You get a bit more info about the whole merging of the worlds thing in the next like 10-15 chapters, w/ Rickert
visiting Falconia and talking to Locus, and some dudes talking about how
the world was altered in Elfhelm, so if you want to just keep reading and draw your own conclusions then ignore the rest of this response.
But basically I think the idea behind it is that for humanity (including apostles) to unite and yk stop being dicks to each other on a grand scale, they need a common enemy. And merging the worlds allows humanity’s collective imagination into the real world, turning it into a high fantasy and giving humanity a shitload of their own nightmares to deal with as that common enemy.
I think Falconia is also a side effect of this – humanity, or at least Midland and co, collectively willed it into existence as a safe utopia with a bird theme because Griffith just saved the world and they all want him to lead them. There’s that historical memory/legend of Gaiseric’s empire, so this is like version 2.0.
Quick and easy way for Griffith to gain a utopian kingdom with full support of the vast majority of the people in it. Plus saving the world, turning it into high fantasy, and ruling the only peaceful kingdom in it kind of gives you carte blanche to do whatever you want. Societal expectations are out the window. Human Griffith as king probably would’ve faced huge obstacles when it came to gaining support and implementing even small changes in, say, how much power the nobility had, while NeoGriffith can do whatever the hell he wants.
There’s also the effect of allowing the Godhand to exist physically in the world, I think, which will probably turn out to be important. Does it grant them more power? Does it make them vulnerable? Both? Something else? idk yet but it’s intriguing.
yeah, big mood. I’ve kind of got some mixed feelings because I hate Isidro and I don’t want him to have more importance lol, and I dislike parenthood narratives in general, but it’s still so true that Guts could’ve had much more meaningful relationships with everyone in the rpg group, and it’s kind of glaring to me that he doesn’t.
idk I keep wondering if it’s just because I’m biased towards the golden age lol, if I’m willfully downplaying significant moments between Guts and his new group, or if the interesting aspects are there but subtle and I’m just failing to appreciate it, but idk I mean I’ve read the latter stuff twice or more recently and Guts’ new relationships leave me cold. imo the most interesting relationships in Guts’ narrative are between Farnese and Casca, Farnese and Serpico, and Schierke and Farnese. The one relationship Guts has to anyone that I feel any emotion about is Guts and Puck’s friendship, and that’s been almost dropped completely lol.
Like, I feel more genuine warmth and love between Guts and various random background raiders than Guts and anyone in the rpg group lol.
And I think it does actually make sense for that to be the case from a character standpoint – Guts deliberately keeping them at a distance because he’s been burned before when he lost people he cares about, because he doesn’t trust himself not to turn on them, because he still intends to drop them eventually and return to his revenge quest, etc – but if it is purposeful then I wish I could be shown that from Guts’ perspective. And not just through the Beast taunting him while he’s unconscious (eg ”make them precious to you, it’s all the more to lose”).
I want more moments of self-reflection and telling emotion from Guts, basically. Like, I would’ve loved to see, say, Guts starting to push Isidro too hard during swordfight training and then realizing what he’s doing with a bit of horror and ending it early. Or maybe Guts himself drawing a comparison between Farnese wanting to be useful and Casca wanting to be Griffith’s sword and being a little perturbed. Or in a positive direction, maybe include a scene on the boat where Guts thanks Serpico for stopping him from challenging Zodd with some similar language to the old staircase conversation. Or a million other possible examples of showing what Guts’ current relationships mean to him that I just feel we don’t really get.
ia, I think Guts and Serpico have a lot of potential for an interesting relationship dynamic, parallels, contrasts, both wrt their relationships and each other as individuals. Yk in the conviction arc serpico and farnese had some griffguts vibes (well everyone in the conviction arc did lol), they both have abusive childhoods that involved taking care of a parent and eventually killing them, they’re actually both relatively chill people but guts has a force of personality and a drive that serpico doesn’t have, idk there’s a lot of interesting comparisons to make imo.
tbh their relationship feels way shallower than it could, but honestly I feel the same way about most aspects of guts’ narrative from the millenium falcon arc on. so I’d love to see more development, but I’m not like counting on it lol.
(maybe it’s purposefully shallow to show that Guts isn’t really fully connecting with anyone in his new group. like guts and serpico dueled but… guts doesn’t really give a fuck. serpico saved guts from zodd but guts doesn’t really reflect on that or care. anything interesting between them is from serpico’s point of view, eg reflecting on how being around guts has changed him. guts just gets his bland little ‘hey thanks for the help you guys’ moment in elfhelm and that’s about it.
i’d like to think that’s a purposeful contrast to guts’ actual meaningful relationships of the golden age lol, buuuuuuut yeah right lol, that’s wishful thinking. miura’s just halfassing it.
it’s like guts going to get farnese back from her family. it’s nice, it makes me happy that guts values farnese, but what does that mean for guts? how does his relationship with farnese, or serpico, or schierke, or isidro, etc, make him feel? he likes them, he wants to protect them, but how do they fit in to his complex inner life? i can come up with a million ways griffith and the hawks reflected and refracted guts’ childhood for instance, but not the rpg group.
maybe the difference is that guts is now fulfilling gambino/griffith’s role. he’s switched from needer of attention to distant giver of attention. there are parallels there in theory, yk farnese’s admiration, teaching isidro to fight, casca/shizu similarities potentially, serpico comparing guts to fire/blazing inferno that is griffith, blah blah blah. but they also… don’t seem to emotionally affect guts much. like damn imagine if guts himself was making a comparison between himself and gambino and fearing his own potential to be a shitty abusive life ruiner. instead that all gets channeled into the beast of darkness stuff, easily blamed on a magic suit of armour, without a hint of awareness on guts’ part of the potential parallels there.
this is a real mood, and I’m ngl one of the bigger reasons I want Casca to use the behelit is because I feel like it’s the best way of totally destroying any possibility of them eventually getting together, while giving Casca an actually interesting role in the story.
I mean ofc my major fear is that whatever goes wrong (and something will, of that I have no doubt) won’t be enough to completely kill the ship and I’ll be stuck dreading it for the rest of Berserk.
And my other major fear is that g*tsca will be dead in the water as a potential future thing but Guts will end up 100% motivated by whatever happens to her/whatever she does/her trauma/etc, with his complicated feelings towards Griffith dropped. But I don’t think that’sall that likely.
But! I think there’s plenty of reason to maintain hope lol. Like in the context of Berserk a happy ending is probably not gonna be a return of the jedi style elfhelm party where guts and casca make out. A happy ending could be Guts dying with his humanity intact lol. It could be Guts’ whole life being a garbage fire, separated from Casca and the rest of his friends, but having a moment of emotional connection with Griffith and choosing not to kill him, thus saving his soul from hell or whatever. Or the next gen children being able to grow up in a slightly better world regardless of what happens to the adults.
Like I’m pretty sure any ending that isn’t “everyone dies and Guts goes to hell” counts as not grim.
Plus that’s from an interview back when he was still in the middle of the conviction arc
–Is it even possible that we’ll see a happy ending?
Miura: I’d say it’s possible. I used to have the
final moves planned out, but lately I’ve been thinking I’d rather figure
them out when I come to it, so now it’s hard to say what could happen.
Being the sort of person I am, though, I actually don’t think I could
let such a long grim story end with a grim ending — like, say, having
him suddenly die. I don’t really like that kind of entertainment. I’ll
leave it to my subconscious.
and it sounds pretty up in the air anyway. I feel like whatever we’ll get will lean more towards bittersweet than purely happy, especially since his example of a grim ending is “suddenly guts dies” lol. There’s plenty of room there, and Berserk hasn’t been grim for ages anyway.
Plus I think Guts and Farnese getting together at least is pretty unlikely after being overtly compared to Casca and her feelings for Griffith several times, and Guts has never expressed interest in her so it would come out of left field imo (not that that stops het ships, but yk, gives me hope).
Aaaaand lastly the vibe I get from Miura when it comes to romance is that he’s not interested in it and just gives all his female characters one-sided crushes because he doesn’t know what else to do with them lmao, so while I could definitely see a bunch of boring side pairings getting together at the last minute/children making significant eyes at each other so you know they’ll get married when they grow up, I doubt we’re gonna get anything like Guts and Casca resuming their relationship for the last quarter or so of the manga. If we do get more g*tsca content I feel like it’ll come in the form of a sad kiss before one of them dies or something.
I have this fear that Farnese is going to die in part to motivate Serpico so I’d prefer this to that ngl, tho I want both to live.
And it’s possible I guess, Serpico’s had less development than Farnese overall so he might be more expendable, and it would be kind of ironic if after Serpico being p much entirely motivated by wanting to protect Farnese, he was the one who got killed.
I wouldn’t really bet on it though, mostly bc at this point in Farnese’s narrative, I feel like it wouldn’t further her story much – she’s no longer as attached to Serpico as she had been, or dependent on him in any way, so all it would really do is make her angry or sad.
Tho actually now that I think about it what if things go wrong with Casca’s return and she ends up killing Serpico? (Uses behelit, sacrifices Farnese, apostles kill their sacrifices themselves from the looks of it so monster!Casca tries but Serpico leaps in to save Farny and dies instead, then Skull Knight bursts in like the kool aid man, does his thing w/ sealing the Godhand away, and everyone else manages to escape and survive. w/e) Like i’m js farnesca/griffguts parallels would be super fun.
Or yk it would still be kind of fitting if he died in some other circumstance by sacrificing himself for Farnese, but I think that would be pretty boring unless Casca killed him.
Based on like, plot set up stuff in the last few chapters, my guess is that there’s going to be a time skip when everyone leaves Elfhelm. Rickert will have spent the last 10 or however many years in the Bakiraka village, he’ll be a cool warrior/inventor, he’ll give everyone weapon upgrades lol, and yk, village full of super intense assassins who do nothing but train + a wizard = handy canon fodder allies.
Now ofc I’m hoping really really hard that doesn’t mean we’re just going a rote route of Guts and co leaving Elfhelm to attack Falconia/Griffith and hitting up the Bakiraka and Rickert along the way for allies and power ups lol. I mean god could you imagine anything more boring?
Guts is due to go Beast of Darkness, so another possibility is that whichever of his friends survive whatever goes down trail him on his way to kill Griffith, stop at the village along the way, swap Guts stories with Rickert, get power ups and allies, and then go kick Guts’ ass and try to bring him to his senses.
Then there’s my Void (probably but hell maybe Elfhelm, I got some vague hopes there) is the actual big bad theory and Rickert and co could end up being part of an enemies teaming up to fight the worse dude plot.
Anyway I guess regardless of the circumstances my answer boils down to Rickert probably being the archetypal helpful ally who
provides weapons, maybe helps fight, and knows more about Guts and Griffith than just
about everyone else (pending Casca’s narrative future) and so can potentially provide ~wise insight~ wrt how the past could inform the future.
And also since he visited Falconia and met NeoGriffith there he could also tell Guts what happened, though I didn’t get the impression that he discovered anything particularly insightful. Unless the fact that he was able to slap Griffith goes somewhere interesting.
Yeah assuming Casca both opens the behelit and then does actually make a sacrifice, I’m bracing for it to be Farnese even though that would be really disappointing and the last thing Berserk needs is fewer female characters going forward lol. But she does seem like the obvious candidate.
On the other hand my alternate theory is that she could sacrifice whatever entity counts as her fetus, whether it’s the demon fetus incorporated into NGriff or the Moonlight Boy or both or whatever. Most sacrifices we’ve seen have been parent/child, and we just saw the fetus as Casca’s metaphorical heart during the quest to put her back together. The fragile heart being what you bury when you sacrifice someone who is “part of your soul.” Plus it would have the added benefit of totally crushing that burgeoning hope for a family vibe and making Guts extra sad. Yk, it wouldn’t just be sacrificing the fetus, it would be sacrificing the concept of a happily ever after in a way.
Idk that’s probably wishful thinking, lbr it would be too perfect for me to ever happen lol. But I really want it.
Also I dig the idea of someone sacrificing Griffith (idk whether it would be possible but it should be) but if Casca’s gonna open the behelit it’s probably going to happen like, right now, and if she sacrifices Griffith then Berserk is over and I feel like that would be a really sudden ending lol.
ty! and tbh I don’t think you don’t have to worry about that (unless Miura decides to retcon hard facts).
in addition to the count not being able to sacrifice guts because he doesn’t love guts lol, they point out
you can’t mark someone for sacrifice twice.
But yeah there’s nothing saying that someone marked for sacrifice can’t use a behelit themselves, and everyone knowledgeable about these things seems to believe that Guts potentially could use it (like Slan saying “why not make a sacrifice” in the troll cave, eg).
Though I don’t think the behelit is Guts’. Whether Miura was considering it for a while is a possibility, but since the Berserk armour made an appearance and we started getting a lot of “is it yours or are you just carrying it for someone hmmm” moments, I feel like it’s been really unlikely that Guts is ever going to use it. The armour is more his way of letting his inner darkness loose. Which has the handy effect of not being necessarily permanent, but with the ever present threat of becoming permanent. Perfect for a protagonist lol.
Also speaking of the Beast of Darkness telling Guts to assault and murder Casca so he can pursue Griffith, I think that could be another like… factor in Casca using the behelit. Right now she’s the symbol of Guts’ humanity, so if she becomes a monster it makes thematic sense for Guts to follow suit by losing himself to the armour. He could later be brought back by ~the power of friendship~ to demonstrate that despite their quest ending in tragedy and darkness, it was still worthwhile because of the character development and relationships formed along the way.
Ha! I’ve been fretting for ages about how Casca going apostle could work thematically w/ the whole interpersonal relationships as positive influences/power of love and friendship stuff of the last 200 chapters, but there, that totally fits! Then mb Casca could have her own personal narrative rather than continuing to be a symbol of Guts’ humanity.
Off the top of my head I find them fairly disappointing. I feel like Miura’s really half-assing this glimpse into Casca’s psyche – eg we got a few scattered Golden Age scenes from Casca’s perspective, but they didn’t bring anything new to the table, we didn’t learn anything about Casca that wasn’t already obvious. The chapter full of dick monsters was ridiculous lol, and the whole concept of piecing Casca together like gluing together a broken doll is like, kind of cliche and super shallow? Again, we’re not learning anything about Casca, we’re just montaging through a dumb dream quest.
On the other hand this sequence does have good points. I loved Farnese w/ tiny Casca. The fact that Farnese is now v intimately familiar with Casca’s whole life, seeing through her eyes and feeling her feelings, is interesting from a shippy standpoint even if canon does nothing with it. I liked that dog Guts just fucked right off and got destructive to everyone around him when pterodactyl Femto showed up, to the point where they were worried he’d smash Casca. Gives me hope lmao. The portrayal of the Eclipse was remarkably restrained so I applaud Miura for that lol. And of course I loved that Casca’s heart is covered in ominous despair thorns, and that shit got dark as soon as Casca saw Guts after waking up.
Like it’s not enough to make me super confident that g*tsca isn’t gonna happen, but it was enough to make me fistpump lol.
I have mixed feelings about the fetus showing up. On the one hand, I fucking hate that fetus and every glimpse of it fills me with dread. On the other hand, the fact that it symbolizes Casca’s heart backs up my wild reach-y theory that she might sacrifice it lol.
I have seized on the fact that Danann 180ed from ‘get lost Guts Casca’s scared of you’ to ‘wear this dress and go see Guts right now’ and I completely believe that Danann is plotting something and Casca going into despair as soon as she sees Guts (who has a behelit on him js js) was planned.
There’s always a chance. I mean I don’t think he’s going to go yes homo, but I definitely think there’s a strong possibility that Guts is gonna die single and thinking about Griffith.
I am trying to brace myself for disappointment ofc. I mean you’re right, the rpg group constantly succeeding in all they do and never having actual problems narrative has been going on for 150 chapters now so banking on the results of their quest being tragedy (ie Casca gets her mind back, proceeds to fuck shit completely up) is, yk, not a sure thing. the power of friendship could come through again and Guts and Casca could reunite happily, and if that happens I’ll finally give up on my optimism lol.
But til then I think there’s a good chance that all this awful harem vibe shit is a prelude to tragedy and disillusionment (not that that makes it better, but yk at least it would mean it ends), and the narrative is going to refocus back onto Guts and Griffith’s unconcluded story. That’s p much what I mean by suggestive climax – Guts and Griffith confronting each other at the climax of the story, emotions running high, allusions to their emotionally intimate history and the way they’re each still “the only one,” “the true light” for the other despite both trying so so hard to cut the other out lol.
Yk, finally dealing with the shit they’re avoiding by focusing on a kingdom/forcing Casca’s mind back, and cathartically reconciling the fact that they’re simultaneously fated enemies and true lights. Probably right before one or the other dies.
2/2 I just feel like any kind of character development she could have
had was just quickly glazed over like she went from someone who got off
on watching people get burnt to death and wanting to torture serpico for
‘fun’ or whatever to this simpering woman who’s working on bettering
herself way too fast I wish her journey was explored more and not just
kind of put as if she met guts and suddenly all her problems were solved
and she’s just perfectly good other than a little weak and scared now
Idk I agree with most of this but I think you’re being a little harsh.
Like it’s been a while since I re-read any of the later chapters but I never really got the impression that Schierke was keeping her ability to help Guts to herself, more that she’s just… the only person in the RPG group proficient enough w/ magic to help keep the armour at bay. Like Farnese is still a beginner and no one else knows any magic, so there’s nothing they can really do. (Also I’m kind of loling at calling Schierke childish, like, she is a child.)
But otherwise I pretty much agree, there’s nothing I particularly like about Schierke and her crush is annoying and offputting.
Also wrt Farnese, describing her as “simpering” makes no sense at all. The word means coquettish in an affected, ingratiating way, and that is basically the opposite of Farnese’s character lol, both as an enemy and as an ally.
But other than that I mean yeah I do agree that her character development was not well written. I like both antagonist Farnese and ally Farnese but it’s hard to see them as the same character, because Miura really like, did not show how one became the other lol.
It might be believable that after having her religious faith shattered she’d latch onto Guts as something new to believe in, as an emotional crutch, but it’s never depicted that way really – deciding to follow Guts has been 100% positive for her, while religion was 100% negative and evil, even though they’re both presumably filling the same emotional niche for her. (And if they’re not basically the same drive pointed at different objects of belief, God vs Guts, then Farnese’s sudden switch from religion to Guts is actually super weird and nonsensical, so either way it’s not well done.)
Like, her black and white, us vs them, pure vs impure, etc, thinking should still have been an issue, at least at the start of her time with the rpg group, even if the subjects of that thinking have changed. Or if Miura wanted that type of thinking shattered with her religious faith, she should have had difficulty adjusting to seeing the world in shades of grey. Her related buried guilt and self-doubt should also not have just conveniently disappeared, aside from one vague attempt at an apology for burning witches alive to Flora lol.
(Man now that I mention it it would’ve been fantastic to see Farnese struggling with letting go of her pure vs impure thinking and more slowly accepting that everyone is greyscale, and finding self-acceptance in that too. What a missed opportunity.)
Something else that would’ve been good is showing that Farnese dedicating herself to taking care of Casca, learning magic, etc, is a continuation of her tendency to like, violently throw herself into things. “become the storm yourself,” that life philosophy. Like if she was overeager to an off-putting, borderline unhealthy extent. Or if she wholeheartedly devoted herself to taking care of Casca because of her guilt issues, but again in a not-wholly-positive, overcompensating way.
I think this is a basic problem with Guts’ entire side of the narrative actually lol. It’s too damn good. Everyone is bettered by hanging out with him, plain and simple. Not even two steps forward, one step back – everyone just happily grows as a person on his stupid journey. Farnese replacing God with Guts causes no problems for her or anyone else, because Guts is just a good person to build your entire life around, when imo there should be some critique there wrt the concept of building your life around anything or anyone. The problem isn’t what you’re worshipping, it’s that you’re worshipping, but idk if Miura sees it that way.
Tho I still have hope that this apparent sense that Guts is just the fucking bees knees who changes everyone around him for the better could be subverted. I mean we’re about to get the payoff of his whole quest, and he’s just been compared to Griffith again specifically wrt how Farnese feels about him vs how Casca felt about Griffith, which is promising. Like, Golden Age Griffith was the same wrt everyone around him growing and being happy bc of his ~conviction~ and the feeling that they’re all going places, it’s something Guts comments on when he first meets the Hawks lol, and we all know how that turned out.
But even if that is the case it doesn’t really fix the 150ish chapters of Farnese’s super quick, super positive character growth lol. Idk it’s a disappointment to me too. I still like “both” Farneses, but I really feel like Miura half-assed the hell out of her development.
anyway ty for the asks and sorry for being a bit nitpicky, i mostly agree with you, just my contrary streak kicks in if i think some crit is unfair lol.
Yeah like I think the scenes are framed to make the reader wonder whether Locus or Griffith sent Raksas after Rickert. SInce it’s supposed to be ambiguous it could be either.
Idk if I think it would be out of character for Locus tbh. Grunbeld is the apostle we saw with a distinct honourable streak, while Locus’ thing seems to be more like, hardcore loyalty lol, so I could potentially see him doing something underhanded if it was for Griffith.
But yeah he does still have that knight in shining armour image that assassinations don’t quite fit. Then again so did Griffith lol. So idk I could see it either way.
This is like, the fucking plan. Skull Knight and Danann are conspiring to have the behelit open in Elfhelm, by Danann’s spirit tree, summoning the Godhand, so Skull Knight can do his thing, quite probably aided by Elfhelm tree magic, and entomb them in the vortex. Probably alongside Guts and Casca and everyone else watching the show.
Also something genuinely bad and dark has to happen because of this, like say, Casca becoming an apostle, because Guts needs to feel the full weight of betrayal by SK and succumb to the armour. And this will be a heavy painful betrayal because it’s gonna remind Guts of Griffith, because of the way Skull Knight has rescued him in the past and earned his trust. (tbh more on this whenever I get off my ass and write a long meta post about Guts and what his relationship to Griffith means to him.)
But also the power of friendship is going to prevent Guts from going full Beast of Darkness forever the way it’s been suggested that Skull Knight lost his humanity to the armour. Just, god willing, hopefully not before g*tsca is laid to rest.
So. Still think Guts and Casca are pawns, still think the tree and Dragon’s Road thing are relevant, definitely think the behelit’s relevant, and I’m actually pretty confident that the Godhand are coming to Elfhelm and Danann and Skull Knight have this trap waiting for them.
Whether Danann and Skull Knight’s plan is successful is another story entirely. Whether defeating and trapping the Godhand away in the vortex is even a good idea is also another story entirely. And idk whether NeoGriff figures into this at all lol.
Oh also I know the behelit only opens when the laws of causality like, make it happen, but, a) Skull Knight referred to that in that ominous scene where Flora suggests he might be using Guts and it’s not stopping him from maneuvering things into place it’s just giving him a handy excuse b) fate works thru people’s encounters and choices and Danann and Skull Knight and Guts etc are people c) they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for their own ends or smthn.
Also I know Miura has said he writes on the fly and doesn’t have a plan, but he must have some idea of where things are headed because he has actively been throwing foreshadowing down for 150 chapters. Maybe the details are vague in his mind but I’m quite sure he knows the broadstrokes of the story. Like after all he wrote the entire golden age knowing exactly where it would end up, give or take a few details. I’m willing to bet he’s been planning some Skull Knight shit since Flora’s appearance.
Anyway this is my theory now. I may go about it backwards, ie having a destination I absolutely want and then finding evidence for it, but yk what i want to live in hope until the next chapter so screw it.
Ok so to summarize, my theory is that Casca’s despair is going to open the behelit, this was deliberately arranged by Danann and Skull Knight so they can trap the Godhand in the vortex, and the fall-out of this is going to be Guts going full Berserker for some period of time, most likely (though I am a little less confident about this aspect than the rest of it) because Casca opts for monsterism.
So anyway I was re-reading chapter 328, another one of those chapters that basically exists to be crammed full of foreshadowing, and this jumped out at me
Hey Schierke, quick question for you:
what the hell does deciphering “fates that transcend time” have to do with the elf king showing up as a child to stalk your rpg group?
Nothing. That’s just completely unrelated infodumping that happens to fully support my theory that Danann and Skull Knight are conspiring to have Casca open the behelit.
Up there I wrote
“they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can
tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for
their own ends or smthn” and basically I’m just giving myself a pat on the back because that’s absolutely correct, as Schierke tells us here.
Incidentally I’m also now contemplating the possibility that Schierke is right and moon kid is Danann in disguise, but I have nothing conclusive to say about that, other than it would be another extra hilarious example of Danann playing up g*tsca for the sake of betraying them and tearing them apart for her own ends.
@a-girl-named-chester I’m not reblogging that post to talk about it because I thoroughly disagree with the op and I don’t want to start shit lol
but basically I am constantly low-key irritated at people who conflate femininity (a set of traits that any given society encourages women to adopt and discourages men from adopting) with women and therefore call anyone exasperated with compulsory femininity and/or fictional portrayals of femininity (especially those written by men lbr) misogynist.
Casca isn’t a real person, she doesn’t have her own opinions on what she wants to wear, those are given to her by the man writing her character, and I personally hate how Miura goes to great lengths to feminize Casca once she becomes a viable romantic interest for Guts – by putting her in a dress and literally having her ask Guts to validate her attractiveness, but also by things like this:
and by depowering her through her period of all things so Guts can save her, and by having her try to kill herself because of unrequited love so Guts can save her again, and by having her feel fulfilled when she is able to take the role of nurturer and (sexually) comfort someone else, all culminating in turning her into a helpless long haired childlike waif in a dress after being raped to make Guts feel bad and give him someone to protect.
Like, Miura plays lipservice to Casca as a Strong Woman lol, but he never follows through. We hear that she can beat ten men, but we see her feverish and at the brink of exhaustion needing to be saved more often than we’ve ever seen that.
I don’t even necessarily mind moments like Casca feeling insecure about how she looks in a dress, like it’s fine as a character trait and I think it makes sense that Casca might be self-conscious, but it goes hand in hand with things like Casca “showing a soft side” to hamfistedly indicate her burgeoning feelings for Guts, so it’s impossible to separate moments like Casca asking Guts if she looks okay in a dress from Miura deliberately making Casca more feminine as she becomes a love interest.
And that sucks, and is itself deeply misogynist, so I can’t with anyone saying that people who are disappointed at seeing Casca put into a dress (as she herself protests) in the most recent chapter are misogynist lol.
Like we’re not even deriding a real woman putting on a dress, we’re deriding a male writer putting a female character in a dress explicitly to make a reunion feel more romantic. Because who cares that she’s a mercenary who doesn’t feel comfortable in dresses, as a love interest she needs to be appropriately feminine to complement Guts’ rugged masculinity. Gag.
I mean personally I’m actually reserving judgement on this scene in particular because I think(/hope/pray/oh my god do i pray) this is going to end up being sinister and not actually romantic lol. But god if it is played straight, fuckin yikes.
There’s nothing progressive or worth celebrating about a dude writing a romance between a man and a woman and consistently and overtly making sure the woman’s masculine traits are offset by heaping on more femininity.
This is about Falconia, bodies and lives being bought and sold, the natural order of the world, etc.
tw for csa (no graphic panels but still disturbing enough for a cut imo)
The Conviction Arc shows us in broadstrokes the world humanity’s collective unconscious wants to overturn through starving crowds, dungeons filled with tortured ‘heretics,’ rampant plague and the desire for a saviour, and nobles terrorizing peasants using god as an excuse, but this is the up close and personal version. Lives and bodies as commodities, weak trampled by the strong, poor ruled by the rich, and everyone accepting it as the way things are.
Our three main protagonists during the Golden Age all have very personal formative trauma that revolves around being bought and sold as a matter of course.
And Griffith’s dream, as someone wracked with guilt for lives lost in his battles, someone who has sold himself to a rich and powerful predator to save some of those lives, is to overturn this natural order of things.
And he does. Falconia is a place where children aren’t sold as sex slaves, where the powerful do not oppress the weak, where the rich don’t exploit the poor, where everyone is treated equally and with dignity, where Guts, Griffith, and Casca could’ve all had happy childhoods.
One of the important aspects of this theme re: societal power dynamics and exploitation is that these evil actions
are excused away. This is true of like, just about every abuser of power and
rapist in Berserk. Some think it’s okay because someone more powerful than
them told them they’re allowed (torturer, Wyald/probably the rest of
the apostles, Mozgus’ torturers, Mozgus and the inquisition in general
passing the buck onto God, Donovan because Gambino allowed it, etc),
some think it’s okay because that’s just the way things are (Donovan
again, Adon, Rosine’s got some of this, etc), some think it’s okay because
they’re powerful enough to do anything they want (implied with Gennon,
Ganeshka,
the Godhand, a lot of apostles, Casca’s attempted rapist nobleman), and finally some think it’s okay because the world wronged them (Gambino, apostles like Rosine again and Eggman, Jill’s dad, the baby eating heretics lmao, one could argue the King, Mozgus’ torturers again, etc).
Again, it all comes back to the “reason of the world,” the natural order of things that NeoGriff overturns. In the ordinary world these people with power can do whatever they want and justify it to themselves. In NeoGriffith’s world, they don’t. Apostles, our prime example of powerful preying on weak because they’re allowed to, no longer prey on humans, simply because of NeoGriffith’s existence.
It seems safe to assume nobles no longer exploit people either, if nobility is even still a thing in Falconia. Like granted, I’m taking some of this as read based on what we’re told Falconia is, but I feel like the apostles (and the explicit focus on equality) are a good representative example of the point of Falconia, which is to essentially fix everything we see wrong with the world in the Conviction arc and, like I laid out above, in our protagonists’ lives.
The fact is that Falconia isn’t just a utopia on a distant macro level, where the readers can look at it and go, hm seems nice I guess but w/e. On a micro level it’s a place where these horrible things that happened to the characters we personally love and care about wouldn’t’ve happened. I, at least, am emotionally invested in that utopia because of this, yk?
But here’s where I get critical of the portrayal:
Femto and the Eclipse rape is the epitome of the harmful power structure. Like, Femto hits every branch on his way down this tree lol. During his transformation he met God, God absolved him of his guilt and responsibility by telling him he can do whatever the fuck he wants and it’ll be the right thing. He’s taking the place of the nobleman he saved Casca from and exemplifying existing power structures of strong preying on weak, and it’s petty revenge.
One can easily argue that the Eclipse rape is a distillation of every abusive power structure in Berserk.
So okay, you have Falconia, a utopia that exists to eschew these power structures and create a place of equality where no one is exploited, created by a dude whose defining act is the epitome of these abusive power structures.
And frankly it’s fucking pointless. This feels like the shallowest of shallow hot takes lol. Like, oooh what if this wonderful place where all the horrible things that traumatized our favourite characters are no longer an accepted given was created by an evil demon rapist???
Like… okay? And then what? The Eclipse rape has nothing to do with the social structure of Falconia, NGriff seems to have completely delivered on his/humanity’s dream regardless, he is now the higher power making the calls and he hasn’t told everyone to do whatever they want no matter who it hurts. From what we’ve seen he’s done the exact opposite, existing as a tempering influence on the apostles who no longer prey on those weaker than them, ending the Holy See’s reign of terror, ending wars in general, and uniting people in their differences.
So it’s just like, an arbitrary evil act which creates an artificial sense of moral greyness. It has no deep meaning. I mean I suppose Miura could address it in the future – I’ve mentioned that I think it could theoretically be really interesting for Casca to visit Falconia and see the dream she devoted her life to having come to fruition because of her rapist. But even so, that doesn’t have any like… deeper intrigue. That’s interesting for Casca’s character, not as an examination of moral relativity or w/e.
Similarly, if NeoGriffith turns out to be more human than he looks he could reflect on this contradiction in a potentially interesting way.
But I can’t think of a way to make it an interesting examination of morality. It’s boring at its core imo. I mean you could argue that it’s still worthwhile on that personal character level, but let’s be real here – no amount of potentially interesting character stuff in Casca’s future is worth removing her from the story for 20 years, and anything w/ NeoGriffith would be a retread of human Griffith’s guilt issues and frankly I don’t see it happening anyway lol.
So yeah ultimately this whole egalitarian utopia created by a rapist demon thing just does not work for me at all. There’s no reason the creator of this paradise /had/ to be a symbol of this abusive power structure it exists to destroy, again, that’s just an arbitrary happenstance, not a pre-requisite to utopia building, so it doesn’t say anything about the nature of Falconia. It doesn’t say anything about utopias in general, it doesn’t say anything about those power structures that we don’t already know (ie they bad, equality good).
It’s like, fake deep tbqh.
The actual interesting and morally grey aspect of Falconia is the way world peace was achieved by setting a bunch of fantasy monsters loose on humanity, and that has nothing to do with the Eclipse rape. Like, that’s literally all you need for the moral complexity. We have world peace and a growing utopia that everyone is welcome to join, but the price is monsters everywhere, and this could not have happened without those monsters to unite humanity in fear. Is the world better or worse than it used to be?
And NGriff being a rapist, or his demon alter ego being a rapist, or whatever the deal is there, adds nothing to that question, rather, it distracts from it and devalues the actual moral ambiguity.
In fact, it makes me wonder whether Miura regrets going with rape as his way of demonstrating Femto’s evil. Because it’s been such a non-issue to the whole theme of power structures, utopias, equality, etc, that it feels like Miura is sweeping it under the rug lol – it’s less of an attempt at dark irony and more the elephant in the room. I can’t even say with confidence that Femto was intended to be a symbol of exploitative power structures, despite how obvious it seems, because it just… hasn’t impacted the themes of the story at all.
and ok one more thing about this part
this is actually pretty damn non-wholesome, to the extent that i’m kind of surprised none of the characters were like, ‘wait a second this oppressively cutesy place attacked us with a giant cage full of the trapped spirits of people they burned alive to power it’
like it just kind of happened completely without commentary or attention drawn to it, and lbr it’s berserk so it can get away with that
but also i’m happily filing it away as strong evidence that elfhelm is more than capable of being fucked up. like, magic drawing power from the lives of sacrificed people eh? where’ve we seen that before?
tbh I think it might be a visual nod to how Casca was the leader of the Hawks. There was a strong emphasis on her role as the leader during the Eclipse, when Judeau was determined to save her, and to Guts she largely represents his three years of happiness with the Hawks now. She’s kind of set up as the representative of the Band 1.0, and the dress fits that.
This is a thread I like so maybe I’m overemphasizing it, but imo it would be nice if it was picked up again, and now’s the time to do it.
(or yk maybe it’s bc Danann genuinely wants to set her and Guts up and she knows Guts has a thing for ethereal figures dressed in white with wing motifs lmao.)
This is like, the fucking plan. Skull Knight and Danann are conspiring to have the behelit open in Elfhelm, by Danann’s spirit tree, summoning the Godhand, so Skull Knight can do his thing, quite probably aided by Elfhelm tree magic, and entomb them in the vortex. Probably alongside Guts and Casca and everyone else watching the show.
Also something genuinely bad and dark has to happen because of this, like say, Casca becoming an apostle, because Guts needs to feel the full weight of betrayal by SK and succumb to the armour. And this will be a heavy painful betrayal because it’s gonna remind Guts of Griffith, because of the way Skull Knight has rescued him in the past and earned his trust. (tbh more on this whenever I get off my ass and write a long meta post about Guts and what his relationship to Griffith means to him.)
But also the power of friendship is going to prevent Guts from going full Beast of Darkness forever the way it’s been suggested that Skull Knight lost his humanity to the armour. Just, god willing, hopefully not before g*tsca is laid to rest.
So. Still think Guts and Casca are pawns, still think the tree and Dragon’s Road thing are relevant, definitely think the behelit’s relevant, and I’m actually pretty confident that the Godhand are coming to Elfhelm and Danann and Skull Knight have this trap waiting for them.
Whether Danann and Skull Knight’s plan is successful is another story entirely. Whether defeating and trapping the Godhand away in the vortex is even a good idea is also another story entirely. And idk whether NeoGriff figures into this at all lol.
Oh also I know the behelit only opens when the laws of causality like, make it happen, but, a) Skull Knight referred to that in that ominous scene where Flora suggests he might be using Guts and it’s not stopping him from maneuvering things into place it’s just giving him a handy excuse b) fate works thru people’s encounters and choices and Danann and Skull Knight and Guts etc are people c) they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for their own ends or smthn.
Also I know Miura has said he writes on the fly and doesn’t have a plan, but he must have some idea of where things are headed because he has actively been throwing foreshadowing down for 150 chapters. Maybe the details are vague in his mind but I’m quite sure he knows the broadstrokes of the story. Like after all he wrote the entire golden age knowing exactly where it would end up, give or take a few details. I’m willing to bet he’s been planning some Skull Knight shit since Flora’s appearance.
Anyway this is my theory now. I may go about it backwards, ie having a destination I absolutely want and then finding evidence for it, but yk what i want to live in hope until the next chapter so screw it.
hohoho
so i did what i said i was going to do, re-read most of the elfhelm chapters to see if i could figure anything out.
and idk how solid this is, especially considering how biased in favour of it i am lol, but i came up with this theory last night
So in 345 they’re all sitting around a table having a nice chat about important spirit realm shit.
The world tree is a “dragon’s road.”
The behelit also creates a dragon’s road.
Just want to point out the little specification of “at your side” and the shot of the behelit in Guts’ pouch vs the way Guts’ cloak billows to give us a view of that pouch as he walks towards Casca.
SO dragon roads.
Schierke pipes up with a question absolutely no reader was ever curious about and is therefore probably very relevant:
With me so far? These spirit woods are lands associated with spirit trees, like Flora’s. These trees feed off the world tree like parasites, keeping it pruned to manageable levels until Griffith destroyed a bunch of them to make way for his high fantasy genre shift.
The world tree is a dragon’s road – it’s not a real tree, it’s a fissure between realms:
Again, the same kind of thing the behelit creates.
Eventually they head on over to Danann’s palace, which turns out to be a giant cherry tree:
It’s a really impressive spirit tree, maybe the last surviving one, or one of the last at least. Elfhelm is probably its associated spirit woods.
Danann specifies that Guts and Casca’s first meeting will take place right by her spirit tree.
And check out the last image of the most recent chapter:
Quite an ominous shot of that tree.
Bear in mind that Danann sensed that Casca was afraid of Guts and refused to let him join Schierke and Farnese in her dreams because of this. It seems a bit strange that as soon as Casca wakes up she’s sending her straight to Guts then, doesn’t it?
Also bear in mind that Skull Knight, who reminds Puck of the elves and is implied to be the Elf King’s oracle, is the one who both told Guts the Elf King could heal Casca, and warned him that “there’s no guarantee your wish will be her wish.”
Schierke thinks the oracle is the Moonlight Boy, because she doesn’t know it’s Skull Knight. But this is how we know that “oracle” is connected to the Elf King. And this is how we know it’s Skull Knight:
And check out this vaguely ominous thread that hasn’t been picked back up yet. Is someone using Guts…? Skull Knight, or the person Skull Knight is playing messenger for – the Elf King? (tbh it looks like he’s justifying it to himself by saying whether he interferes or not causality has the final say anyway. calling Guts “a factor.” A factor in what? What is being facilitated, and by whom? Maybe someone who understands the flow of causality, who is using it for their own ends?)
I also want to note that I had zero memory of Flora asking if Skull Knight is using Guts lmao, the only reason I went back to this part was to prove that SK is the Elf King’s oracle. But I am super stoked that it fits my theory perfectly.
SO yeah the Elf King’s oracle is the one telling Guts this. Seems probable that Danann has been planning to try healing Casca’s mind since long before they showed up on her doorstep asking her to.
Also of note in this scene with Skull Knight on the beach:
This is the explanation for why NeoGriffith had Flora killed.
To
confront him, one must also exist outside the story. Who exists outside
the story to some extent that we know of? Skull Knight, the branded, and witches.
AND one more thing of note in this scene is Skull Knight warning Guts about the armour:
All this foreshadowing is thrown into the same chapter, and I think it could be all tied together.
So, my theory:
Danann is using Casca and Guts, for two possible reasons, maybe both:
1. By healing Casca’s mind and sending her to meet Guts right beside her spirit tree, she knows or hopes that Casca’s memories will send her into despair right there, with the behelit at hand, thereby opening a dragon’s road right beside her powerful spiritual tree thing which feeds on dragon’s roads. Maybe giving Danann and Elfhelm a boost of energy/spiritual power for something.
2. Weapons.
If Casca becomes an apostle, she will be branded, ergo a step outside the reason of the world and able to harm Griffith. She will be powerful. And Griffith will have a weakness against her – that whole wacky fetus thing that made him save her life. It’s entirely possible that Danann knows this, as she has scryers checking things out.
(Granted Casca would also have her own weakness against him, that demon instinct which recognizes NeoGriffith as a messiah, buuut I’m js Ganeshka’s reaction to him was rather similar to Casca’s old feelings, which she’s had several years of experience dealing with and ignoring. Plus he’s responsible for destroying her life and everything that traumatized her into insanity, and Danann has a lot of magic. That potential weakness isn’t the be all end all, is what I’m saying.)
There’s also the foreboding foreshadowing regarding Guts succumbing to the armour. Skull Knight’s warning back there, the Beast of Darkness taunting him here
and this scene
which directly connects Casca regaining her sanity and ~doing something~ ominous to the Beast of Darkness lying in wait. And I feel like Casca choosing to make a sacrifice like Griffith did and become a monster would be a pretty solid incentive for Guts to succumb to his inner beast.
And I’m js Beast of Darkness Guts, with his own foot outside the reason of the world thanks to the brand, and lbr Femto/NGriff’s own host of issues that led to him letting Guts go three times so far, would also be a powerful weapon.
It’s also worth noting that we’ve been warned time and again about the dangers of Guts succumbing to the armour, losing his humanity, etc, and he’s been saved every single time he reaches a danger point by Schierke, or the Astral Kid, or whatever. At some point he has to actually succumb properly, at least for a while, for long enough to shake up the narrative and have Consequences, or there’s no point to all this ominous foreshadowing.
Elfhelm is opposed to NeoGriffith and Falconia and the whole merging of planes thing, it’s suggested that Guts is being used by Skull Knight, who seems to be allied with/working for the Elf King, and all these little ominous moments fit together very well.
Plus let’s be real here – Skellig is obviously too good to be true.
Like, I don’t think there’s a dark underbelly to Skellig, any more than I think there’s a dark underbelly to Falconia. I don’t think they’re secretly killing children or Danann’s going to transform into a cackling demon or that the cloying wholesomeness is all a performance to trick Guts and co lol. But I do think that despite the cutesy elf antics and unicorns and sentencing Magnifico to dishwashing duty etc, they would be very capable of ruthlessness. This is Berserk, after all.
tbh I’m really feeling the behelit dragon’s road thing, all those expository details in the recent chapters add up v neatly.
And I think the weaponizing Cacsa and/or Guts theory is a little more of a stretch, more of a “well it would logically follow” rather than having directly suggestive evidence of its own, but still fits nicely imo. And boy, would that not twist the whole revenge theme in an interesting way? If there’s another secondary antagonist who wants Guts and/or Casca to go and kill NeoGriff for their own reasons? Maybe even for the greater good – but at the expense of our protagonists?
oh im just banking on the ominous ruse awakening i think were in for no matter the context. but the romanticization was just weirdddd no matter what like i know its been a while but casca never really felt that way about guts pre eclipse either like. what.
to me it felt like either fanservice for the sole sake of subverting expectations, or miura buying into everything g*tsca shippers think without re-reading his own story first
and i’m definitely fearing it’s the latter what with the indication that she’s been wanting to see(/meet whatever the line is) guts this whole time while stuck in a dream, the teary look when his name is mentioned, the expectation of romance and casca immediately going along with it, etc.
like who is this and what have you done with casca
sure miura feminized her a lot when she started crushing on guts in the golden age but it was never this bad, and there has never been a true love vibe between them
so like yeah even if there is a twist it’s hard to explain away the characterization here
yeah, it’s just like. regressed casca even had that moment when she was trying to touch neo griff but couldn’t, plus like the stupid fetus, and idk how the gremlin man (miura) thinks so i’m assuming the worst. but yeah you’re probably right
there is a shit ton of stuff that can and should be taken into account tbh, and that post was rly just a v distant overview. i think… idk there’s probably enough evidence to make a case for either scenario happening – guts moving on vs guts failing to move on. and like the fetus eg could figure into either of those scenarios, by maybe being a source of conflict between casca and guts, or maybe uniting them.
i think there’s also enough evidence to argue that guts failing to move on isn’t necessarily a negative/tragic thing either, tho i kind of framed it as one. like there’s a scenario where guts trying to “let go of his obsession” is essentially guts kidding himself and just burying and refusing to acknowledge his mixed feelings instead of confronting them, using casca as an escape
that’s my #1 hope rly.
but yeah at the end of the day this all kind of rests on the premise that when berserk is over it will overall be a good solid comprehensive story lol, and that’s based on what I’m picking up on as important themes, which is kind of itself a distant hope.
i think if the latter is the case then perhaps there will be a more light-hearted ending but… my preferences aside, from BS arc this manga’s theme is the quest for revenge, fighting against all odds etc. so i think that if this scenario occured then the manga will have kind of deviated..? not that it couldn’t be (objectively) a development, but still the ending would be all over the place instead of tackling the core elements, ie their relationship
yeah I totally agree. While I think you could argue that Guts forming strong relationships as a way of moving on from traumatic shit is in keeping with earlier themes, applying that to moving on from Griffith completely ignores the complexities of Guts and Griffith’s relationship, which is straight up what Berserk is about. Like yeah I’m super biased but I still think it would objectively be more narratively fulfilling to see their mutual obsession take centre stage again – it’s the difference between their intense relationship getting a proper climax and emotional catharsis versus being reduced to basically a bad break up that one dude couldn’t move on from.
It’s also a deviation in another way that I was considering tacking onto that post but didn’t, but now I want to talk about it.
But like imo if it is the case that Berserk is about Guts overcoming his obsession and moving on, then functionally Berserk is basically two different kinds of stories.
Everything from chapter one to chapter 129 is the story of a kind of fucked up dude with a lot of issues muddling his way through a very dark grey narrative and trying to do his best.
Everything from chapter 130 on is the story of a dude consistently Making The Right Choice.
Like, I kind of feel that those two stories are incompatible. In a narrative about a dude struggling with himself and trying and usually failing to make the right choices in a complex world where right and wrong barely even exist, which tbh is My Berserk, then it simply doesn’t work for the main character to then make the correct choice, ie focusing on Casca, and stick to it for two hundred and twenty chapters plus afterwards. If he eventually does make a genuinely good and correct and narratively rewarded choice, that should only happen at the end and it should be cathartic.
There are stories about protagonists doing the right thing the whole time even though it’s a struggle at times, and those can be fine stories, but it’s a giant downgrade from a story about a dude making a bunch of mistakes in a morally grey world, and an absolutely enormous tonal and thematic shift. It just doesn’t work as a complete story to me if that’s the case.
i mean i guess it’s always been the same question:
is this the prelude to a happy or tragic narrative shake up?
it’s just that now, thanks to how heavily romanticized that chapter was before the last couple pages, there’s imo v little doubt that happy = casca is soothed (whether it’s after a chapter or a volume) and romance ensues
and tragic = casca fucks shit up, romance does not ensue
if the former, the narrative is shaken up by guts’ party coming to a stand still and guts experiencing contentment and needing some outside motivation to continue doing anything relevant. maybe neogriff showing up, elfhelm in danger, something like that.
if the latter, the narrative is shaken up by casca taking the playing board and throwing it across the room, which, based on earlier beast-y foreshadowing, will likely lead to guts losing control of the beast of darkness, etc, whatever. Bad shit happens.
BUT there’s also another way of looking at it:
is berserk the story of two dudes who keep trying and failing to stop being obsessed with each other until some kind of climactic catharsis happens?
or is berserk the story of two dudes who were obsessed with each other, one of whom is ironically still obsessed despite going to extreme lengths to try to cut out his feelings, and the other of whom successfully lets go of his obsession and moves on?
(or, put another way, the story of one dude overcoming his obsession with another dude through the power of heterosexual love, while the other dude’s gay love is both what turned him evil and his only weakness.
And I swear to god if I
have to power thru guts’ hetero romance for the sake of griffith’s
doomed evil gay love i can’t think of something emphatic enough to
describe how i’ll feel.)
SO
Ultimately the question comes down to: is Guts’ focus going to return to Griffith, whether that’s through backsliding into revenge again or through re-examining his complex feelings and actually dealing with them instead of running away from them through the fix Casca sidequest?
or will Guts successfully overcome his obsession with Griffith, likely by saving Casca from herself through the power of love or w/e the way he failed to save Griffith before the Eclipse, leaving NGriff to drive the narrative and setting the stage for the final climax?
And if Casca fucks shit up and it turns out the fix Casca sidequest was kind of a terrible idea all along that leads to tragedy and darkness, the answer is the former. If Casca is talked down and love and companionship save the day, the answer is the latter.
So basically whatever happens is going to make or break Berserk for me lol. No pressure.
i haven’t looked at the new chapter, just the pics y’all posted & linked to, but with the feathers and casca wanting to see someone and “your wish may not be her wish” like i could see her using the behelit and joining neo-griff ….. but ………….. idk, has she remembered the eclipse yet? if not she’s bound to and that’s not gonna be pretty. also idk what the point of her joining griffith would be wrt guts …… like i hate the idea of his own desire
to see griffith getting mixed with his “feelings” for casca you know
what i mean?
anyway if i remember
correctly i think your “casca uses the behelit” theory involved her
having her own revenge journey or something like that but yeah what if
this instead. i’m thinking no thank you mr miura
haha i would straight up murder miura if casca joined neogriffith. my, like, unlikely ideal is the three of them with their own individual power ups (incarnated god, apostle mb along the lines of ganeshka wrt power, berserk armour) all kind of opposing each other to some degree. eg ngriff wants his empire and also wants guts in some capacity that he doesn’t understand so maybe tries to kill him, casca wants to kill ngriff but guts wants to be the one to kill ngriff but also he doesn’t want to kill ngriff, etc
I think the feathers are probably more a reminder of her past as a Hawk than necessarily to do with NGriff. That’s what I was thinking anyway, but like, with the addition that that past is traumatic and they’re a reminder of Griffith who is the source of her trauma and therefore it’s ~ominous~
The backgrounds and details are very nice but the characters seems too cutesy for my personal taste. Even the monsters in Casca’s dream world lacked a visceral feeling besides being dick monsters. I am glad we didn’t see any rape but at the same time I think the drawings could of been rougher. I also wasn’t a fan of Casca’s magical girl dress. But maybe the translation will help… *Goes back to read Golden Age Arc*
@laraskadi said:
indeeeeeeeeeeeeeed I
feel this so much! I NEED her to look like Casca and act like Casca,
otherwise it just looks like a random person…? And in that dress no
less… Put her in some armor with a normal face and I’ll cry my eyes out
(putting this in one post bc it’s all about art)
Yeah mte. Like I won’t deny that Miura’s always drawn women with exaggerated eyes and tiny mouths, but she seemed so much more expressive before and idk, the exaggerated faces seemed less jarring with the flatter/cartoonier style of the golden age, as opposed to the current mix of hugely exaggerated features and realistic details? Plus the shape of her eyes makes a difference, she’s so feminized now the dress is just the cherry on top of that really unpleasant sundae tbh.
And more for the first reply:
Yeah the art is a lot like, heavier and darker, thicker lines (more lines holy fuck) but it lacks the fluid visceralness we saw during, eg, the actual eclipse, in moments like this:
and like the sheer business of the art now means we don’t get evocative and terrifying contrasts like this:
And yeah the style in general seems less suited to monsters now. compare above to
like man I want to see the monsters, not just suggestions of them.
also the helix in the necklace a la brand of sacrifice that i just noticed?
like i’m not saying danann dressed her in this to be secretly evil, but i’m thinking it’s subtle visual hinting re: the source of her trauma, hawks/sacrifice/griffith, and purposefully suggestive as a little added layer of ominousness
i mean i’d take it as coincidence considering it’s mostly petals in the dress, but those hairpieces, man
ch 355, more random musing
i s2g it’s like this chapter was especially designed to fuck me personally up and leave me fretting for however long until the next one comes out, it has no chill it’s either my personal worst or best case scenario and i have no way of knowing which. mb this is premature since we don’t even have a full translation yet, but still. i’m stressed lol
and seeing all the skullknight fans pretty much just assuming that there’s going to be an emotional chapter followed by guts and casca hugging it out has me torn between thinking that’s a good sign bc it means miura isn’t using the ominousness as a fake-out, since it seems your typical berserk fan doesn’t think anything too bad is going to happen – the ominiousness is just plain ominiousness and if things go truly wrong it will still take people by surprise and be dramatically effective. but also what if it’s a bad sign because they’re just better at predicting berserk than me and more on miura’s current wavelength? 😦
also i’m eyeing that last image of the tree and how it looks similar to the falconia branches and various hearts of darkness
i’ve got my eye on you skellig
also eyeing the feathers in casca’s dress design tbqh
also guts looking scary and intimidating in that spread of him in the berserk armour w/ the eclipse scene behind him is good, and the more i look at the last few pages, eclipse flashback + guts -> tortured griffith -> ominous looking tree the more i’m like, hmmmmmm
as soon as we get a translation i’m re-reading the entirety of the skellig stuff so far to see if i feel like it all fits together in some way
355 spoilers
fair warning this is v rambly and stream of consciousness, and largely negative tho not entirely
all this time and i’m still in hope for the best, prepare for the worst mode, agh this is so frustrating
(lol @ reusing a bunch of images from casca’s life we’ve already seen
in our journey thru her mind. also my god i hate the art so much rn
lol. casca’s face deserves better.)
and idk how to feel about
downplaying the fetus/moonlight boy now lol, with way more memories
alotted to guts, since apparently “there’s someone i want to meet” is
repeated towards the end here, and the one saving grace of that fetus
was the hope that casca wanted to meet it, instead of guts (or griffith
for that matter).
also danann calling guts to show up psychically which then proceeds to trigger casca seems weird and fishy to me? but idk maybe it reads as less weird in context, plus i don’t trust elfhelm so.
and i’m extremely wary about guts triggering her because he reminds her of the eclipse, rather than because he assaulted her himself. those dreamy half-remembered memories sure are convenient
on the other hand they’re also convenient for this delayed reaction happening just in time for guts’ arrival. meaning there’s a reason guts had to show up first before casca remembered the eclipse.
this chapter seems to be playing up g*tsca for the sake of sweeping the rug out from under the readers at the end when casca sees him and shit starts going down, but is that leading to actual Shit Going Down or is that leading to, idk, farnese jumping in and calming her down before nobly stepping aside so they can have a tearful reunion, or guts like, saving the day by Being There For Her For Once??
i s2g miura knows exactly what the best case and worse case scenarios are (tho he probably thinks they’re reversed) and he’s taunting me personally. like i’m sorry but ivalera joking that schierke woke up the “final boss”? just plain and simple teasing about schierke’s crush on guts or also ominous foreshadowing? casca’s last clear memory is rescuing griffith, which explains why tortured griffith is one of the final images, but why make that her last clear memory, why give that a full page at the end of the chapter right before the picture of the tree that looks visually similar to the darkness in her heart unless perhaps… a parallel?
But even if that’s the case is Casca going to use the behelit in Guts’ pouch or is Guts going to get another chance to Not Fuck It Up This Time?
I’m feeling like the odds are getting higher that after a moment of emotional peril Guts comforts her, promises to stay with her, and they live happily ever after until NeoGriffith arrives to fuck shit up versus shit actually going down and Casca graduating into a secondary antagonist role. And the odds of anything in between happening, like eg Casca rejecting Guts romantically and healing while becoming close friends with Farnese, are feeling extremely slim after this. Like, imo we’re in for either g*tsca or the “tragic” opposite of g*tsca after how it’s been played up here, not “let’s just be friends.”
Also there’s a strong chance I’m just in the denial stage rn. But like I’ve been salivating over the idea of all three Golden Age protags being enemies with their own clashing goals by the end of the series for a while now and as long as that’s still a possibility I’m going to continue to keep hope alive.
Could it be him maybe accepting that for NGriff, his old dream is taking priority over his previous love for guts, which guts was eventually aware of?
Not necessarily buying into NGriff’s hype himself, but not wanting to overcomplicate Griffith to his friends? His friends who didn’t even know he knew Griffith?
Yeah I definitely don’t think he’d start getting into all the complicated stuff wrt that relationship with his friends, but the line “he hasn’t changed” is just guts’ thoughts, not something he said outloud, suggesting Guts believes it:
and that’s a hell of a loaded statement for guts to be thinking to himself especially with the immediate visual reference to NeoGriffith’s look back at him as he says “nothing has changed.”
It could be that he’s just referring purely to what his dream entails, ie a kingdom, but then again, even then, human Griffith only said he wanted a kingdom, he didn’t say anything about taking over the world or building an empire, which is what they’re talking about now.
lol i didn’t even predict the fetus showing up in casca’s mind, idk.
i think it’s still possible that casca’s going to wake up and lose it? what with the whole thing about shoving her metaphorical heart in her metaphorical chest while it’s covered in metaphorical thorns. actually i’m pretty stoked about that because farnese had her line about wanting to help casca overcome her darkness the same way casca helped her, so either we’re going to get some good farnese and casca interaction or that’s going to turn out to be a pipe dream and casca’s going to do something dark, and either way i’m super intrigued.
whatever guts does would depend on what casca does, i figure. i’m thinking they’re not getting back together immediately, if at all. worst case scenario that i could easily see happening is that miura teases a reconciliation for most of the rest of the manga and i have to live with that sword of damocles hanging over my head indefinitely.
so like, if casca is chill and recovers with farnese’s help, the plot has to get going somehow. maybe we end guts’ narrative on a high note, farnese helping casca recover and guts having achieved a goal without ruining everything for once, return to griffith’s in a flash forward, and he’s about to attack elfhelm logically because it’s the last remaining threat to him but actually because he’s bored and misses guts. honestly i would mostly hate this scenario for many reasons, like guts’ narrative being passive and boring and ngriff having a more unambiguously villainous role, like it would just feel shallow thematically imo, but i could maybe see it happening. I’ve been mostly bored by Guts’ narrative for like 200 chapters now so it wouldn’t be out of place lol.
or something else entirely could kick start the plot. maybe the flower king encourages guts to go fight griffith and we start getting into skellig moral ambiguity. maybe magic deus ex machina happens. maybe casca learns of a way she can use magic to siphon her stupid kid out of griffith and that’s the new objective lol. I was gonna suggest that maybe guts takes off on his own for revenge spurred on by some unforseen event, but the fact that he’s on an island makes that unlikely I guess.
god tho i still think that the neatest and most efficient way to kick start things into gear, fulfill a lot of foreshadowy promises, re-motivate guts into doing something, and shake things up in an interesting way is for casca to use the behelit. this is the hill i’m going to die on, at least until it becomes impossible. and yk what, casca’s last remaining and most important piece of herself, her heart, being the kid could be solid set up for sacrificing it. “Someone so close to you it’s almost like they’re a part of you,” and “bury your human heart,” after all.
I mean the way we revisited the Eclipse and Casca’s trauma, ie, we didn’t, kinda makes me less inclined to think Miura’s going to do anything with it/make it a real motivation, but, yk. thorns and whatnot. ~i want to believe~
i just want something dark and permanent with real consequences to happen, guts’ story has been progressively lighter and happier for over 200 chapters by now, come on.
the dress is just the cherry on top of that really unpleasant sundae tbh.
you're the only one 