that makes perfect sense. he has low self-esteem so he projects his feelings onto guts and kinda living the relationship vicariously.. i don’t think this was in any way good because he completely disregarded both guts and casca’s feelings tbh (and griffith’s). guts did the same thing, like you said, but i don’t think he did that to such a detrimental degree iirc. i still don’t see why cishets love him so much tbh. thanks for the detailed reply!
lol i’ll take any excuse to go on and on about something, ty for your reply + giving me an opening 🙂
Yeah I have a lot of mixed feelings about Judeau. I’m still fond of him and I kind of like that he fits the “tertiary friend who gives the protag wise advice” slot except that a lot of his advice is terrible and makes things worse because he has his own issues too. it gives him a nice little bit of dimension. But lol I still resent him a bit for being the resident het cheerleader, and he’s far from the super good bro who gives great advice that a lot of Berserk fandom treats him as.
still wondering what’s judeau’s agenda tbh. like did he want guts to take casca away for her to be safe? this is completely true tho and one of the reasons why i dislike judeau is that he’s a gtsca shipper lol
There’s that hint before he dies that he’s in love with her, and there’s an indication that he has like… self-worth issues lol, with his “if I couldn’t be the best I’d fly in the wake of someone who was” reasoning for following Griffith, and comparing himself to Guts negatively when they were running from monsters in the Eclipse. I think it’s basically Judeau thinking he isn’t good enough for Casca and Guts would be, and seeing how hard leading the Hawks while they’re being hunted has been on her and wanting her to get away from that responsibility.
Which tbh is another indication that gtsca was a misguided mistake from the start, since Judeau’s reasoning for arranging their hookup in the first place is stupid and based on low self esteem.
There’s also shades of a parallel between Judeau trying to get Guts and Casca together and Guts trying to get Casca and Griffith together, and I will personally argue forever that Guts throwing Casca at Griffith was because he didn’t feel like he was good enough for Griffith, rather than not good enough for Casca. I mean, that is his entire reasoning behind his decision making at that point in the story, after all.
Thinking he’ll be worthy of Casca when he’s Griffith’s equal is a random quick aside spurred on by Judeau right before he leaves and imo framed as though Casca being in love with him would be a sign that he’s made it as Griffith’s friend and equal, rather than wanting to be Griffith’s friend and equal to get with Casca lol, which has never been a factor.
griffith thinks he’s cruel for letting someone – guts – in and hence dragging him through the dirt with him; guts thinks he’s cruel for /only/ letting guts in… i don’t have a conclusion but hmmmm
that’s a really good observation tbh
my guess is that it highlights how much they see what griffith is doing as dirty? guts like, let’s be honest, doesn’t really at all. griffith asks him to kill a man and he’s like pshh just order me like you always do 😉 hey why don’t you tell the rest of our pals about this?? meanwhile griffith thinks he’s a filthy monster
Yeah it shows how non judgemental Guts is about it, and that he expects everyone else to be similarly non-judgemental. Maybe indicates that Guts thinks Griffith is only keeping them in the dark for… convenience or whatever, and subtly shows that he doesn’t realize it’s because of shame. Griffith explains afterwards, sort of, in his prevaricating way (”they need only feel as though they’re rising up”). Idk but it’s another sign of the gulf of misunderstanding between them for sure.
reflected fire light helping out w/ the metaphor too
i will never be over how damn suggestive it is that judeau, the resident dude who won’t stop throwing guts and casca together and who dictates the entirety of the guts/casca relationship based on whispering in guts’ ear, doesn’t want rickert to tell guts how fucked up griffith was over him.
so the other day i looked at a scanlation version of the beast of darkness scene in chapter 187 and boy oh boy they threw around the word “love” to describe guts’ feelings for casca a lot (eg ‘yet you love her?’ instead of the dh version which is ‘yet she’s precious?’)
which just made me think of so many fandom arguments i’ve seen in my brief experience as a fan of gay anime and manga ships about how nothing is ever a straightforward non-platonic love confession between 2 dudes or women unless, idk, you use some outdated phrase no one uses anymore or smthn, at least based on recent mikimiki wank lol.
but everything is a straightforward declaration of love if it’s a man and a woman ofc.
i’m vaguely musing rn on touch, guts’ early and post-eclipse aversion to it, griffith always initiating, never willingly receptive (except to guts), guts starting the eclipse by touching griffith’s shoulder and then being the one to let go of griffith’s hand the final time they ever physically connect, hands on shoulders and emotional vulnerability and power dynamics, guts growing more comfortable again with his rpg group while neogriffith is “one who is beyond the reach of man,” femto almost pointedly refusing to allow physical contact between them even thru a sword w/ his telekinesis, zodd standing between guts and neogriffith
the only solid conclusion i have so far is that guts needs to physically touch neogriffith at some point
i honestly can’t believe that we’re not supposed to see griffith as both in love with guts and unable to easily come to terms with it because his frame of reference for same-sex attraction was gennon
and vice versa for guts and his formative trauma w/ donovan
it’s just all there, laid out so neatly. like i feel like it’s not a stretch to call it the essential point/theme/plot of the golden age. two dudes love each other and completely fuck it up because they’re traumatized. like yah i’ve written an essay about this b4 but man sometimes it just hits you. like right now.
ugh it just kills me how griffith comforted casca here, even though he must have been sick to his stomach as well
and then later. you know
agh a while ago I was going to post about how the fact that Griffith’s hand on Casca’s shoulder bookends this chapter, except the second time he is very clearly repressing his feelings to seem like a strong perfect person and reassure Casca, sheds a whole lot of light on how he was probably feeling the first time he put his hand on Casca’s shoulder in chapter 17 here.
and then I forgot and this reminded me and now I’m sad again.
also i think guts’s sword fixation has a lot to do with how much he humanizes the sword and dehumanizes himself. iirc miura makes a point about guts using the sword to protect others instead of fighting for its own sake, at which the sword is no longer a meaningful subject in itself but a means of protecting bonds he’s forged. the unhealthy part of it is, again, the way he objectifies himself through it (and one of berserk’s themes is human objectification)
it’s sort of a coping mechanism
backfiring on him. the sword is just an object; the unhealthy aspect of
it is that guts has been using it as a means of self-actualization for
his entire life. part of his development in the golden age is to derive
meaning and significance from his relationships with others, but he
never really addressed his issues so once the eclipse happens and
casca’s mental state is revealed he almost instantly reverts back to
that coping mechansim
Hmmm I think I pretty much agree with you. By objectifies himself through his sword do you mean like, when the Berserk armour takes over, when he becomes monstrous and consumed by rage even without it, etc? Because I definitely think there’s a strong theme of Guts becoming dehumanized through his sword, and the way you put it in contrast to Guts humanizing his sword (like considering it an extension of himself I assume?) is something I’ve never really thought of but it makes a lot of sense to me.
(lol I guess dehumanization is actually kind of a loaded term in Berserk where everything from monsters to gods are expressions of aspects of humanity, but ikwym and it’s definitely a theme regardless of semantics.)
like ok this visual reference doesn’t really bring anything new to the table since we already know that Casca’s heart is full of dark negativity but yk
i still like it
also i’m still on my casca using the behelit bullshit ftr
I JUST SAW UR OTHER POST LOL FUCK!!!! IF THE FALLING AND SHATTERING ISN’T A DIRECT REFERENCE ILL SHIT… holy fuck. i never really got the “gave away too much of the plot too early” reasoning behind the removal of the chapter but like THAT COMPARISON really puts it in new light and makes me genuinely hopeful
I’m so torn between being like lol this would never happen miura is not that good to me and being like, but what if tho
I mean ok I don’t think a fix Griffith quest is likely, that would be a little too impossibly good a thing to happen for Berserk lol. And Casca was traumatized while Griffith was like, literally and willingly transformed by magic and evil so it probably doesn’t work exactly the same way. (Someone should write this fic though omg, anything’s technically possible since it’s all magic anyway.) But exploring Griffith’s mental landscape? mayhaps? and again, tiny Griffith? theoretical potential to fix Griffith giving Guts some devastating Hope™ and ruining his stop obsessing over Griffith resolution?
i’ve always assumed the ‘gave away too much of the plot too early’ thing referred to griffith being essentially the avatar of humanity, but honestly knowing that in advance only improves everything.
griffith being in uh literal pieces in that panel? really makes u think
@miura give us tiny griffith
ALSO
like ok this visual reference doesn’t really bring anything new to the table since we already know that Casca’s heart is full of dark negativity but yk
i still like it
cut for controversial theorizing and also lost chapter spoilers
I want this to be purposeful for two reasons:
1. what if there’s a tiny griffith living somewhere in neogriffith
2. i fucking hate the visual metaphor of casca being a ~broken doll~ and the only thing that could even come close to salvaging it for me is if it’s a deliberate griffith parallel because at least then it seems less grossly gendered
omg I didn’t even think of this possible connection, nice!
I remember a little while ago I discussed scars and wounds etc with @therainykitty as a somewhat sexual thing with comparing the Casca scene to a few things including “the wound Griffith left, because you want to keep feeling that pain he caused you,” here, but this is another potential application of that, and tbh it makes a lot of sense to me.
i have some … thoughts, so let’s go through this in order.
this is nitpicky, but i can’t believe they translated
寝るの？ as “do you sleep?” i mean sure, i guess, but the hound is clearly asking him if he’s gonna sleep. i guess they wanted to make it sound more dramatic.
also nitpicky, but even though there’s no desiderative in なぜあいつを追わないの？ i personally would have translated it as “why won’t you chase (after) him?” i feel like in the original there is no suggestion to chase griffith that can be felt in “why don’t you chase him?” instead, it’s like chasing griffith is a given and the hound is (childishly) confused about why guts isn’t doing it. that’s how it feels to me, anyway. i could be wrong, i’m still learning + i have no experience as a translator, but yeah.
i’d just like to point out that in やっと会えたんじゃない, the verb 会う is in potential form. so it’s leaning towards “you finally got to (managed to, got a chance to etc.) meet with him”
もう少しじゃない was translated as “Just a little farther,” which i understand, but you should know that the original says “isn’t it just a little farther,” as in, isn’t he just outside your reach, isn’t he right in front of our eyes, let’s go to him, why won’t you? again, i’m not a native or even fluent speaker of japanese, but i’m almost certain this is a really childish way of speaking, which really says it all i think.
we’re getting into “who cares” territory but この女がいるから？ literally means something like “because this woman is here?” and … idk why i feel like that’s relevant, i think it maaaybe emphasises the feeling of her getting in the way? but yeah, do with that what you will.
放っておこうよ → “Leave her be” is of course accurate, but i wish there was a better translation for the nuances of this expression as used in this context, because the one they went with sounds a bit more like, you know, “give her some peace,” whereas i feel like what the hound was saying is closer to basically telling guts to abandon her. you know what i mean? “just leave her,” something like that.
it’s a little hard to read some more complicated kanji with the quality of these images, but if the original really does say 残骸, then “shell” is a clever translation, but basically, the meaning of that word is like … something that’s been destroyed to the point of uselessness. google says even a corpse that was thrown away. dictionaries say “debris” “wreckage” “ruins.”
i think 傷口 is specifically like the “opening” of a wound. google says, “Metaphorically, past mistakes and weak points that you do not want people to touch.” which, duh.
グリフィスの残した痛み
→ this is, again, the pain that he left. “caused” is very much a one moment thing, like griffith hurt guts in the past and now guts wants to go back to that feeling. but the original implies that the pain is constant, and what’s more, guts doesn’t want to stop feeling it.
we’ve reached the meat of this post. the actual thing bthump asked me about. 「この女はグリフィスを渇望（こがれ）続けるための生贄さ」 so you know how in manga authors like to use kanji for one thing but then add furigana for another, in order to create layered meanings? that’s what’s happening here, and boy is it layered. 渇望 (read as katsubou) is “craving,” “longing,” “thirsting.” google says “to desire from the heart, the way someone who is thirsty wishes for water. to long for*.” but furigana says こがれ (from the verb 焦がれる). the dictionary definition of this word is literally “to yearn for” “to be in love with.” google says “to earnestly hope for. to yearn for and fret.” bear in mind this “yearn for” is 恋い慕う = to love + to pine for. basically, these are some pretty charged words, which is why i pulled up all these various definitions, since i can’t feel all the connotations of various japanese expressions. (*this ”to long for” is, again, just the dictionary translation of that synonymous expression (待ちこがれる), but i looked for a japanese definition and it says “to keep waiting and waiting and feel restless”)
excuse me? “you’ll get closer and closer to Griffith” doesn’t even cover もっと深く深くグリフィスと繋がる 深い = “deep”, but also “close,” sometimes “strong/intense.” 繋がる = you know this word. “to be tied/linked together.” i think anime translators often use the word “bond.” it’s not just about getting closer to griffith, it’s about them getting tied closer and closer together, being more and more deeply connected to each other. there’s no happy solution in terms of translating, but this is definitely one of those lines that need translation notes.
lol I don’t have anything to add but this is some Good Shit.
again per @bthump‘s request, we compare griffith’s “If I can’t have him I don’t care” with also griffith’s “That you, rather to have been with princess Charlotte, would have had her yourself?”
If in the instant our swords meet, the pressure from his alters the arc of mine even just a little … … I might really kill him!!
Even then … If I can’t have him …!!
I don’t care!!
here, the expression used is 手に入る, literally meaning “to enter someone’s hand,” with the actual meaning being “to obtain” “to get hold of” “to get one’s hands on.” i would have to check if it’s generally used for objects or people or both, but yeah.
another thing possibly of note is that there’s also 手に入れる (”to put into one’s own hand”) with pretty much the same meaning when translated into english–but clearly there are differences. for example, if something “entered your hand,” you didn’t do anything to obtain it, it just found its way there. likewise, if you “put something into your hand,” you did something to obtain it, you went out and got it for yourself.
bear with me though. there’s an issue here, and that is that when it comes to transitive/intransitive pairs of verbs (such as 入れる /
入る), in certain situations japanese speakers have a tendency to use the intransitive verb where speakers of other languages would more naturally use the transitive verb. for example, instead of asking “have you found your keys?” (mitsukeru, to find – transitive) they’ll ask, “have the keys been found?” (mitsukaru, to be found – intransitive). and i’m still not sure what the rules/patterns are here, really.
this means that i don’t know for sure if griffith using 手に入る instead of 手に入れる has any real semantic significance. but even if it really doesn’t, i still think it’s fitting, and interesting, since, as griffith understands it, guts is the one who won’t readily enter griffith’s grasp anymore (in fact, he wants to leave it: オレの手の中から出ていきたいのか！？)
and while we’re on the topic of grasps, if you’ll allow me to go on yet another tangent here,
いつからだろう 手に入れたはずのあいつが 逆にこんなにも強くオレを掌握してしまったのは
How long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand instead gain such a strong hold on me?
(i’ll talk more about this scene some other time)
now for the dungeon scene with the king.
それならば・・・・・・・・・・・・ それならば、いっそ・・・・・・
いっそ・・・ 私が・・・
抱きたいのですか？ シャルロット様を・・・・・・ いや・・・
あなたが・・・ 抱・い・て・ほ・し・い・ のでは？
I’d rather … … rather that …
… That you … rather …
to have been with princess Charlotte … would have hadher yourself? No …
Don’t you … … want her to have you?
here, the verb used is 抱く, which can mean “to hold/embrace” literally or in the sense of “making love.” according to my dictionary, it can also mean “to have” (e.g. ambition) but i don’t … know what else you can “have” like that (people??).
my guess would be that griffith is basically saying “you wanted to hold her … no … you wanted to be held by her,” but since the king was talking about griffith having taken her virginity before griffith said this, it makes sense to translate it as “to have her,” as in, “to have her first.”
sadly though that means there’s a parallel in english that isn’t there in the original japanese, but i still think your overall reading of this scene is accurate.
Thank you so much! This is only mildly disappointing lol, the similar wording in the english translation was one of those things I referred to in some earlier post where I’d written the entire section beforehand and only noticed something seemingly obvious w/ the wording afterwards, so I tacked it on. I think the parallel stands up fine without it.
Nice nice nice wrt the connection to “how long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand,” tho. i’m looking forward to your further thoughts on that someday!
I had a relatively busy day at the office but I couldn’t resist starting on this, and then I kept getting distracted in between work and taking short breaks, reading part after part and internally yelling. SO GOOD.
I’ll probably go back to reread it and leave comments if I can even /think/ coherently jdkdmdm.
Excellent work!
aaaaaaa thank you so much!! I’m v glad it entertained you during work ❤ I’d absolutely love to read any comments you think of/feel like writing, but no pressure or anything 🙂
Uhhhhhg why couldn’t
they have just communicated with each other?? This meta has me really
intrigued and hopeful (though not overly optimistic) again that the
endgame is SOME sort of resolution of this intense dynamic they have. It
was a pleasure and a painful thing to read. Great job
Right??? why couldn’t they have just communicated with each other could be the tagline of Berserk lol. And I’m also hopeful that this is all going to come back at some point, maybe soon. At the very least I really, really want both Guts and Griffith to finally realize what actually happened between them lol, and that their feelings had been mutual love the whole time. Like, that’s a revelation that has to happen, right? Thank you so much for the feedback, I’m v glad you enjoyed reading it!
friendly reminder to myself: licking wounds
guts and casca were never about healing each other or bettering each other, it’s in the damn chapter title
yk whose relationship is about mutual betterment and support? casca and farnese t b q h
also wrt relationships being generally healthier than other coping mechanisms in berserk, i think i might actually be selling miura short on that bc i think his take is more nuanced. look at serpico and farnese – they had an extremely intense relationship that wasn’t… bad necessarily, but it is absolutely a good thing that they’re both forging other relationships and not just relying on each other for comfort and protection from the world. so it’s not like all relationships are automatically great, and saying one of the major themes of berserk is that relationships are better than swords is still true, but maybe overly simplified
i still think the entire point of griffith and guts’ story though is that they could’ve been perfect for each other but they fucked it up
i appreciate that miura drew not one, not two, but three dudes sleeping with their heads in their friends’ lap on this page
ALSO! Speaking of swords as ways of shielding your heart and refusing to deal with your issues, and relationships as ways of opening your heart and helping one another heal, and related sword imagery, how about the way Guts and Griffith both lose their swords during their first duel and finish it with bare hands?
Especially compared to the second duel where only their swords collide, and Guts’ stops before it even touches Griffith’s shoulder.
fuck and i wrote that bit about shoulder touching as a sign of Griffith’s emotional weakness bc he’s in love with Guts and didn’t connect it to where Guts’ sword pointedly didn’t land (or… possibly did gently land actually, but either way it’s important that it’s his sword, not his hand).
but there, now i’m connecting it.
ALSO! Speaking of swords as ways of shielding your heart and refusing to deal with your issues, and relationships as ways of opening your heart and helping one another heal, and related sword imagery, how about the way Guts and Griffith both lose their swords during their first duel and finish it with bare hands?
Especially compared to the second duel where only their swords collide, and Guts’ stops before it even touches Griffith’s shoulder.
i was thinking in line of “swinging his sword is an u healthy coping mechanism and way to avoid confronting his true feelings and casca being called one here incites comparison to that, casca weaponizing herself aside”
yeah i think ultimately that’s what it is for the most part. even now, his journey to take casca to elfhelm and get her healed has had ominious forboding overtones and imo guts like… metaphorically chaining the beast up in his subconscious is reminiscent of avoiding his issues thru this side quest, rather than confronting and dealing with them.
like his rpg group is a positive influence and this is undoubtedly better than his black swordsman rampage, but like… he’s still closed off from them, still doesn’t talk about his past or only v dispassionately when questioned by warlocks lol, etc. saving casca (and sleeping with her way back when) isn’t so much helping him deal with his problems as it’s helping him avoid them.
just like telling casca about gambino and donovan was a positive thing and a step in the right direction, but not an instant fix.
and yea swords have always represented male power to a phallic degree even pre freudian analysis framework (broken swords symbolize impotence on the flip side) but the visualzzzz in berserk especially in the golden age is good. like griffs sword breaking and then guts shattering later at the eclipse. or the uh unfortunate realization that guts symbolically “castrating griffith” is both metaphorical and probably literal foreshadowing to what happens to griff a few chapters later.
yeah v v true, and ngl along the same lines i have a few (less than positive) Thoughts on Guts holding a broken sword while Femto rapes Casca.
@griff-guts said: oh mannnnn there’s a lot to say about
the broken sword thing lmao i might write a post about it….. same with
guts and griff symbols being a hawk (or white bird in general lol) and a
dog because there’s a LOT of medieval shit to do with that too…..
anyway for the sword thing a sword being broken basically amounts to an
“oh shit” moment where the person loses all ability to control their
situation, and acts of desperation ensue. it has a lot to do with fate
and human control being
ultimately helpless up against fate.
ohhh man I’d love to read a whole post on this sometime! this all seems extremely in line with Berserk and lol I kind of regret never taking any literature classes more advanced than 101 in uni.
oh i like this take i think its something ive and most readers have been aware of but no ones said it yet. brings another perspective to the “boy and an oversized sword” thing at the end of the gutsca chapter ouch.
ooh good point.
lol for a sec i was like, ‘uh oh wait does that mean miura was actually trying to say that a relationship with casca could replace guts’ emotional reliance on his sword?’ then i remembered the context of their relationship, the fact that casca becoming a sword for other people is a negative way of dealing with her own shit, the way guts emphatically does not start prioritizing casca over swinging his sword as we soon see when he shoos her away to fight wyald by himself, etc, and yeah.
the sword comparison overall feels more in line with saying a relationship casca is a form of emotional support, like swinging his sword, rather than better or more fulfilling than swinging his sword.
also the motif of broken swords/swords being worn blunt is a really interesting one that i don’t see many people talking about, especially if you look at the theme in relation to arthurian/medieval ideas about swords and what they represent… griffiths sword breaking when guts left is especially interesting to me tbh.
oh man you’re right that all the broken swords get more interesting when paired w/ the theme of like, swinging a sword to cope lol. ngl I kind of get stuck on phallic symbols when it comes to broken swords but there’s more to it than that.
+ do you feel up to elaborating on arthurian ideas about what swords represent? because I know nothing about this stuff and I’m v intrigued.
i want to like, write a longish meta about how guts’ “dream” ie his attachment to fighting/his sword is a coping mechanism to deal with his traumatic childhood and then every traumatic event since then but like
is that really something that requires an argument behind it
you're the only one 