mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
I’m just gonna rank them all:
and tbf the Fantasia arc could still come through for me depending on the direction it goes, so this ranking is subject to change.
Thank you!
Hmm I sort of do have a plan for a more extensive Guts-centric post, though I don’t think it would be as long as the Griffith one. Though like the Griffith one it would be largely about Guts’ dream and his relationship with Griffith.
And it would probably cover Black Swordsman – right before the Eclipse, with a shorter, more critical section or maybe follow up post on everything from the Eclipse on, because honestly I want to sit down and really hash out exactly how the Eclipse fails to knock down the thematic pins Miura had set up. Like even up to the Wyald chapters he has this perfect set-up going on, and then imo he mostly fails to utilize it during and after the Eclipse, and I keep kind of talking about it on my blog lol but only in broad strokes, I want to dig into it.
BUT that said most of it would be talking about how great Guts’ narrative is in the first two arcs, I wouldn’t let the criticism overwhelm it. And who knows, I might catch more interesting details when I look over everything again with this in mind and end up less critical than expected.
Yeah I really feel like the Eclipse just, hugely cheapened just about everything that was interesting about Guts in the Black Swordsman arc by putting all the focus on a) how someone else’s pain affects Guts and b) like you said, the suggested emasculation of Guts watching someone else give his girlfriend an orgasm. And that might be seen as an uncharitable take on the scene lol but Casca’s arousal seriously is the central visual focus, and it’s what the rape scene builds up to, and it remains all about Guts’ feelings, and it’s so simultaneously offensive and just… cheap and boring.
It straight up mystifies me how Miura decided to add g*tsca for more Eclipse drama (ie the rape scene) and somehow didn’t realize that not only does the Eclipse not require any additional drama, but it overwrites the actual drama the Eclipse should’ve had as a personally traumatizing event to Guts. It’s just so frustrating lmao.
Wrt the fetus you can kind of tilt your head and still see it as a symbol for the futility of revenge – in hindsight now it’s more like a haunting reminder of Guts abandoning Casca – but it doesn’t work nearly as well because in the BS arc it’s visually depicted as a representation of like, Guts’ own inner demon – the pathetic monstrousness left when revenge consumes the rest of you.
So you have things like Guts’ nightmare where it’s chasing him which is echoed in his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s Donovan chasing him, and then echoed again in his vision after killing Adonis where it’s Zodd/Donovan/himself. How’s that supposed to work thematically if the fetus is a symbol of a relationship/his humanity lmao? Or the vision Guts had of the fetus with Vargas’ face?
And I mean I love the Beast of Darkness bc i’m easy for evil dark sides lol, but honestly the vibe the fetus had in the BS arc was better, because of that patheticness. It wasn’t cool, it wasn’t powerful, it was just sad, like the Vargas parallels.
Anyway ty for this ask and giving me an opportunity to complain some more, I’m glad you agree.
lol no, I know I’d cheer if half the rpg group died. I mean I’m fond of Farnese, Serpico, and Puck when he’s not interacting with Isidro, and it would be ridiculous and terrible if Casca died after everything, but everyone else could be horribly killed off next update and I’d be overjoyed. I’m dying for a dark shake up of Guts’ narrative, and I have virtually no emotional attachment to anyone except the characters I listed.
And even the ones I do like I’d be willing to sacrifice for the sake of more of what I love about Berserk, ie grimdark violence, characters making disastrous choices because that grimdark violence has meaningfully impacted them, and homoeroticism.
I’m not really sure what you mean by your first sentence, sorry. Otherwise, idk I think it’s surprising how much convincing it took Griffith to make the sacrifice, like, I would’ve completely understood and still found him sympathetic if he took the Godhand up on their offer instantly lol and instead it took a chapter and a half of manipulative guilt tripping.
Also the Godhand don’t seem to care much about Guts as an enemy so idk if they’re really plotting against him, but calling Griffith is a puppet of the Idea of Evil/Fate/whatever does seem accurate. Maybe even Void too, he seems like he could be scheming something.
lol i haven’t watched it. i’ve seen i think the first few episodes from the second season – hill of swords to the fight outside flora’s house iirc – and I feel like that’s more than enough for me.
it brings nothing new to the table as far as i can tell (well, i’ll give them the sexy soulful sax music while guts contemplates griffith’s ass, that was a bold and exciting choice) and everything about it varies from lacklustre to immensely disappointing in execution.
also i respect wanting to adapt a part of berserk that isn’t the golden age but when the fuck am i gonna get to see the black swordsman arc animated??? that should be priority number one i m h o
Ooh this is an interesting question, ty!
I wouldn’t change either Guts or Griffith’s backstories tbh, I think they’re actually pretty well done, and important to their characters and narratives without being the be all end all. Well, I’d like to make Gennon less of an evil gay stereotype and Donovan less of a scary black man stereotype but yk, other than those details the existence of rape in their backstories isn’t something I’d change.
With Casca… tough call. Her story is all about gendered violence to the point where if you got rid of the rape attempts you’d have to come up with a whole new story for her. But it’s still a shallower and less well-rounded depiction of abuse than either guts or griffith’s backstories, bc it’s so emphatically gendered, like, rather than informing her personality or her choices it’s just framed as being a woman.
So actually I guess for Casca what I’d change is (actually pretty obviously lol) her motivations. She’s not in love with Griffith, she idealizes his dream because she knows he wants to dismantle those power structures that fuck her over and create a place where those w/ power can’t easily abuse their power over others. She hates Guts not because she’s jealous of him (tho she could still be jealous of his emotional closeness with Griffith, like she’d still admire Griffith here even if she’s not in love with him and I like that rival dynamic), but because she recognizes that he could end up destroying Griffith’s dream.
Also I think we can still cut out most of the rape threats she gets while still showing that she has something to fight against. Maybe keep Adon being a gross dick (in all fairness he kind of mirrors Gennon towards Griffith which kind of shows how they’re fighting for the same dream – ie a world where those kinds of dudes are shut down) but have Casca just fighting for her life rather than against rape attempts as she runs from the 100 man fight.
So nothing really changes much until Guts comes back from his vacation. And now Casca is genuinely, genuinely angry and hateful towards him, because he did exactly what she’s been afraid he was going to do – destroyed Griffith’s dream, and her hope for a better future.
Which means they don’t have sex lol, Casca was never into Guts, they began a friendship towards the end of the war but nothing more. And now that Guts has come back Casca is actively hostile to him, though after Guts lets her stab him she probably forgives him a bit bc it’s not like he intended to destroy absolutely everything, and he’s clearly fucked up about it.
Also no suicide attempt.
So their dynamic during the rescue mission is resentful allies, like a throwback to their first three years knowing each other.
Wyald still happens but no attempted rape w/ Casca obviously.
Now when it comes to the Eclipse, I want it to be all about Guts, and I want it to hit the audience over the head with parallels to his childhood. It’s the Eclipse, it doesn’t need to be subtle. Rather than looking wistful when Griffith sacrifices everyone, I want Guts to look betrayed, I want him to look just as sad and horrified as he did when he was 11 and Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan.
Agh I’d hate to lose the creepy silent monster vibe from Femto, but something like a cold, “you’re still alive?” would be v fitting w/ the “you should have died” parallels. Tho idk I’m torn on that.
And ok I said I want it to be all about Guts but I can’t just kill off Casca. But if she’s gonna live the Eclipse needs some serious personal meaning for her too. So maybe her reaction to being sacrificed, knowing it’s for the dream she’s dedicated her life to and in theory she should be willing to give her life for it, and trying to reconcile that with the horrificness of the situation and her desperate desire to survive anyway. So she survives long enough for Femto to show up, because she’s not the third best fighter in the Hawks for nothing, and then…
torture? Femto has monsters hold Guts down and tortures Casca in a way reminiscent of a kid pulling the wings off a fly. She loses an arm, Guts keeps his because he’s too busy being utterly terrified and possibly flashbacking to hack his own arm off in a rage.
Like, one thing about the Eclipse rape, is that if Miura had to have it as a way of emotionally affecting Guts, how the fuck did he manage to draw like two chapters of awful awful shit with Guts being held down by monsters that he’d just watched rape Casca, and completely fail to allude to Guts’ own rape trauma? How. Hooooow it’s mind boggling. It’s absurd.
But you don’t even need the graphic rape for that, like hell, Miura has absolutely adequately set up the correlation between giant monsters Guts is compelled to fight and his own childhood trauma imo to justify Guts having a very emotional traumatic reaction to just being held down and made helpless by monsters after being essentially given to them.
There’s Black Swordsman Guts in a nutshell, and this is exactly what was implied to have caused him to go full traumatized amoral asshole. Before g*tsca was a gleam in Miura’s eye all he had were those parallels to Guts’ childhood trauma – Guts being given away to monsters by someone he trusted – and that’s all he needed.
So anyway, because Casca lives, she has her own reaction to being casually tortured by Femto before being rescued, which is also a replay of her childhood trauma but without the agency of killing her attacker herself with a sword. So her reaction could very well be similar to Guts’ – a desire to kill monsters and get revenge. Maybe she’s lost her idealism wrt the dream, and she’s more cynical now – a better world is impossible, best you can do is survive this one.
She and Guts go their separate ways because they’re barely friends, let alone lovers, and remember 2 brands = big ghost problems.
After this the narrative splits 3 ways between NGriff, Guts, and Casca.
I’m reaching the limits of my creativity lol. So I’m just gonna suggest that Guts gets the behelit, Casca gets the armour and the rpg group, Casca gets the moving on arc and hooks up with Farnese while maybe finding a happy medium between changing the world and lashing out against the world, and Guts succumbs to his inner darkness and gets a highly emotional confrontation with Griffith. Since he has the behelit maybe he uses it upon realizing that Griffith’s heart is still beating for him, bc the emotional conflict is just too much, and sacrifices Griffith to become a Zodd-esque apostle wandering battlefields and fighting for no reason, basically returned to his pre-Griffith state.
It’s probably shorter than 355 chapters too lbr. I’d say NGriff creates Falconia right before the confrontation with Guts, so yk he achieves his dream b4 ironically getting sacrificed. Otherwise his story doesn’t change much. Maybe stronger suggestions that he’s not as unemotional as he looks, to build up to a guts confrontation better.
Like… I’m not a very creative or good writer lol but I feel this general outline could be written in a very good and satisfying way by someone with talent, like Miura.
I definitely take questions and prompts and stuff into consideration and as inspiration, but tbh I think I’d have to disappoint you on this one bc this is way outside my area of expertise. I’m more film studies than history lol, if I tried to write this I’d never be able to do it justice.
I appreciate you asking though, and I hope someone who knows more history than I do does write something like this because it would be interesting to read.
mmm I’d have to go with the 97 anime. I appreciate the ovas and how in one or two ways they actually manage to improve on the source material (i’m thinking griffith going to charlotte after guts leaves) and how despite making terrible adaptation choices they do manage to largely emphasize what i like about the story (ie griffguts) and indicate that despite yk, cutting most of griffith’s character, they do understand him to an extent (eg subtly showing that he’s bullshitting when he says he feels nothing towards gennon by having him back his horse away when gennon touches him).
the anime is different in that I don’t think the creators really like what I like about the manga or have the same understanding of it as me, but it’s also a much more faithful adaptation overall, so by virtue of that it’s still better. everything it changes from the manga is for the worse, but it doesn’t change all that much, and it gets some key moments very right in contrast to the ovas (eg the moment griffith chooses to sacrifice the hawks. the anime did it perfectly by copying the manga exactly, while the ovas made griffith look like a sinister scheming villain lol).
plus in the dub at least (i still haven’t rewatched the sub to that point) griffith lists “love” as one of the feelings he has towards guts that he’s been obsessing over in the torture chamber, and i can’t deny i fuckin love that.
also yk it includes the naked waterfight and griffith’s backstory and motivation.
like i have a lot of nitpicky beefs with the anime and I’d never consider it a legit alternative to the manga lol, but it’s still a pretty good adaptation.
lol sorry this ended up being posted a day later
lmao things heating up in the berserk/rpdr modern au fandom
no worries! it’s a fun discussion lol even if lots of it goes over my head.
seisans
replied to your post “I think he‘d like pearl from season 7, she‘s not as extroverted as…”
idk maybe .. i don’t see him being super into look queens + she’s like. a stoner, which i don’t think is his gig. he might appreciate her aesthetic
i can only facilitate discussion rather than contribute lol but thoughts, anyone?
I mean, that’s like… I was gonna say ‘fair’ but it’s not rly fair to you lol, you shouldn’t feel guilty about liking a good super interesting relationship just bc the mangaka thinks gratuitious rape and rape attempts are gr8 ways to illustrate evil. It makes sense to feel that way, but yk, it sucks.
So like I know it’s easy to say “idc bc it’s fiction” and that probably doesn’t help you because you already know it’s fiction. But I do think it’s good to bear in mind that the only person who has any say in what happens to Casca in the story is Miura, so you shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying some elements of his story just because he likes to go full grimdark at other times.
Also like, while I personally am fine with just saying “it’s fiction so idgaf, I’ll take what I like and dismiss what I don’t,” it doesn’t work for everyone, but an extra like… point that might help you reconcile liking characters who do terrible things is that these two terrible things in particular are bad and genuinely offensive writing lol.
Like it’s probably easier to say “fuck the Eclipse rape idc” when you see it as hugely gratuitous, offensively depicted, contradictory in some ways to earlier canon***, wholly unnecessary, thematically muddy, and kind of disturbingly downplayed in the future for the sake of depicting NeoGriffith as a morally ambiguous hero of his own story (and Miura has straight up said that NGriff is supposed to be morally ambiguous and heroic depending on your pov lol).
Guts sexually assaulting Casca is also unnecessary (trying to murder her seems like it would be a sufficient illustration of darkness), super misogynist in that we’re still supposed to support Guts afterwards and sympathize with him and his guilt moreso than Casca, not to mention homophobic since it’s all about his (super suggestively described by the hound) feelings for Griffith.
So yk, these things may be canon but they suck and if dismissing them makes me enjoy the story more that seems like the best course of action.
And finally, if none of that helps at all, it’s worth taking into account that these are Griffith and Guts’ magical evil alter egos at work. Canonically Femto is the worst aspects of Griffith, magnified by literal evil, with the rest of him burned or shattered away. The last thing Griffith did as a character was sacrifice the Hawks. Everything else has just been a magically augmented part of him.
Guts’ Beast of Darkness similarly is part of Guts, not all of him, and it’s also given strength by Guts’ existence on the interstice, thanks to the Brand. That’s why Flora’s magic seal of protection on the brand helped like, metaphorically chain it up in Guts’ subconscious.
One of Berserk’s main thematic points is that everyone has an inner darkness in them, it’s part of being human, so it’s not that Guts and Griffith are singled out as extra evil.
As pure unmagical humans, Guts and Griffith are just interesting complicated people, neither saints nor demons, with an intense relationship, and imo there’s plenty of room for fluffy content between them pre-Eclipse, or in an AU. I mean canon has them bond during a naked waterfight lol, you know there are a ton of cute off-screen moments between them just waiting to be depicted in fanworks.
(With the caveat that Miura’s misogyny sometimes still shows through, eg Griffith’s night with Charlotte which is narratively treated as consensual even though she says “no” first (typical bodice ripper shit), or Guts sexually assaulting Casca by grabbing her boob to distract her during an argument which is treated as cute rather than fucked up. But yk, welcome to Berserk. Miura sucks.)
***eg in v brief one thing that bothers me is that in the Black Swordsman arc
it was strongly implied that Guts’ reaction to whatever made him so
angry at Griffith/Femto was paralyzing fear, whereas during the Eclipse
all we see is violent rage
tbh i’ve seen like a grand total of two episodes in my life lol so someone else is gonna have to contribute to this
but i support this au
ABSOLUTELY
lol i’m actually writing a thing right now that gets into that a little, tho it’ll be a while b4 i can post it
but yeah like femto specifically I would argue is essentially griffith’s guilt and self-loathing personified, just as the beast of darkness is guts’, and those feelings relate back to trauma for both of them.
For Guts it’s Gambino selling him and later telling him he’s cursed and evil and deserved it + the guilt of killing Gambino. This is v strongly visually suggested during his sewer nightmare right before he overhears Griffith’s promrose hall speech. Watches a monster kill gambino, then child!guts, then turns out the monster is himself. Voila. (also the trauma of the eclipse, buried guilt + self loathing wrt abandoning griffith leading to the eclipse, and his black swordsman sadism, traumatizing and killing children, etc, all makes the beast of darkness grow)
For Griffith it’s the guilt of the deaths of everyone who follows him and tbqh the deaths of people he kills too, and his self-loathing wrt “dirtying” himself in pursuit of his dream, so yk there’s trauma there too with Gennon. Also I think there’s a case to be made that the year of torture had a significant contribution to Femto’s existence, even if the psychological trauma of it isn’t rly discussed like the physical trauma is – I mean the mask he was forced to wear is incorporated into Femto’s design, that’s a big sign at least, plus the talk of darkness and feeling numb at the start of his torture chamber monologue which is echoed during his transformation into Femto.
idk basically strong yes imo, and i’m probably gonna come back and revisit this topic in greater detail eventually
Oh yeah totally, it basically sounds like the theme song of griffith assassinating his way to the throne. ty for the suggestion!
don’t ask me lol, I read him as 110% gay
I don’t even get how that would simplify anything lol, tbqh Griffith (and Guts) being gay would make the story make 50x more sense and also make it more complex.
But I mean we all know that “X can’t be gay that’s too simple/too reductive/you can’t reduce their relationship down to sexual attraction it’s more ~profound~ then that/X is beyond things like sexual orientation but also he’s straight/etc etc” is just badly disguised homophobia anyway.
…what is this a response to? Where did I suggest Casca was forced to stay with the Hawks?
The closest thing I can come up with is my tags on this post, which are referring to the fact that Casca is upset because she wants to leave with Guts and now feels like she can’t because of Griffith, and I think that’s pathetic writing that could be vastly improved if Casca was motivated by something other than men.
I mean if we’re talking about Casca’s term as leader of the Hawks, the text insists over and over again that she’s basically forced to lead them bc of her sense of duty and bc everyone just turned to her as their replacement for Griffith – Judeau tells Guts multiple times that leading the Hawks is terrible for her, we see that it drives her to suicide, and when the Hawks learn that Griffith isn’t going to recover they want Casca to keep leading them and Judeau tells them to stfu because they’re asking too much of her.
And I think Miura choosing to emphasize the toll leading takes on Casca emotionally is a shitty writing choice, especially compared to Griffith’s issues with leadership which are all about guilt, vs Casca’s which are all about how difficult it is.
Also like, are you saying I’m victimizing her by pointing out how often she needs to be rescued because she’s always conveniently feverish/on the verge of exhaustion/suicidal/up against someone so strong someone else has to step in/etc? There’s a well-known piece of writing advice: “show, don’t tell.” We’re told that Casca is the third best fighter in the Hawks who can defeat ten men. We’re shown Guts or Griffith rescuing her (or Guts easily defeating her) way, way more often than we’re ever shown her actual fighting skills.
This is a deliberate choice on Miura’s part, to shove Casca into the role of victim as often as possible despite what we’re told of her skills. I’m not dumping on a real woman who has a lot of bad luck lmao, I’m dumping on Miura’s misogynist writing.
Casca was a full character for about 90 chapters, in which she had to be rescued, let’s see… I count eight times: nobleman, guts, ch 15-21 (which could be counted as like 4 separate rescues but i’m being generous here), silat, suicide attempt, wyald, judeau during the eclipse (could be 2 separate times but let’s call it one), skull knight at the eclipse.
Compare it to the number of times we see Casca defeat her enemies
herself in those 90 chapters: Adon at Doldrey, the nobleman (after Griffith throws her a
sword), a few attempted rapists as she’s running from the 100 man fight
(before Judeau and co show up and get the rest for her), and one of the
Bakiraka assassins.
(I counted the nobleman in both categories lol bc Griff threw her a
sword and chopped off his ear first to interrupt the rape attempt, but
Casca finished him off and was also a kid so she gets points for that.
Just fyi.)
Or compare that to Guts, who is a full character throughout the whole 300+ chapters of story, and had to be rescued once when Griffith rode back for him after their first raid, once when Griff leapt in to save him from Zodd, a monster neither of them could actually defeat and it was actually fate that saved their asses, and once when Skull Knight showed up at the Eclipse. Oh, I suppose there was one time Gambino killed an enemy on the battlefield for him when he was like six. And Skull Knight didn’t save him from Slan, but he did save him from the subsequent cave collapse, so let’s be fair and count that too.
Versus an uncountable number of times he defeated his enemies himself.
Or compare it to human Griffith who is a character for about as long as Casca, and has to be rescued once after he’s tortured to the point of helplessness. Maybe twice if you include Zodd killing Wyald while Wyald’s holding him. And even after he’s physically helpless he manages to save the group once himself.
My point being that Miura chooses what to write, and he chose to write a ridiculous amount of situations where Casca needs to be rescued. He chose to make her a victim many many times even though she’s theoretically a highly accomplished warrior, and then he went all in and turned that into her entire character in the 250 chapters post-Golden Age, and I am absolutely gonna criticize that choice.
Finally, I often cite the way the Hawks fully respect and admire Casca as one of my favourite things about her character, and I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that she wasn’t hurt by Griffith and Guts lol, so i’m not sure why you brought those things up.
Kind of yes, kind of no lol.
I find Casca a very frustrating character because I think she had plenty of potential to be interesting, and we see brief flashes of that in canon, but Miura fucked her over at every turn, flattening her, making sure every aspect of her character revolved around men somehow, etc. Personally that potential is more than enough for me to love her, because I’m easy when it comes to angry women with swords lol, but that’s just me and my ability to ignore what I don’t like about canon.
For example, when she brought Guts up to that cliff by the waterfall so she could take her anger out on him by trying to murder him. The narrative never really acknowledges how utterly fucked up that was, it’s played off as Casca being a hysterical woman, but man in theory that is a very interesting, super dark character note.
Casca’s lack of independence is actually interesting to me too as a major character flaw. But again, it’s something that the narrative… doesn’t necessarily acknowledge, but rather seems to treat as the default role of a woman.
Like Miura’s misogyny is never more blatant than when it comes to how he writes Casca, and it sucks, but despite that he’s still a really good character writer, and that still shines through even with Casca. She has relatable moments, she has awesome moments, she has strong dialogue, moments that make me feel empathy, and interesting traits. I mean the most heart-wrenching part of the Eclipse imo was when we saw it through her point of view as she fought with Judeau. Miura’s writing still makes me feel real feelings for her, and I can’t not love a character I feel for lol, even if that writing fails her enormously in many other ways.
Like it blows that her motivation for joining the Hawks and becoming an incredible swordsman was being in love with Griffith, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s an incredible swordsman who can lead an army and it’s cool and badass. Like, it seriously blows that she’s almost 100% motivated by men – either being in love with them or fighting against their misogynist violence – but I can still read moments like her capture of Doldrey, or the way she can take command of the Hawks in moments of panic, and want to cheer for her. It blows that she’s always being depowered somehow so she can be rescued, but I can still read dialogue like “they say she can defeat ten strong men at once” and go ‘yeah that’s my girl’ lol.
BUT ALL THAT SAID like, I can completely understand being exasperated by her character too. Like, I personally can kind of… ignore how badly she’s often written and just take the parts I like and form my opinion based on that. But that’s not something anyone should be required to do, and her writing fucking sucks let’s be real.
No one should feel like they have to like her when she pretty much exists as an example of Miura’s misogyny, and when she is forced into the love interest role for the sole purposes of a) no homoing Guts and Griffith and b) getting horrifically and off-the-charts offensively fridged for Guts’ manpain. One of my pet peeves is people calling fans misogynist for disliking fictional women, cause like, the thing is she’s not real and hating her as a poorly written and often offensive fictional construct isn’t the same as hating a real woman, so yk, I support you lol.
Plus yeah I do think she’s often overrated in lots of fandom – a good chunk of Berserk fandom doesn’t acknowledge the enormous flaws in her writing, and does consider her to be genuinely a well-written ~strong female character~ lol. So yeah in that case I think she’s overrated. Though it might be more accurate to say Miura’s writing is overrated.
idk tl;dr I like Casca but her writing is so deeply flawed that I completely get disliking her.
I’m feeling it, mostly from Guts’ post-eclipse pov for some reason even though you’d think it would fit post 2nd duel Griffith best. Idk, either way it’s nicely fitting and depressing, ty.
ok i’m having a hard time responding to this bc frankly this reads as salty that i didn’t include her, but i want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just curious about my thoughts on Casca’s terrible way of dealing with her feelings.
so for the record I’m not obligated to do a version of every post i make for every character in berserk. i focused on guts and griffith bc
a) their shitty ways of dealing with their feelings drive the plot and are related to their dreams/coping mechanisms of choice and story arcs, unlike Casca’s which is entirely incidental and separate from her dream/coping mechanism (ie, supporting others’ dreams)
b) they parallel each other in several ways
c) i have more pages featuring guts and griffith’s denial/avoidance saved so I didn’t have to search for examples
and d) they’re my faves
but if you are just curious and i’m reading your tone wrong, then here you go: Casca is queen of lashing out imo
punching guts several times, attacking him by the waterfall, physically lashing out at corkus a few times, screaming in outrage a lot, and you could maybe argue her suicide attempt counts as lashing out against herself, but honestly i don’t think I’d count it based on how it was depicted.
but yeah to me this reads as less a carefully considered individualized and plot-and-theme-relevant character trait and more “haha women are so irrational, amirite?” on miura’s part so I’m hard-pressed to lay it all out like it’s a solid writing choice the way i did w/ the other two. I mean
come tf on Miura.
ooooh yeah ia this is perfect for them, and also wow this song is gorgeous, ty for telling me about its existence
yk what when you’re right you’re right
Seems like a fair take. I mean becoming Femto was very much shown as a rebirth – you could definitely say he was reborn into a new family, the godhand, to begin a new life. I always particularly loved this panel as an illustration for this ngl:
the very image of a newly hatched (evil) baby bird right there.
But yeah like, the chapter where the hand begins to unfold to reveal Femto is called “quickening” and the next chapter is “birth.” There’s no doubt it’s def a monstrous gestation thing.
Makes me wonder about NeoGriffith’s similar birth tbh. It gets a series of chapters titled “birth ceremony,” he hatches from an egg there too, rapidly grows from fetus to adult, etc.
Though we don’t know enough about NeoGriffith to conclude whether it means there’s significant differences between him and Femto/it’s another new start in a way. But I mean the parallels and contrasts between the Eclipse and the Conviction Arc’s shadow Eclipse were hammered through the reader’s head for a reason right? There’s got to be something to it.
Idk sometimes I have a problem where while I’m making a post and adding pictures, it takes a few seconds to upload during which the “post” button is yk unclickable. And sometimes it glitches out and won’t finish uploading, and it makes the post unpostable forever. Is that the problem you’re having?
Because my only solution is to save as a draft after adding every pic or two just to make sure if it does glitch on one of them I have most of the post saved. You might have to copypaste the text and start again with a new post, and try uploading the pics again.
If what I described isn’t the problem you’re having then idk you might just have to contact tumblr support. Good luck 🙂
To be fair almost every family in Berserk is either terrible or ends horribly, from blood relations to adopted families to found families. Give or take the found-family rpg group, Farnese and Serpico, and the suggested Casca Guts and moonlight kid thing, but I’m willing to bet on two out of three ending in tragedy there too. Overall I think it’s more a Berserk thing than a Griffith-specific thing.
But yeah Griffith doesn’t have a great track record there at all lol.
Oh hey yeah, true. That’s a clever little visual detail I never really paid attention to before, cool.
you're the only one 