straight up, he would’ve murdered casca. like no doubt in my mind, basically the whole point of the chapters between the hill of swords and the rpg group catching up to him is to tell the reader that without the rpg group casca would not have lasted much longer w/ guts.
after he killed casca?
boring default answer: revenge rampage part 2 to distract himself from this new giant heap of guilt, now with more passive suicidal tendencies
better answer: behelit opens, he sacrifices griffith, everything comes full circle
best answer: revenge rampage part 2 to distract himself from this new giant heap of guilt, but he feels like he’s just as bad as griffith/femto now and ends up joining him after a confrontation (and probably sex as a substitute for uh “giving him a heap of raw iron” lbr). all the thematic stuff about inner monsters becoming literal outer monsters is a build up to guts as an example of a human just succumbing to his dark side without the help of a magic transformation
caveat to best answer: with griffith he may actually recover some of his “good” self, as he’s still an echo of that last glimmer of the whole campfire in his chest metaphor, and depending on what’s going on with neogriffith internally they could end up both sort of balancing light and dark. would also fit neatly with the way the apostles do under ngriff’s influence, but this would be the emotional version rather than the metaphysical one lol.
Whether by accident or design (since yk from the sounds of it Miura wrote the first chapter or two before really figuring out where he wanted to go with the story) I actually consider the opening few pages to be very in character lol, which might be an unpopular opinion, idk.
Consider: it fits perfectly into Guts pattern of self-destructively doing whatever it takes to get close enough to his enemy to blow their head off. He’s deliberately let monsters throw him around, break bones, shove him through walls, eat him, and stab him just so he can maneuver himself into position to take them out. This is an apostle that likes to fuck her victims, ergo.
It also like… actually I’d never thought about this before so bear with me bc this is going to get rambly, but damn it’s actually perfect, because it also makes the connection between Guts’ sex related issues and his stupid monster fighting rampage very direct on page one.
Like if that’s not purposeful then Miura accidentally hit it out of the park with our intro to Guts. But actually it’s gotta be purposeful. Even if it’s just to equate Guts’ particularly phallic violence (big sword, shoving his fist into the monster’s mouth mid-sex and blowing her head off) to sex right off the bat because Miura wants to like… well I think it’s part of what Miura wanted to kind of examine. Swords are dicks in Berserk, just like they’re dicks in a lot of action stories. But what does that mean – why? What’s the connection between violence and sex that makes that imagery fit?
And the answer here is Guts’ rape trauma. Liiiiike ok I completely think that Guts lashes out at enemies, particularly enemies that are bigger and stronger than him, particularly monsters once he learns they exist, because of that trauma. He is very driven to destroy anything that scares him, and that’s the root of it. Monsters scare Guts, we see this very viscerally during the first Zodd encounter and the Wyald encounter, and (particularly after he abandons his emotional support in the snow) Guts is driven to destroy them.
So like on one level Guts fucking the apostle is like, a hook for the dudes and a surface image for Miura to unravel: cool manly action hero bangs chicks and kills monsters, sometimes at the same time! On a character level, it’s a self-destructive strategy to get close enough to kill her because Guts absolutely isn’t the kind of cool hero who regularly bangs chicks, he’s the kind of dumbass who would do anything to kill a monster. And potentially on a thematic level it’s a story opening that primes the audience to equate sex and sex related issues to Guts’ monster killing revenge rampage, ie set up for an undertone of Guts lashing out not because he’s righteously angry or a hero who protects the innocent and kills evildoers, but because he’s traumatized and killing monsters makes him feel better.
(god that panel is gr8 shorthand for everything i want to say lol)
Or idk maybe it’s not that deep. But damn it now I’m definitely going to include this scene in the next big meta post I write about Guts, his dream, trauma, and his relationship with Griffith.
Anyway I definitely 100% believe the first bit I said, about it being in character for Guts because it’s a self destructive ploy to kill her. The trauma theme stuff is more of a stretch but it’s worth thinking about.
(Also lol @ Guts being faithful to Casca when he left her to rot in a cave for two years. I mean they had sex once and the last significant interaction they had before the Eclipse was Casca essentially breaking off whatever form of relationship they’d begun.
I feel like people reach for that bc they need an explanation for why cool badass protagonist Guts is basically celibate and has never expressed attraction to a woman other than casca (and tbqh casca’s debatable), but honestly it’s cause he’s gay.)
Honestly, Black Swordsman Guts, especially in the Black Swordsman arc (tho he’s also p good in the Lost Children arc). The way he starts out as the epitome of the asshole antihero out for revenge and that image almost immediately starts crumbling until you’re shown that he’s terrified and pathetic and not a whole lot better than the monsters he’s fighting and really sad about a bad breakup.
The way he opens the story by banging an apostle on page one and eventually you realize that is one of a grand total of two occasions on which he’s had consensual sex. The way he ends the first arc crying after a kid swears vengeance against him. The end of the first chapter when he tortures the snake apostle and the art and tone shift to make Guts the villain and the monster the pitiable victim. Encouraging children to kill themselves because he’s upset. Refusing to admit how monstrous he’s getting when he gets temporarily possessed. Letting a zombie kid stab him.
The driving mystery of why Guts is so obsessed with revenge followed by the reveal that it’s because he had a relationship comparable to marriage with the dude he wants to kill and Griffith didn’t just betray him, they betrayed each other and like half of Guts’ motivation is guilt/distracting himself from guilt.
The way his current situation, haunted by monsters claiming ownership of him after being given to them by someone he loves reflects his childhood so effectively.
I mean yeah part of what makes Black Swordsman Guts great is what the Golden Age reveals about him too, but I’ll still take Black Swordsman over the happy Golden Age version.
For one thing, when Black Swordsman Guts is a dick, the narrative is very clear on that being a negative thing. While when Golden Age Guts is a dick (eg most of his scenes with Casca) it feels like we’re supposed to find that at least somewhat endearing. And also like… I just really, really love the way Miura starts Guts out as strong badass archetype and then immediately sets about complicating it by answering the question of: what would make a real human person this fucking over the top and ridiculous? What’s actually underneath the cool image?
Like Guts goes from badass mccool 80s action hero send up to being directly compared to Vargas in terms of how sad and pathetic he is within a couple chapters, and it’s So. Good.
Answer to your second question under the cut
This question… is actually a very tough call lol. Like yeah okay the smart money’s on the character whose introduction didn’t include a gratuitious rape scene, but I genuinely love Femto regardless? Mostly because I disregard that choice of intro since it was um Badly Written lol, and Femto had me at
And I just love dark inner monsters as a concept in general despite the author’s reliance on rape as his primary illustration of evil.
On potential alone I’d go with NeoGriffith, because boy he is full of potential to be amazing depending on where those hints about his feelings, isolation of being a singular god, etc go. But what we actually see from him is like… so bland 99% of the time. Like yeah that’s purposeful, that’s a big part of the point, but still. He does feel like a shell of the old Griffith, literally – the outside with v little of the depth (so far).
I can headcanon and theorize a bunch to make him interesting to me, and I do, but idk if that counts lol.
So as for what we’ve got on the page and how seeing him makes me feel, I’m actually going to pick Femto. Like, the same way I inwardly cheered when we saw Guts’ slasher smile at Godo’s after he killed the pig apostle, because it was such a “he’s baaaaaack” moment, I cheered when we saw Femto confront Ganeshka. I love his stupid offensive camp villain makeup, I love his stupid exoskeleton, I love what a petty asshole he is, I love how silent and scary he was when he first appeared and I love how awkward and pathetic he was when he lowered his hand and let Guts escape, I love that he expresses emotions, I love that Void had to basically tell him to shut up during his petty back and forth with Guts in his first scene, and I love him partially out of spite because Miura tried to make me hate him in the shittiest way possible.
Like yeah okay put your super gay character in vampy makeup and make him a rapist to piss off the manly protag while writing out the woman you have no idea what to do with, fuck you I love him anyway.
I have a tendency to love the characters the narrative goes above and beyond to try to get me to hate, because I don’t like being told what to do lol, and if I feel like the narrative is pushing me to feel something without properly selling it/while poorly and/or offensively illustrating it I get contrary. Like basically the Eclipse rape only made me feel hate for Miura. If I hated Femto for it, then I feel like I’d be validating Miura’s bad and offensive writing.
Which is not to say I don’t fully understand and respect people who do respond to the Eclipse by hating Femto. This is just how I personally respond to fiction lol.
lol sorry anon i’ve gotta be honest, I didn’t watch this because the odds of my sense of humour meshing with a berserk parody are extremely low, especially going in completely blind.
not to discourage you or anyone from sending me links to stuff they think i’d enjoy, i appreciate it, but i rarely watch fandom related youtube videos in general and berserk fandom has me extra wary ngl
I think that’s a reasonable way of reading their relationship.
The Beast of Darkness is definitely pretty overt about suggesting that Griffith is Guts’ first choice, calling him his “true light” while Casca gets grouped in with the RPG group as “warm lights,” as well as suggesting that Griffith is more “precious” to him than Casca.
And ofc I definitely agree that Griffith is Guts’ number one choice. Casca I’m less sure about, I think she was more torn between them and maybe ended up prioritizing Guts by the end, when she told him to leave to pursue his dream. But that’s p ambiguous.
My own opinion on Guts and Casca’s feelings for each other is that they’re… complicated lol, but imo genuine romantic love doesn’t really enter into it. I don’t enjoy their relationship so I’m biased ofc, but I do think Miura was like, conscientious about portraying their relationship as a more low-key realistic hookup between friends, rather than burgeoning true love, and motivated by a number of complex feelings and factors other than straightforward romance.
Like both rebounding from Griffith, “licking wounds” and comforting each other after experiencing some extreme self-destructive feelings, genuinely liking each other as friends by now, the fact that Guts saved Casca and Casca feels like she owes him the same way she wanted to be Griffith’s sword after he saved her (Casca pointing out Guts’ scars from the 100 man fight when he saved her then, and asking for a wound in return), Judeau’s heavy-handed manipulations pushing them together, Guts inviting Casca along for sex while prioritizing his dream (”I don’t know whether you’ll get in the way of what I want to do or the opposite”), Guts letting Casca comfort him the way Griffith didn’t, etc.
Additionally I think that their hookup serves as a distraction for Guts, a way to continue repressing the realization that he fucked up when he left for as long as possible because accepting that he ruined everything because he was wrong about Griffith’s feelings is… not easy lol, and this is shown in how he invites her along and still intends to leave the Hawks again, rather than rethinking things based on new information and deciding to stay this time. It takes him like four days to finally accept that he shouldn’t’ve left.
And post-Eclipse I think Guts sticks with Casca in part because of what the Beast of Darkness suggests, that she’s a reminder of the pain Griffith caused, and in part because he wants to try to move on from Griffith now that NGriff has soundly rejected him, and in part because he’s longing for a piece of his happy past and that’s what Casca represents, and in part to atone for abandoning Griffith the first time, and in part because she’s his friend and comrade and he wants to help her.
So like, basically tl;dr I think they care about each other, but the romance aspect did end up being forced and I would’ve liked their relationship a lot more if they’d stayed platonic friends, and it probably would’ve been better for them too.
Also I headcanon them both as gay and repressed lol, and I think the story makes that fairly easy to do, which is nice.
i linked a few related posts under the cut if you happen to be interested
BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC
I want to see it animated so bad. I wish the 97 anime had done it, because honestly the style would’ve suited the subject so well, and also for vid purposes it would be so damn useful to have black swordsman and golden age all animated in the same style and not missing any super significant scenes (lookin at you, ovas).
also I want to see petty bitter ex femto animated, and i want to hear his voice.
the first time i saw a gif of that moment i spent a few days assuming it was someone’s joke edit ngl, like not only is it completely ooc but it also just looks hilarious and ridiculous
anyway from what I saw of the hill of swords reunion in the anime they made griffith look sinisterly evil and kind of pissed off the whole time too so yeah, just add that to the long list of reasons the newer anime sucks
The line between think and desperately, desperately hope is thin lol, but yes. Also completely agree that the best outcome would be Guts killing one or more of his friends himself in beast of darkness mode.
The theory I’ve been pushing and will continue to push until Miura proves me wrong is that Casca’s ptsd despair is going to open the behelit, she’ll choose to become an apostle, and consequently Guts will succumb to the armour in his grief and outrage. Also symbolically it’s nice because something has to cause Guts to lose himself to the armour, we know this because of fifty pieces of foreshadowing, and Casca becoming a monster would work great for that since she basically symbolizes his tie to his humanity right now.
But anyway, whatever ends up happening, I hope it really shakes things up, raises the stakes, and causes serious permanent consequences, because we need a dose of darkness soon imho, and Guts’ fix Casca quest ending in tragedy would just… work so perfectly for me. I want it so bad lol.
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.
tyvm, I appreciate the message! honestly Berserk fans can get so vile with like, some of the shit you mention like rape jokes. not surprising considering the canon, but unfortunate, and I’m glad I can help provide an alternative.
also I’m tacking this on bc it’s a similar topic and I’m trying not to spam everyone’s dash lol:
all of this …. and it’s baffling to me how
many workarounds ppl come up with to argue the opposite
god same, it’s to the point where people might as well have their fingers in their ears going ‘la la la.’
like
the sheer number of berserk fans who don’t acknowledge/actively deny
that, say, Griffith valued Guts more than his dream, or Guts left the
Hawks to become Griffith’s friend and not to like, escape his sinister thrall lol, is mind
boggling. these aren’t interpretations, these are cold hard facts
directly stated many times.
like eg because I read the tv tropes
page before re-reading the manga for the first time in years I went in
assuming most of what I love about it (ie Griffith and Guts’
overwhelming feelings for each other) was subtext and just one potential
interpretation of many, rather than like, the hammered home point of
the story lol.
It really does feel like there are two completely different stories out there. And some of it is probably bc of scanlations, and anime vs manga fans, etc, but still. the fundamentals of the story remain the same, but you wouldn’t know it looking at fandom.
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!
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’ve never really paid attention to the difference between the manga art and color pages/covers, other than enjoying the oil pastel look, but yeah w/ those examples I do see a difference. Maybe it’s the medium, or just spending more time and effort on the covers. Idk art is a mystery to me lol.
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.
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.
This is the exact opposite of my opinion, up to and including the bit about the noses which are legit my favourite part of the character designs in the ovas lol.
i have posted 0 fics but i am in the process of writing multiple fics
I’ve got a couple short ones that I might even post soon, and a few medium length ones that I’m hoping to like, finish. It’s looking good at least like I’m over halfway done on some of them. I’ve got a finishing things problem, but I’ve been extra tenacious in the Berserk fandom for some reason so it’s promising.
oh i did make a vid one time if you’re interested in Berserk related creative endeavours in general, tho fair warning my song choice is ridiculous
this is a cop out but I honestly have no idea lol. Charlotte as a character, as far as I can tell, is uniformly weak and reticent except when she finds inner strength specifically through her feelings for Griffith lmao, so there’s no precedent for how she’d react if she learns about the Eclipse rape/Griffith being an evil demon in general. Surprisingly resilient and able to take action (even if only to leave) because she’s grown up a lot? Another 2 years of despondent moping? Who knows? Plus I can’t imagine how Miura would handle that subject, but I expect it would not be well.
So I’m just going to say Charlotte runs away with Anna. Hey she’s already been framed as a better alternative to Griffith once:
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.
you're the only one 