Tag: ask

do you think that berserk is homophobic?

yeah absolutely. ignoring every ounce of subtext, the only characters who demonstrate textual same sex attraction are child predators and groups of heretics having hedonistic and like fuckin baby eating orgies before dying horribly.

As for the subtext, I like to interpret it in as positive a way as possible (ie Guts and Griffith’s relationship and lives are totally fucked up because they fail to recognize and act on the attraction between them, largely because of their past traumas), but as much as I think it fits the story perfectly and is the neatest and most resonant reading of Guts and Griffith’s relationship, it’s still only subtext, and possibly accidental, so that doesn’t really mitigate any of the actual homophobia inherent to the story.

And then ofc you have the evil gay subtext, yk like Femto staring at Guts during the Eclipse rape and the Beast of Darkness talking about Guts’ longing for Griffith and Guts assaulting Casca to feel closer to him. Hard to defend that lmao. I mean I can still read it as inoffensively as possible (the negative part comes when they redirect their feelings from each other to a heterosexual outlet, eg) but yk, that’s just me wanting to enjoy the story, that’s not a nuance I’m gonna give Miura credit for.

And also because this is all subtext it’s very nebulous and v open to interpretation.

Like for instance, another less forgiving interpretation of the subtext might be that Miura intended for Griffith and Guts’ relationship to be positive inasmuch as it is platonic, and for the implications of sexual attraction to be something negative that should have been overcome. I feel like that’s a much less valid interpretation, because it’s pretty contradictory overall, but yk there are still some pretty fucked up implications you can pick up in the subtext, and the context of all textual same-sex attraction being evil doesn’t exactly help that.

Oh also I suppose one can argue that in Berserk every expression of sexual desire is negative whether it’s hetero or not, give or take the second half of the gtsca sex scene (and i can still argue it’s negative), and therefore the fact that all textual same-sex desire is evil is more neutral in berserk than it would be in other stories. but we live in a world where predatory heterosexual desire isn’t a damaging stereotype in and of itself but predatory same-sex desire is, so it’s not actually neutral regardless, bc of real world context.

Tho that fact does make Berserk more fun for me to read at least.

At the end of the day basically I choose to read the subtext in as
positive a way as possible and it works for me and entertains me a whole
lot, but that doesn’t make the homophobic implications go away. but enh
I’ve kind of made my peace with enjoying a very offensive work lol.

What do you believe is the probability that Miura releases official artwork of Guts and Griffith all up on eachother I’m talking deadass hands being where they shouldn’t be and fans STILL try to explain how it’s perfectly normal male hetero sexual platonic physiological pseudo intimacy or whatever pretentious academic sounding lingo they can make up?

If Miura ever did draw that art, the probability of a bunch of fans reacting with immediate denial is 100%. like, the gay things i’ve seen people twist themselves into knots to deny, man they could have graphic sex on page and I’d still be able to find a bunch of people calling it platonic, or explaining that they were just trying to out manipulate each other or it was gay chicken gone too far or something lmao.

Wish i could say the probability of Miura drawing it is higher tho 😡 come on Miura you clearly love homoeroticism, go back to your naked waterfight and sexually suggestive duel roots

what do you think of berserk reddit and skullknight. net lol?

very much not my scene lol

i never check the reddit unless i’m linked there (usually for raws/translations) and i try not to read the comments when i do visit. and skull knight just has a generally like, stuffy and unpleasant atmosphere lol. i’ve been known to go there to check translation info, but yeah i have no interest in even lurking to read discussions let alone participating

in general when it comes to fandoms, especially fandoms with tension between different interpretations or ships or whatever, i tend to just find a niche i like and stay there

I’ve noticed that male Berserk fans and female Berserk fans almost always have TOTALLY different interpretations of the story and characters. I think guys (not ALL) tend to view the relationship between Guts/Griffith as strictly platonic, and Guts/Casca as this amazing thing. Meanwhile, girls seem to see all the subtle hints/moments between Guts/Griffith and see that Guts/Casca is kinda crap. I’m curious to see if you have any input on this? Or do you disagree?

As a rough pattern it probably holds true, though I know plenty of exceptions, and there are a lot of women who like gtsca ime. there might even be more women into gtsca than there are griffguts fans, though i’m v sure there’s a higher concentration of women on the griffguts side of things.

i feel like there are a million thinkpieces on the internet about why women are into THIS part of fandom while men are into THIS part of fandom lol, and idk if I have any valuable input myself on that. yk, like women are into transformative fandom (fic) while men are into the collecting side of fandom (which includes facts and stats and stuff not just collectibles), or like women are into slash because of [insert one of a million different explanations i’ve seen], yadda yadda yadda. 

it’s always worth exploring possibilities, but i also kind of dislike theorizing that tries to explain demographic splits in fandom with one or two neat little theories lol, like all people into X fictional thing have Y trait but all people into this other fictional thing have Z trait.

I mean whatever demographic split there is could be nothing more than the fact that most men into berserk are straight and therefore less likely to enjoy the very gay elements of the story, while women may be more evenly divided between the two ships because of differing taste/ship preferences/dedication to explicit canon/irl politics lol/whether the Eclipse ruined Griffith as a character for them/ability and desire to pick up on subtext/ability and desire to compartmentalize away misogyny/etc etc etc.

So idk I guess basically I don’t disagree but I also don’t think I have anything worth adding.

hi I really like your blog and I find your analysis interesting even though I don’t ship griffith and guts but you have made me see their relationship in a different way. I have a question. what do you think of the demon child within griffith? do you think he is the reason why griffith still has feeling for guts(and casca?)or is griffith trying to blame the child for his feelings like the time with charlotte when he denied his friendship with guts?also what do you think about moonchild?

Thank you! I’m glad you found something to enjoy in my meta despite different ship preferences, esp since I like to think a lot of what I have to say about them is applicable even if you go the platonic friends route in your interpretation.

When it comes to NGriff’s unfrozen heart, I definitely go with option B. I completely believe Griffith was lying to himself about his feelings, as he is wont to do lol, like you said – definitely related to his “take all the sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire” method of dealing with his feelings, ie pretending they don’t exist.

I’m going to link a previous post on this topic bc I feel like I said most of what I have to say about it already. But in short I definitely don’t think the fetus is responsible for Griffith’s heart beating while he watches Guts fight Zodd, though it may be responsible for Griffith saving Casca from falling rocks.

As for the moonlight kid, I’m not sure what to make of him. It’s suggested he’s the soul of Guts and Casca’s kid, what with the family imagery in that one chapter. Conversely it’s suggested he might be associated with Dannan, and therefore possibly taking the form of what that child would look like for the sake of… well I want to suggest manipulating them, bc I have high hopes that Danann is gonna turn out to be shady and using them for her own ends.

I do have a hard time with the popular theory that Moonlight Kid is part of NeoGriffith and like, escapes during the full moon to hang out with the rpg group bc the idea sounds very silly to me.

And on a personal level I hate him lmao. I just… I hate most cutesy fictional children, I vastly prefer Black Swordsman Guts to family man Guts lol, I don’t like that the kid’s role is to prevent Guts from succumbing to the armour because I want Guts to succumb to the armour, at least for long enough to shake things up and have consequences. I don’t like that Casca has strong maternal feelings for him despite not even having a personality right now, bc it’s so gender essentialist. Not in a surprising way, just in an annoying way. I don’t like the way he’s used to tease the audience about the possibility of Guts eventually settling down with a family. And I don’t like the implication that he briefly like, possessed NeoGriffith to make him save Casca lol, because again, it strikes me as really silly.

My biggest hope and dream involving Moonlight Boy is that he’s either a) secretly bad news because he’s a trick of Danann’s, or b) going to be what Casca sacrifices to become an apostle if she opens the behelit.

I remember reading Berserk for the first time and being totally unimpressed with Guts n Casca’s relationship. Then I really entered the fandom and it turns out a lot of people really like them together??? I thought “Did you guys read the same manga as me?” Lmao. I’m never gonna forgive Miura for forcing that shit into the story

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I don’t think you’re the same person but I’m combining these asks into one post because it’s basically the same subject and sentiment lol

honestly yeah the relationship really just brings out the worst in both characters imo (rampant misogyny and general laddish unlikeability in Guts; dependency, victimization, and narrative passivity in Casca), and it seems so, so unnecessary to me.

Like they are the epitome of pasted on romance. The relationship that drives the narrative, provides the most tension and intrigue and character development is Guts and Griffith’s. Guts and Casca’s romance drives nothing, develops nothing, and the intrigue and tension comes from… how Griffith figures into it (eg as the person they’re both rebounding from, as the object of their early rivalry, as the person Guts is trying to get over post-Eclipse by focusing on Casca. like literally every single one of their scenes where they grow closer is a conversation about Griffith lol).

Plus Guts rescuing her and then escorting her to Elfhelm is not dependent on his romantic relationship with her at all – he’d do the same for any of his former comrades. She could be replaced with Gaston and absolutely zero things would change except Guts probably wouldn’t’ve sexually assaulted him.

The romance brings nothing unique to the characters, it adds nothing, all it does is diminish everyone involved, extremely literally in the case of Miura adding it so he could write Casca out of half the story in the most grotesque way possible and give Guts motivation he absolutely didn’t need and which diminishes his actual personal trauma which is what should’ve been motivating him.

It’s so frustrating! I swear I could write another 4 part essay about all the ways Guts and Casca’s romance actively makes Berserk objectively (yes i’m saying objectively, idgaf some things are universally bad regardless of personal taste, like most things to do with the Eclipse) worse lmao

And the thought of an AU where Casca also survived the Eclipse without the bullshit and got her own plot-driving complementary storyline as an active character with a goal is so depressing because it could’ve been amazing.

How do you think the overall fan base would react if Miura decided to just say “fuck it” and make Guts x Griffith canon lmao do you think there’d be an uproar?

a whooooooole lot of ragequitting and calling miura a sjw-pandering hack/evil fetishizing homophobe/rape apologist on one side of the fandom, wild celebration on the other side

might depend how it goes canon too lol. like, guts and neogriffith improbably living happily ever after somehow? definitely the above

guts and griffith admitting to themselves and/or each other that they were/are still in love before one or both die in the final confrontation? i could see the majority of the berserk fandom hmphing and going “ugh fine” (or insisting it’s still platonic love or that he still loved casca more) instead of ragequitting or hating miura.

and probably a combination of the two if there was a kiss or something to demonstrate the non-platonicness of it lol

griff and guts sleeping/cuddling position headcanons? guts is a little spoon and griffith sleeps on top of guts huge chest…

legit. guts sleeping on his back and griffith clinging and using his chest as a pillow is perf.

i think they’d also naturally fall into sleeping on their sides w/ guts as the big spoon (and griffith holding onto his arm like a stuffed animal), and falling asleep facing each other a lot too tbh, complete with holding hands.

The fact that ppl view gtsca as this epic love story truly baffles me. Nvmd that he’s treated her like shit, miura admittedly shoehorned it into the story to give guts more manpain. It has like 3 chapters of forced build-up (judeau lit had to push them together) and it’s implied that they’re both using e/o as an alternative to griffith. And indeed, as soon he reenters the picture, it starts to fall apart. And it lasted like, what, one week? But sure, they’re totally the loves of e/o’s lives lol

four days actually lol

but yeah, strong agree here. I do kind of wonder what Miura wanted to portray – like I definitely think it very much comes across in the story that he added their relationship entirely for the sake of fridging Casca to motivate Guts more (the fact that he admitted it is icing on the cake lol). But he also didn’t shove it in as a badly written last-minute true love story, he was very deliberate in showing that there were flaws there from the start, like Judeau pulling the strings, both rebounding from Griffith, both using sex as a distraction from their negative feelings, the jealousy during the rescue mission, Griffith still taking priority to Guts (and this holds true until after the Hill of Swords confrontation), Casca becoming Guts’ “sword,” their hookup helping enable Guts’ denial so he doesn’t realize he shouldn’t’ve left the Hawks until it’s too late, etc.

So idk bc to elicit the correct reaction from his readers during the Eclipse he had to make them invested in their relationship and Guts’ feelings for Casca, but he also doesn’t do a damn thing to make Guts feelings for Casca matter or affect his decisions or anything. So imo it ends up feeling awkwardly pasted on when we’re supposed to believe they have strong feelings for each other, and the rest of the time it feels deliberately portrayed as negative.

(Like I’ve pointed out before, but a good example of this is the way Guts decides he screwed up before and wants to stay with Griffith this time while talking with Judeau, before consulting with Casca. It would’ve been so easy to have him decide while talking to Casca, showing that what she chooses to do also affects his decision, but nope. Too bad for Casca if she really wanted to leave with Guts, Guts is sticking with Griffith now.)

just finished the movies and bc i love your meta i just wanna say icb they made the waterfall scene to just be guts and casca calmly have sex. the movies only really work to prove how if you leave the entire character development and depth of guts out the series itself changes significantly

thank you! and yeah ikwym, it makes me wonder what people who got into the movies first take away from them characterization-wise.

like obviously griffith is completely different lol, transformed into a two dimensional conniving ambitious dude who happens to be in love with Guts. But also like you mention, how does guts and casca’s relationship come across? I feel like it’d be even more boring, like i consider guts’ flashback to be like the lone highlight of their interactions together, and without that it’s just… so rote. Same w/ the anime on that point actually.

idk i think the ovas are a pretty decent hook to get people into the story, but anyone who stops there instead of reading the manga is seriously missing out.

berserk is just: no confronting or talking about our feelings we repress them like men (until they literally cause the apocalypse)

lol p much. like i’ll argue forever that dreams in berserk are ways to avoid dealing with your feelings and the whole story is about repression due to trauma.

not even in a guts and griffith are attracted to each other but can’t figure it out way, tho it’s so easy to read that as part of it, but repression due to trauma also describes guts’ whole monster hunting campaign post eclipse, the way behelits and turning into monsters work, and imo like 90% of guts, griffith, and casca’s characters in general. and farnese, at least pre-guts. and serpico.

Re: griffith’s torture chamber monologue do you happen to know what’s the original japanese word they translated as “hunger”? I wonder if it has any particular connotation in japanese

I do not, but this is a good question and one I’m also curious about. I can say that the anime replaced it with “love” (whether the word itself changed or the translation, idk) so it wouldn’t surprise me if it sounds just as suggestive in japanese as in english, or more so.

@chaoticgaygriffith no pressure to answer this, but do you have any insight on the word? (i’m sure you know exactly the page we’re talking about but just in case, chapter 49)

And actually while I’m wondering about this I’ve always been curious, is it the same word Ganeshka uses on this page? (chapter 282)

I have never seen or read berzerk. I somehow came across your grifguts analysis and decided to read it, despite having no context for it . The first part was so interesting and compelling that I have decided to start the series, and then finish your analysis when I’m caught up. Thank you for that high quality meta

oh wow this is so cool to hear, i’m so glad something i wrote could motivate someone to get into this story! thank you for letting me know 😀

But also before you read too far please let me know if you have any triggers or just want to be warned for any types of dark (and sometimes offensive tbh) content in general, because Berserk seriously has it all, and as much as I still love the story I’d hate for anyone go in and be blindsided by some of it. I’d be happy to give you a rundown if you want to be forewarned.

Oh and the official translation of the manga is what I’d recommend, there are some pretty dodgy scanlations floating around that aren’t nearly as accurate. Here’s a link if you happen to need one:

http://mangaseeonline.us/read-online/Berserk-chapter-1-page-1.html

oh my god yes that’s my favorite scene too. closely followed by the “only you made my forget my dream” scene. they’re both heartbreakingly beautiful and it amazes me how miura can convey how intense and complicated guts and griffith’s feelings for e/o are w/ so few pages. take the bthump page too or the ones of griffith and guts looking at e/o from afar in ch 278. their relationship truly is the heart of berserk and i can’t wait til they meet again

yesss the moment of the sacrifice probably is my second favourite scene too. and also special mention to guts’ monologue about how he wants griffith to look at him.

and it’s true even those brief meetings/eyes meeting across a plain lol have such a weight to them because of both how miura portrays those scenes and because of their history informing them. like there’s a reason guts keeps thinking about griffith on that hill now even though he was barely a speck on the horizon to him. their connection is just that intense.

it’s so good!

what’s your favorite scene in the whole manga?

I feel like this should probably be a harder question to answer because there are so many amazing scenes, but honestly it’s easy: Griffith’s torture chamber monologue.

It’s the absolute heart of Berserk and it’s everything I could possibly ask for in a ship.

Griffith starting off with the pages on his dream. The brightest thing he’d ever seen. Then darkness. And every single time I turn the page from this

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to this

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it takes my breath away lmao.

It’s a monologue about how Guts holds Griffith’s heart in his hand.

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And like look at this shit!

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The sole sustenance keeping him alive oh my god. Why just him? Why indeed.

And the monologue that begins with showing us the dream Griffith dedicated his entire life to pursuing ends with this:

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I just fucking can’t handle it. This is seven pages of absolute perfection, and these seven pages are what Berserk’s about, both literally and thematically, and that’s why I’m stuck in this fandom no matter how many other aspects of the canon disappoint me lol.

Like, a few of my favourite ship tropes are: love/hate, someone ruining their own life because of love, power dynamic reversal due to desperately intense emotions, someone forced to choose between love and the thing they value most in life, betrayal and obsession/desperate need, two people who are singular to each other, etc and this scene hits every branch on the way down.

how bout you, if you have a favourite scene you want to talk about?

Reading chapter 355 and seeing how the art style in those last panels where guts triggers casca’s bad memories (that close-up of griffith’s tortured body rlly struck me) is so similar to the manga’s old art style makes me wonder if the cutesy art shift was indeed intentional to suit elfhelm’s tone and if it’s gonna shift again now that it seems some dark shit is gonna down again? I certainly hope so cause the new art style isn’t doing it for me. Like at all

yk I also wondered/hoped that. I mean idk the Griffith panel was pretty stand-out in detail and realism compared to the rest, and the tone was fairly dark at times in Casca’s dream but I still wasn’t into the art, so I’m not super hopeful that the style will completely shift back to something more say Golden Age-y or early Millenium Falcon arc.

But the shift from the Millenium Falcon art to the Fantasia art seemed weirdly abrupt to me, so it does give me hope that at least some of the style now is deliberate rather than just natural art shift, and maybe he’ll at least shift styles again to something different and hopefully better lol. I want to believe.

imgur(.)com/a/f0QgmjY / imgur(.)com/a/KFd5zXQ lmao

for ref the pics are guts fantasizing about neogriffith’s ass during the “he looked so human” panel, and gennon being creepy while imagining nearly the same image

and ngl I’ve actually made that connection before somewhere in here

i mean it’s not really to compare guts and gennon lol, more that yk miura knows how to visually illustrate the concept of someone’s physical attraction to griffith and that’s what he’s doing on both those pages l b r here

What do you think would have happened if guts hadn’t accepted his new companion’s fellowship and stayed travelling alone with casca?

straight up, he would’ve murdered casca. like no doubt in my mind, basically the whole point of the chapters between the hill of swords and the rpg group catching up to him is to tell the reader that without the rpg group casca would not have lasted much longer w/ guts.

after he killed casca?

boring default answer: revenge rampage part 2 to distract himself from this new giant heap of guilt, now with more passive suicidal tendencies

better answer: behelit opens, he sacrifices griffith, everything comes full circle

best answer: revenge rampage part 2 to distract himself from this new giant heap of guilt, but he feels like he’s just as bad as griffith/femto now and ends up joining him after a confrontation (and probably sex as a substitute for uh “giving him a heap of raw iron” lbr). all the thematic stuff about inner monsters becoming literal outer monsters is a build up to guts as an example of a human just succumbing to his dark side without the help of a magic transformation

caveat to best answer: with griffith he may actually recover some of his “good” self, as he’s still an echo of that last glimmer of the whole campfire in his chest metaphor, and depending on what’s going on with neogriffith internally they could end up both sort of balancing light and dark. would also fit neatly with the way the apostles do under ngriff’s influence, but this would be the emotional version rather than the metaphysical one lol.

Agree on Black Swordsman Guts, he’s my favorite too. Also speaking of which, what do you think of people who say him banging the female Apostle is OOC because of his issues with sex and because “he’s faithful to Casca”?

Whether by accident or design (since yk from the sounds of it Miura wrote the first chapter or two before really figuring out where he wanted to go with the story) I actually consider the opening few pages to be very in character lol, which might be an unpopular opinion, idk.

Consider: it fits perfectly into Guts pattern of self-destructively doing whatever it takes to get close enough to his enemy to blow their head off. He’s deliberately let monsters throw him around, break bones, shove him through walls, eat him, and stab him just so he can maneuver himself into position to take them out. This is an apostle that likes to fuck her victims, ergo.

It also like… actually I’d never thought about this before so bear with me bc this is going to get rambly, but damn it’s actually perfect, because it also makes the connection between Guts’ sex related issues and his stupid monster fighting rampage very direct on page one.

Like if that’s not purposeful then Miura accidentally hit it out of the park with our intro to Guts. But actually it’s gotta be purposeful. Even if it’s just to equate Guts’ particularly phallic violence (big sword, shoving his fist into the monster’s mouth mid-sex and blowing her head off) to sex right off the bat because Miura wants to like… well I think it’s part of what Miura wanted to kind of examine. Swords are dicks in Berserk, just like they’re dicks in a lot of action stories. But what does that mean – why? What’s the connection between violence and sex that makes that imagery fit?

And the answer here is Guts’ rape trauma. Liiiiike ok I completely think that Guts lashes out at enemies, particularly enemies that are bigger and stronger than him, particularly monsters once he learns they exist, because of that trauma. He is very driven to destroy anything that scares him, and that’s the root of it. Monsters scare Guts, we see this very viscerally during the first Zodd encounter and the Wyald encounter, and (particularly after he abandons his emotional support in the snow) Guts is driven to destroy them.

So like on one level Guts fucking the apostle is like, a hook for the dudes and a surface image for Miura to unravel: cool manly action hero bangs chicks and kills monsters, sometimes at the same time! On a character level, it’s a self-destructive strategy to get close enough to kill her because Guts absolutely isn’t the kind of cool hero who regularly bangs chicks, he’s the kind of dumbass who would do anything to kill a monster. And potentially on a thematic level it’s a story opening that primes the audience to equate sex and sex related issues to Guts’ monster killing revenge rampage, ie set up for an undertone of Guts lashing out not because he’s righteously angry or a hero who protects the innocent and kills evildoers, but because he’s traumatized and killing monsters makes him feel better.

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(god that panel is gr8 shorthand for everything i want to say lol)

Or idk maybe it’s not that deep. But damn it now I’m definitely going to include this scene in the next big meta post I write about Guts, his dream, trauma, and his relationship with Griffith.

Anyway I definitely 100% believe the first bit I said, about it being in character for Guts because it’s a self destructive ploy to kill her. The trauma theme stuff is more of a stretch but it’s worth thinking about.

(Also lol @ Guts being faithful to Casca when he left her to rot in a cave for two years. I mean they had sex once and the last significant interaction they had before the Eclipse was Casca essentially breaking off whatever form of relationship they’d begun.

I feel like people reach for that bc they need an explanation for why cool badass protagonist Guts is basically celibate and has never expressed attraction to a woman other than casca (and tbqh casca’s debatable), but honestly it’s cause he’s gay.)

Based on the different arcs in the manga, what’s your favorite Guts (like Black swordsman!Guts, Golden Age!Guts etc.)? Also do you prefer Femto or Neo Griffith?

Honestly, Black Swordsman Guts, especially in the Black Swordsman arc (tho he’s also p good in the Lost Children arc). The way he starts out as the epitome of the asshole antihero out for revenge and that image almost immediately starts crumbling until you’re shown that he’s terrified and pathetic and not a whole lot better than the monsters he’s fighting and really sad about a bad breakup.

The way he opens the story by banging an apostle on page one and eventually you realize that is one of a grand total of two occasions on which he’s had consensual sex. The way he ends the first arc crying after a kid swears vengeance against him. The end of the first chapter when he tortures the snake apostle and the art and tone shift to make Guts the villain and the monster the pitiable victim. Encouraging children to kill themselves because he’s upset. Refusing to admit how monstrous he’s getting when he gets temporarily possessed. Letting a zombie kid stab him.

The driving mystery of why Guts is so obsessed with revenge followed by the reveal that it’s because he had a relationship comparable to marriage with the dude he wants to kill and Griffith didn’t just betray him, they betrayed each other and like half of Guts’ motivation is guilt/distracting himself from guilt.

The way his current situation, haunted by monsters claiming ownership of him after being given to them by someone he loves reflects his childhood so effectively.

I mean yeah part of what makes Black Swordsman Guts great is what the Golden Age reveals about him too, but I’ll still take Black Swordsman over the happy Golden Age version.

For one thing, when Black Swordsman Guts is a dick, the narrative is very clear on that being a negative thing. While when Golden Age Guts is a dick (eg most of his scenes with Casca) it feels like we’re supposed to find that at least somewhat endearing. And also like… I just really, really love the way Miura starts Guts out as strong badass archetype and then immediately sets about complicating it by answering the question of: what would make a real human person this fucking over the top and ridiculous? What’s actually underneath the cool image?

Like Guts goes from badass mccool 80s action hero send up to being directly compared to Vargas in terms of how sad and pathetic he is within a couple chapters, and it’s So. Good.

Answer to your second question under the cut

This question… is actually a very tough call lol. Like yeah okay the smart money’s on the character whose introduction didn’t include a gratuitious rape scene, but I genuinely love Femto regardless? Mostly because I disregard that choice of intro since it was um Badly Written lol, and Femto had me at

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And I just love dark inner monsters as a concept in general despite the author’s reliance on rape as his primary illustration of evil.

On potential alone I’d go with NeoGriffith, because boy he is full of potential to be amazing depending on where those hints about his feelings, isolation of being a singular god, etc go. But what we actually see from him is like… so bland 99% of the time. Like yeah that’s purposeful, that’s a big part of the point, but still. He does feel like a shell of the old Griffith, literally – the outside with v little of the depth (so far).

I can headcanon and theorize a bunch to make him interesting to me, and I do, but idk if that counts lol.

So as for what we’ve got on the page and how seeing him makes me feel, I’m actually going to pick Femto. Like, the same way I inwardly cheered when we saw Guts’ slasher smile at Godo’s after he killed the pig apostle, because it was such a “he’s baaaaaack” moment, I cheered when we saw Femto confront Ganeshka. I love his stupid offensive camp villain makeup, I love his stupid exoskeleton, I love what a petty asshole he is, I love how silent and scary he was when he first appeared and I love how awkward and pathetic he was when he lowered his hand and let Guts escape, I love that he expresses emotions, I love that Void had to basically tell him to shut up during his petty back and forth with Guts in his first scene, and I love him partially out of spite because Miura tried to make me hate him in the shittiest way possible.

Like yeah okay put your super gay character in vampy makeup and make him a rapist to piss off the manly protag while writing out the woman you have no idea what to do with, fuck you I love him anyway.

I have a tendency to love the characters the narrative goes above and beyond to try to get me to hate, because I don’t like being told what to do lol, and if I feel like the narrative is pushing me to feel something without properly selling it/while poorly and/or offensively illustrating it I get contrary. Like basically the Eclipse rape only made me feel hate for Miura. If I hated Femto for it, then I feel like I’d be validating Miura’s bad and offensive writing.

Which is not to say I don’t fully understand and respect people who do respond to the Eclipse by hating Femto. This is just how I personally respond to fiction lol.

youtube(.)com/watch?v=gnXEpNMUjoo

lol sorry anon i’ve gotta be honest, I didn’t watch this because the odds of my sense of humour meshing with a berserk parody are extremely low, especially going in completely blind.

not to discourage you or anyone from sending me links to stuff they think i’d enjoy, i appreciate it, but i rarely watch fandom related youtube videos in general and berserk fandom has me extra wary ngl

i ship guts and griffith, and i’ve always thought that Casca and guts do genuinely love each other but that they forced a romance between themselves. whats your opinion on their relationship? again i think they love each other but griffith is both of their first choices, didn’t the beast of darkness even say something like that?

I think that’s a reasonable way of reading their relationship.

The Beast of Darkness is definitely pretty overt about suggesting that Griffith is Guts’ first choice, calling him his “true light” while Casca gets grouped in with the RPG group as “warm lights,” as well as suggesting that Griffith is more “precious” to him than Casca.

And ofc I definitely agree that Griffith is Guts’ number one choice. Casca I’m less sure about, I think she was more torn between them and maybe ended up prioritizing Guts by the end, when she told him to leave to pursue his dream. But that’s p ambiguous.

My own opinion on Guts and Casca’s feelings for each other is that they’re… complicated lol, but imo genuine romantic love doesn’t really enter into it. I don’t enjoy their relationship so I’m biased ofc, but I do think Miura was like, conscientious about portraying their relationship as a more low-key realistic hookup between friends, rather than burgeoning true love, and motivated by a number of complex feelings and factors other than straightforward romance.

Like both rebounding from Griffith, “licking wounds” and comforting each other after experiencing some extreme self-destructive feelings, genuinely liking each other as friends by now, the fact that Guts saved Casca and Casca feels like she owes him the same way she wanted to be Griffith’s sword after he saved her (Casca pointing out Guts’ scars from the 100 man fight when he saved her then, and asking for a wound in return), Judeau’s heavy-handed manipulations pushing them together, Guts inviting Casca along for sex while prioritizing his dream (”I don’t know whether you’ll get in the way of what I want to do or the opposite”), Guts letting Casca comfort him the way Griffith didn’t, etc.

Additionally I think that their hookup serves as a distraction for Guts, a way to continue repressing the realization that he fucked up when he left for as long as possible because accepting that he ruined everything because he was wrong about Griffith’s feelings is… not easy lol, and this is shown in how he invites her along and still intends to leave the Hawks again, rather than rethinking things based on new information and deciding to stay this time. It takes him like four days to finally accept that he shouldn’t’ve left.

And post-Eclipse I think Guts sticks with Casca in part because of what the Beast of Darkness suggests, that she’s a reminder of the pain Griffith caused, and in part because he wants to try to move on from Griffith now that NGriff has soundly rejected him, and in part because he’s longing for a piece of his happy past and that’s what Casca represents, and in part to atone for abandoning Griffith the first time, and in part because she’s his friend and comrade and he wants to help her.

So like, basically tl;dr I think they care about each other, but the romance aspect did end up being forced and I would’ve liked their relationship a lot more if they’d stayed platonic friends, and it probably would’ve been better for them too.

Also I headcanon them both as gay and repressed lol, and I think the story makes that fairly easy to do, which is nice.

i linked a few related posts under the cut if you happen to be interested

this is a pretty thorough post on my interpretation of guts and casca’s relationship, the op is more of a meta take on how Miura doesn’t portray their hookup entirely positively, and the response is p similar to my answer here but with illustrative pictures lol

this is an illustration of guts maintaining denial thru sex with casca

and this is a really long look at how casca figures into guts and griffith’s relationship with lots of exploration of repression and sublimated feelings lol

speaking of adaptations, what parts of the manga that haven’t been animated yet would you like to see animated the most?

BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC

I want to see it animated so bad. I wish the 97 anime had done it, because honestly the style would’ve suited the subject so well, and also for vid purposes it would be so damn useful to have black swordsman and golden age all animated in the same style and not missing any super significant scenes (lookin at you, ovas).

also I want to see petty bitter ex femto animated, and i want to hear his voice.