mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
thank you, this is so nice to hear and I’m v glad you’re enjoying my blog! tbh the world needs more griffguts content in general.
just on the off chance you might not know i have a page w/ links to a lot of meta-y stuff i’ve written here
plus useful tags i have are “other ppl’s meta” “fic” “fanart” and “a” (my tag for my own posts that are meta-y at all), and while i was liveblogging the manga i tagged by era, volume, and “berserk liveblog”
I’m so glad you enjoy them ❤ And back at you, I love your Berserk art 🙂
Thank you so much, I’m v happy that you’re enjoying it all 😀 and ty for reading ❤
I think that’s a legit interpretation. I kind of like the emotionally hesitated idea a bit more because I’m a sap and I love antagonists who can’t bring themselves to actually kill their enemy lol. But yeah considering how petty and spiteful Femto is I think your interpretation def makes sense, or it could be a mix of both. Maybe Femto couldn’t bring himself to kill Guts and allowed himself to let him go by telling himself it’d be worse for him if he survived. That’s a pretty Griffith-esque type of denial.
I wonder if the brand discrepency is just because a few skulls with the same brand is a more ominious image than just one. It’s a bit of a jarring difference tho. But either way ia that Void was most likely the sage in the tower and the sacrifices at the bottom of the tower of rebirth are his.
I’ve heard the theory that Gaiseric was an escaped sacrifice of Void’s like Guts, though since Gaiseric is also paralleled to Griffith I like the idea that he’s the incarnated Godhand member from the previous cycle. Maybe he’s both lol, who says you can’t sacrifice a reborn Godhand saviour dude.
Ty I’m glad you think so 😀 and lmao you and me both, Void/Skull Knight is legit.
I think Void is definitely going to play a big role in the endgame of Berserk – I’m p sure MIura’s said he’ll be important and he’s got shifty fuck written all over him. I think he absolutely knows more than he’s letting on and if I were to guess I’d say he has plans of his own that will become relevant. Also I think he’s using the rest of the Godhand, including NGriff, as pawns. I don’t have any real reason for this other than his caginess and the fact that he seems to know more than them, but I still like the idea.
Also I have a whole theory in the first half of this post about how he could affect the plot but that’s mostly just wild guessing and hopeful theorizing lol.
@mastermistressofdesire had a post about this that I loved (i think in answer to an ask) but I can’t find it now bc I suck at tag organization 😦
But basically I agree with most of what you’re saying, I feel like NeoGriff’s half of the story with the Neo Band of the Hawk and Rickert calling him out is perfect set-up for a reveal that he has more emotions than we can see. Idk if I’d say he’s denying the Eclipse by rebuilding the Band, but I could see it being a denial of him having changed – “You of all people should have known – this is the man I am. Nothing has changed.”
mmod in her post on the subject mentioned that NGriff forming a new Band of the Hawk and inviting Rickert along seems like an indication that he wants approval/vindication from the last remaining member of the Hawks. And Rickert pointing out the differences in the insignias and saying Griffith was his leader, not the “Falcon of Light,” while NeoGriffith’s only response is to quietly agree, seems really important.
Like it’s the only time we’ve seen NGriff at a loss for words and at a disadvantage. And it’s when Rickert says he’s not his Griffith. I could easily see NGriff having some identity issues after this scene. (Especially after seeing Ganeshka ascend to a higher plane and totally lose his sense of identity.)
I do kind of wonder about NGriff’s capacity for guilt. It’s all in question bc we’ve seen his heart beating but since then we haven’t had any insight into his internal thoughts, so he’s feeling something but we don’t know what. Whether part of it is regret or guilt, idk. Guilt was such an important aspect of original Griff’s character that it wouldn’t surprise me if that returned in some form, if his emotions in general have.
(Also while searching for that post by mmod I found a different conversation with her that’s p relevant to this ask too, if you’re interested.)
Not bothering me at all, I love talking about this stuff! (As may be a little obvious considering how long I ramble on in response to your asks lol.) And yeah, Casca needs to be saved from Berserk tbh.
yk I’ve seen that theory but I think it’s really, really unlikely that Femto let them go because he knew about the demon baby and the whole resurrection thing, unless Miura plans to retcon stuff.
Like first of all his actions during the Eclipse indicated that he fully wanted Guts and Casca dead. He attacked Skull Knight when he showed up to save them, and Guts was so mutilated what with his missing limb etc that without Puck’s healing powder he probably would’ve died anyway.
Then you have Femto nearly killing Guts in the Black Swordsman arc and apparently believing he did when he slammed him against a wall (”it seems i have unintentionally granted your wish, count”). Guts was necessary for the mock Eclipse (two sacrifices needed to pull all the spirit residue together into a malicious destructive force) so if he could predict the future he wouldn’t try to kill him.
I mean granted Miura writes on the fly so i’m sure he wasn’t thinking about details re Griffith’s resurrection that early, but still.
I mean just look at the scene where Femto lets them go:
Reach followed by Guts closeup followed by … followed by escape followed by Femto awkwardly lowering his hand lol.
Like if it was a Casca closeup I could maybe see an argument that Femto got a message from God telling him to let them go, or something, because of the fetus, but it’s Guts he looks at before hesitating. The dude he does stupid self destructive, impulsive shit for.
Plus the other Godhand didn’t predict this. Void’s a silent wildcard, but I personally think his suggetive silent closeup
is an indication that he’s seen something like this happen before.
I definitely think Guts and Casca’s survival was fated to happen (lotta weird coincidences that all add up to them facilitating NeoGriffith’s resurrection), but I don’t think Femto is in on the plan.
I think this basically sums up how fate works in Berserk:
Femto can do whatever he wants and it’s going to make whatever is meant to happen, happen.
So imo Femto let them go for personal (Guts related) reasons.
Yeah I think Griffith + Femto is morally grey if you combine them into one entity (which… I guess is just saying Griffith is morally grey lol since Femto is his dark side unleashed or w/e). I’m v curious about how NeoGriff fits in. One theory I have is that if Femto is Griffith with all the “good” parts of his humanity stripped away, then maybe NeoGriff has the “evil” parts stripped away too, and all that’s left is like, a heart full of neutrality (and whatever feelings made him call off Zodd and save Casca from rocks), making him the perfect fulfiller of humanity’s desires.
bc you’re right, he hasn’t done anything malicious. He’s been darkly pragmatic in eg sending apostles after Flora, but that’s not really any different than Guts and Griffith assassinating the queen from his point of view.
Ofc NeoGriff could just be Femto in a human suit who’s gotten better at concealing his petty side, who knows?
Also wrt Femto negating Griffith’s good deeds, ia – I think especially the rape is meant to be a v direct contrast to Griffith saving her from attempted rape the first time. The movie even uses the same Casca point of view shot to make the connection painfully clear. Though I don’t necessarily think that’s deliberate on Femto’s part (tho it could be) so much as the narrative drawing a strong contrast between Griffith and Femto. Griffith was Casca’s saviour, Femto then destroyed her, that kind of thing. Femto was a part of Griffith, but always tempered by Griffith’s ideals and morals, so stripping that part of him away is shown by negating his good deeds.
There’s also the way he literally replaces the nobleman who tried to rape Casca – he says, “do you think you’re chosen by God?” to him when he saves her. Now it turns out Femto literally has been chosen by God. Coupled with Berserk’s cynical take on religion, God being the Idea of Evil, etc, you get the sense that divine right isn’t any better or more noble than the class system enabling predators.
But again NeoGriff is all about that divine right and he hasn’t done anything malicious yet so the ultimate message might end up being more complicated than that.
(also i just want to be clear that theorizing about why miura had femto rape casca during the eclipse isn’t me saying i think it was a good writing choice. it makes sense in context of berserk’s themes, but that’s bc casca’s character is defined by rape and rape attempts from beginning to end, which sucks)
I feel you, it would be so disappointing if after everything it turned out NGriff is totally emotionless after all, the end. But I have hope 🙂
Good point about Griffith’s armour design, I’d never really thought about it like that but it makes perfect sense for the aesthetics over practicality aspect to tie into his untouchability and existence as humanity’s “desired.” And yeah ia it is a little depressing.
to answer your question, tbh yes. Well the human emotions part at least, I think that’s just about inevitable.
I mean when you structure your story around two dudes and their epic (b)romance that fell apart not because they didn’t love each other but because they didn’t realize they were loved by the other, and then reveal that one dude who’s supposed to be an emotionless demon now still has feelings, that has to be significant.
He can blame it on a fetus all he wants but let’s be real here – you don’t write a character arc about how Griffith’s feelings for Guts were so powerful they eclipsed his dream, ruined his life, and he eventually turned into a demon partly in an attempt to free himself from those feelings, and then reveal that he still feels something for Guts after all that…. only for these feelings to be a total coincidence unrelated to the feelings that propelled the plot of the story for 82 chapters.
Redemption though, idk. I guess it depends how you define it. My ideal ending, that I think is definitely possible, is NeoGriff irrationally sacrificing his dream/himself again for Guts’ sake – whether that’s to save his life somehow or being emotionally unable to kill him in a duel, or whatever. So if you count that as a little bit of redemption, I could see it.
I could also see NeoGriff’s net effect on the world of Berserk being positive overall, with the difficult moral quandary of: is world peace or w/e worth the saviour of mankind being basically a literal monster? Though I don’t really think NeoGriffith potentially doing more good than evil qualifies as redemption myself.
Basically I don’t think NeoGriff will ever express remorse for the sacrifice or his actions as Femto, so if that’s a required part of redemption then no, I don’t think he’s going to get redeemed at all. But I do think he’s going to be complicated a lot, by his divine position as saviour and/or by his residual human feelings.
Actually yeah I could see that. Judeau is self depricating at times (”If I couldn’t be the best at something, I’d fly in the wake of one who seems the best.”), and at the very end he compares himself unfavourably to Guts:
He might see Guts as more worthy because he is the best at something, ie swinging a sword. Kind of like, if Casca can’t have Griffith, she should get the second best dude in the Hawks, which isn’t Judeau (in Judeau’s opinion).
Also he seems to understand implicitly when Guts says, “the one who has her eye is Griffith. That’s why right now I’m no good for her like this.” So he gets feeling unworthy and considers it a good reason not to pursue someone.
So I mean I do think that Miura shoved a lot of last minute romance in lol, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he came up with Judeau’s thing around the same time he came up with G*tsca, so not exactly from the beginning but somewhere along the way. But there’s some evidence for your suggestion imo.
Yeah ia a time skip seems really likely. If I had to guess I’d say maybe 10-15 years?
If it’s like, a century then Guts would come back to Griffith running an empire as an immortal god-king, all the characters we know like Rickert and Charlotte and Silat etc would probably be dead, and I think it would change the tone of the story too much. Like yeah it’s an epic story, but at its core it’s about relatable characters, and if you start kiling those characters off for no reason other than to add to the epic-ness then it throws the balance off.
I could maybe see 50ish years, making Rickert an old wise mentor like Godo lol, and maybe aging Sonia so that she reminds Schierke of Flora? Could be interesting. But overall I’d probably prefer less time, that still seems like too much.
10-15 years gives Griffith some time to start acquiring his Gaiseric-esque empire, it’s enough time for the new fantasy reality of the world to change how things work and function, it’s enough time to Rickert to grow up and do whatever he’s doing up in the mountains with Silat and co (resistance movement sounds good tbh), enough time to make everyone sad (like say if Farnese’s parents died in the interim or something, or Isidro had a family waiting but not anymore), but it’s not so much time that the world Guts returns to is unrecognizable and without familiar touchstones.
Also just to be self indulgent for a sec, several decades is too long for NeoGriff to be chill and serene and doing his thing without Guts despite his unfrozen heart imo. It makes the whole beating heart that he blames on the fetus thing seem irrelevant if he can easily function for that long regardless. But a decade or so sounds like a perfect range of time for NGriff to start out serene, throwing himself into his empire etc and pretending he doesn’t care at all about Guts, only for the cracks to begin showing just as Guts is set to return.
Of course if he is able to put Guts out of his mind for 50 years until he’s standing in front of him, unaged, and then he has an emotional response, I’d still be okay with that. It’s just a little less fun to me.
That’s so nice, thank you so much!
Lol I’m glad he doesn’t hate Griffith, it always sucks when your friends hate the characters you like. But yeah I definitely agree that his theory doesn’t really make sense. Though at the moment I only have manga related reasons because I haven’t watched the entire anime in years and years.
tbh the main thing I’d want to say in response is that if Griffith was evil all along and secretly planning to sacrifice his friends from the start then Berserk is a really boring story.
Like in what way is a story about a sinister dude manipulating his friends for power more interesting than a story about a dude with good intentions being driven to the point where he feels like sacrificing his friends is the correct moral choice?
Or how is a story about a dude whose bff turned out to be a lying dick all along better than a story about two dudes who love each other (platonically if he doesn’t ship it) accidentally ruining their relationship through a complex character-based misunderstanding and being torn apart in an epic way?
Berserk is great because its characters are complex and interesting and have a ton of layers, and interpreting Griffith as evil all along just makes it shallow and boring.
Though if you want concrete evidence that Griffith isn’t evil I’d point out stuff like Griffith asking Guts “do you think I’m cruel?” and Guts being the one to reassure him that killing people is nbd and his dream is worth it. And Griffith risking his life (and, consequently, his dream) for no reason to save Guts from Zodd. I mean I guess if you think Griffith somehow knows what the behelit is you could argue that he knew he’d survive, but lol.
There’s Griffith ignoring the nobles to rescue Guts and Casca, which is also a risk to his dream because he’s supposed to be sucking up to them.
There’s Griffith self harming while denying his feelings of guilt, which is the most obvious indication that he has extreme feelings of guilt I’ve ever seen (especially in combination with the aforementioned “do you think I’m cruel?”)
There’s Griffith reaching to grab Guts as he falls during the first few minutes of the Eclipse, even despite Guts being the source of his despair.
tbh the problem is that if his premise is “Griffith knew he needed sacrifices so he valued his friends lives only so he could sacrifice them later,” those examples still might not convince him. You could show him this bit from the manga (idk if it’s repeated at all in the anime):
Griffith’s sacrifice canonically wouldn’t work if he didn’t feel genuine love for them, and if he’s been planning to sacrifice them the whole time then he obviously doesn’t really love them. For him to be able to sacrifice Guts and Casca etc he has to care about them so much it’s like they’re part of him.
Also there’s always the fact that the Godhand had to take him on a guilt trip and convince him that he has to sacrifice his friends for the sake of thousands of people who already died for his dream, which would hardly be necessary if he already knew how the behelit worked and wanted to sacrifice everyone anyway.
(oh and btw if he’s thinking Griffith’s “I will choose the place where you die” line is an indication that he’s evil and knows about the sacrifice, the better explanation for that is that it’s a reference to Griffith’s guilt for leading people, like that one kid, to their deaths. he’s owning that fact, because as a mercenary leader it’s p much true – people die in the battles he fights on the road to his dream. by stating it up front he’s denying and repressing his feelings of guilt. It also sets up the mentality that leads to him making the choice to sacrifice, and it’s foreshadowing. But it doesn’t mean Griffith literally knows he’s going to sacrifice Guts in a magic ritual – it means he’s already mentally prepared to sacrifice his followers in battle for his dream.
Mental preparation that, as we saw in flashback, came with a dose of self-harm and sacrificing himself as well in a way by sleeping with a predatory pedophile, so, hardly an indication of evil.)
Thank you so much Anon I’m glad you’re enjoying this whole… thing lol. ❤
In the DH translation he says “You’re like… some playful kid.” Which IS similar to how he described Griffith early on (”he is tough to read… but probably just a kid…” and “that innocent grin… ear to ear like some little kid…”) but not really exact enough for me to think it’s much more than a coincidence.
Though the fact that the spirit kid thing does seem to be directly connected to the Moonlight Boy, like his astral projection or w/e, and the fact that a lot of ppl theorize that the Moonlight Boy is the soul of the fetus that NeoGriff grew out of (which seems like a reasonable theory), I mean it doesn’t seem farfetched after that to suggest that there could be some of Griffith’s unfrozen soul/heart/whatever in there too.
Tbh idk if thinking the soul of his ex is in there makes the Moonlight Boy better or worse lol. Kinda makes shipping awkward, but I’m also very not into the MB as the soul of Guts and Casca’s kid making a happy picturesque family.
Guts: tbh… his tenacity – his
attitude that you have to see things through to the end, and how in most
stories this would be shown to be a virtue, but in Berserk while it is
often shown as admirable, it’s also one of his biggest flaws at times.
It’s there in touching moments, like when teenage Guts risks his life to
take a flower to a hill, and it’s also there when he vows revenge and
abandons Casca and Rickert to go off on a two-year monster hunting
spree. It’s there when he insists on getting Casca magically healed
despite Skull Knight’s warnings and his own musing that things could
turn out very bad if her sanity is forced back. It’s there when he
becomes obsessed with becoming Griffith’s equal, explicitly ignoring all
evidence that Griffith already cares for him. It’s there every time he
refuses to die.
The closest Guts came to abandoning a course
of action once he’d decided on it is when he switched from his “dream”
to realizing he wants to stay with Griffith, right before the Eclipse,
and that would’ve been the best thing Guts could’ve done, if he’d had
the chance. Switching from revenge to helping Casca is close too (and
pretty explicitly paralleled to leaving Griff vs returning and staying),
but he’s doing it with the thought in his head that it’s temporary
(”when this journey ends, I’ll…” [pictures Griffith]), and his
tenacity is still there in how he’s not letting doubts and warnings
deter him from fixing Casca, so it’s a bit of a double-edged sword.
Idk man I love Guts’ doggedness, both as a virtue and a flaw.
My
favourite Guts moment though, now that’s difficult. I’ll go with one of
the best early moments, during the Black Swordsman arc, for the sake of
making things easy. It’s my first favourite moment, at least:
Like
half his bones are broken, he couldn’t do more than crawl on his
stomach and beg for attention before this when faced with the object of
his revenge obsession, but he stands up and marches up the stairs with
his sword when Femto says he’s beneath his notice. I love him.
Griffith:
Griffith is one of my all-time favourite characters period so narrowing
it down to one thing is hard, but I think if I had to settle on one it
would be his emotional repression? The way he doesn’t realize he’s in
love with Guts until it’s too late, the way he refuses to acknowledge
his feelings of guilt and self-loathing, the way he comes so close to
getting more emotionally healthy and open with Guts at his side but then
Guts leaves without a word and everything falls to pieces, the way he
falls back on the fact that he “won” Guts in a duel and fights for him
again because he can’t articulate why he can’t stand the thought
of Guts leaving, the way he self-sabotages himself into a dungeon
because he’s so unfamiliar with his own emotions that he can’t deal with
his feelings after Guts leaves, etc.
Funnily enough, in contrast
to that, I think my favourite Griffith moment (lbr my favourite Berserk
moment) is probably his moment of greatest self-awareness:
But like the reason this monologue is so effective is because
he’s so emotionally repressed, and it took him a year of nothing but
torture and self reflection for him to recognize his feelings. It makes
this moment really, really shine.
Casca: I love that
she genuinely commands respect among the Hawks. It’s one of the few
really satisfying aspects of her character role and her treatment by
other characters to me – from Corkus getting scared and apologizing when
she threatens him, to Griffith giving her the most important job in his
capture Doldrey ploy, to the Hawks stepping back so she can take out
Adon herself and cheering her on, to being able to rally the Hawks as
their leader in the most panic-inducing circumstances, etc etc.
I think my all-time favourite Casca moment is this:
God she deserves this moment of glory.
Farnese: I love
her “you just have to become a storm yourself” thing. The way her
reaction to fear is to join the thing that frightens her and become the
frightening thing. I loved it when it lead to her doing terrible things
like burning people alive and I loved it when it lead to her doing great
things like joining Guts and learning to defend herself and Casca and
becoming a witch.
My favourite Farnese moment is a pretty obvious one but what can I say it’s so good:
Fighting
off a demon tiger taking out whole crowds with a swipe of its paw, with
a candlestick, at a fancy ball, man, how can you not love her?
Serpico:
I like the contrast between his chill and diplomatic
go-with-the-flow-ness vs how solid and immovable he is when it comes to
protecting the people he loves, and how what ties those contrasts
together is a willingness to be hurt for their sakes, from dueling
people to a draw to avoid feelings of resentment towards Farnese, to
standing between her and Berserker Guts.
My favourite Serpico moment is:
Putting
himself in danger while defusing a tense situation with that chill
diplomacy. And not even for Farnese, but for Guts this time.
tbh griffith’s reactions during the wyald fight are so good, lol reading your ask made me want to quickly re-read and find some:
same actually, for some reason that moment stood out to me as particularly awesome
lmao ikr
tbh i used to think that it was a stupid out of place and out of character way to kick the story off but i’ve grown kind of fond of it
like the way it sets you up to think wow this is a super manly badass story about a big angry dude who bangs women and kills monsters sometimes even at the same time.
and then the rest of the black swordsman arc just tears that idea down piece by piece. i dig it.
😦
Man ia Guts’ love for Griffith is ignored way too much, but also yeah reducing Griffith’s love for Guts down to ~evil possessiveness~ is one of my pet peeves.
imo he’s possessive because he’s stunted emotionally (like most of Berserk’s cast lol), but that doesn’t mean he only loves Guts as an asset, it means he has v little ability to recognize and compartmentalize his emotions so he responds to extreme feelings generally pretty badly.
Like Guts is compared to Griffith’s dream a lot which to me is saying that when Griffith fell in love with Guts he’d never felt so strongly about anything else, other than his dream. (”I want you, Guts.” “Griffith’s never said a thing like that… not to anybody!”) And because his whole raison d’etre is seizing his dream, now that something else makes him feel the same amount of need and desire, he “must obtain” him. He has no other frame of reference for what he’s feeling lol.
But in actual action he’s not controlling. Guts does whatever the fuck he wants in battle and Griffith plans around it, eg. Griffith asks Guts to help him out with his assassinations, which the narrative specifically draws attention to, and Guts is the one who wants it to be an order. Griffith risks his life and dream for Guts multiple times and can never explain why. Griffith, according to Casca, doesn’t control Guts enough as a leader. Griffith self-consciously asks Guts if he thinks he’s cruel for asking him (or maybe ordering him after Guts’ response to Griffith phrasing it as a question for the first assassination) to help him with the bonfire assassinations. Griffith’s whole speech about friendship is about desiring an equal who he doesn’t own, and can’t control, and his monologue in the torture chamber is about realizing that Guts was that person.
I really love Griffith’s inner monologue during the second duel because it’s such a powerful emotional breakdown imo, and it feels so childish to me. It seems like he’s falling back on “you can’t leave, I own you” because he has nothing else, no other way to respond to the thought of being abandoned, no other way to contextualize what he’s feeling. He’s clinging to a sense of ownership bc it’s the only part of his relationship to/feelings for Guts he really understands, and it’s a defense against the uncontrollable messiness of his feelings – a way to repress his love and need and feelings of rejection and loss and self-loathing, and a way to repress his realization of “when did someone I was supposed to have in hand… instead gain such a strong hold over me?” – that ultimately fails.
It just feels so consistent with the childish aspects of Griffith’s character, and the part of him that represses his emotions until they seep out in horrifying ways (eg self harm, risky sex, thinking it’s better to risk killing Guts than to let him “reject” him, etc).
Idk basically I like Griffith’s possessiveness because it’s a flaw that rears its ugly head to fuck up his relationship with Guts, and is actually entirely counter-productive to the relationship he genuinely wants with Guts (equality). But it’s nowhere close to the be-all end-all of his feelings for him.
tbh I barely know anything about astrology so I’d be pretty useless at sorting the characters, sorry.
I’m going to post this though bc I’m curious about anyone else’s thoughts, for anyone who sees this and has more sign knowledge than me. Including you, i’d love you hear your headcanons if you have any!
I’m a libra, and I just used one of those online chart calculators so apparently I’m an aries moon and cancer ascendant too. How about you?
I think I pretty much agree – idk if I’ve really seen Griffith fans like this myself, but yk I’m sure they’re around.
tbh I feel like a lot of villain fans do this to avoid The Discourse about the ~evils of woobifying~ etc and I understand that. Fandom is fucking weird about moral purity rn and treating fictional characters as if they’re real people, and it’s hard in a lot of fandoms to talk about liking a villain without constantly putting a “BTW I’M NOT APOLOGIZING FOR THEM THEY’RE VERY EVIL AND BAD I JUST ENJOY VILLAINS” disclaimer up every time. So I sympathize w/ that urge. Fandom makes it hard to just enjoy characters without holding them up as either pure as the driven snow or irredeemably evil from birth.
But if they’re genuine about loving Griffith entirely because he’s oh so evil, then of all the antagonists to love Griffith makes v little sense to me bc before he becomes a demon he’s like… fine. He’s not a great person but he’s not a bad person, he has noble intentions, flaws and virtues, he’s a v good well-rounded character. I know a lot of people think Griffith was moustache-twirling evil all along but yk, they’re objectively wrong so lol.
Then after he becomes a demon he’s a petty evil dick for all of two appearances, one of which is a gratuitously depicted, grimdark-drama-for-the-sake-of-drama rape scene, and if that scene is what makes you love Griffith/Femto I’m definitely like gonna side-eye you. And I mean I don’t see anything wrong with liking Femto – I like Femto lol bc his pettiness mixed with inability to kill Guts is extremely amusing to me, plus his makeup is on point (and I love all gnc villains out of spite), but it’s very much despite the rape, not because of it.
And then as NeoGriff he comes back seemingly neutral, fulfilling the subconscious desires of humanity and committing no great acts of evil again. So yeah if you like super evil dark villains Griffith/Femto/NeoGriff is an odd choice to me.
Oh and as an aside I could kind of get liking him for his evil villainry if you liked him as Griffith and then felt personally betrayed when he sacrificed everyone. Like that was gr8 writing and feeling rly pissed off and then impressed by how mad you are, making you like him as a character bc of the emotional ride he took you on, makes sense to me. But I feel like that’s not really what you’re referring to.
So I guess tl;dr my answer boils down to it sounds p silly to me but I guess it depends on their exact reasons lol.
😦 idk but you’re good at sad stuff lol. Also kind of like the image of Farnese navigating a psychic hellscape with a puppy in her arms.
Yeah like I’m all about the badass Casca in this AU but regressed Guts has its own uniquely depressing vibe. I think we’re exchanging demon rape for mind-breaking psychic magic bc if the end result is an insane character with no agency it’s just a better method to get them there (I have a lot of issues with Casca’s story let me tell you but w/e) but there’s a lot of aspects to explore w/ Guts all fucked up instead of Casca.
(Like consider: NeoGriff moving involuntarily to save Guts from rocks and feeling uneasy about seeing him as an empty shell.)
Also check out the ask I’m about to post by @tfan2013 for more, she’s got you covered for sad details lol.
This is tough tbh. I was thinking Wyald at first bc he has so much screen time and all of it is gratuitously repulsive, but tbh his awfulness is so mundane in a grimdark fantasy way that I can’t go with him.
I think maybe Rosine and her army of “elf” children. There’s a lot of fucked up stuff going on there. And I’m kind of disturbed by her on two levels – there’s the fact that she’s meant to be on the cusp of adolescence/adulthood but her worldview and method of villainy is more childlike while she’s drawn in a sexualized way and makes overtures at Guts, which is a bit disturbing on a meta level. I like to think she’s around 16 but honestly who tf knows.
But despite that I think she’s still a really effective character in a more emotionally disturbing way – the fact that she was an abused kid and sacrificed her parents as a child, and then she tried to go home while on the verge of death, knowing despite everything that she was never an elf for real, and all her villainy was basically just playing pretend and like… in a way hiding from the cruelty of the world by turning it into a game – it genuinely makes me feel sad for her ngl.
Also she’s got that defensive army of corpses possessed by bugs and that’s disturbing to me as someone very grossed out by most insects lol.
Man I would love to see all the griffguts golden age drama replayed with a running commentary lol.
actually if in this au casca was the main character the whole time dealing with her own shit so we only saw all the griffguts mutual pining from an outside perspective as just an annoying additional complication to casca’s life, it would be ridiculously fun to get an up-close and personal chapter-long revisitation with all of guts’ emotions at the forefront. I mean idt i’d trade it for the story we actually got, but this is kind of a delightful idea.
aww. + YES to wounded panther casca, i’m loving these big cat associations.
also gotta say metaphorical puppy >>>>> broken doll
I actually don’t know lol. It’s a tough question because I’m not sure how much Miura thinks we should condemn Guts for it – on one hand he’s getting consequences for his actions in the form of Casca hating him and I don’t think it’s likely that she’ll forgive and forget and everything will go swimmingly. On the other I think we’re supposed to feel like he should get a pat on the back for stopping, and we’re definitely not supposed to hate him for it, we’re probably more meant to empathize with him and his loss of control and his regret, and admire the steps he’s taken to protect her from himself by travelling with people, and his willpower in keeping the hound on a leash.
So I guess ideally I’d like their idealized and infatuated images of Guts to be shattered as they realize that he’s capable of some fucked up shit even without the armour. Farnese could get protective of Casca and take off with her and Serpico and whoever in the party wants to follow, quite possibly all of them, give or take Puck and Isidro. Because she’d definitely choose Casca over Guts and that would be nice to see.
But I think it’s more likely that some of them, like Farnese and Serpico, would maybe get a bit warier of him and he might lose some of his shine in Farnese’s eyes, but overall consider it a past mistake he’s overcome and atoned for, and just another signifier of how much of a struggle it is to be Guts akin to how they feel about how Guts + Berserker armour = trying to murder them all. Yk like it makes Serpico anxious but no one blames him for it even though it’s his own inability to control his rage that leads to the armour taking over without magical hand-holding to save everyone from him.
Idk that’s at my most cynical. Don’t get me wrong I love Guts and his narrative for the most part, I just think aspects of it and the magical fantasy metaphor of the Berserk armour, hound, etc aren’t handled as well as they could be lol.
Anyway it’d probably be something between those two extremes tbf.
lol same.
I mean one thing I def like about Berserk is that het sex scenes are extremely few and far between (not counting rape scenes here ofc :/) and in like, 1.5 out of 3 the point is Guts and Griff’s feelings for each other.
(the 3 i’m thinking of are opening scene w/ guts fucking the apostle, griffith and charlotte, and guts and casca, which gets the 0.5. I… literally can’t think of any other sex scenes in berserk lmao.
oh no wait, there’s also two orgies – nina’s pagan bash and the count’s wife’s cheating escapade. and yk what, one of those was about guts/griff too, in the form of an emotional parallel, so l m a o)
you're the only one 