the degree I wrote about in my giant gay analysis, but I definitely think a lot of it is intentional.
The visual chemistry and romantic atmosphere in certain scenes like the “do I need a reason” scene. The homoerotic tension of their first duel, commented on by the characters. The parallel to the Count and his wife. Casca very nearly telling Guts that Griffith is in love with him several times of course. Casca and Guts’ early relationship having suggestions of romantic rivalry for Griffith. Certain aspects of Guts’ romantic relationship with Casca, eg the way their sex scene parallels significant moments each of them had with Griffith (the final duel in Guts’ case, trying to comfort him in the river in Casca’s). Griffith thinking about Guts while fucking Charlotte. The sensuality of Griffith’s resurrection and Guts’ reaction to it. The extremely suggestive language the hound uses while goading Guts about his “longing for” Griffith.
Like here’s the thing: Guts and Griffith’s relationship and history of betrayal is introduced to us through a parallel to a dude and his wife. 10 minutes after they meet properly for the first time Guts asks if Griffith is gay and Griffith doesn’t answer. Their subsequent duel is extremely deliberately homoerotic and Guts offers himself sexually to Griffith if he loses. A couple chapters later he walks in on Griffith naked, stares at him, then two of their most influential moments follow with Griffith still naked – the waterfight when they start to bond, and Griffith’s imperious speech about his dream. Casca is canonically jealous of Guts’ relationship with Griffith because she has a crush on Griffith. They both have non-consensual traumatic sexual encounters with other men in their histories. Guts’ trauma is referenced when he first meets and duels Griffith in his offer of sexual slavery to him, and Griffith’s trauma is revealed in the same sequence that Casca reveals she’s jealous of Guts and nearly says that Griffith is in love with him directly, which ties those experiences to their current relationship, colours it, and explains why these dudes are so fucking repressed about it.
Berserk is, imho, largely a gay story. It’s not textually gay (except when it comes to predatory stereotypes) but the subtext is purposeful. It’s commented on by the characters. It’s almost as much a gay story as Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (the movie I use as my #1 example of subtextual gay where the homoeroticism is both purposeful and the whole point) is a gay story. It’s not representation, it’s not all that positive, I’m not praising Miura for this lol, but it is pretty undeniably there.
If I had to guess at the author’s motives, I might hedge my bets and say the subtext is there to heighten the central relationship and make it intense and full of chemistry. Gay subtext is engaging, even when the audience doesn’t pick up on it, or flat-out refuses to. Like, there’s an old hollywood adage that if you want to generate electric chemistry between two friends you play them as lovers.
But hell, if I wasn’t hedging my bets I might just say that Miura just wanted to write a story about two dudes who love each other but are too emotionally repressed and fucked up to do anything about it, and end up destroying each others’ lives because of it, and he’s being published in a seinen magazine so it has to stay mainly subtext.
Like I don’t think the subtext is absolutely integral to the understanding of the story, but I think it exists to add more layers of meaning and more emotional resonance to it, and I honestly think it’s kind of ridiculous to suggest that it’s totally accidental (let alone not even there and solely wishful thinking).
this fucking call back. guts’ driving motivation hasn’t actually changed. griffith’s definition of ‘friend’ still applies. the reminder of griffith’s desire for an equal now that he’s a singular god. like just
This is extremely incomplete bc I’m only including stuff that is self-explanatory. No commentary from me. It’s still long as fuck tho so be aware that this is really image heavy when you click.
guts and griff tiny on the side pursuing their dreams while dwarfed by their other half and their feelings for him. and these monologues in general are pretty comparable so i feel like this is purposeful.
also like – while griffith has come to the realization that his dream is nothing compared to guts, guts gets it into his head to pursue a dream because of his feelings for griffith (not just love but respect and admiration etc), and wanting griffith to return them. they’re kind of evolving in opposite directions here, but both motivated by the other.
Guts thinking about the Band, remembering them and recognizing that their memories are part of what drives and inspires him and keeps him going now. His bros and comrades get one page, and Casca and Griffith get the next two and like, goddamn that image. (And this isn’t even about how his platonic Hawk bros get their moment and then his objects of sexual affection get theirs js.)
Like yeah I wrote a long post about how Guts and Casca’s relationship is all about Griffith from start to end but yk I could’ve just posted this page because it says the exact same thing in a lot fewer words.
I mean look at it. Guts and Casca having sex. Casca is facing towards us/Guts, Griffith is, once again, facing away. But they’re wrapped in his cape. They are connecting to each other in Griffith’s absence – Griffith is unavailable, emotionally and literally, but Casca is there and ready to be connected to. And his presence literally surrounds them as they fuck out their feelings about him thru each other.
And it’s two pages before Guts’ revelation that leaving her behind was just like abandoning Griffith which makes him vow to find her and make up for it. Liiiiiiike these parallels aren’t subtle.
more on this page bc i’m not over it yet
speaking of comparing griffith watching guts fight zodd with his heart beating to the moment griffith first sees guts facing off against bazuso
(incidentally the same page guts asks whether griffith is gay)
more half faces, sultry eyes, talk of risking death, and guts’ lookin sweaty
like I don’t rly think this is a purposeful callback to these moments lol, but i sure have fun drawing the comparison, and that sexy half face is pretty consistent.
then from griffith’s perspective you have guts looking, imho, hotter than he usually looks. the half-face cuts off his missing eye, he’s sweaty and panting with exertion, the lighting highlights the planes of his face very well, hair catching the light, intense expression but not heightened or exaggerated – just makes him look angry in a manly way lbr.
like ok i’m not going thru 250 chapters looking for images of guts from the perspectives of other ppl with crushes on him like farnese, bc i didn’t keep track of that on my readthru so i have no idea where they might be, so i have no comparisons here when it comes to guts’ image. but yk, basically i just think this page feels charged af and i love it.
and the matching clouds of breath on that page as a subtle reminder that griffith may be a god now but he’s got human characteristics now that he’s flesh and blood
and a subtle illustration of his turbulent emotions despite the serene image he portrays – we see guts panting heavily after exerting himself, while griffith looks calm, yet he has the same breath, and his heart is pounding
i see people actually insist that like “nooo griffith made it clear it was the fetus making him feel stuff sweetie :)” and its just. i get the writing and irony or whatever behind thinking that but its sloppy and easy and not emotionally satisfying. or maybe it is for freaks who hate griffith idk.
i’ve seen people insist that griffith made it clear he doesn’t feel guilty lol, so many berserk fans have like negative reading comprehension
like with the fetus idk, maybe i could see an argument that it’s ironic? like lol griffith thought he’d escaped feelings but now something else’s feelings, which he’s responsible for creating during the eclipse, are fucking him over again, serves him right. maybe the idea of evil is punking him or smthn. but yeah it would still be sloppy, emotionally pointless writing lol.
tbh even if the fetus is only forcing him to save casca i feel like… it’s unnecessary. one of my major writing pet peeves is when you could explain something thru organic characterization and development you’ve already established, and instead you decide to explain it through artificial means like magic/brainwashing/physical changes to their mind/whatever.
if neogriffith’s blood is unfrozen, well, we don’t know what that means exactly, but one thing it could mean is that he’s reverting back to human griffith in mind. because he’s on another plane of godlike awareness he’s never going to be entirely human griffith again, but if miura tells me that human griffith’s emotions are unfrozen or w/e then I would absolutely believe it would fuck him up and make him do irrational things without thinking, like save casca from rocks. and i’d believe that griffith would deny it to himself and continue acting cold and aloof, bc lol it’s griffith, now re-dedicated to his dream with godlike powers and memories of being a monster and choosing to sacrifice everyone he loves, obviously he’s going to deny and repress whatever he’s feeling.
you don’t need the additional step of magic baby possession to justify it, it just takes away from all that excellent character work we already have.
like ok i’ll take the baby possession when it comes to his reaction to casca if it ends up being true, fine, but i absolutely refuse when it comes to his feelings for guts. that just crosses a line.
ok the chapter where neogriffith’s heart starts going off
visible exhale of breath as the fight begins
eventually guts kicks a sword through zodd and gets thrown back
this is rickert’s commentary, but it reminds me a lot of this
and immediately following that panel ngriff’s heart starts making itself known
denial followed immediately by one of the best pages in the manga, as though in counterpoint
the composition of those final 2 panels is interesting
ngriff on one side, fetus or guts on the other. who’s to blame? well, the first is neogriffith’s thoughts, the second is neogriffith’s reality.
whether the fetus is responsible for neogriffith impulsively saving casca for no reason is whatever. it seems entirely possible to me that we can blame the fetus for that. neogriffith thinks the fetus is fucking with him, and maybe he’s partially right.
but when it comes to blaming the fetus for making his heart stir here instead of blaming his very own feelings for guts, the visuals just don’t support it.
speaking of great moments
the view of griffith from behind and cut off at the eyes – his feelings hidden from guts, the audience, himself
contrasted to guts’ feelings at the forefront on display – guts’ ‘gh’ like the words, the apparent acknowledgement are a physical blow. ntm the way he holds himself back until griffith confirms – twice – that he feels nothing. hope is painful, and even worse when it’s given and then ripped away in like 30 seconds
if griffith remained serene i’d suggest that his face is largely hidden for the impact of ‘i am free’ and i think that’s part of it, but since his heart starts beating as he watches guts fight (in an echo of the very first time he saw guts in that courtyard js) i def think that this is a nice visual set up for neogriffith’s emotional ambiguity. we’re on the outside looking at a mysterious blank page, even when we’re in neogriffith’s thoughts – because griffith himself doesn’t understand his own heart.
i will never be over how ideal this moment is
femto reaching out -> closeup of guts -> closeup of femto -> femto failing to act -> guts + co escaping -> femto watching them disappear with a lowered hand, shown from a high angle -> a panel depicting femto from far above as a tiny dark smudge, alone and distant, singular, surrounded only by monsters
today i was at work and thinkin bout how good the potential inherent in guts and neogriffith’s hero/villain relationship is tbh. like the tiny glimpses we’ve seen so far (ngriff’s heart beating, guts’ complicated feelings, eg) + the foundation of the golden age backstory = solid fucking gold in theory
complicated angsty hero/villain anger and rage + regret and desire and loneliness, and w/ neogriffith his godliness + potential latent humanity
like these are all things i adore to pieces. singular godlike figures brought down by human feelings (love lbr). vengeful rage complicated by love. destructive, life-destroying love and obsession. ppl incapable of understanding their extremely powerful feelings. regret for lost potential and the mistakes that led to ruin. prominent shifting power dynamics – the whole basis of their relationship being a desire to be equals, each feeling at points inferior to the other, then one of them becomes a literal demigod but the need for equality (and thus, friendship) is still there, like, fuck that’s good stuff.
one obsessed and one who cut out his obsession, sloooowly switching places as guts semi-successfully attempts to move on and griffith starts succumbing to his beating heart. ofc guts can’t truly move on or there’s no story, but the opposing character trajectories are perf.
ooh and then you got the whole thing where one has fully succumbed to his inner darkness and is essentially a monster, but with glimmers of humanity, and the other is a human being pulled under by his inner darkness and struggling with it. complete with fun shining beautiful saviour/near-monstrous warrior imagery.
and the fact that at first it was his feelings for guts that lead to griffith succumbing to the darkness, and guts’ feelings for griffith that uplifted him, in turn giving him a home and then spurring him on to better himself. and now it’s potentially his feelings for guts that lead to neogriffith evidencing signs of humanity, beating heart etc (”he was the reason i’ve been thrown into darkness, and now he’s the sole sustenance keeping me alive” anyone?), and guts’ feelings for griffith that pull him towards monstrosity.
like just imagine the two of them finally brought together again with all this build-up behind them, fueling their confrontation. imagine all these teasing glimpses of mutually complex, contradictory, intensely powerful feelings really coming to fruition.
the set-up is dead on for an absolutely ideal hero/villain dynamic, and you know miura theoretically has the character and storytelling skills to make it amazing bc we all read the golden age.
you're the only one 