tbh yeah it does seem like such an over the top reaction, especially since in griffith’s nightmare of the future he’s pretty again so whatever happened to his face is probably not permanently disfiguring to a huge extent (yeah it was a dream sequence but it was deliberately meant to be a realistic one). but imo there’s also a legit answer.
Guts’ kind of extreme, omg this can’t be griffith, omfg, reaction is less “oh no he’s ugly now” and more “wow i’m being confronted by the extremely painful, horrific, and undeniable fact that griffith is actually not a god, he’s human and vulnerable and broken and it’s my fault.”
it’s putting an image to Casca’s words:
Guts being hit over the head with the fact that this image:
is bullshit.
And I love that it happens when Guts takes off the mask, not before when he’s checking out his cut tendons and cut out tongue, because the mask is such a strong consistent symbol for the image Griffith hides behind.
tbh it doesn’t really matter what Griffith’s face looks like, it’s the fact that Guts takes off the mask and sees the real, human Griffith, and it hits him how false his idea of him, the idea he based his decision to leave around, was.
And it’s a nice set up for this moment later:
Guts is symbolically accepting the real Griffith here, but Griffith isn’t able to drop the image and be vulnerable yet. Another tragic missed connection.
(And yeah like @chaoticgaygriffith has said, from a character perspective Guts is still dancing around reality here, and it’s not til another few chapters that he really fully acknowledges how immensely he fucked up (”why do I always see these things… after they’re done and gone?”) but yk. it’s a baby steps attempt lol. the tragedy is that they both suck at this.)
Also an additional detail because I love it
Guts’ eventual acceptance of Griffith’s humanity mirrors Casca’s realization that her feelings for Griffith weren’t just distant awe and respect, but actually romantic, I’m just saying.
I love getting questions! And I haven’t really discussed this as far as I remember.
But I think that moment makes a lot of sense tbh.
Griffith’s feelings towards Guts in his torture chamber monologue are incredibly intense, but not exactly positive. He’s all-consumingly in love with him, but he doesn’t want to be. Being in love with him is what lost him his dream and got him tortured for a year, which is a hell of an experience to resent someone for.
And the way his immediate response to Guts suddenly showing up is to try to strangle him seems like a very solid prelude to the sacrifice imo. Being in love is not fun for Griffith, it ruined his entire life, made him incredibly vulnerable, and made him emotionally dependant on a man who may very well leave him again and whose feelings Griffith has no reason to believe match his own.
If killing Guts can take the edge off those feelings and maybe return him back to factory settings when his dream was the most important thing and life made sense, in the irrational frame of mind he’s in after a year of torture, that would definitely seem like a good plan.
Add a side of plain old lashing out because he’s blaming Guts for the fact that he’s in that torture chamber, and I think it works very well that Griffith’s first act here is attempted strangulation.
What’s really incredible to me is that all it takes is Guts starting to cry and Griffith just welcomes him back, life destroying feelings and all. Like being in love is one thing, accepting that love and deciding to try to roll with it right after those feelings made him want to kill Guts is… wild.
This
to this
in a page.
So there’s also something to be said for extreme emotional instability after a year of torture, and a lifetime of repressing his feelings. He has no practice dealing with his feelings constructively, so when he can’t repress them he does some extreme, stupid things (like the duel, like the night with Charlotte, like self-harm, like reaching up to strangle Guts.)
OH AND ALSO it’s worth noting that Griffith is very aware that his hands don’t work anymore. He has no physical ability to kill Guts, and while in a moment of irrational overwhelming feeling he might try, I wouldn’t count this as a genuine murder attempt because somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he can’t actually strangle him. Like if, say, he had physical strength and access to a knife, I don’t think this moment would translate into suddenly slitting his throat without warning. Maybe more like holding the knife to his throat threateningly before dropping it and collapsing into his arms lol.
So tl;dr imo in this moment he’s spent a year hating Guts because he loves him and that ruined his life, so he’s lashing out and potentially trying to/wishing to cut those feelings off at the source the same way he does soon after during the Eclipse. But he just loves Guts so much he ends up holding his hand instead.
God I love this ship.
Anyway ty for sending this and your kind words, I hope you also have an awesome day!
cut for people who don’t want to see discussion of monster sex lol
i feel like there’s still room for this though! like this is one of those concepts i keep coming back to and i always envision it as neogriffith using sex as a way to keep the apostles in line and not preying on humanity, yk like, one taste of yr god and you realize that humans just aren’t worth risking getting kicked out of falconia for
except it’s actually completely unnecessary and more low-key a convoluted ott expression of his self-destructive streak while telling himself it’s just another rung on the ladder to his utopia dream, because griffith is a dramatic disaster in all incarnations
or you want it less fucked up and weirdly angsty then maybe it actually is just part of how he keeps them tame (a la Ganeshka’s “if he touches me I’ll sacrifice all -”) and he’s lowkey into it. or he lets his loyal generals gang bang him as a reward bc they’re apostles and apostles respond better to base lust than bags of gold, and in this scenario he’s getting fucked from a position of power as a show of generosity and knows he can’t be truly harmed bc fate, so it’s still a contrast to sex when he was human
i’ve said this before but still like, literally both g/c sex scenes began with the dude saying “hey here’s a great way to stop thinking about painful, painful reality” right after being devastated by their belief that they destroyed their relationship with the other dude, like they both seek out sexual connections in the face of losing their relationship with each other!
Like I don’t think anyone would deny that this is clearly what Griffith is doing.
But Guts does it too:
“The dead or broken” refers back to Casca’s “the almost broken dream of someone who might not even be alive” incidentally, so you don’t even need to make your own connections here, they’re delivered in a neat little bow. It’s about Griffith being in a dungeon right now because of Guts.
There’s a big empty space very clearly defined where Guts and Griffith should’ve fucked each other, and because they didn’t the Eclipse happened.
That’s the thesis statement of Berserk as far as I’m concerned.
this is a given but all this really drives home that him and guts could’ve had it all including the first actual healthy and mutual romantic + sexual experience either of them would have
ikkkkkkkkkkkkkr
like i s2g griffguts is the keystone to berserk, it’s the missing piece, everything is built around it and everything falls apart literally because it’s a missed connection, i’ll argue that forever. and it always fits like no matter which angle you’re looking at the characters from
look at guts trying his damnest to be casual with griffith and make him feel even a little bit better about his situation (and also to distract himself from his guilt)
i’m honestly willing to think this wasn’t just a stupid, slightly insensitive naive moment from him but, in fact, an actual pathetic attempt at re-establishing their intimacy which he fucked up by leaving
he doesn’t look hurt when griffith kinda sorta refuses (i.e. changes the subject) but he’s still in the trying to act casual/make him feel better/distract himself mode
# i feel like griffith asking for his armour instead of taking off the mask kinda marks a switch for guts from the attempt at intimacy # and beginnings of real acceptance of griffith’s like… vulnerable humanity and the fact that he isn’t a god # to kinda following griffith’s lead and piling on more denial lol # like guts is a dumbass but he almost got it right here
ia i just think the elephant in the room is too big for guts to try to be this casual to start off? like it’s so transparent? and i get that what went down isn’t something he can just dive into without prepping either of them, especially considering the consequences it had for griffith and the guilt he feels over that, but like the way he handled it (following griffith’s lead like you said and all that) they didn’t get to talk about it* at all, which is imo so much worse
*of course it would have been one-sided bc griffith can’t talk but you know, better than nothing
tbh yeah true actually, at this point Guts falling to pieces and just screaming some real genuine words like the rambling guilt ridden monologue that’s been occasionally running through his head for a few days would probably be a step in the right direction more so than more dancing around everything
yk I think the number one reason Griffith had to lose his tongue, narratively, like you were talking about the other day, is because in the lake when Guts was running towards him if he could talk he would’ve finally broken and said everything. like I think to that point he would’ve kept repressing and not actually started the relevant conversation, but there is a breaking point when it would’ve come out then
but Guts, who could talk, never reached that breaking point
This is a topic and a half lol. Ok, I have many many thoughts, and I’ll try laying some out.
To start, I’ve seen the heacanon that his mother was a prostitute a few times and tbh it makes a lot of sense to me and seems v plausible.
But also I don’t really get any indication that he views sex as a way to control/own others, at least not pre-Femto. I’d actually argue the exact opposite, that throughout the Golden Age sex for Griffith is indicative of his own powerlessness relative to others. Sex, to Griffith, is something that he can trade to people more powerful than him for something in return – or something people take from him.
(I mean you can argue that seduction and trading sex for power/security/etc is a way to control people, but everyone Griffith does this with has more societal power than him and Griffith never pursues sex with them for its own sake, so to me the dynamic comes across as less rakish rogue using sex to get what he wants and more csa victim with a warped view of sex as something to trade for the things he needs.)
under a cut for length and yk the whole topic
Gennon was straightforward prostitution, plus Griffith was a literal child whose guilt was taken advantage of by a pedophile. And as Griffith’s first sexual encounter we see, it certainly sets a tone and establishes the beginning of a pattern.
Later, as a villain, Gennon’s goal is literally just to rape Griffith, and Griffith is very aware of this, since he incorporates it into his battle plan. There’s also some indication that he’s been overtly getting his creep on for years on end, possibly explaining how Griffith knew Gennon would shoot himself in the foot just to get to him:
So Gennon is both a sexual threat and someone with power who gives Griffith something in exchange for sex.
Charlotte is a princess he has to seduce to realize his dream.
And when he does have sex with her I’d argue that it’s basically an attempt to escape from his feelings (rejection, need, self-loathing, being in love with Guts) through refocusing on his dream (which is consistently his alternative to and escape from Guts), essentially irrationally trying to prematurely seal the deal on the “transaction.”
It’s the sex version of this:
And it also negates every scrap of power he clawed his way up to and lands him in a dungeon.
Next you have the torturer and his incredibly creepy suggestiveness, which makes Griffith’s sexual victimization here technically subtext, but I mean, “we were like husband and wife,” the Gennon-like fixation on Griffith’s beauty, the tongue thing, the uh speculum he was holding in his introduction… it’s not subtle subtext.
Then when Griffith makes a move on Casca in the wagon he’s offering himself to her because he’s entirely out of options and kind of desperately grasping at something, now sunk from trading sex for a kingdom to trading sex for a caretaker, painfully highlighting his complete and total lack of power at this point in his life, and the future he envisions should she take him up on that offer makes him suicidal.
So like, four out of four sexual encounters we’re aware of pre-Eclipse focus on his vulnerability and powerlessness, then he turns into an evil demon and expresses his newfound power and invulnerability(/frozen heart) thru rape. So yk, there’s a thread there to pick up theoretically.
I mean I honestly have a really difficult time ascribing any meaning
to the Eclipse rape beyond assuming Miura wanted a cheap + shocking way
to piss Guts off, write out Casca, and presumably get himself off
judging by how he drew it, but yk… take the rest of the Golden Age and
the general concept of Griffith’s inner darkness raping Casca, the last person he felt that sexualized powerlessness to, while
ignoring the depiction of the actual scene, and you can read some amount of depth/cycle of abuse stuff into it. That was probably at least part of the point, if I’m being generous to Miura and his writing.
(Really given the amount of content in Berserk that
revolves around sexual violence you can read a million things into the
Eclipse rape. But yk if Miura wanted me to do that, he shouldn’t’ve
treated it like a sudden detour into actual porn. Ok mini rant over.)
(Oh I should probably add that obviously Casca was in no way complicit in Griffith feeling vulnerable to her there lol and I’m not suggesting she bears any responsibility at all. Griffith in the wagon and his subsequent dream was basically him projecting a bunch of issues on her. I feel like that goes without saying but I want to cover my bases.)
Then you get NeoGriffith with his magically heightened literally untouchable, beyond the reach of man vs an army of monsters is basically in love with him stuff.
There is approximately 0 chance the placement of that “hunger and thirst” panel is accidental js.
But now Griffith has all the power. His beauty and magical sex appeal can be used as a tool without Griffith ever having to make himself vulnerable.
(Also speaking of using sex to control others… like I don’t think it fits human Griffith based on what we see in canon, but imo there’s plenty of room to explore that with NGriff.)
This isn’t a real threat, Griffith can just go “lol” and completely destroy him without breaking a sweat. Now Griffith has switched from he who is taken from to he who takes.
Like, the stakes of the Battle of Doldrey, for instance, was the threat of Griffith being captured as a sex slave. Some of the tension came from Casca’s suggestion that Griffith volunteering for the battle may not have been a rational decision, because his rapist is the commander of that army. We don’t learn Griffith’s full plan until partway through, there are cliffhanger moments during the battle chapters where Our Heroes look like they might lose, and the sequence is tense and nervewracking as a result.
The war against Ganeshka has absolutely no tension at all. There isn’t even a moment where the outcome is not absolutely certain. And that’s a strong way of showing that NeoGriffith may face the same threats he did as human Griffith, but he’s no longer vulnerable to them.
Uh I guess my point is basically that NeoGriffith’s kind of sexualized untouchability feels like a narrative response to human Griffith’s particularly sexualized vulnerability. Enemies and monsters still go on and on about how hot he is, but they can’t act on that now.
But there’s still Charlotte. Like, despite all this godly distance and inability to be harmed and pointed contrast to human Griffith experiencing sex solely as a bargaining chip or a weapon, he’s still gotta marry her to make his dream official.
I feel like it’s unlikely that Miura intends me to read their relationship like this, so it’s not gonna be addressed, but ngl it’s something I find theoretically interesting. Like I see a lot of people assume that NeoGriffith is going to like, murder Charlotte after they get married, and tbqh I think that’s generally stupid, but if there’s one angle you can look at the story from and conclude “yeah NGriff may just off Charlotte with extreme prejudice as soon as possible” it’s this imo. Not to prove how pointlessly maliciously evil he is lol, but because she still has a form of sexualized power over him.
But I think it’s more likely that NGriff doesn’t give a fuck anymore, or if he does he won’t admit it to himself, because he carved out most of his emotions and it’s gonna take more than that to get him to admit it didn’t completely work.
Also speaking of Charlotte there’s the whole like, heteronormativity and repression aspect while we’re talking Griffith and his relationship to sex. The related fact that he deliberately performs a certain image/makes himself a symbol. And I barely even mentioned Guts. Agh actually there is a ton more to say about Griffith + sex, but I don’t want this to be even longer lol.
So ok, those are my thoughts on Griffith + sex + power specifically.
I’ll just link you other stuff I’ve written which kind of covers a wider variety of topics re: Griffith and sex, if you’re interested.
i cant believe miura gave us real power bottom griffith imagery not only does he subdue guts by standing on his sword but he wins the fight by looping an arm around guts fist/arm and holding him there
Yeah I don’t think there’s any actual canon on apostles and how monstrous they look or don’t look, but it’s something I’ve wondered about. This is kind of what I theorize, that if they’ve succumbed more to their “monstrousness” they probably always look a little off, but if they’re one of the more chill, “human” seeming apostles their appearance could reflect that.
Like… since apostles transform from human to monster, and they have a scale of in between forms (like Rosine looking more human with Jill, looking more buggy by default, and going full moth fighter jet while fighting Guts), I do wonder if the extent of their transformation relies on their emotions and how much they allow their negative emotions (like bloodlust) to run rampant. Like w/ Guts succumbing to the armour, same kinda deal. And maybe it’s harder for them to look fully human, like they have to have a greater emotional control/tie to their humanity.
Kind of a pretentious meta-y reason lol, this is one of my fave post golden age chapters because I feel like Sonia’s thoughts on loneliness are extremely relevant to NeoGriffith and whatever residual feelings for Guts he has, based on how Miura frames him here, and like, the themes of Berserk in general.
Yk, Sonia is lonely because she’s different from everyone else, she briefly bonds with her Guts’ narrative counterpart and misses her, we get a conversation with Irvine about how relationships humanize and isolation dehumanizes, we get our usual light = companionship, darkness = isolation imagery, and then Sonia dreams of her and Schierke in the moonlight. Followed by the page of NeoGriffith surrounded by darkness, alone under that moon.
So “A dream of a kite and an owl playing in a moonlit forest” is roundaboutly griffguts related as far as I’m concerned bc Sonia and Schierke seem like a v strong parallel to me, and I like being needlessly subtle w/ my references sometimes lol.
I’m not gonna argue that Guts doesn’t care about her at all lol, but I do think the fact that she’s a reminder of the pain Griffith caused is a very important aspect, and is likely to come up again since Miura mentioned it as the reason he kept her alive (ie to keep Guts from moving on) in a 2017 interview.
I don’t think that’s the only reason Guts is sticking with Casca now, I think there are like, a bunch of other reasons as well. The fact that she’s a reminder of his past with the Hawks and he wants to bring her mind back to recover a piece of that idyllic past. The fact that he wants to try to move on from Griffith after Griffith pronounced himself free of him tbqh, and focusing on a new objective is a good way to attempt that. (And incidentally I think it’s purposeful that keeping her around as a reminder of the Eclipse and trying to move on thru taking her to Elfhelm are contradictory, but that doesn’t mean Guts can’t be motivated by both reasons.)
And also the fact that he does genuinely care about her. Like even if I don’t think he’s actually in love with her, and I don’t, Guts cares about his friends and comrades. He saved her even back when he hated her, when she fell off that cliff. His revenge campaign was damaging to himself in part because like… by abandoning Casca he kind of betrayed himself, because at his core he wants to help the people he cares about, he wants to be there for them. Abandoning her in a cave for 3 years is like, the exact opposite of our (chronologically) first image of him, when he was three and held his mother’s hand as she died.
So yk, another aspect is that at his best, Guts stands up and does the right thing for the people he considers friends and family, and at his worst, he fucks off and leaves them to fend for themselves. And Guts is trying to be more his best and less his worst.
Oh and ofc relatedly he’s trying to atone for leaving Griffith in the snow. He draws that parallel a lot when he decides to focus on Casca lol.
Thanks for responding! I appreciate it. Love this stuff. And yeah I agree that Griffith definitely cares for Casca, and that’s part of what makes this scene so tragic. Manipulating Casca’s sympathy in order to make her stay, in order to make Guts stay, doesn’t lessen the fact that Griffith cares for her. But Casca isn’t Guts, and that distinction seems to be highlighted here. Griffith seems to be responding to a) Guts possibly leaving again and b) the relationship with Casca that he no longer—
has, now that Casca
and Guts have grown closer. He’s probably trying to be that person Casca
knew him as, as you pointed out, and doing it from the point in his
life furthest from that past glory. The tragedy is layered here, and I
personally enjoy the idea of Griffith using someone he genuinely cares
for (Casca) in order to reach for Guts, who always seems out of reach. I
also agree that it foreshadows the eclipse and demonstrates the
consistency of Griffith’s character when he makes the
sacrifice before the Godhand. Thanks for listening to me go on, hah.
thank you for responding too, this is a fun topic to talk about!
yeah I basically agree with everything you said here I think. Honestly the lead-up to the Eclipse was so good at making everything as depressing and painful as possible for everyone involved, and everything you’ve described is a huge part of it.
“Casca isn’t Guts, and that distinction seems to be highlighted here“
Yeah v true, and I think it also effectively parallels Griffith and Casca’s feelings for Guts, the way Casca and Guts’ feelings for Griffith have been paralleled at times (eg during the cave conversation where they both see Griffith as out of reach, and potentially even believing that he desires the other, considering Guts tries to set them up afterwards. Or during the rescue mission where Guts thinks that he has to accept Casca’s lingering feelings for Griffith because he’s not over him/hasn’t unbound himself either). Like Griffith isn’t Casca’s first choice either now, she feels obligated to stay with him, and in the dream sequence Guts’ absence seems to diminish them both.
And ia that the like… tension between genuinely caring for someone but using them (and later, sacrificing them) despite that is great, like the sacrifice wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting if Griffith didn’t actually gaf about the Hawks. And we see that attitude in his general existence as a mercenary leader too – like when he says to Guts “I will decide the place where you die,” or positions the Hawks with their backs to the river during the Doldrey battle so they have no choice but to give it their all bc they can’t retreat. Like his life is also on the line, so it’s not exactly cruel or unfair, but it is ruthless and it’s great fuel for the guilt issues he denies.
But I’m hugely into the contrast between like, Griffith’s feelings and his almost desperate need to deny them/bury them lol.
I should mention: even
though our interpretations differ in some ways, I don’t mean to argue!
I’m interested in your take and enjoy the other metas you’ve posted. I
agree that Casca really isn’t done justice in Berserk at all, and I
honestly hate that so much story has been devoted to “saving” her
post-eclipse instead of focusing on what made her badass and
sympathetic. That said, I can see why she’s used the way she is plotwise
with respect to Guts and Griffith; it’s part of the tragedy for me.
(I just wish Casca’s suffering didn’t
center so often on the fact that she’s a woman. Leaves a bad taste in my
mouth, like womanhood is the only source of suffering for someone like
her.)
Same same. Like I have strong opinions and I definitely don’t shy away from sharing them lol but I’m happy to have people disagree with me and get the opportunity to discuss them and get new ideas to consider etc, it’s all part of the fun of being in fandom as long as everyone’s fairly chill. I’m interested in your takes too, whether you agree or disagree 🙂
And yeah cosigned wrt Casca. It’s such a shame to me because I feel like she had so much potential and some great scenes as an awesome character, but she gets hamstrung by the writing so much, her role stuck between Guts and Griffith, and how every aspect of her character revolves around being a woman, cumulating in the Eclipse and the destruction of her character, and like… damn, yk? It’s a bit hard to take lol.
Nice analysis. I agree with you for the most part, and have something to add that seems complementary to what you’ve already mentioned: Griffith is showing Casca exactly how pathetic he is in order to manipulate her into staying, and thereby get Guts to stay as well. But Casca spoils this plan when she reminds Guts that if he is Griffith’s friend and equal, then he must leave. This is the moment that Griffith realizes that he is responsible for Gut’s departure that day in the snow. It’s tragic.
(Cont.) Low as he was,
Griffith seems to still be trying to manipulate the situation to get
what he wants (Guts to stay), even going so far as to weaponize his
broken body. But this, like you said, is total desperation, and when it
doesn’t work Griffith has nothing else to try. It really cements the
idea that Casca was, is, and always will be just a means to an end for
Griffith, which is heartbreaking for Casca but one of my favorite parts
of the series.
Thank you!
yeah i definitely agree that Casca is a means to an end to Griffith here – he certainly isn’t asking her to stay because he wants her in his life in particular, and ia that he’s most likely hoping Guts will stay too if Casca stays, since he now has an idea that they’re together. I don’t think that’s all she is to him – he genuinely cares for her, or else he wouldn’t be able to sacrifice her lol, and wouldn’t try opening up to her in the river after Gennon, wouldn’t try to save her when Wyald grabs her despite being unable to do a thing, etc. But their feelings for each other definitely aren’t equal and it does make me feel for Casca.
(and on a related subject I have a lot of feelings about how Casca is constantly used by both Griffith and Guts as an emotional and physical like, bridge between them, from Casca warming Guts all the way back in the beginning, to Guts assaulting her to “get closer and closer to Griffith,” to just about everything in between. Her role in the story is very depressing to me bc I really love her and she has some amazing moments and scenes, but overall Berserk absolutely doesn’t do her justice.)
Tho idk I wouldn’t really consider Griffith to be deliberately manipulating Casca here or “weaponizing” his body. His sexualized offer is pretty straightforward, and I don’t think he intended to come across as pathetic as he does – Casca comforting him with a hand on his shoulder is, imo, the opposite of what he wanted. He wanted to be the comforter, but he can’t fill that role anymore.
But this is a v ambiguous scene so it’s not like there’s not plenty of room for different interpretations.
But in brief, no – he stopped when Casca said stop, which kind of nips the idea that it was a rape attempt in the bud. It was an offer, the only way he could really make it without being able to speak, and it’s mainly meant to show how weak, helpless, and desperate he is at this point – particularly as it comes after Wyald helpfully explained how he’ll be dependant for the rest of his life.
And imo it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse rape emphasizing Griffith’s lack of power – he’s not offering sex because he wants it, he’s offering because it’s the one thing he can give Casca in exchange for her continued loyalty/care, which fits the transactional pattern of Griffith’s other textual sexual encounters (Gennon for money, Charlotte for her kingdom), and leads directly to his nightmare where he envisions that potential future and immediately tries to kill himself.
In the official guidebook it is said that their estimed age are the same
(24 years old when published, but it’s quite “recent” so not sure about when they met)
YES!
that’s the official berserk guidebook that came out in like 2017? I’m assuming they’re not including elfhelm time dilation shennanigans or subtracting the 2-3 years Griffith spent as Femto on the astral plan or w/e in that, so it probably means they were both 15ish (since Guts was 15) when they met
charlotte was a convenient plot point that allowed Griffith a quick trip to the throne via marriage, which would allow him to cruise on into being king without disrupting the royal structure or starting a revolution. Imo she doesnt have a firm characterization bc 1) miura sucks at writing compelling women and 2) her wishy-washy-ness and the fake superficial nature of her relationship with griff is a stark contrast to guts and griffs relationship – which id like 2 think is purposeful but lmao that was a stupid and long reply but
basically charlotte is a cloaking example of how ppl view the image
griffith projected, and now neogriffith – thru rose coloured glasses and
as an idea or concept rather than a real person. to charlotte he’s her
knight in shining armour, to the falconians he’s a saviour, to the old
band of the hawk he was a way to a better life etc etc
also charlotte has a
habit of ignoring or running away from the bad things in life. if she
were to find out about the truth with griffith, would she even care?
what’s her other option? locking herself up in a tower like she did with
her father? I doubt learning griff is a “monster” would change much
about him in her eyes, she already knows he kills ppl and when he talked
about it in his friendship speech she was basically like “oh griffith
that’s so disturbing” and then got over it lol
Yeah I agree w/ most of this (I mean tbf I find some of the women Miura writes compelling, despite giant writing flaws, but Charlotte is not one of them lol)
Charlotte really is like the ur-example of how other people see Griffith without really knowing him. I suppose that’s probably why people want to see the scales fall from her eyes lol. Even back during the Golden Age, he was assassinating her family left and right and she had no idea. Personally I’d find it much more potentially interesting for Charlotte to learn that he killed her uncle, cousin, and stepmother, but I think that ship’s kind of sailed.
And yeah by now like… she’s happily accepted that Griffith hangs out with an army of monsters. I’m pretty sure she could learn exactly what happened during the Eclipse, and if NGriff gave a fuck about keeping her on as an ally/queen at that point he could like, literally just straightforwardly tell her what happened and Charlotte would be like, oh okay. ie: yeah I sacrificed my friends and became an evil demon for a while but now I’m back to human, yk like how the apostles used to eat people but now they help humanity. You know how it is with personified inner darknesses.
lol I feel like I have more to say on this subject wrt Charlotte being the epitome of seeing the image but not the person beneath vs what happens if she finds out, yk like thematically, but I’m about to go to work so I’ll end this here and maybe write more about it later if I think of something worthwhile.
2/2 And you probably already know this, but in roman history and
shakespeare’s julius caesar, casca was the soldier who stabbed caesar
first, and if you see griffith as caesar and guts as brutus, it makes me
wonder if casca will join guts in fighting griffith?)
I wonder about the relevance of her name, because it seems like the Eclipse rape (and presumably her subsequent insanity) wasn’t Miura’s original intention, since he’s mentioned that he originally didn’t plan to have Guts and Casca get together, and hooked them up for added Eclipse drama. So the portuguese connection might be coincidence. But who knows?
I could see the Julius Caesar reference being intentional for sure.
tbh tho my favourite Casca name connection is to the Casca the Eternal Mercenary series lol (I’ve heard it’s a Known Thing that Miura references names from old pulp fantasy books at least, so it’s maybe not totally out there?) I mean, the mercenary who stabbed Jesus is cursed to live as an immortal mercenary, which is like my ideal ending for Casca lmao, so I want to believe.
Either way I like that there are 2 possible connections to stabby soldiers.
God it’s just the fucking worst isn’t it? And it’s so constant, both pre and post Eclipse, and so shitty, and often straight up tonally jarring lmao.
I actually recently wrote out a whole rant about how the depiction of Casca during the Eclipse isn’t just incredibly offensive but straight up objectively, qualitatively bad writing and bad art, but then I never posted it bc I got uncomfortably specific lol. But man, and it’s not just the Eclipse either, it’s everywhere.
Actually can I just (not cut for anything particularly triggering, just me going on a brief rant anyway lol. also tits)
imagine drawing this. You’re an artist and writer, you’re trying to depict a thematically resonant, significant moment that’s also very sad and emotionally touching, and this is how you choose to do it. Look at those metallic looking nipples. Do you think Miura even knows that nipples usually aren’t hard?
Why does he want the het male portion of his audience to be turned on during a sad moment that takes place after an attempted rape?
Or, conversely, why are so many men so awful that it doesn’t even occur to Miura or the majority of his audience that the image accompanying this sad text is inappropriately eroticized? That a mostly naked woman with those ridiculously (and kind of racistly lbr) bright, eye-catching nipples and gravity-defying tits actively fucks with the emotional tone you’re theoretically trying to convey? Because it’s just default to them: woman = naked and sexy as often as possible no matter what the context is.
Honestly it’s infuriating, and this example is nowhere near as fucked up as the Eclipse, or even the way Miura continues to eroticize Casca’s body when she’s traumatized and regressed to like mental infancy, etc.
But, when Golden Age ended, Griffith’s character became too prominent
and I wanted him to fight with Guts in his usual form.
Storytelling-wise, if he was in his normal, unchanged form, and then
changed into his powered-up form, the opposition would be easier to
understand. Also, setting-wise, as Femto, the dimension on which he
operates becomes more distant.
ok so I hate this, I’ve argued against reading the appearance of Femto at the end of the Millenium Falcon arc as an actual transformation a few times because I think it just straight up sounds stupid
buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I’m willing to admit that despite framing Femto as a ~final form~ being silly to me, it actually works better for my purposes if it is a literal transformation. because it’s more easily comparable to the Beast of Darkness.
Like reading the appearance of Femto as just the way ascended Ganeshka sees him seems more natural and cool imo, but it also equates NeoGriffith and Femto in a way I’m meh about, and that was always the downside. If it’s a transformation, then Femto is like NGriff’s Beast of Darkness – a personified inner darkness made into a weapon that he can call up and use. Making Femto and NGriff kind of distinct, and backing up my idea that NeoGriffith is more like human Griffith rather than just Femto in a nicer outfit lol.
lmao fuck I really do vastly prefer this idea when you downplay the whole powered up form aspect and emphasize the comparison to Guts’ armour. Like, the Beast of Darkness is Guts’ Femto, that’s not subtle. If Guts loses himself to the armour, there’s gonna be more comparisons, and this could be a great part of that.
I mean lbr the only difference is that the armour doesn’t require a sacrifice to use and also it’s probs not as powerful as yk being a demon demi god. But it’s essentially a magical artifact created so that someone can use the power of their own dark side, the way apostles and the godhand in a more epic way can, without having to trade away a loved one first (/be ordained by causality). And the story has been very very clear about Guts’ dark side being v comparable to Griffith’s lol.
Like… the more I think about it the more I’m actually into this concept. Depending on how it plays out. I mean it still could just be as shallow and stupid as an upgrade for a fight. But yk, it has potential as part of a pattern of man vs inner monster, human volition vs bestial rage, etc, that we’ve been seeing a lot with Guts and various apostles, as well as hitting that equals theme.
Still can’t think of much worse than a drawn-out fight scene tho lol. I want to have faith in Miura’s ability to make things much better than they sound on paper, but there isn’t enough faith in the world for that.
yk tho as much as i theorize and hope wildly for a lot of stuff, at the end of the day i think there are only 2 things i truly need from berserk:
1.
casca actively fucks shit up in a way that greatly affects the plot instead of getting back together with guts
2.
guts and griffith have an exchange of some sort that provides emotional
catharsis by addressing the fact that they were singularly obsessed with each other
and neither has actually successfully gotten over that obsession
i don’t give a shit about anything else. if those two things happen, I will consider berserk a satisfying story
hey if miura cut out the idea of evil chapter because it gave too much away, is this
secretly ominous?
or not so secretly, considering it’s the page after this:
i’m hoarding every drop of ominous foreshadowing i can find rn, and flora asiding that god brought guts and his rpg group together right after she suspects skull knight is using them and skull knight excuses himself with “w/e fate’s gonna fate no matter what i do” seems kind of fittingly ominous
Considering casca is supposed to be the same age as Guts, and she met Griffith when she was still young, and Griffith was old enough to not look off in armour, I would say Griffith is at least 3 years older than both of them
all the straightforward info we have on anyone’s age other than Guts, as far as I know, comes from the movie guides, which I think do say Casca is Guts’ age and Griffith is 3 years older. But I don’t think (and please correct me if I’m wrong or forgetting something) that’s stated in the manga anywhere.
Could be Miura signed off on it or suggested it himself, or it’s in the guidebook too or something, but I personally still wouldn’t consider it technically canon if it’s not in the manga. I mean I’m biased because I like the idea of G+G being about the same age. But also I have a rly hard time seeing Griffith as 18 before the 3 year time skip:
Especially w/ Guts thinking of him as just a kid, and about his age, etc. Three years is a p noticable age gap when you’re teenagers.
and Casca could also be around the same age, rather than younger than either imo. she says she was 12 when Griffith saved her (to me she looks younger than that, but w/e, canon says 12), and I could easily buy Griffith as around 12-13 in that scene just going off looks. He acts older, bc at this point he’s got more life experience, but honestly they both look like babies to me
I mean maybe it’s a stretch to think of a 12 yr old leading a group of bandits soon to be mercenaries, but enh child soldiers abound in Berserk, Rickert was a unit captain at about that age lol, and the other Hawks are also relatively young according to Guts so I can suspend my disbelief and accept it.
i need to remember this (2017) quote every time i start to fear the possibility of guts and casca getting together and moving on just so griffith can go on the offensive and keep the plot going:
“I kept Casca alive precisely for that reason. That’s because even if she
died, and if the series continued for a long time, Guts’ reason to
seek revenge would become a thing of the past and if Guts formed new
relationships with people, his motivation would weaken. It’s a cold,
calculating move and it might feel unpleasant, but it’s exactly because
Guts has Casca at his side that he can never forget about the Eclipse.”
whatever happens w/ casca is gonna make guts go beast of darkness. miura is aware that guts needs to keep driving the plot forward and it can’t just stall out in elfhelm waiting for griffith to kickstart it again.
I always saw the kid as an allusion to the whole “Casca was pregnant before the eclipse and moon-child is actually Guts’”. Like it was a strange meta-hallucination without fully relying on any character knowledge. Not that I was thinking that deeply about it to begin with, that’s just kinda how my brain filled in the gaps
Hm, yeah that’s another interesting potential reading of the scene.
Tho wrt the idea that it’s a sort of meta hallucination, like a glimpse of a potential future informed by information Griffith himself doesn’t even have, idk it seems like a fair interpretation since there’s a lot of sinister magical things going on pre-eclipse. But idk if I’d consider it the most likely concept, so I wouldn’t default to that interpretation myself.
I had similar thoughts about that Griffith/Casca scene in the wagon. However, I remember reading the kid in the nightmare scene as Gut’s kid that he left with Casca.
Kind of like a hint to Casca’s pregnancy.
This also seems possible imo. Even if it’s just Griffith’s imagination he does know Guts and Casca have hooked up so he could also be just assuming her pregnancy in this imaginary scenario. Plus assuming the kid is Guts’ potentially highlights Guts’ absence even more.
But idk to me that scene has such a sort of… cloyingly domestic and kind of sinisterly sexual undertone to it, which seems especially significant after the scene in the wagon, that I lean towards the kid as another aspect of Griffith being trapped in this heterosexual nightmare. And I feel like Guts and Casca’s kid would have way darker hair.
But ultimately I could go either way. Both interpretations are depressing in their own ways lol.
for some reason i totally thought we were supposed to assume it’s his first time lol ….. idk he’s just so gaycoded that it’s the only option for me
I’ll also add that I want to take the parallels to the g*tsca sex scene as another reason it’s his first time
guts and griffith both having het sex to try to avoid confronting their feelings for each other, and it destroys everyone’s lives and the golden age is a cautionary tale about heterosexuality
seisans said:
im losing my MINDDDDDD that people think
this is proof he liked her. it’s called being gay and repressed holy
shit i’ve never seen a more accurate depiction of how heteronormativity
messes with a gay person (in manga anyway) and people think it’s
attraction looooord help me
honestly it’s so real, like fucking everything about griffith’s story fits the repressed gay narrative. idk how miura did it if it was an accident lol.
but like, yeah i get being confused by those scenes, particularly the wagon one, but the one conclusion you definitely cannot draw from them is that griffith loves casca because he literally tries to kill himself right after imagining a quiet “content” domestic life with her lol. I’m almost morbidly curious about the arguments the person who sent me those asks saw.
idk if I can really make a case for it, other than the fact that like… that sex scene was super basic lol.
also i like the idea of griffith thinking he needs to be good at hetero sex so he can seduce charlotte properly for the sake of his dream when the time comes, and then convincing himself that reading the books he canonically has totally covers it and there’s no need to actually have sex with a woman
hope you get your gay griffith thoughts watered bc i always want to read more of them
realizing the kid in griffiths hesterosexual nightmare is his and cascas gave me hives cool how this whole situation is
realized in gruesome reverse, with griffith off “pursuing his dream” and
casca and guts “kid” being a literal part/reminder of griffiths absence
ooh good point. and also that is a reason i can get behind for guts being freaked out by the fetus in the black swordsman arc. obviously not authorially intended at that point and i don’t think it actually works wrt symbolism, but emotionally i dig it
also yeah lol that scene is like 3 pages of quiet domesticity and i think it disturbs me more than anything else in berserk
course a lot of that is what i bring to the table with my berserk is about heteronormativity and repression hot takes but yk, still
Sorry I ran out of characters in the last post so I’ll continue from
here: And in the dream sequence where Griffith imagined Casca was his
wife and Guts was there child? Did you think that what happened in the
wagon was Griffith attempting to rape Casca and was the dream sequence
suppose to reveal ANY sort of feeling he had for her? What do you think
is the case and why?
I definitely don’t think the wagon scene or the dream sequence (I call
it a nightmare lol) suggest that Griffith has feelings for Casca. And I
don’t think the scene in the wagon was a rape attempt, because I mean
for one Griffith stopped when Casca told him to stop, so yk, qed lol,
but also because I think it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse
rape, rather than like, a sneak preview. It’s an offer, the only way he can make that offer without the ability to speak.
Griffith is at his absolute lowest point here. He’s lost everything that he perceives gives him worth, and Wyald’s just literally and metaphorically stripped away his last lingering ability to deny this. He overheard Casca tell Guts she wants to be held right before the wagon scene, and as Casca is bandaging his hand she reflects on how Griffith could always comfort her with just a hand on her shoulder – but now it’s her turn to do that.
So imo Griffith is offering himself to Casca for two reasons:
1. He desperately wants to be this person again:
She’s shaking, she wants comfort, and Griffith wants to be the strong leader who can ease her trembling.
It’s a way he’s denied his vulnerability in the past:
But he’s simply no longer able to be this person.
It’s a humiliating, and depressing reversal of their roles, emphasizing how far Griffith’s fallen.
2. It’s sexual for one or both of these reasons:
Guts and Casca just had comfort sex. As a failed attempt at initiating comfort sex, the contrast highlights Griffith’s removal from their new dynamic. Also, since Griffith knows they’ve hooked up, this could be an attempt to insert himself into that dynamic and redress the balance because he’s afraid of being left behind.
What may be a harder sell depending on your reading of Griffith but makes the most sense to me is that frankly, Griffith is desperate. Wyald just gave the Hawks a run-down of how fucked he is for life – he can no longer be the Hawks’ hope for the future, and he can’t even live on his own. He’s been hiding behind that hawk mask, clinging to the last vestiges of his image (like when he asked Guts for his armour), and now that’s gone. If someone doesn’t take care of him, he’s dead. Griffith is someone who judges his worth by what he can be to other people, and now in his eyes he’s nothing but a burden with tens of thousands of corpses worth of guilt hanging over him.
And kind of hammering this point home for the reader, outside the wagon Judeau is backing up Griffith’s own depressing image of himself too – he’s telling Guts to take Casca and run because otherwise she’ll basically end up stuck taking care of Griffith, while he himself offers to take Griffith with him because he feels like he owes Griffith. And after this scene, Casca cries because she feels like she can’t leave Griffith behind, even though she wants to leave with Guts.
Ironically, considering what Griffith overhears right after, Guts is the only person who actually wants to stay with Griffith now, as he keeps trying to tell the people who keep telling him to leave lol:
So, imo Griffith’s offering sex to Casca mostly because it’s something he can offer that still
potentially has worth – it’s something he can give in exchange for being
taken care of.
Casca was in love with him, and lbr Griffith knows that, so this is theoretically something she might want.
And Griffith like, sees sex as transactional. It’s something he can trade to those with more power than him, who can give him something he needs. Money, with Gennon. A kingdom, with Charlotte. And here it’s Casca, for security – plus maybe Guts. So imo trading sexual favours absolutely seems like something Griffith would fall back on if he’s desperate.
And this leads right to Griffith’s hallucinatory nightmare after he overhears Casca telling Guts to leave – he’s envisioning the life he just asked for, believing Guts intends to leave, and it’s fucking horrific.
Griffith is living in what seems like a state of permanent dissociation. Guts is out there, still pursuing his own dream, totally out of their lives.
You mentioned the child being Guts, as in a surreal nightmare, but I think he’s just intended to be named after him. The “he” swinging his sword out there somewhere who Casca mentions would be the actual Guts, and this – blondish – kid is presumably Griffith and Cacsa’s.
imo a p disturbing way of underscoring that Guts is gone but far from forgotten.
Anyway yeah to me this whole sequence reads like Griffith grasping at the last straws available to him.
So to basically just sum up My Take on all this:
Griffith offers himself to Casca in the wagon both to try to reclaim a piece of his past self, and in an attempt to secure his future by offering Casca something she wants. And imagining that future, sans Guts, drives him to suicide.
So like, I don’t think it’s indicative of Griffith having any romantic feelings for Casca. It’s more a painful illustration of Griffith’s current powerlessness and desperation.
In case you want to read more lol, I talk about these scenes more thoroughly and with more context and build up in like the first half of the fourth part of this Griffith analysis.
you're the only one 