“Ha, I’m so over him!”
(Cut to the next scene of Griffith weeping softly in the bath, with candles a glass of rose in his hand, the evening light streaming in.)
This feels very fitting in the sense that all of Casca, Guts, and Griffith’s struggles for their own autonomy are rendered useless by people that are willing to use their lives/bodies as pawns. That’s just my thought.
oh yeah i didn’t really think of it that way, but good point.
kinda ties into how fate works almost lol. i mean in a way isn’t the idea of evil the ultimate paternalistic figure, ultimately orchestrating guts, casca’s and griffith’s encounters with the people who use them?
and this theory i threw out is kind of based on how causality determines when the behelit opens, but theoretically people can use that for their own ends, so it’s like an intersection of both fate and people using others. tho i didn’t rly say anything about that there i guess.
true answer: miura is a misogynist hack who doesn’t really gaf about casca, and needed to get rid of her for a while because he hadn’t invented her yet while writing the black swordsman arc, and is less than concerned about whether guts even comes across as someone who genuinely cares for her.
meta answer:
whyever Miura decided to go that route, Guts’ actions after the Eclipse seem like a pretty strong indication that he wasn’t as angry on behalf of Casca as he was about Griffith transforming into a monster and destroying everything he values. Casca became a symbol of everything he lost – the good old days with the Hawks and Griffith – rather than seeing her as a person in her own right.
And to take that a step further, remember, Guts’ pre-Eclipse revelation was that he broke Griffith’s heart when he left, and therefore he already had what he tried attaining by leaving. The Eclipse wipes that away. Whatever Griffith has become does not (apparently) love or value Guts, and is not Guts’ equal or friend.
and this fucks Guts up
Femto raping Casca was proof that he has fundamentally changed into a monster who looks down on Guts, and Guts does drastic things when someone he loves looks down on him, thanks to his giant collection of daddy issues. Like leaving the woman he supposedly cares for in a cave and going on a self-destructive monster hunting spree.
hohoho
so i did what i said i was going to do, re-read most of the elfhelm chapters to see if i could figure anything out.
and idk how solid this is, especially considering how biased in favour of it i am lol, but i came up with this theory last night
So in 345 they’re all sitting around a table having a nice chat about important spirit realm shit.
The world tree is a “dragon’s road.”
The behelit also creates a dragon’s road.
Just want to point out the little specification of “at your side” and the shot of the behelit in Guts’ pouch vs the way Guts’ cloak billows to give us a view of that pouch as he walks towards Casca.
SO dragon roads.
Schierke pipes up with a question absolutely no reader was ever curious about and is therefore probably very relevant:
With me so far? These spirit woods are lands associated with spirit trees, like Flora’s. These trees feed off the world tree like parasites, keeping it pruned to manageable levels until Griffith destroyed a bunch of them to make way for his high fantasy genre shift.
The world tree is a dragon’s road – it’s not a real tree, it’s a fissure between realms:
Again, the same kind of thing the behelit creates.
Eventually they head on over to Danann’s palace, which turns out to be a giant cherry tree:
It’s a really impressive spirit tree, maybe the last surviving one, or one of the last at least. Elfhelm is probably its associated spirit woods.
Danann specifies that Guts and Casca’s first meeting will take place right by her spirit tree.
And check out the last image of the most recent chapter:
Quite an ominous shot of that tree.
Bear in mind that Danann sensed that Casca was afraid of Guts and refused to let him join Schierke and Farnese in her dreams because of this. It seems a bit strange that as soon as Casca wakes up she’s sending her straight to Guts then, doesn’t it?
Also bear in mind that Skull Knight, who reminds Puck of the elves and is implied to be the Elf King’s oracle, is the one who both told Guts the Elf King could heal Casca, and warned him that “there’s no guarantee your wish will be her wish.”
Schierke thinks the oracle is the Moonlight Boy, because she doesn’t know it’s Skull Knight. But this is how we know that “oracle” is connected to the Elf King. And this is how we know it’s Skull Knight:
And check out this vaguely ominous thread that hasn’t been picked back up yet. Is someone using Guts…? Skull Knight, or the person Skull Knight is playing messenger for – the Elf King? (tbh it looks like he’s justifying it to himself by saying whether he interferes or not causality has the final say anyway. calling Guts “a factor.” A factor in what? What is being facilitated, and by whom? Maybe someone who understands the flow of causality, who is using it for their own ends?)
I also want to note that I had zero memory of Flora asking if Skull Knight is using Guts lmao, the only reason I went back to this part was to prove that SK is the Elf King’s oracle. But I am super stoked that it fits my theory perfectly.
SO yeah the Elf King’s oracle is the one telling Guts this. Seems probable that Danann has been planning to try healing Casca’s mind since long before they showed up on her doorstep asking her to.
Also of note in this scene with Skull Knight on the beach:
This is the explanation for why NeoGriffith had Flora killed.
To
confront him, one must also exist outside the story. Who exists outside
the story to some extent that we know of? Skull Knight, the branded, and witches.
AND one more thing of note in this scene is Skull Knight warning Guts about the armour:
All this foreshadowing is thrown into the same chapter, and I think it could be all tied together.
So, my theory:
Danann is using Casca and Guts, for two possible reasons, maybe both:
1. By healing Casca’s mind and sending her to meet Guts right beside her spirit tree, she knows or hopes that Casca’s memories will send her into despair right there, with the behelit at hand, thereby opening a dragon’s road right beside her powerful spiritual tree thing which feeds on dragon’s roads. Maybe giving Danann and Elfhelm a boost of energy/spiritual power for something.
2. Weapons.
If Casca becomes an apostle, she will be branded, ergo a step outside the reason of the world and able to harm Griffith. She will be powerful. And Griffith will have a weakness against her – that whole wacky fetus thing that made him save her life. It’s entirely possible that Danann knows this, as she has scryers checking things out.
(Granted Casca would also have her own weakness against him, that demon instinct which recognizes NeoGriffith as a messiah, buuut I’m js Ganeshka’s reaction to him was rather similar to Casca’s old feelings, which she’s had several years of experience dealing with and ignoring. Plus he’s responsible for destroying her life and everything that traumatized her into insanity, and Danann has a lot of magic. That potential weakness isn’t the be all end all, is what I’m saying.)
There’s also the foreboding foreshadowing regarding Guts succumbing to the armour. Skull Knight’s warning back there, the Beast of Darkness taunting him here
and this scene
which directly connects Casca regaining her sanity and ~doing something~ ominous to the Beast of Darkness lying in wait. And I feel like Casca choosing to make a sacrifice like Griffith did and become a monster would be a pretty solid incentive for Guts to succumb to his inner beast.
And I’m js Beast of Darkness Guts, with his own foot outside the reason of the world thanks to the brand, and lbr Femto/NGriff’s own host of issues that led to him letting Guts go three times so far, would also be a powerful weapon.
It’s also worth noting that we’ve been warned time and again about the dangers of Guts succumbing to the armour, losing his humanity, etc, and he’s been saved every single time he reaches a danger point by Schierke, or the Astral Kid, or whatever. At some point he has to actually succumb properly, at least for a while, for long enough to shake up the narrative and have Consequences, or there’s no point to all this ominous foreshadowing.
Elfhelm is opposed to NeoGriffith and Falconia and the whole merging of planes thing, it’s suggested that Guts is being used by Skull Knight, who seems to be allied with/working for the Elf King, and all these little ominous moments fit together very well.
Plus let’s be real here – Skellig is obviously too good to be true.
Like, I don’t think there’s a dark underbelly to Skellig, any more than I think there’s a dark underbelly to Falconia. I don’t think they’re secretly killing children or Danann’s going to transform into a cackling demon or that the cloying wholesomeness is all a performance to trick Guts and co lol. But I do think that despite the cutesy elf antics and unicorns and sentencing Magnifico to dishwashing duty etc, they would be very capable of ruthlessness. This is Berserk, after all.
tbh I’m really feeling the behelit dragon’s road thing, all those expository details in the recent chapters add up v neatly.
And I think the weaponizing Cacsa and/or Guts theory is a little more of a stretch, more of a “well it would logically follow” rather than having directly suggestive evidence of its own, but still fits nicely imo. And boy, would that not twist the whole revenge theme in an interesting way? If there’s another secondary antagonist who wants Guts and/or Casca to go and kill NeoGriff for their own reasons? Maybe even for the greater good – but at the expense of our protagonists?
Thank you, and yeah lol I know how you feel. I avoid the general Berserk fandom as much as I can but man the occasional times I do check it out are just painful.
since the start of the falconia arc his schedule has been kinda out of wack but in the last 3 years its been 4-5 chapter strings w then 6 months or so gaps
I’m still kinda new to berserk fandom but how long the hiatus usually takes?
can someone jump in and help answer this please bc i’ve been through two hiatuses i think but i have no conception of time so i honestly don’t remember how long they lasted
six months ish maybe?
off the top of my head i threw together some of my favourite golden age facial expressions after all that art talk earlier lol
i’m missing a bunch of good ones i’m sure but these are what jumped to mind
holy fuck this just hit me like a brick. the way “do you think i’m cruel” is slightly separate from the other two memories, coming after Guts stops denying it and begins thinking “is this…”
“do you think that I’m cruel?”
“is this… what you wanted?”
it’s the moment griffith has least wanted this.
guts’ answer is what the godhand use to convince him to agree. it’s the moment that could’ve changed what happened here, if griffith had gotten a different answer.
I just need it to be miura building up to fuck with people and pull the rug out at the last moment– if he doesn’t, I’m going to really seriously wonder if he’s suffered a head injury and personality change because berserk ain’t been about straight up romance. ever.
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
this
vs
Wtf it doesn’t even look like the same person. It’s the angle and shape of the eyes and brows that’s doing it I think. Her eyebrows got done at a hella nice salon.
(she looks sort of elfish. Maybe elf magic is to blame, or (probably) he’s just forgotten how to draw her.)
lol yeah the eyebrows are super conspicuous too
i guess to miura’s credit he got a lot better at shading her lips, thankfully. so you win some you lose some.
she looks as neogriff looks to original flavour griffith which could just be art choices but is frankly SUSPICIOUS
hmmmm
(probably the art shift, but still. this is some ~i want to believe~ shit right here. gimme sinister came-back-wrong Casca)
i just wanna point out that griffith actually has the angled cat eyes & always has
miura: hmm need to make casca look like the perfect image of the protagonist’s love interest when she wakes up for reasons
miura: i know i’ll give her griffith’s patented sultry eyes
oh i like this take i briefly considered something in this direction but i didnt miura would have a sophisticated enough perspective to want to say that? idk. it was going thru my brains built in gender theories filter at the time so it seems more reasonable put this way ig
yeah this seems a little beyond miura ngl but idk, i’ll grasp at any and every straw for the sake of hope lol, and tbf we were reminded that she’s afraid of guts by danann just a few chapters ago so it’s not like miura has completely forgotten
GOD casca is obviously your edgy twist on miki except casca is “your type” can we just have them move the fuck on already
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
this
vs
Wtf it doesn’t even look like the same person. It’s the angle and shape of the eyes and brows that’s doing it I think. Her eyebrows got done at a hella nice salon.
(she looks sort of elfish. Maybe elf magic is to blame, or (probably) he’s just forgotten how to draw her.)
lol yeah the eyebrows are super conspicuous too
i guess to miura’s credit he got a lot better at shading her lips, thankfully. so you win some you lose some.
she looks as neogriff looks to original flavour griffith which could just be art choices but is frankly SUSPICIOUS
hmmmm
(probably the art shift, but still. this is some ~i want to believe~ shit right here. gimme sinister came-back-wrong Casca)
oh im just banking on the ominous ruse awakening i think were in for no matter the context. but the romanticization was just weirdddd no matter what like i know its been a while but casca never really felt that way about guts pre eclipse either like. what.
to me it felt like either fanservice for the sole sake of subverting expectations, or miura buying into everything g*tsca shippers think without re-reading his own story first
and i’m definitely fearing it’s the latter what with the indication that she’s been wanting to see(/meet whatever the line is) guts this whole time while stuck in a dream, the teary look when his name is mentioned, the expectation of romance and casca immediately going along with it, etc.
like who is this and what have you done with casca
sure miura feminized her a lot when she started crushing on guts in the golden age but it was never this bad, and there has never been a true love vibe between them
so like yeah even if there is a twist it’s hard to explain away the characterization here
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
this
vs
Wtf it doesn’t even look like the same person. It’s the angle and shape of the eyes and brows that’s doing it I think. Her eyebrows got done at a hella nice salon.
(she looks sort of elfish. Maybe elf magic is to blame, or (probably) he’s just forgotten how to draw her.)
lol yeah the eyebrows are super conspicuous too
i guess to miura’s credit he got a lot better at shading her lips, thankfully. so you win some you lose some.
no yeah i was talking about just casca, i know in my heart guts cannot and will not move on. at least any time soon. but i can’t seem to predict which way casca’s arc will go because miura writes women so incomprehensibly
oh yeah i see what you mean. and yeaaaaah casca is seriously an enormous blank spot because who knows wtf miura is going to do with her, i can really only begin to theorize about how she’s going to support guts’ story lol. tho imagine if she actually got her own motivations and narrative.
i agree that the moment she wakes up is rushed, things are too cordial and NICE. Tbh I almost expected her to wake up screaming. but the last few panels of the update suggest some dark shit is coming?? So maybe something is UP
@seisans said:
yeah i thought he was like fake, maybe danann knows more than she lets on and is trying to get casca to realise some things? idk
here’s hoping. i mean when you put it that way with danann pushing the romance but it turns out this is just like, magical therapy part 2, maybe the point is that g*tsca is a terrible idea and casca has to realize that lol
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
yeah, it’s just like. regressed casca even had that moment when she was trying to touch neo griff but couldn’t, plus like the stupid fetus, and idk how the gremlin man (miura) thinks so i’m assuming the worst. but yeah you’re probably right
there is a shit ton of stuff that can and should be taken into account tbh, and that post was rly just a v distant overview. i think… idk there’s probably enough evidence to make a case for either scenario happening – guts moving on vs guts failing to move on. and like the fetus eg could figure into either of those scenarios, by maybe being a source of conflict between casca and guts, or maybe uniting them.
i think there’s also enough evidence to argue that guts failing to move on isn’t necessarily a negative/tragic thing either, tho i kind of framed it as one. like there’s a scenario where guts trying to “let go of his obsession” is essentially guts kidding himself and just burying and refusing to acknowledge his mixed feelings instead of confronting them, using casca as an escape
that’s my #1 hope rly.
but yeah at the end of the day this all kind of rests on the premise that when berserk is over it will overall be a good solid comprehensive story lol, and that’s based on what I’m picking up on as important themes, which is kind of itself a distant hope.
i think if the latter is the case then perhaps there will be a more light-hearted ending but… my preferences aside, from BS arc this manga’s theme is the quest for revenge, fighting against all odds etc. so i think that if this scenario occured then the manga will have kind of deviated..? not that it couldn’t be (objectively) a development, but still the ending would be all over the place instead of tackling the core elements, ie their relationship
yeah I totally agree. While I think you could argue that Guts forming strong relationships as a way of moving on from traumatic shit is in keeping with earlier themes, applying that to moving on from Griffith completely ignores the complexities of Guts and Griffith’s relationship, which is straight up what Berserk is about. Like yeah I’m super biased but I still think it would objectively be more narratively fulfilling to see their mutual obsession take centre stage again – it’s the difference between their intense relationship getting a proper climax and emotional catharsis versus being reduced to basically a bad break up that one dude couldn’t move on from.
It’s also a deviation in another way that I was considering tacking onto that post but didn’t, but now I want to talk about it.
But like imo if it is the case that Berserk is about Guts overcoming his obsession and moving on, then functionally Berserk is basically two different kinds of stories.
Everything from chapter one to chapter 129 is the story of a kind of fucked up dude with a lot of issues muddling his way through a very dark grey narrative and trying to do his best.
Everything from chapter 130 on is the story of a dude consistently Making The Right Choice.
Like, I kind of feel that those two stories are incompatible. In a narrative about a dude struggling with himself and trying and usually failing to make the right choices in a complex world where right and wrong barely even exist, which tbh is My Berserk, then it simply doesn’t work for the main character to then make the correct choice, ie focusing on Casca, and stick to it for two hundred and twenty chapters plus afterwards. If he eventually does make a genuinely good and correct and narratively rewarded choice, that should only happen at the end and it should be cathartic.
There are stories about protagonists doing the right thing the whole time even though it’s a struggle at times, and those can be fine stories, but it’s a giant downgrade from a story about a dude making a bunch of mistakes in a morally grey world, and an absolutely enormous tonal and thematic shift. It just doesn’t work as a complete story to me if that’s the case.
i mean i guess it’s always been the same question:
is this the prelude to a happy or tragic narrative shake up?
it’s just that now, thanks to how heavily romanticized that chapter was before the last couple pages, there’s imo v little doubt that happy = casca is soothed (whether it’s after a chapter or a volume) and romance ensues
and tragic = casca fucks shit up, romance does not ensue
if the former, the narrative is shaken up by guts’ party coming to a stand still and guts experiencing contentment and needing some outside motivation to continue doing anything relevant. maybe neogriff showing up, elfhelm in danger, something like that.
if the latter, the narrative is shaken up by casca taking the playing board and throwing it across the room, which, based on earlier beast-y foreshadowing, will likely lead to guts losing control of the beast of darkness, etc, whatever. Bad shit happens.
BUT there’s also another way of looking at it:
is berserk the story of two dudes who keep trying and failing to stop being obsessed with each other until some kind of climactic catharsis happens?
or is berserk the story of two dudes who were obsessed with each other, one of whom is ironically still obsessed despite going to extreme lengths to try to cut out his feelings, and the other of whom successfully lets go of his obsession and moves on?
(or, put another way, the story of one dude overcoming his obsession with another dude through the power of heterosexual love, while the other dude’s gay love is both what turned him evil and his only weakness.
And I swear to god if I
have to power thru guts’ hetero romance for the sake of griffith’s
doomed evil gay love i can’t think of something emphatic enough to
describe how i’ll feel.)
SO
Ultimately the question comes down to: is Guts’ focus going to return to Griffith, whether that’s through backsliding into revenge again or through re-examining his complex feelings and actually dealing with them instead of running away from them through the fix Casca sidequest?
or will Guts successfully overcome his obsession with Griffith, likely by saving Casca from herself through the power of love or w/e the way he failed to save Griffith before the Eclipse, leaving NGriff to drive the narrative and setting the stage for the final climax?
And if Casca fucks shit up and it turns out the fix Casca sidequest was kind of a terrible idea all along that leads to tragedy and darkness, the answer is the former. If Casca is talked down and love and companionship save the day, the answer is the latter.
So basically whatever happens is going to make or break Berserk for me lol. No pressure.
i haven’t looked at the new chapter, just the pics y’all posted & linked to, but with the feathers and casca wanting to see someone and “your wish may not be her wish” like i could see her using the behelit and joining neo-griff ….. but ………….. idk, has she remembered the eclipse yet? if not she’s bound to and that’s not gonna be pretty. also idk what the point of her joining griffith would be wrt guts …… like i hate the idea of his own desire
to see griffith getting mixed with his “feelings” for casca you know
what i mean?
anyway if i remember
correctly i think your “casca uses the behelit” theory involved her
having her own revenge journey or something like that but yeah what if
this instead. i’m thinking no thank you mr miura
haha i would straight up murder miura if casca joined neogriffith. my, like, unlikely ideal is the three of them with their own individual power ups (incarnated god, apostle mb along the lines of ganeshka wrt power, berserk armour) all kind of opposing each other to some degree. eg ngriff wants his empire and also wants guts in some capacity that he doesn’t understand so maybe tries to kill him, casca wants to kill ngriff but guts wants to be the one to kill ngriff but also he doesn’t want to kill ngriff, etc
I think the feathers are probably more a reminder of her past as a Hawk than necessarily to do with NGriff. That’s what I was thinking anyway, but like, with the addition that that past is traumatic and they’re a reminder of Griffith who is the source of her trauma and therefore it’s ~ominous~
The backgrounds and details are very nice but the characters seems too cutesy for my personal taste. Even the monsters in Casca’s dream world lacked a visceral feeling besides being dick monsters. I am glad we didn’t see any rape but at the same time I think the drawings could of been rougher. I also wasn’t a fan of Casca’s magical girl dress. But maybe the translation will help… *Goes back to read Golden Age Arc*
@laraskadi said:
indeeeeeeeeeeeeeed I
feel this so much! I NEED her to look like Casca and act like Casca,
otherwise it just looks like a random person…? And in that dress no
less… Put her in some armor with a normal face and I’ll cry my eyes out
(putting this in one post bc it’s all about art)
Yeah mte. Like I won’t deny that Miura’s always drawn women with exaggerated eyes and tiny mouths, but she seemed so much more expressive before and idk, the exaggerated faces seemed less jarring with the flatter/cartoonier style of the golden age, as opposed to the current mix of hugely exaggerated features and realistic details? Plus the shape of her eyes makes a difference, she’s so feminized now the dress is just the cherry on top of that really unpleasant sundae tbh.
And more for the first reply:
Yeah the art is a lot like, heavier and darker, thicker lines (more lines holy fuck) but it lacks the fluid visceralness we saw during, eg, the actual eclipse, in moments like this:
and like the sheer business of the art now means we don’t get evocative and terrifying contrasts like this:
And yeah the style in general seems less suited to monsters now. compare above to
like man I want to see the monsters, not just suggestions of them.
all righty then the double helix isn’t so much suggestive of evil/darkness as spiritual stuff/od stuff in general i guess. which does fit better overall.
(has she been wearing it in plain sight the whole time and i just never noticed? or has it been largely under her travel dress at least lol?)
the dress is just the cherry on top of that really unpleasant sundae tbh.
you're the only one 