I’d say that argument is directly and unambiguously contradicted over and over again in the story, including by Griffith himself.
And like, literally the last thing Griffith thinks before sacrificing Guts is that Guts is more important than his dream. That’s why he’s sacrificing him. “You’re the only one who made me forget my dream.”
The main point of the Golden Age is to hammer home the concept that Guts is more important to Griffith than the dream, and it does it over and over and over lol. Everything revolves around that fact. And the sacrifice is a really clever (imo) culmination of that theme, not a weird last-minute contradiction of it.
Also I might try to add a quick explanation of my reading of the dream, ie it’s a defense mechanism/way for Griffith to escape his feelings, both guilt and the feelings for Guts that make him vulnerable and essentially destroyed his life, “the life of the person you loved the most and hated the most! you gave it to us so that you could bury your fragile human heart!” all that jazz. Which explains why Griffith chooses his dream over Guts even though he cares about Guts more (because he cares about him more). But idk if I could manage that without writing an essay, or more likely, linking one I’ve already written lol.
Wrt the second bit, idk what the fact that he had to sacrifice the other Hawks too has to do with it, it’s pretty clear to me that Godhand sacrifices are bigger and more epic than apostle sacrifices, but Guts still gets the spotlight even though there’s 30-40 others in the group. He’s the one Griffith’s last thoughts are directed to, he’s the one Slan singles out as a particularly excellent sacrifice, he’s the one Zodd directed his “prophecy” to and even makes sure to save so he can be sacrificed later (when he threw him a sword during the battle of Doldrey), while Rosine and the Count and Wyald killed a bunch of Hawks before the Eclipse without causing any issues. He’s the one Skull Knight singles out to give a warning to.
I like that the rest of the Hawks are included because it proves that Griffith does in fact care very much about all of them. I mean Casca’s flashback already proved that, but yk, it never hurts to underline Griffith’s capacity for caring about others, because Griffith himself downplays it as much as possible lol, to say nothing about the fandom. But I don’t think it detracts from Guts as the most important sacrifice either. He’s still above and beyond. He’s the one who caused Griffith’s behelit-opening despair, and he’s the one Griffith sacrifices to escape that despair.
Idk man, the sacrifice is like half the reason I ship griffguts, so I definitely don’t think it downplays or diminishes Griffith’s feelings for Guts in any way, imo it emphasizes how they’re front and centre as Griffith’s number one priority and central motivation in an immensely satisfying way.
ty for asking, i’m just gonna write a few long lists lol
97 anime likes:
the animation, including the like, yk the more detailed stills they pan over in place of action or to punctuate important moments, i love it
the gorgeous backgrounds
most of the colour choices. red eclipse, femto’s blue eyes, casca’s skintone, griffith’s mauve clothes, etc.
how close it is to the manga. like, it’s a solid adaption just by virtue of making very few changes.
so like, most of it really, because i like the manga
special mention to the entire lead up to the eclipse from griffith’s reality break to the sacrifice tho, because i think that was all pretty damn perfect. it’s the most important scene and they did it right.
actually also shout out to casca’s flashback to griffith and the dead kid, gennon, the river scene, all that. another difficult v emotional sequence that they nailed imo.
griffith thinking about how he “loves” guts during the monologue
skipped most of the griffith/charlotte sex scene iirc which i approve of
the glimpse of black swordsman guts in ep 1. it’s not perfect but it’s way better than the ovas starting w/ 15 yr old guts
the opening and closing themes. fucking love both songs ngl
also the opening monologue. never get tired of hearing it
the score
the portrayal of griffith was honestly pretty solid imo. i have very few issues there. and lbr that’s important lol
97 anime dislikes:
not a big fan of griffith or guts’ character designs.
just about everything that isn’t identical to the manga is a change for the worse
turned griffith’s scratch marks into that giant unexplained scar
adding extra scenes where casca is secretly impressed with guts’ skills in battle in an attempt to build up their relationship better, which instead just made casca look unfair for still being a dick to him for 3 years and made guts stupidly gary stu-ish
obviously the straightforwardly romantic portrayal of guts and casca’s relationship
through several seemingly minor changes (eg, skipping guts’ night of self-doubt after he leaves, giving guts’ stay with godo its own half-episode, making guts inviting casca along super romantic rather than the incredibly casual and assholish way he does it in the manga, etc) it makes Guts’ dream seem legitimately noble and worthwhile, with none of the like… implicit critique the manga has. like honestly it completely fucks up what i consider one of the central themes of the story lol
the pre eclipse stuff also fails to sell guts’ sense of regret – through things like playing guts’ theme while judeau is telling guts to leave, not repeating guts’ statement of regret after casca tells him to leave again, the tone remains consistently in favour of guts’ dream. wrong and bad.
like it really reads like the suggested tragedy is that guts doesn’t get the chance to ditch griffith with judeau and take off with casca and the raiders lol
also fucks it up by never directly mentioning guts’ csa trauma
also fucks it up by losing guts’ self-destructive single-minded urge to fight monsters that we saw thru the wyald stuff. i’m not gonna say that losing wyald was a bad decision, but they should’ve at least moved erika suggesting that guts just wants to fight zodd again to the fucking waterfall scene in question, which they portrayed completely sans zodd discussion, completely sans implication of the self-destructiveness of guts’ dream
like in the manga he nearly gets killed by the falling logs and just laughs it off like a dumbass while erika is concerned and suggests that guts is driven by something irrational and not actually a ~noble~ dream, ie, wanting to fight zodd again (ie, going deeper, his csa trauma), while in the anime we get a 2nd scene where he successfully slices through the logs as a super basic symbol of growth and a narrative pat on guts’ back that shouldn’t be there!
honestly just fucking everything about the portrayal of guts’ dream lol it just takes it at face value in a way the manga consistently never did and always undermined and critiqued, and it bugs the hell out of me.
guts is just drawn in a way that makes him look angry way too often and he often feels ooc to me bc of it. like he lacks a lot of the warmth he has in the manga imo
showing that griffith is awake when guts says “i’ll stay too” even tho in the manga those words are placed over a panel of him asleep for a reason like, ffs
lots of other random nitpicky details that only i give a fuck about because my opinions and feelings about the story are too strong lol. like not showing griffith’s face when he asks if guts thinks he’s cruel
oh huge one: moving the scene where the torturer rips off griffith’s behelit from about a day after he was imprisoned to right before his rescue. completely trivializes griffith’s torture because it still looks like he’s been in there for a day at most
why on earth did it end where it ended????????????? who’s bright idea was that? the perfect ending is skull knight riding tf out with guts and casca and femto not killing them, but then they also cut out skull knight’s first appearance so idfk man.
oh some downplaying of griffguts, like i can’t complain too much about this because it was still p homoerotic, but things like omitting guts assuming griffith wants to fuck him right before their first duel. boo.
ultimately at the end of the day as much as i do genuinely like the anime, it’s not telling quite the same story the manga was – the story it’s telling is more boring and basic. but because it sticks so close to the manga the good story still shines through? it just means there’s inconsistent tone choices and stuff, like the aforementioned grievances.
it’s like, they kept casca’s diatribe at guts line for line while she’s screaming that griffith needed him and a man can’t live on dreams alone, but they don’t extend that train of thought to guts going off to pursue his dream, while the manga does.
anyway despite that giant list of dislikes i still think the anime is pretty fantastic overall. i just also like, blame it for a lot of wrong fandom takes lol.
movie likes:
character designs! honestly imo everyone looked pretty great.
they played up the homoeroticism and i appreciate that
illustrating griffith being torn between guts and his dream through that lovely moment when he catches guts when he nearly falls off the stairs right before he catches charlotte, and in a more romantically suggestive way
the whole scene where griffith shows up at charlotte’s window thoroughly improved on the manga, so hats off there. loved how completely out of it he was to the point where he barely realized where he was and immediately turned to leave when charlotte was like ‘woah dude wtf,’ love that charlotte was the one to ask him to stay and then physically move his hand back to her tit, love how emphatically griffith was thinking about guts during that sex scene, etc. like it’s still not perfect, but it is a vast improvement.
griffith showing up in person after the hundred man fight was a nice touch
it was cool that they got a lot of the same english vas from the anime dub back, and they all did a gr8 job. like it’s a pretty good dub imo.
i liked that they moved ‘the crystalization of your last tear shed’ to after guts’ post-eclipse breakdown
compared to the anime at least gtsca was more low-key and chill rather than dramatically romantic. still don’t want it there, and still not as… unromantic as the manga, but i’ll take what i can get
the animation during griffith’s transformation into femto, yk that whole sequence, was cool
slan’s english voice was super sexy
ummmmm i feel like they conveyed the whole dreams are stupid theme, and guts’ decision to leave being a mistake, better than the anime? like i got the sense that the ova ppl recognized that was a theme, at least. i’d have to watch them again to really be sure of that tho
movie dislikes:
GRIFFITH’S. NARRATIVE.
like holy fuck they completely destroyed his character lmao
i cannot believe
no backstory! no tombstone of flame! no ‘do you think i’m cruel?’ THAT WAS THE REASON HE MADE THE SACRIFICE FFS HOW DO YOU SKIP IT????
no dead kid angst, gennon only in vague implication, no self harm – oh no wait we saw self inflicted scratches, they were just completely contextless and meaningless to the point where we could assume charlotte’s nails made them
no torture chamber monologue
no guts monologue in the tavern either for that matter
no rooftop scene
again barely the implication of guts’ childhood trauma, both the sexual abuse and the general parental abuse. one vague flashbacky nightmare doesn’t cut it, it’s the cornerstone of the story
like i get it, it’s a movie trilogy, you have to cut some things, but goddamn, cut out gtsca. trim the hundred man fight. add 20 minutes to the first ova and take the insanely long rape scene out of the third. trim down the whole eclipse sequence. don’t cut out like… the story. like they cut out SO MANY emotionally relevant scenes and kept so many much less relevant scenes, idek.
and like let’s be real here, they turned griffith from an immensely interesting and complex character into a 1 dimensional dude who is torn between a vaguely evil ambition and being in vaguely evil love with guts, just for the sake of streamlining the least interesting aspects of the story
they don’t even try to pretend otherwise lol, look at his fucking hilarious evil smile here
also while i’m looking at it, in general i think they failed at the whole eclipse sequence. looks, lighting, colour, build up of tension… there are a few minor improvements here and there (eg casca’s point of view shot of femto, femto telekinesising guts back a la the black swordsman arc which emphasizes his failure to act when he escapes), but overall it doesn’t work for me at all. like imo the anime has the exact same highs and lows as the manga, but while the ova avoids some lows it never reaches those highs.
they also had griffith overhear guts saying he wants to stay. i really don’t get why this happened twice lol, like… ok his face is kind of shadowed here but he’s still very clearly asleep? this is an important detail, guts’ interrupted words are even on that very panel, so why would you go out of your way to show that he’s awake and listening at that point.
the pacing sucked. 3rd movie was too long, 1st was too short, and they skipped waaaaaay too many significant scenes that should’ve been there as emotional beats
honestly the movies are pretty, they’re nicely fanservicey in ways, they capture some good subtleties and nuances at times, but they’re a husk of the story
oh did i mention the music during the eclipse rape? incredible.
also i am actually generally positive about the movies too despite what it seems like here lmao. i’ve watched them all like, 3 or more times and i find them v enjoyable.
i just have a way easier time listing nitpicky flaws than positives honestly. the flaws stand out to me, the virtues pass me by because i’m just enjoying them and not dwelling on them
and lbr here at the end of the day no adaption will ever really satisfy me unless i somehow find several million dollars lying around and make my own lol. and that would probably be a flop anyway.
I also really liked their relationship tbh. I would’ve been happier about it if Casca hadn’t been secrely in love with him all along, but otoh that does add a metric ton of gay subtext thanks to the parallels so I can’t be too annoyed about that lol.
I talk about them quite a bit in this post (the first part is about their relationship in general, then it goes into the pre-eclipse stuff in more detail) if you’re interested in a more detailed take.
But yeah in general I think they have a pretty sweet relationship that’s kind of a sad missed opportunity, not for romance but for a more emotionally fulfilling friendship. I love how they’re both protective of each other, physically – like Casca stepping in front of Griffith, sword out, when they encounter Zodd, or like Griffith trying despite his complete inability to do something to help Casca when Wyald grabs her – and emotionally, with Casca trying to comfort Griffith in her flashback and Griffith stamping down his own feelings so he can be a strong comforting presence for Casca many times.
And overall I think they’re pretty dysfunctional lol but in an interesting and engaging way that shows they genuinely care about each other and just kind of suck as people. Yk like most relationships in Berserk.
(And yeah ia, that flashback is v touching and sad.)
This is of course all pre-eclipse, Femto is neither here nor there where their relationship is concerned lol.
honestly no, or at least, not in the way you probably mean. and this isn’t me being a griffith apologist and reaching to make excuses for him lol, this is me looking at each scene and getting a very different conclusion from them. like i really just don’t think they logically add up to griffith turning into a rapist demon when you examine each scene you mention, even though it’s admittedly a really really easy connection to draw at a surface level and I can see why people do draw that conclusion.
tho i guess the first duel is actually kind of a “sort of,” to be fair.
at this point the golden age stuff is really hardcore calling back to the black swordsman stuff in an excellent way, and making some v overt comparisons between Griffith and Femto, largely for the sake of… well, for the sake of establishing both similarities and eventual differences.
Griffith’s narrative is a gradual tearing down of our (and Guts’) expectations about him – we start with this larger than life mythical sort of figure who we already know eventually betrays Guts and becomes a demon, so we begin with showing his ambition, his drive, the deference his followers show him, his ability to take out Guts with one parry, etc.
He literally starts out as basically the same antagonist we saw a few chapters ago, at least in Guts’ eyes:
Like, this is meant to show the singleminded obsession that we’re led to believe is why he betrayed Guts to become a demon.
But it’s also a set up for a later revealing subversion of expectations:
In all fairness to Griffith, Guts is the one who gave him the chance to win his loyalty in a fight. Griffith didn’t demand he fight for his freedom or anything lol, he just asked Guts to join, was taken aback when Guts refused, and then leapt at the chance Guts provided to win him in a fight. He even offered to wait a while until Guts had healed more. That’s like, consent right there.
But by taking Guts up on his ridic offer he is definitely kind of pushing the limits of this whole need he has for people to freely choose to follow him, which is also an early sign that Guts is extra special.
Anyway the more overt rapey overtones to this fight, ie Guts basically offering sex slavery if he loses, say more about Guts from a characterization standpoint than they do about Griffith. Griffith is like, lol sure, clearly having no actual intention of taking him up on the sex offer.
But coming after a) the Black Swordsman arc, and b) Guts’ childhood, what this exchange does is draw a comparison between Griffith and the men who abused Guts as a child, both to the reader and in Guts’ mind. (I would argue that this is why Guts insists on fighting him – after Griffith one hitted him Guts is actually scared of him, and his rape trauma informs how he interprets and responds to fear. But I digress)
And again, this is both subverted and played straight. We should’ve already been able to draw comparisons between Femto and Gambino. We’re told about the sacrifice, told Griffith sacrificed Guts, then shown a flashback to Guts’ childhood in which his trusted father figure sold him to Donovan. That’s our explanation for Guts’ vendetta against Griffith/Femto. The sacrifice was a replay of his childhood trauma, and it fucked him up. And our introduction to Griffith here, with Guts projecting his trauma at him, plays off that.
The subversion is in the fact that Guts basically falls in love with Griffith, or insert some platonic phrase meaning essentially the same thing here, because I’m trying to be as objective as possible here lmao. It’s not another Gambino situation where Guts loved him because he was his father and the only family Guts knew, Griffith earns Guts’ love. Griffith is loveable, frankly. He risks his life to save Guts after a week, he‘s put together a merc group that behaves more like one big happy family than like a bunch of hired killers, and Guts spends the three happiest years of his life with him.
We also have Casca’s running commentary helpfully informing us that Griffith’s feelings for Guts are genuine because he’s acting very out of character around him already.
Like to bring this home, Griffith’s narrative is:
to
One reason it was so brilliant to start with the Black Swordsman arc is because it reverses the expected narrative – instead of being shocked when a character we love decides to sacrifice Guts to become a demon, we’re surprised over and over again when a character we were introduced to as a villain turns out to be motivated almost entirely by his intense, very human, very vulnerable, very sympathetic, love for Guts, rather than the expected sociopathic ambition. (And even that ambition has a very human, very vulnerable, very sympathetic source, ie, guilt.)
And, basically, the first duel starts this narrative off by emphasizing the qualities we expect to see in Griffith while simultaneously sowing the seeds of the qualities we end up surprised by. Hence the exchange that emphasizes Guts’ rape trauma – because it also foreshadows/calls back to the sacrifice.
tl;dr the first duel is rapey as part of a comparison between Guts’ childhood trauma and being sacrificed eventually, and it serves as a starting point on which Miura builds a shitload of complexity and basically immediately begins tearing down the image of Griffith as a haughty evil sociopath. Plus at this point idek if Miura had the Eclipse rape in mind – he’s mentioned he decided to have Guts and Casca get together for the sake of more Eclipse drama partway through, and this is pretty early on.
Okay, that’s one out of three. Now, as for scene #2
no I’m kidding, I’ve already written a lot about the other two scenes so I’m not going to reiterate it all here esp since my first answer was already way too long lol.
So I got a more thorough explanation here, but basically the narrative treats the night with Charlotte as consensual sex despite her “no,” and therefore I do too in my reading of the narrative, it’s shitty but so is Miura, the end. Like, I consider this scene the equivalent of Guts grabbing Casca’s tit during an argument. Yk, was that foreshadowing for Guts sexually assaulting her (again but in a dramatic scene next time), or was it Miura being a dumbass?
The super short version of that is that Griffith does have issues with consent – his own – and if you tilt your head a bit you can argue that it might inform the Eclipse rape as a reversal of power dynamics. But it’s not a preview of it, it’s a contrast.
One thing I’ll finish with, though, is that there is a scene that I think can arguably foreshadow the Eclipse rape better than any scene you mentioned, and it’s chapter 39.
This is my very very thorough explanation of it (in like the last 3rd or so of that post), but long story short everything Griffith calls the king out on is something he hates/fears about himself, and I would definitely argue that this scene shows the guilt + self-loathing Griffith feels after trying to keep Guts at his side by force, through a really unsavoury parallel to the King’s predatory lust for Charlotte, as well as the parallel between how their respective “rejections” destroy them.
So yeah, if there’s any scene that I think foreshadows Griffith’s inner darkness being rapey, it’s Griffith comparing himself to the King in a fit of self-loathing. But there’s a reason my explanation is like a million words long lol, it’s pretty subtle, and therefore kind of hard to state definitively.
Okay, and one very last thing to throw out there as a conclusion to this mess:
The Eclipse rape only has the shock value Miura wanted it to have if it’s a contrast. It’s there to demonstrate that new Evil Demon Griffith is a bad dude who does horrible things Our Griffith wouldn’t do, and draw a hard line between regular human Griffith and Femto, which is also what enables Guts to express his feelings thru murderous rage.
This is lost on a lot of fans because people are really, really eager to see Griffith as Pure Evil The Whole Time, but straight up, objectively, that is what the text is going for – the Eclipse rape is a defining character moment for Femto because it’s a harsh contrast to the Griffith we, and Guts, have come to know and love. It’s meant to shock the reader and make them – or remind them to – hate Femto lol, it’s not meant to give them a pat on the back and tell them they were right about Griffith being an evil predatory gay all along. That’s just a very unfortunate side effect.
Judeau’s clear agenda in the back half of the Golden Age is hilarious to me because it’s like Miura couldn’t get Guts and Casca to fuck naturally, so he had to make it a side character’s sole mission in life to arrange their hook up.
But actually to be less cynical, I think it works very well with the overall tone and thematic takeaway from the Golden Age. Why was Judeau meddling? Well, it’s strongly suggested that it’s because he was in love with Casca himself, but didn’t consider himself worthy of her. He thought Guts would be better for her, and that Casca would be better off traveling with Guts than leading the remnants of the Hawks, so he shoved Guts at her until they boned.
And look how that turned out.
Moral of the Golden Age: tell people how you feel instead of just assuming you’re not good enough for them.
And like, something I really love about Judeau’s character is that he seems to fill that character trope of friend who gives good advice and lays out some of the story’s themes and nudges the protagonist in the right direction for the plot. But like everyone else in Berserk he’s more layered than that – he has his own reasons for saying the things he does and directing Guts the way he does, and those reasons are kind of based in low self esteem. He’s another factor that helps bring everyone to the Eclipse.
Sometimes he does give good advice, but sometimes he gives genuinely bad advice, because he’s biased.
And I think there’s a potential parallel between Judeau trying to set Guts and Casca up, and Guts trying to set Casca and Griffith up before he leaves. Guts feels unworthy of Griffith because he doesn’t have a dream, but Casca does, so he shoves her at Griffith to get her to take his place as his sword, but yk with added romance because heteronormativity.
It’s not unbiased-dude-trying-to-be-a-good-bro-for-his-friends advice, Judeau’s own issues are a factor in him trying to get Guts and Casca together.
Judeau feels unworthy of Casca because idk he’s insecure about being a jack of all trades, master of none lol, so he considers Guts, who is the best at least next to Griffith, more worthy of Casca and tries to get them together.
And in his dying moments, he knows he fucked up. That he should’ve just said something.
And yk what, he may think Guts is more worthy of Casca because he’s the best at something, but Guts was up on top of a giant hand trying to save Griffith long after that stopped making sense as a course of action while Judeau was down here trying to survive with Casca, and I think we all know who Casca appreciated more in this moment.
There’s something to be said for just being there with someone instead of leaving them in the snow/trying to convince a dude to sling her over his shoulder and run lol. Same with how Judeau was with Casca throughout the year of hiding and trying to survive while Guts was fucking off on his eat pray love vacation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we’re meant to see Judeau/Casca as a tragic missed connection and the better alternative to Guts and Casca getting together.
(On a personal note I don’t actually like the idea of Judeau/Casca both bc it’s het lol but also since it’s just, yk, dude pines, wants the girl but meddles in her life for her own good, Casca’s feelings towards Judeau aren’t explored at all, etc. But the way Miura portrayed Judeau’s regret and his presence vs Guts’ absence makes me think that the takeaway is that in the best version of events Judeau would’ve told Casca how he felt and they would’ve got together. And thematically that fits imo.)
Also while I’m on this topic, I want to take yet another opportunity to point this great moment out:
hmmmmmmmmmmm
Judeau then immediately segues the conversation to the whole “Casca’s life sucks right now, you need to save her from it, etc” bit.
But I fucking love this moment specifically because it’s telling us that not only is Judeau overtly meddling to get Casca and Guts to hook up, but Judeau believes that Guts knowing how Griffith really feels about him will impede his plans.
And I mean it’s true, he wants Guts to leave with Casca and when Guts realizes how hard he fucked up and how much Griffith desperately needs him and always did he wants to stay. But it’s just such a nice touch to tell us that Guts and Casca… only work in the absence of Griffith. Guts gets with Casca when he falsely believes Griffith looks down on him. Guts chooses to stay with Griffith when he’s convinced he was wrong about that.
(And post-Eclipse, Guts abandons Casca for his revenge campaign, and chooses to stay with her when NeoGriffith says unequivocally that he’s over him now lol.)
It adds to the sense that Guts and Casca are both rebounding from Griffith, and they only work together as long as they both want to distance themselves from him. When he’s back in their life they get weird and jealous immediately, and then they both independently choose not to leave the Hawks together (Guts telling Judeau he wants to stay, followed by Casca telling Guts she can’t leave with him) and Casca tries to break up with him lol.
Sorry I ran out of characters in the last post so I’ll continue from
here: And in the dream sequence where Griffith imagined Casca was his
wife and Guts was there child? Did you think that what happened in the
wagon was Griffith attempting to rape Casca and was the dream sequence
suppose to reveal ANY sort of feeling he had for her? What do you think
is the case and why?
I definitely don’t think the wagon scene or the dream sequence (I call
it a nightmare lol) suggest that Griffith has feelings for Casca. And I
don’t think the scene in the wagon was a rape attempt, because I mean
for one Griffith stopped when Casca told him to stop, so yk, qed lol,
but also because I think it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse
rape, rather than like, a sneak preview. It’s an offer, the only way he can make that offer without the ability to speak.
Griffith is at his absolute lowest point here. He’s lost everything that he perceives gives him worth, and Wyald’s just literally and metaphorically stripped away his last lingering ability to deny this. He overheard Casca tell Guts she wants to be held right before the wagon scene, and as Casca is bandaging his hand she reflects on how Griffith could always comfort her with just a hand on her shoulder – but now it’s her turn to do that.
So imo Griffith is offering himself to Casca for two reasons:
1. He desperately wants to be this person again:
She’s shaking, she wants comfort, and Griffith wants to be the strong leader who can ease her trembling.
It’s a way he’s denied his vulnerability in the past:
But he’s simply no longer able to be this person.
It’s a humiliating, and depressing reversal of their roles, emphasizing how far Griffith’s fallen.
2. It’s sexual for one or both of these reasons:
Guts and Casca just had comfort sex. As a failed attempt at initiating comfort sex, the contrast highlights Griffith’s removal from their new dynamic. Also, since Griffith knows they’ve hooked up, this could be an attempt to insert himself into that dynamic and redress the balance because he’s afraid of being left behind.
What may be a harder sell depending on your reading of Griffith but makes the most sense to me is that frankly, Griffith is desperate. Wyald just gave the Hawks a run-down of how fucked he is for life – he can no longer be the Hawks’ hope for the future, and he can’t even live on his own. He’s been hiding behind that hawk mask, clinging to the last vestiges of his image (like when he asked Guts for his armour), and now that’s gone. If someone doesn’t take care of him, he’s dead. Griffith is someone who judges his worth by what he can be to other people, and now in his eyes he’s nothing but a burden with tens of thousands of corpses worth of guilt hanging over him.
And kind of hammering this point home for the reader, outside the wagon Judeau is backing up Griffith’s own depressing image of himself too – he’s telling Guts to take Casca and run because otherwise she’ll basically end up stuck taking care of Griffith, while he himself offers to take Griffith with him because he feels like he owes Griffith. And after this scene, Casca cries because she feels like she can’t leave Griffith behind, even though she wants to leave with Guts.
Ironically, considering what Griffith overhears right after, Guts is the only person who actually wants to stay with Griffith now, as he keeps trying to tell the people who keep telling him to leave lol:
So, imo Griffith’s offering sex to Casca mostly because it’s something he can offer that still
potentially has worth – it’s something he can give in exchange for being
taken care of.
Casca was in love with him, and lbr Griffith knows that, so this is theoretically something she might want.
And Griffith like, sees sex as transactional. It’s something he can trade to those with more power than him, who can give him something he needs. Money, with Gennon. A kingdom, with Charlotte. And here it’s Casca, for security – plus maybe Guts. So imo trading sexual favours absolutely seems like something Griffith would fall back on if he’s desperate.
And this leads right to Griffith’s hallucinatory nightmare after he overhears Casca telling Guts to leave – he’s envisioning the life he just asked for, believing Guts intends to leave, and it’s fucking horrific.
Griffith is living in what seems like a state of permanent dissociation. Guts is out there, still pursuing his own dream, totally out of their lives.
You mentioned the child being Guts, as in a surreal nightmare, but I think he’s just intended to be named after him. The “he” swinging his sword out there somewhere who Casca mentions would be the actual Guts, and this – blondish – kid is presumably Griffith and Cacsa’s.
imo a p disturbing way of underscoring that Guts is gone but far from forgotten.
Anyway yeah to me this whole sequence reads like Griffith grasping at the last straws available to him.
So to basically just sum up My Take on all this:
Griffith offers himself to Casca in the wagon both to try to reclaim a piece of his past self, and in an attempt to secure his future by offering Casca something she wants. And imagining that future, sans Guts, drives him to suicide.
So like, I don’t think it’s indicative of Griffith having any romantic feelings for Casca. It’s more a painful illustration of Griffith’s current powerlessness and desperation.
In case you want to read more lol, I talk about these scenes more thoroughly and with more context and build up in like the first half of the fourth part of this Griffith analysis.
Like, Guts feeling possessive of
Griffith as a response to Casca telling him that Griffith was
emotionally dependent on him? yk the knowledge that Griffith ended up
in a torture chamber because of him, whether he’s ready to acknowledge
that or not, basically making him feel like he’s allowed to express that
possessiveness bc Griffith has ott feelings for him back? Because if so I could def see that.
We see Guts musing on this fact in the tunnels on the way to Griffith too. I definitely think it’s informing a lot of his behaviour here, and in the lead-up to the Eclipse, maybe not consciously since he keeps trying to bury that realization (because guilt), but definitely subconsciously.
I also think it’s the main source of the rage that fuels his rampage through Midland, killing hundreds of soldiers and a monster. It’s a way of ignoring his guilt by turning the feeling outward onto acceptable targets. You could maybe also add that it’s why he snaps at Casca – he already has the urge to lash out at something, and a minute later the torturer shows up and then he’s able to fully express his feelings lol.
Also plz feel free to explain further if I missed something, I want to know your thoughts and idk if I interpreted what you mean right.
said:
What are your thoughts about the current Griffith? In my eyes he has
become like the Snow Queen – Beautiful, yet cold and empty. Practically
unable to experience emotion and lacking in any humanity. A pretty
doll. A shell. A walking facade. What do you think?
My answer to this ties into the other thing you asked me to expand on, re: Griffith and contrasts, so I guess I’m just kind of doing both answers at once.
Basically I agree, but I think there’s more to NeoGriffith (ie post Femto, resurrected, godlike Griffith) than that.
Griffith as a human is so interesting to me in part because he’s full of contrasts, which is one of those hooks that really get me interested in a character. And those contrasts mostly stem from this attitude right here:
He hides away all of his weaknesses, his negative thoughts, the truth of what actually drives him on (guilt), his self-loathing, even from himself. He smiles and portrays an image of perfection so well that he essentially believes it himself most of the time.
So you have things like the Promrose Hall speech, where he’s fully embodying that image of himself:
vs Casca’s flashback, which is a glimpse of his darker, much more fucked up self underneath, and directly contradicts the above:
So you have the contrast between the perfect leader, the guy who can take down an army of 30,000 with 5,000, the guy who waxes poetic about how great dreams are, the guy who is this fucking cool while burning a queen alive:
And the guy who self-harms after prostituting himself to a pedophile to prevent as many deaths of his followers as possible despite claiming he doesn’t feel responsible for them, the guy who falls to pieces and destroys his own life when Guts leaves, the guy who hates himself and desperately wants to be told he’s not a monster:
And both are Griffith. Griffith isn’t just faking his confidence, he genuinely is that confident. He genuinely believes that his dream is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself, and he can’t call any of his followers friends because they’re clinging to his dream rather than finding their own dreams.
He’s portrayed that image so fully that it’s a real part of him. But at the same time, sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite underneath: the self loathing, the fear, the fact that he’s in love with Guts and has nearly lost his dream because of that love multiple times (ie nearly dying while trying to save him from Zodd, burning his own life down after Guts leaves, even going back and rescuing him personally that first week).
And that brings me to NeoGriffith, because what NeoGriffith is, is that image, and only that image, with none of the very human weaknesses behind it.
He’s described as a painting, as untouchable, etc, like fifty million times.
He’s basically become the impression he used to leave people with.
If Griffith contradicted himself – confidence vs insecurity, conviction vs self loathing, unwaveringly pursuing his dream vs Guts making him forget his dream, etc – then NeoGriffith is one side minus the other. Confidence, no insecurity, conviction, no self-loathing, the dream, no Guts.
And it’s uncanny too. He’s pursuing the dream, but he’s no longer motivated by his very human feelings of guilt (and also fear/insecurity, which we’re shown here:
I got this whole argument about dreams in Berserk being essentially shitty coping mechanisms lol, which I won’t get into now but is worth mentioning as another aspect of human Griffith that NeoGriffith lacks)
He’s lost his human flaws, and that makes him kind of disturbing imo, because those human flaws drove him, and now he’s driven by nothing, he just is.
And, just as a side note, it’s also worth noting that Femto is the other side imo – the self-loathing, the insecurity – in the sense that Femto is the embodiment of the monster Griffith believed himself to be deep down, the monster he believed Guts saw him as too, after this exchange (and then Guts leaving):
I mean it’s ultimately the final puzzle piece that makes him agree to the sacrifice:
And I 100% believe that NeoGriffith is referencing that here with his “you, of all people”:
So like, tl;dr Griffith is a land of contradictions, and that’s embodied in 2 magical fantasy transformations that make those disparate elements of him literal personifications.
NeoGriffith is the side of himself that he showed the world as a human, stripped of his humanity, and Femto is basically a personification of his own self-loathing, in which he became everything he feared himself to be, everything Guts failed to tell him he wasn’t.
But this is just like, the thematic take lol. This is what I think NeoGriffith essentially represents. But it’s also more complicated than that, because
But when it comes to like, NeoGriffith as a character, rather than a construct, who potentially still has emotions and ties to his previous life, I guess I’ll leave you with links because I don’t really have much new to say:
Basically I think there’s plenty of indication that Griffith failed to entirely purge himself of emotion and isn’t quite the serene image of perfection he seems.
there’s something to be said about how this turns into a “men vs women” type of conversation where griffith takes men’s side with his bullshit dream spiel and pretends like it’s this profound thing women will never understand
and by that i mean that it comes off as trying too hard, the same way him talking about what a ‘friend’ is to him comes off as trying too hard. before i was a little hesitant to believe that griffith feels forced into masculine roles rather than choosing to take them bc it’s the fastest way to achieving what he’s trying to achieve, but after re-examining this scene i think i feel a little differently about that
#other ppl’s meta #totally it’s posturing – more for himself than charlotte too #the image that goes with the dream which is (how does this always fit so perfectly) an attempt at a heteronormative masculine ideal #the men are like this stuff fits that so well as does charlotte suggesting ‘family or a sweetheart’ which ofc sums up what griffith #is torn between (‘family’ if you don’t want to be saccharine and include the rest of the hawks he sacrifices) and what guts ends up #abandoning for /his/ dream
@bthump what you said here, “more for himself than charlotte,” that’s exactly what i mean, somehow it didn’t register to me, until today, that the part of this where he puts up a masculine facade is ALSO for himself, and not just for charlotte. you know, when i think @yesgabsstuff and i talked about how griffith would be more feminine without all this bullshit weighing on him, i said i didn’t think his choice to present and act more masculine was one he made out of fear. and i still think that, to an extent, but there’s no denying that he felt forced into that masculine role bc …………… it’s so tightly woven together with his dream. and since it’s something he has to do for the sake of his dream, then fear also has to be involved, even if in a sort of roundabout way. that is to say, i don’t think griffith is afraid of like, getting punched or called a faggot if he wears a dress or w/e. but i think there’s no denying that he is afraid of letting this image falter, and that’s what this is really about
I feel this tbh, like imo Griffith wouldn’t really have a visceral fear for his physical safety, he’s been the best w/ a sword since he was like 10 from all appearances lol, and honestly I feel like as a peasant mercenary with the force of personality he has he would in theory be able to get away with some gnc presentation and attraction to men if all he wanted was to fight and make money. Same way Casca could lead the Hawks even though she’s a woman in the world of Berserk lol.
but his fear of failure is a major aspect – he needs the correct image while climbing higher in society, to achieve his dream.
and also i think he needs the dream to justify hiding behind the image, which is partly what i get out of that speech to charlotte. it reads to me like he’s justifying his dream to himself as worthwhile in and of itself, in a contrast to how he justifies it to himself in the river w/ casca a few chapters later, as something he owes the dead.
idk it all goes into how his dream is a defense mechanism from his self loathing and a way to justify his existence, but he doesn’t think of it that way 99% of the time, he has to see it as inherently worthwhile to avoid acknowledging the actual reason (self-loathing) he’s pursuing it.
and some of that self loathing is guilt, some is a belief of his inherent worthlessness, but some is also connected to his sexuality, both in his traumatic experience with Gennon after which he called himself dirty, and his love for Guts, which is especially shown through how Guts is pitted against his dream and how Guts “made him weak” and his feelings for him led to him losing everything. Griffith’s feelings for Guts are connected to his belief of his inherent worthlessness, because they exist in opposition to his dream. (this is thematic moreso than literal)
So part of his reason for pursing the dream is to bury those parts of himself – like it goes both ways, basically, imo. He has to be a heteronormative masculine ideal for the sake of the dream, but he obsesses over the dream partly as a way to bury the parts of himself that aren’t that ideal?
um i feel like this doesn’t really make sense lol sorry. it’s hard to explain how my brain makes connections sometimes.
If I was Casca I would’ve just said “he’s leaving because of what you said at the Promrose hall. Goddamn. Now can you two please talk it out because there have obviously been some miscommunication”
Like Casca understands those two perfect and knew why Guts was leaving
When she went to get
Griffith she could’ve literally told him “Guts is leaving. He’s going
because of what you said at the Promrose hall, may be you should pull
him aside and talk to him privately”
Knowing Casca that’s probably something that she did say but Griffith didn’t act upon it because of emotions. Damn emotions
mercenaries gonna mercenary i guess
to be fair I think Casca telling Griffith why Guts wanted to leave would be kind of a betrayal of trust. Guts’ reasons are pretty personal. (ON THE OTHER HAND she had no problem telling Guts all about Griffith’s incredibly personal issues, so lmao that’s kind of an inadequate excuse.)
And tbh I feel like she got Griffith to show up to keep Guts from leaving because she thought they’d be able to talk it out. Honestly I think you’re basically right lol, it’s kind of just plot convenience that she doesn’t tell Griffith why Guts was planning to leave. There’s no real reason for her to hold back.
I definitely don’t think she told Griffith though, based on his inner monologue before the duel and like… idk just from everything I feel I understand about Griffith’s narrative and inner conflicts it makes the most sense for him to take Guts leaving as a rejection. If he knew Guts was leaving because he admired him his reaction would still probably be negative, he might even still just default to challenging Guts to another duel to avoid examining how he actually feels lmao, but I think his thoughts would be very different and I don’t think he’d have a huge breakdown after if that was the case.
Guts, and Griffith, and Judeau, and Pippin, and Corkus:
Because it’s true lol, this is genuinely a conflict they could’ve theoretically fixed by talking it out.
Tho I do think the story really effectively shows us why neither of them are going to talk it out, so it doesn’t feel like… stupidly frustrating the way dumb miscommunication does in fiction. It’s rooted deeply in character – Griffith can’t explain why he needs Guts to stay bc he doesn’t really know, Guts can’t explain why he wants to leave because that defeats the whole purpose, ie:
Like, I’m rearranging my entire life to be your friend based on some weirdly specific criteria you have that I happened to overhear, criteria which explicitly precludes basing your life around another person, so it’s kind of awkward to fully explain.
So even if they did try to talk I could easily see it going nowhere because neither is quite able to explain themselves without additional motivation/understanding/etc. But yk, if they had that motivation and an opportunity to hash it out I could also see them figuring their stuff out, and then their lives would’ve been a lot happier lol.
Like if Casca had resorted to the old “lock them in a room together” sitcom plot lmao.
this is so sweet… thinking bout a disabled post torture griffith and guts having a potential healthy romantic and even sexual relationship when its narratively framed as Bad is hmmm good
another point for griffiths behelit shouldve cascas all along au tbh
lol like i know there’s a million and one ways guts and post-torture griffith living a life together could go wrong but I’m an optimist and I think they could make it work
plus yk a lot of the narrative tension in the lead up to the Eclipse comes from teasing the audience with hope spots, which become meaningless if Guts and Griffith are doomed no matter what. I say they could’ve been happy together.
also lol idgaf what Miura probably intended, griffguts is extraordinarily readable as a story about how two dudes failing to act on their obvious sexual attraction was what ruined everything and it’s more fun that way.
so yeah if griffguts got together the behelit would have to be Casca’s. It’s perfect.
mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least
oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.
Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:
I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.
But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.
imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol
And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.
Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.
Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.
(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)
i actually kinda like how unconcerned griffith is. he’s just like, welp what can you do casca, naked man + naked woman = acceptable, naked man + naked man = bad, that’s just the natural way of things and I got way too much internalized homophobia to fight it. (“warming a man is a woman’s duty, he said.”)
lol i seriously cannot read griffith’s narrative as anything but dream/heteronormativity vs guts/living ur gay truth.
like i’ve seen this scene described as just tone-setting casual ye olde sexism, but it feels too significant for that. it just fits their whole messed up love triangle dynamic so perfectly, it’s like, an ideal establishing action that just sums it all up.
Guts’ slow realization that
he had Griffith on a completely unrealistic pedestal and
destroyed him because of his belief that Griffith is distant and untouchable and above him is perfectly mirrored, foreshadowed, and summed up by this statement of Casca’s:
Except yk Guts never gets that moment of realization that his feelings have a sexual component.
And it’s just so easy to read this as a statement on that lol, on how if Guts did have that realization maybe the fact that Griffith isn’t a god would’ve followed. Or if he’d had another few minutes between this
and the Eclipse.
Like I’m js you equate removing Griffith from his pedestal and seeing him as a fallible human to recognizing your buried attraction to him w/ one character, I’m obviously going to follow that thread through to the other character and his paralleled feelings towards Griffith.
Maybe it’s a bit much to equate Guts swinging his sword several hundred times until his hand is covered in blisters to Griffith scratching himself, but hey both are forms of self-harm associated with their dreams. (Plus the blisters work as a solid symbol of Guts’ typical self-destructive way of fighting, letting monsters stab him so he can shoot them, that kinda thing).
Anyway I just noticed that Guts’ hand was bandaged the morning he left the Hawks despite it having been a month since he had to kill anyone, and was like, hmm.
This parallel/contrast is a great little illustration of the significance of the Zodd encounter.
Cuddling with his sword the way he did as a child when faced with mistrust and derision vs dedicating his sword to Griffith – in the first his sword is a comfort object, an escape, a distraction. In the second his sword is a tool – he’s not wielding it as a distraction from his own pain, he’s wielding it for someone else, as a symbol of a meaningful connection with another person.
It’s also worth noting that right before the conversation with Griffith, Guts was angrily swinging his sword as a distraction while remembering Casca making him feel like an outsider (”you’re just a mad dog!” “it’s your fault!”), essentially underlining this contrast between the way Guts regards his sword before and after Griffith says he saved his life for his sake.
And check out these matching visuals of Guts looking at his blistered hands, just to drive the point home:
lol this just sums up the guts-griffith-casca love triangle so perfectly.
Like… it sets up both the way Guts and Griffith use Casca as an intermediary for physical (and emotional) intimacy with each other, making her life a living hell, and the way Casca’s whole existence revolves around her gender in contrast to the men surrounding her, and ties those two things together.
Plus, with Guts’ nightmare and subsequent relief that it’s a woman rather than a man with him, it adds trauma to the mix. It ties everything together.
And man it is thematically neat as fuck.
Like what I’m saying is that if you choose to believe this is purposeful, then what the Golden Age is about is two dudes who are both attracted to each other and can’t act on it thanks to internalized (trauma)*** and externalized (heteronormativity) homophobia, and this fucks up both the dudes in question, and the woman/en (? Charlotte isn’t shown to suffer from this, but I imagine being in a one-sided relationship will eventually take its toll on her) they end up turning to instead out of that internalized and externalized obligation.
Casca’s story is almost entirely about dealing with misogyny, and this makes heteronormativity a part of that. It’s not just a woman’s duty to warm a man – another man can’t. Men can’t be physically intimate with each other, only with women, and more, they have to be physically intimate with women to attain like, an artificial sense of self-actualization – in Berserk, their dreams. And this harms both the men in their enforced isolation from each other and the women in their enforced intimacy with men.
Like, Guts even references Casca warming him here after they have sex, again, tying physical intimacy with her to his trauma.
And while Charlotte is Griffith’s means to achieving his dream, Casca is Guts’ – because attaining Casca’s affection, being “good” for her, means he’s more like Griffith, and closer to his goal of being Griffith’s equal.
I mean Guts leaving Griffith because they couldn’t share their feelings with each other, and Griffith sleeping with Charlotte as a means of denial (“take all those sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire”) and then Guts sleeping with Casca as a means of denial (”don’t think about those things. Right now all you need is to feel alive”) both lead directly to Griffith choosing to destroy his feelings so he can live solely for his dream. Draw your own conclusions about how this culminates in the most destructive display of heterosexuality in the story.
Once the nature of Guts’ dream switches from abandoning Griffith to pursuing him in rage things get murkier on Guts’ side, but this reading still works if you consider that Guts’ problem isn’t exactly his lingering, twisted feelings for Griffith, but his refusal to actually examine and untangle them, with revenge as just another distraction.
And to be perfectly crystal clear I’m not saying this is purposeful, or that even if it somehow is purposeful Miura doesn’t still go about it as offensively as possible. Like, by this reading internalized homophobia is essentially positioned as a result of evil gay pedophiles, to a much greater extent than any vague reference to societal norms. Both these dudes succumb to inner darknesses and assault a woman explicitly because of their feelings for the other dude. I’m not giving him a round of applause here lmao. It’s probably actually less offensive if it’s all accidental.
And lbr it’s probably a side-effect of writing a) a female character whose life revolves around misogyny, b) a homoerotic relationship between 2 dudes and c) a half-assed het subplot between one of those dudes and the aforementioned woman
But like still, it just fits together so freaking well. It’s ridiculous how neat this reading is during the Golden Age.
***to be clear i’m not saying internalized homophobia is always a result of trauma lol, I’m saying that’s how the story does it.
lol tbh I’ve been overthinking this question which is why it took me a while to answer. Like, weighing pros and cons, does the Eclipse rape count as bad character writing for Griffith/Femto/NGriff or does it at least make sense as long as you accept Miura’s premise that people’s inner darknesses are gonna be rapists 99% of the time, or is it a mistake that reflects on the character writing because of the weird tonal issues it raises with NGriff’s narrative? Like, is it a flaw more because it disaligns the way the author wants to portray Griffith vs the way the audience responds to Griffith? How is that weighted against Guts losing so much of what made him interesting through sometimes good, sometimes poor character development? If it’s believable character development is becoming less interesting still a flaw or just like, my opinion man?
And honestly fuck all that, idc. Griffith is the best written character because his highs are higher and more consistent and I find his lows easier to ignore bc they’re wrapped up in other bad writing, and there’s no way to give an objective answer to this anyway so I might as well let my opinions fly and gush for a while.
I just love his narrative.
From his first appearance as Femto taunting Guts by saying he’s beneath his notice to the hints that he certainly didn’t always feel that way to the first flashback of Griffith telling Guts he’s “the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this,” he’s introduced in such an interesting, intriguing way. Then in the Golden Age the way his apparent easy superiority and confidence eventually gives way to the reveal that he’s a giant mess of insecurities and guilt – and the way this reveal sheds so much interesting light on everything that came before, like his dream speech to Charlotte, his “I will choose the place where you die” speech to Guts, risking his life to save Guts, asking Guts to assassinate Julius, etc.
And the way all these apparent contradictions manage to come together to perfectly depict a man who hides behind an image so well that he believes the act himself, except in occasional moments of vulnerability when the truth seeps out.
Like there are so many interesting subtleties to dig into and so many contradictions to navigate but at the same time this one page tells you everything you really need to know to understand him:
This is a dude who will prostitute himself to a pedophile to prevent as many deaths as possible and then the next morning claim he doesn’t feel responsible for those deaths.
He will bury his guilt so hard that his reaction to a kid’s convenient death is triumphant delight, and then fret about killing hired goons and ask if Guts thinks he’s cruel, because Charlotte/his dream reinforces his image – his conviction – and Guts/love unravels it.
Also like, in general it’s fantastic how our impression of Griffith begins with the impression he leaves on everyone:
and then that is like, turned over and examined in the way Miura does, by showing how fucked up you have to be to embody a cool fictional archetype. (Incidentally I love how he does this with Guts’ antiheroism too. Like, hey turns out you gotta have a pretty fucked up life to become a cool monster fighting badass. tho even so Griffith’s is a little better imo because we spend more time with the image before revealing what’s underneath, whereas Guts didn’t even get a full chapter of tricking the audience into thinking he’s just a surly badass b4 the cracks started appearing.)
THEN his feelings for Guts come into it and complicate everything and we’re shown that there’s an internal war in Griffith between Guts and the dream that Griffith himself doesn’t even seem to realize until it’s too late. Which is just delightful bc god knows my favourite literary device is dramatic irony and idk if knowing more about Griffith’s inner conflicts than Griffith himself understands counts but damn it’s fun. And the moment when he does finally acknowledge it (”as he shines so glaring within me… the junk grows dull.”) is just intensely satisfying because we’ve been waiting for it since at least Casca’s “it’s as if… as if…” in chapter 18.
And the way everything cumulates so utterly perfectly in the sacrifice. Everything we see, everything in Griffith’s narrative, every moment leads directly to “I sacrifice,” and it all fits together immaculately. The dream as a defense mechanism, guilt, shame, emotional denial, “take all the frightening and sad things and cast them into the fire,” his desperate search for like, absolution, the way in the build up to the eclipse he’s stripped of everything he ever relied on as a defense, fucking love as the determining factor
the fact that he’s not sacrificing guts because he values the dream more, he’s sacrificing guts because he values guts more. like that’s just so fucking good, come on.
Honestly, Femto and NeoGriffith are both great as symbols too – Femto as everything Griffith was ashamed of but without the shame; NGriff as pure conviction, as the perfect image with none of the driving guilt. I can’t exactly say they’re great characters since the whole point of them is that they’re not fleshed out or relatable or understandable as humans one can empathize with, but they’re great conceptually. It’s cool to see the fully fleshed out, contradictory Griffith and then see him divided and carved up into representational aspects of himself.
Also the few hints of more are super satisfying with the full weight of Griffith’s human narrative behind them – Femto letting Guts escape, the unfrozen heartbeat, you know what I’m about.
And idk at the end of the day with Griffith Miura successfully (IMO) depicted a dude who would choose to sacrifice a group of people I really liked and become a demon for the greater good, for petty reasons, and out of fear of his own feelings, all at the same time, and make me empathize with that decision, and that seems like it would be hard to do. I mean granted, I’m in the minority when it comes to empathizing with him, but idk I can only answer this from my perspective lol.
Anyway to wrap this up I’m plugging this thing again because really could I have ever given any answer other than “the dude whose character arc I wrote over fifteen thousand words about”?
ok yk what
if half of the g*tsca sex scene is meant to be a positive step towards guts getting over his trauma, and ignoring my personal feelings by all rights it absolutely should be, because the central point of berserk is that interpersonal relationships are positive ways to heal from trauma and guts having a flashback and then talking it through in front of Casca b4 having comfort sex seems like it fits right into that theme
so yeah if that is meant to be a positive emotionally healing experience, then i simply do not understand why it… changes literally nothing.
guts’ dream is a distraction, swinging his sword is his way of not thinking about his issues, and after this he goes right back to harping on about his dream and insisting he’s gonna keep fighting stronger and stronger enemies.
during the wyald fight he refuses to let casca help and refuses to run because he feels like he’s got a score to settle with monsters as a concept, and therefore he has to beat wyald all by himself (”by my own sword”), which is also an indication that he’s still mired in his issues, obsessed with his dream, lashing out to assuage his personal pain.
and he finally, finally chooses to let go of his dream for someone else’s sake when it’s Griffith who needs him, not Casca.
having sex with Casca after the flashback should be Guts’ turning point. When Casca asks him to stay his answer should be yes, or at least be ambiguous enough to show that he’s seriously considering it. that he’s beginning to recognize that relationships > dreams and the Hawks are his family. He suggests that Casca come along, but makes it very clear that his dream gets first priority when he does. “Whether bein’ with you will get in the way of what I want to do… or the opposite… I can’t tell now.”
rather than considering staying when Casca asks, he immediately says he wants “to draw a line, keep things separate.” And ofc Griffith ends up being the turning point. Casca telling him Griffith destroyed himself because of him, thinking about Griffith’s emotional vulnerability during the rescue mission, finding Griffith after a year of torture and now dependant – these are all what lead to Guts wavering and wondering if leaving was a mistake. Not Casca yelling that he’s a selfish idiot who only cares about himself and dreams, but Casca yelling that Griffith ended up in a torture chamber because of him.
Miura even shows us Guts choosing to stay with Griffith before even consulting Casca.
Like he could’ve split the difference, had Casca tell Guts she can’t leave with him because she needs to take care of Griffith and have Guts make up his mind then, showing that his relationships with Casca and Griffith are at least equal in importance, but nope. Guts wants to stay with Griffith regardless of what Casca decides. It’s before they talk again that he reaches his conclusion that he fucked up and the Hawks were his home all along:
their relationship could not be more of an afterthought to Miura here. it’s so painfully clear that he added it just to destroy her character and motivate Guts, because where there should be a shitload of thematic resonance and character development in their relationship, there’s none. it’s absolutely unnecessary, it affects nothing at all except the eclipse rape, to such an extent that it’s awkward, because it would’ve been so easy and straightforward to tie it into existing themes and make their relationship matter, and Miura just didn’t bother.
Like if I shipped them I’d be mad lol, I’d feel ripped off. Instead I’m just weirded out by how badly written this one subplot is in the midst of the otherwise pretty outstanding Golden Age.
this is one of those grand thematic statements that applies to a lot of berserk, like guts’ nearly obsessive need to fight monsters, or like, well, most sacrifices imo. But I’m thinking about how it applies to Griffith – the reverse, I mean. Griffith doesn’t really express fear, like he doesn’t really express most of his feelings, but what does he strike out?
Well, here he’s assassinated a bunch of would-be assassins, including the Queen. Gennon. Tyranny/the natural order of things in general lol.
And Guts.
Or maybe more accurately, his feelings for Guts.
tbh one of my major criticisms of Berserk is that as far as I can tell the theme of fear has been mostly dropped, like, i’m pretty sure the last time we saw a suggestion of Guts being afraid for himself rather than of himself was 150 chapters ago with Slan, and that was like the only time post-Eclipse at all lol.
So I can’t exactly say that Guts surviving the Eclipse and then Femto/NeoGriffith pointedly failing to strike Guts out suggests his narrative is gonna end with falling under the wing of what he fears, but screw it that’s what I want and I’m using that panel up there to justify it.
…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.
There are few things I love more than how the early chapters of the Golden Age reflect, build on, deepen, inform, and contrast the Black Swordsman arc.
ohhh man re-reading those chapters in particular and like
there’s such a clear little mini-arc. This isn’t brand new information at all, but I love seeing it laid out like this so I’m going to talk about it.
Chapter 6 starts with Guts trying to visit Griffith while brooding about Casca’s “it’s your fault!”
He’s prevented by social status.
Casca punches him out and Guts leaves and sulks, and the rest of the Hawks have this exchange:
So we start with the statement that everyone’s feeling a little distanced from Griffith thanks to his promotions, and this is very much affecting Guts too, which is why he threw a couple guards down the stairs and made an ass of himself while trying to visit him.
Then we go straight to Guts angrily swinging his sword on the staircase.
He’s pissed off about Casca making him feel like an outsider. This is a dude who has clearly defined issues when it comes to being blamed for bad shit happening. See, eg, Gambino blaming him for the death of Shizu, calling him “cursed,” along with the rest of his first mercenary band.
Three years with the Hawks, and Guts is mostly content and happy, but there’s still this doubt, still this sense that he’s a little on the outside looking in, a little distanced, and Griffith more recently drifting away from everyone puts that background feeling into sharp relief. This is why we begin our narrative, after the three year gap, when Griffith gets promoted into the nobility.
Guts angrily swinging his sword, alone, probably brooding over Casca accusing him of not caring about his comrades since this scene is placed right after that confrontation, while Griffith gets promoted, rising away from him.
Chapter six returns us to Guts swinging his sword angrily and alone while brooding over his feelings of being an outsider. His place is with the Hawks, but is it really? When it’s “his fault” Griffith nearly died, when he’s accused of not caring about anyone but himself?
And then Griffith seeks him out, joining Guts at the midpoint of a staircase, for that extra bit of symbolism.
He talks about how much he hates the other nobles, talks about how nightmarish their encounter with Zodd was, but how it was also interesting theologically lol. A bit of philosophy, a bit of personal connection and emotional opening up. Guts asks the question.
And the turn of this little mini-arc is, of course, this:
The end of chapter six.
It’s Griffith completely assuaging those fears of being an outsider, of losing him to the nobles, of being looked-down on. It’s Griffith negating his deep-seated belief that his only worth is as an asset.
Three years ago Guts began this sentence:
And now, in chapter seven, he’s finally reached a place where he can finish it.
Idk basically this is the pinnacle of Guts’ search for belonging, and I love how well it’s built up to by emphasizing Guts’ outsider status first, through Casca’s angry tirades and through Griffith’s promotions.
Which ofc also provides a solid foundation for the dissolving of Guts’ feeling of personal fulfillment in another few chapters. Honestly it provides a solid foundation for literally everything that comes after. This is the skeletal structure of Berserk – Guts’ longing for love and acceptance vs Guts never quite feeling like he has it. Except right here and right now.
“Even so, incidentally, I found someone I really wanted… to have look at me.”
That feeling goes as easily as it came, with a few words, but it’s what motivates Guts at least until chapter 130 (potentially til chapter 182), after which trying to forget that feeling and focus on what he does have is what motivates him (”I came this far by letting go of my obsession…”) And we’ll see how that goes.
welcome to controversy country
Griffith’s decision to sacrifice the Hawks was perfectly reasonable not just taking into account Griffith’s own values and priorities, ie ensuring the thousands of dead posthumously achieve the thing they died for, but taking into account the Hawks’ own attitudes towards their lives, including Guts’.
It’s all there in Requiem of the Wind.
“More than half of us’ve been killed…”
These are the core group of Hawks. These are the ones who believe in Griffith so strongly that they’re willing to spend a year living as outlaws, dying in raids, so they can rescue him – so Griffith can lead them again.
There were lots of deserters over that year. People who didn’t think it was worth risking their lives for a chance at achieving Griffith’s dream. They’re presumably out there living happily ever after.
These Hawks are the ones who are willing to risk their lives, not out of friendship or loyalty to a man, but out of loyalty to what the man symbolizes for them, what he can bring them, the success that comes to them when they follow him. Out of loyalty to the dream.
Corkus is the only one throwing a tantrum, but he’s voicing all their thoughts, as we can see when his words are placed over their depressed faces.
Wyald spells it all out.
This is who Griffith is to them. He’s the facilitator of their dreams, dreams that each and every one of them is willing to risk their lives for.
And when he can’t be that to them anymore, what happens? He becomes a burden to them.
Judeau offers to take care of him because it’s the least he can do, because he owes it to him, but mostly because if he doesn’t he thinks Casca will, and he thinks it will be a life ruining burden for her. His offer is a personal sacrifice.
Casca offers to take care of him because it’s the least she can do, he’s so small now, he needs someone, and because if she doesn’t Guts will, and she thinks it will be a life ruining burden for him. Her offer is a personal sacrifice.
Guts’ offer is probably the only one based on a genuine desire to stay with Griffith.
Now, Guts doesn’t see Griffith as the guy who can grant him his dreams. Guts is the exception to that. He sees Griffith as a guy he wants to be friends with.
But here’s Guts’ take on the situation:
Finish the battles you start.
Well, that’s exactly what Griffith chose to do. The Eclipse is, in part, a narrative rebuke of Guts’ stubbornness lol, it happens because he seized on the concept of finding his own dream and couldn’t let it go until it was a moment too late.
When Guts finally drops his own “battle” in favour of staying with Griffith, ie makes the right choice contrary to his dogged nature, it comes too late because he’d successfully convinced Casca that he was dedicated to his dream at the expense of his friendships with the Hawks. “I want to draw a line, keep things separate.” He told her he didn’t want to stay with the Hawks, and she believed him, and that attitude is what ruins everything.
And ironically that’s the exact path Griffith chose when he agreed to the sacrifice. Drop his friends and relationships in favour of renewing his committment to a dream, and finishing his own battle.
For the rest of the Hawks, the Eclipse is a rebuke of their choice to live and risk their lives for tomorrow’s success rather than today’s existence.
Now, this absolutely isn’t me arguing that the Hawks deserved to die or anything lol, this is just me saying that Requiem of the Wind is largely set-up for the sacrifice, and I think it’s a clever way of like… depicting the sacrifice not just as a random tragedy that befell a group of people, but as a darkly fitting end to the way they live their lives.
It shows that the sacrifice is consistent with everything the Hawks profess to believe in.
They are all willing to lay down their lives for a victory they may never see.
The Eclipse is the fucked up yet logical conclusion to the Hawks’ very existence as a mercenary band that fights for an ideal, a dream, rather than just day to day living. They agree to potentially sacrifice their lives in every battle. The Eclipse is just one more battle, by this logic, and it’s one they win by losing their lives in it. By dying, they achieve their ultimate victory.
And I think by taking this whole philosophy of dedicating one’s life to a dream to its logical and horrific conclusion, Berserk is basically critiquing the concept of living for an ideal. In making the sacrifice, Griffith gave the Hawks what they wanted at a cost they’ve already agreed to by choosing to risk their lives for Griffith’s victories and the success he can bring them.
Of course, in the moment, knowing that death was inevitable, they would have preferred to live. None of them would knowingly trade their life for a future they won’t live to see. But that’s essentially what they’re doing by fighting battles for future hopes and dreams.
At the end of the day, the moral of Berserk’s story is really simple and basic: live for the sake of being alive. Guts had it right during his three years with the Hawks, before overhearing the Promrose Hall speech: no grand dream, no living for a potential future, nothing but doing the job of a mercenary with a group of people he considered family, enjoying life day to day, fighting just to live a life he considered worthwhile.
Personally I have mixed feelings about this message, but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of Berserk.
Black Swordsman: living for revenge (and, for extra irony, Guts’ own dream of fighting stronger and stronger enemies) is bad, living day to day with those “irreplacable things” – friends – is good. Golden Age: “I was too stupid and stubborn to notice it, but what I really wished for back then was here.” Guts left for a dream and by leaving threw away what he truly wanted – companionship. Conviction arc: the people who survived the shadow Eclipse were the people who acted to save their own lives, rather than out of a conviction, their faith in a higher power. Millennium Falcon: “Dreams can make for courageous challenges or opportune escapes” – emphasis on escapes. Troll village dude wanted to escape the darkness of life through a dream as a child, but eventually found greater fulfillment just living an ordinary life in his village. etc etc. Stop dreaming, focus on living.
And essentially the despair we see from the Hawks upon their realization that the fight is over and Griffith is no longer able to lead them to a greater dream leads directly to the Eclipse and gives it a layer of dark irony.
um guts u sure you’re not projecting a little
like casca’s not the only one who got all self destructive while thinking about griffith my dude
anyway i don’t think we’re meant to take guts’ statement up there without a hefty grain of salt considering guts immediately proceeds to have a flashback and talking about his dead father figure makes him feel better, and also considering that in a few days guts embraces the exact opposite point of view when he decides to stay and take care of griffith despite judeau basically repeating this sentiment to him
and also it’s callous as shit and pretty much tells us that guts is in full denial mode here while fucking casca
in fact it’s kind of similar to
oh holy shit and look at this, which i hadn’t even noticed til rn:
like we all accept and understand that Griffith is projecting when he tells Charlotte to ignore the sad shit, but SO IS GUTS!
and ACTUALLY yeah i’ll do this whole thing right now: Griffith fucking Charlotte and Guts fucking Casca are both attempts to deny their feelings for each other after being made painfully aware of those feelings
Griffith being left in the snow by Guts, and Guts learning about Griffith’s consequent crashing and burning – and specifically being stabbed by Casca while she screams that he broke Griffith
Both deny their feelings in like, a self harming manner. Sex with Charlotte is itself an act of self-destruction, while Guts just lets himself be stabbed first while denying any guilt in a disturbingly detached way
And additionally both these sexual encounters revolve around their respective dreams. Charlotte is a clear representation of Griffith’s dream and fucking her is his way of attaining it, just very badly timed due to being completely emotionally fucked up.
And Guts’ brief relationship with Casca represents his dream to an extent as we see when he compares her to his sword in his inner monologue after sex, when she’s the one he directs his whole promrose hall-y dream monologue to, when he invites her along with the caveat that she doesn’t get in the way of his dream, and when she tells him to leave to pursue his dream at the worst possible moment.
Griffith couldn’t manage to deny his feelings for very long, breaking down after Charlotte falls asleep, while Guts manages to hold out for a few days, and I’d say finally fully stops denying his feelings when he conclusively realizes he shouldn’t’ve left. “Why do I always see these things after they’re done and gone?”
basically i think guts and
griffith have parallel arcs wrt coming to terms with their particular
relationship and realizing they both value that relationship more than
their respective dreams, and both those arcs involve trying to use het
sex as a distraction before facing the music.
yk what as much as i absolutely adore guts’ total lack of rage here, i feel like this is a huge writing mistake.
and not only because miura basically used guts’ resignation upon being sacrificed to try to narratively justify the eclipse rape as a way of actually pissing him off, but also because, frankly,griffith sacrificing him should send guts into a giant tailspin of rage and hurt.
it’s a very clear replay of his childhood trauma.
like while i think it’s not necessarily ooc for guts to feel sad and wistful after griffith makes the sacrifice, rather than heartbroken and rageful, I think a) it would be just as in character for the sacrifice itself to send Guts into Black Swordsman mode, esp with watching all his friends die horribly and b) it would be thematically tighter and fit with what we see of the Black Swordsman arc better if that had been the case.
As of like, chapter 12, we know everything we need to know to understand Guts during the Black Swordsman arc. He’s a walking bundle of trauma because someone he loved essentially handed him over to a hoard of monsters and ghosts, and that reminds Guts of Gambino both calling him a cursed child who should’ve died and selling him to Donovan.
And having Guts be not really all that upset over the sacrifice, but more upset over Femto’s petty demonstration of evil afterwards completely shifts the focus from Guts’ personal trauma and feelings of betrayal to manpain over his girlfriend’s trauma.
like this?
Is extremely good shit, especially after we see his childhood later.
Guts’ frantic denial after Griffith does make the sacrifice, as he’s trying to “save” him, is also perfect set up for this in the way it echoes Guts denying Donovan’s assertion that Gambino sold him. But then instead of giving way to rage and betrayal, Guts just… resigns himself.
The rage and betrayal could’ve even be put on hold until Femto appears. All we’d need to see to justify Guts shifting from regret and dull sadness to pure unadultrated rage and pain would be something akin to what we saw in the Black Swordsman arc – Femto coldly telling Guts he should be dead/he’s nothing but a sacrifice/he belongs to the apostles/something along those lines. Ie an echo of Gambino telling Guts he sold him before trying to kill him.
(and we could have femto sic the apostles on guts + guts survive just long enough for skull knight to show up. we don’t even have to lose femto failing to kill him as he escapes.)
Imo the sense that Guts is personally very fucked up by the fact that he’s once again been traded away by someone he loves, respects, and admires is lost after the Golden Age in favour of the sense that Guts is fucked up by losing someone he loves and gaining an evil demon antagonist in his place, with a side of being mad about Casca.
On the plus side we get the sense that part of his rage comes from just missing Griffith, and I can’t deny that I absolutely enjoy the fact that Guts isn’t angry at human Griffith, but is only angry at demon Griffith. The way Guts separates the different versions of Griffith in his mind and still feels love and regret and guilt and fondness etc for human Griffith is good shit and it’s hard for me to say I’d give that up for anything lol.
But I think it would still be better writing if he was directly angry about the sacrifice, and if his feelings of love and regret and guilt were all mixed together with rage and betrayal and all aimed at all three versions of Griffith. And despite everything I would ultimately rather have that + no Eclipse rape than what we got.
I wanna improve my skills more and challenge myself by crossin’ swords with stronger and stronger enemies… If I stay there may be no lack of battles… but I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough of the battles I want. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll never entrust my sword to another again. I’ll never hang from someone else’s dream.
(for clarity’s sake this is an illustration of Guts’ dream of becoming Griffith’s equal, not a ship thing lol)
you're the only one 