@bthump Oh I agree, I think Guts’ dreams on Griffith after the eclipse would be a mix of longing,sorrow,mourning,regret, happiness,joy and dreaming of the good times as well as things he would have liked happen, anything romantic or otherwise.But I like to think Guts never gets a damn moment of rest without his dreams always going back to Griffith one way or the other.
lol poor guts, fighting ghosts all night, having confusing + painful dreams about griffith all morning and walking all afternoon, for months.
this is a pretty glaring omission. we saw zodd and the king’s griffith dreams but not guts’, our protagonist with a “profound connection” to him???
i’m not saying guts’ canonical dreams about griffith are too gay and revealing for berserk’s general readership but that’s exactly what i’m saying
Hey considering how often Griffith was naked in the Golden age, I’m sure one of Guts’ dreams had a naked Griffith in it.
lmao right?
and lbr the odds that guts has not dreamed about griffith naked after spending half the golden age thinking about this moment
and then goes straight to intently pondering this moment for a while
are zero
@scenesthatmakeugowow said:
Well, as you noted in a previous post and as Puck would say “it’s more complex” which is why is so damn interesting.
so I just assumed without double checking that you were commenting on
that last ask, not my jokey post about Guts’ Griffith dreams lol, and I just noticed that i missed the context.
to me gay subtext and relationships and feelings are synonymous with complex and interesting and I don’t think there’s anything reductive about saying Guts’ feelings for Griffith (and vice versa) are gay af and probably quite sexual.
i can think of quite a few dream scenarios that are both gay and extremely complex and interesting and wholly reflective of the complicated emotions Guts feels tbqh. and, not to assume that you were implying this but it’s always worth saying, if anything, I’d say stripping away or ignoring the romantic and sexual subtext reduces the complexity of their relationship.
Well, as you noted in a previous post and as Puck would say “it’s more complex” which is why is so damn interesting.
totally! I mean the hill of swords reunion shortly after is such a powerful and painful mix of rage and longing and regret and loneliness etc for guts. moments like the one anon pointed out are gr8 preludes to that.
like this is one of my favourite exchanges:
like fucking, imagine being guts, obsessed with getting griffith’s attention since he was like 15, still obsessed after everything, and hearing that now. and right before griffith declares he feels nothing and “deserts” him.
his feelings are so complex and interesting to me.
ALSO speaking of “the desired”
this is a pretty glaring omission. we saw zodd and the king’s griffith dreams but not guts’, our protagonist with a “profound connection” to him???
i’m not saying guts’ canonical dreams about griffith are too gay and revealing for berserk’s general readership but that’s exactly what i’m saying
and like a chapter and a half of build up to this moment of griffith’s incarnation is about everyone in the world crying out with desire for griffith/a new world, the voices all resonating and affecting reality to climactically bring this about, and everyone being able to sense it. so like he can sense griffith, “the desired,” hatching and this is his reaction.
to quote puck
You clash head-on with your own destiny. Compared to my cooled demeanor, that is a life similar to being scorched by hellfire itself.
i want to say something about serpico and how he and guts make a good compare/contrast as basically opposite reactions to an abusive childhood, but i don’t really know what to say so i’m just going to throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks
serpico’s coping mechanism is emotional repression and calm acceptance, where he just takes absolutely everything thrown at him by his mother’s expectations and childhood bullies at first (learning quickly that fighting back led to worse) and then farnese, while guts fights back and struggles, killing donovan, defending himself against gambino’s attack, etc. i mean one was a mercenary and one was a servant, one was taught by his father figure to fight and the other was taught by his mother to bear everything, so yk it makes sense.
both killed a parent: serpico killed his mother bc he was pressured to by circumstances and did so when farnese told him to (imo farnese making it an order and holding the torch with him is what made him capable of doing it), basically just numbly doing what he’s directed to do, while guts killed his father in reactive self defense, and both are pretty messed up about it.
serpico lay down to die bc it was easier and was found by farnese who nursed him back to health; guts lay down to die bc it was easier and then got back up and fought wolves.
it feels easy to compare gambino and serpico’s mother in that both guts and serpico were their caregivers for a while. and i want to compare serpico’s mother telling him he’s noble vs gambino telling guts he’s cursed but i’m not sure where to go with that. both statements kinda fucked them up tho.
they both have tendencies to fight in a self-destructive way now that i think of it: guts throws himself into the fray and just tries to kill before he gets killed, serpico otoh lets himself be wounded in order to fight to a draw + avoid making trouble.
guts and serpico both found themselves nursed back to health and then kept by haughty insecure blond ppl, and both relationships were extremely intense and exclusive. only yk guts and griff were in love and farnese and serpico are gay bffs/siblings, and neither farnese nor serpico have epically fucked their relationship up yet.
in conclusion: i have no conclusion, idk. turns out everyone responds differently to abuse and berserk is largely about that? surprise surprise guts is active and serpico is passive? guts and serpico might have more stuff to talk about if they ever got 3am drunk together than you’d think?
lol sorry anon this got kind of long and meandering, hopefully it answers your questions though.
I guess I think that Guts isn’t really fully self-aware about the fact that he’s still trying to be Griffith’s equal. It’s not like a real goal for him the way it was when he left the Hawks, it’s just that he can’t help but crave Griffith’s attention. He needs Griffith to see and acknowledge him as someone who matters to him.
It’s why Femto’s dismissal back in the Black Swordsman arc was what spurred him to finally stand and walk up to him despite like a million broken bones, it’s why he refused to heed much sounder advice like stay and take care of the Hawks that are left, and insisted on his attention-getting revenge campaign instead, and it’s why NeoGriffith ditching him makes him do this:
Because becoming Griffith’s “equal” was only a means to an end in the first place – what Guts really wanted was to be Griffith’s friend, or, put in Guts’ own terms:
He wants to be Griffith’s number one priority. At the most genuine point of their relationship, when Griffith admitted he had no rational reason for risking his life for Guts, Guts like basically found personal fulfillment. That scene on the rooftop where Guts contemplates it and decides that this means his home (at least for now bc Guts sucks at committment) is with the Hawks, is probably the happiest moment of Guts’ life.
And when Griffith became an evil demon this core desire of Guts’ didn’t go away, I guess, Guts just started expressing it through attention-getting monster killing and wanting to personally murder Femto, to force him to look at him and value him, if not as a loved one then as an enemy.
Also, to address that last bit, I think it’s very telling that Guts doesn’t hate Griffith. It wasn’t sacrificing all his friends that made Guts’ love turn to rage and hate, it was Femto spitefully raping Casca, which is something Guts knows his Griffith wouldn’t’ve done. While Femto was born out of the darkness of Griffith, something Guts probably at least has some understanding of, he’s not the same as Griffith. He tells that to Rickert too on the Hill of Swords “That’s not the Griffith you know anymore.”
And I think a huge part of the reason he doesn’t hate or blame Griffith for making the sacrifice is because he blames himself for breaking Griffith’s heart and ruining his life.
Like Guts’ narrative from coming back after a year to this moment revolves around his slow realization that leaving was a huge fucking mistake lol. And he finally figured it out right before the Eclipse, so when he thinks of Griffith afterwards he’s associated with guilt and sadness and regret and love, rather than bitterness or hate or resentment.
Like I guess Guts’ feelings are kind of contradictory but in a way that makes sense to me. The situation is complicated af and while Guts is consumed by hate, that doesn’t conveniently erase his love. Separating Femto from Griffith is probably part of how he reconciles that, which is also why when NeoGriffith shows up looking like the old Griffith it was particularly confusing and painful for Guts to handle, and why he “forgot” he wanted to kill him lol.
And both Guts’ hate and his love lead to wanting Femto/Griffith’s attention, it just changes how he goes about trying to accomplish that.
my feelings on his art is basically that it progressively got worse, so the mf arc is like. still pretty ok near the beginning and then slowly gets worse. griffith is mostly still very pretty, but i feel like he still cannot compare to ga griffith. farnese is cute, no one looks like a wooden doll. wbu?
hmm yeah i kind of agree. I have mixed feelings on it because I think it’s like, genuinely pretty impressive and totally gorgeous at times, but it feels a little too polished almost, and not as visceral/raw as it could during the golden age
but then again i’m more emotionally attached to the golden age so it’s not like i’m objective, and despite that a few of my favourite panels are from the millenium falcon arc, so idk really
yeah everything from the golden age is my absolute fave ever. miura went through quite a few art styles even just in that one arc and they were all flawless and charming in their own way. now … i don’t wanna talk about it
q: how do you feel about the art in the millenium falcon arc?
Q-2. Griffith has a record I feel screwing things up what if all this
time ruling a kingdom wasn’t what he truely wanted now he’s just not
going to mess himself and the neo band of the hawk but millions of
people. Another sacrifice he’s petty asf.
I like to think NeoGriffith is bored (if he’s even capable of feeling boredom) though not because he particularly enjoys and misses battles. imo as a human Griffith would’ve seen them as part of his path to his dream but I doubt he took particular enjoyment in fighting so much as seeing it as a necessary evil, considering things he did specifically to avoid fighting more than absolutely necessary.
Though now that you mention it, the fact that he reminisced about how great his fight with Guts was is interesting in this context. What was great about that (other than Guts in general and the way it wasn’t a fight to the death) is probs the fact that they were nearly equally matched. So yk if he’s bored I’d say it’s more because he’s essentially alone and without equals.
tbh tho I feel like we have very different views of Griffith. he didn’t make the first sacrifice out of pettiness and I’m not sure what you mean by sacrificing millions of people? That seems very unlikely to me. Also I don’t think Zodd is likely to turn on him, he has an established thing about being loyal to the strongest person around, and even before the Eclipse he was acting like a fate enforcer by taking out Wyald when he was threatening Griffith. Like idk maybe he’d betray ngriff, he has his own reasons for doing stuff, but something would have to change for that to happen I think.
me just rambling about this thing i’m writing lol
so i was like ‘oh shit the fact that griffith overheard casca mentioning promrose hall before telling guts to leave ruins everything, oh no, i’m going to have to go real fucking deep now to make this work, like i guess now griffith hallucinating his dream afterwards is like a role reversal because he knows guts overheard his dream speech and only left to be his friend and equal and now he feels powerless without a dream compared to guts with a dream so he’s symbolically still pursuing his dream so he can keep guts as his friend and equal, but oh shit now you can argue it’s all about power and that griffith’s despair stems from his powerlessness and it’ll be a cold day in hell before i argue that, and besides contextually calling it a role reversal is flimsy as fuck, shit how do i make this work shit shit shit this just straight up doesn’t fit oh no am i wrong about everything do i need to delete this whole thing and give up???’
then i re-read the scene in question and we only see griffith overhearing everything AFTER casca mentions promrose hall and the focus of the moment from griffith’s pov is entirely about guts leaving again and not the dream-related whys behind it
(like yeah for guts’ narrative those whys are extremely important which is why they’re there, but for griffith’s narrative they don’t matter a damn bit. granted griffith does overhear “if you’re griffith’s friend and equal you have to go” but what’s repeated when he starts hallucinating because of it is “even if it’s alone. you have to go,” which directly tells us which part of that statement matters to griffith in that moment)
and this should be a lesson to me not to write while i’m at work, overtired and unable to actually look shit up when i need to
i love that guts just assumed skull knight’s mention of “the eclipse” was a metaphor lmao
You should have known. This is the man I am. You, of all people.
“you, of all people” is a really powerful translation imo but the literal translation would be “just you” which i think ………….. is noteworthy
yesss like this line absolutely refers back to the fact that griffith let guts (and only guts) in to see the darker sides of his rise to the throne, and specifically tombstone of flame, and guts telling him his cruelty is a part of the path to his dream, and what griffith believed guts’ reason for leaving was etc, and it’s nice when learning more about the literal dialogue only solidifies my interpretation
anyway everything from dreams to ascending to godhood are smokescreens
love is the true equalizer between them
and that’s why despite the fact that the odds of guts becoming femto/neogriffith’s literal equal as in ascending to another plane of existence and being as powerful as him are approximately -10000, i still have hope that the whole equals thing is gonna come full circle in a satisfying way
this being in reference to whether griffith sent an assassin after rickert is extra interesting.
rickert: griffith wouldn’t have me assassinated… but griffith isn’t even human anymore… and even back when he was he did some shady shit… and he sacrificed the rest of the band… but still…
just the fact that that the narrative is reminding us thru rickert’s musing that griffith did indeed care about the band a whole lot when the subject is neogriffith and his feelings towards rickert now is good shit
like clearly rickert here is erring on the side of ‘yeah he probably did send raksas after me’ so there’s no reason for him to maintain that little bit of doubt at the end unless it’s relevant. and it’s not relevant to rickert’s decision making or actions soooo
idk this is just a long way of saying ambiguity is only worthwhile if the truth is (at least somewhat) unexpected.
i always forget that rickert was a unit commander in the hawks
why the portrait of neogriff at the end of chapter 250, after all the discussion of loneliness, is one of my faves:
miura’s visual depiction of isolation, loneliness, and alienation is consistent af and if this doesn’t lead somewhere i’ll eat my hat
i feel like the double standard stems partially from the fact that guts “feels bad” about what he did to casca
but griffith would fucking feel bad too if he had the ability to feel anything lol. he is literally the king of feeling bad about fucked up shit he’s done, please
griffith:
berserk fans: i am shocked, shocked and absolutely appalled that neogriffith said he has no regrets
griffith:
those same berserk fans: griffith has clearly been an evil unfeeling sociopathic monster from the beginning
ok so i went looking for those pages and when the beast of darkness bites casca’s neck while telling him to r*pe her to get closer to griffith
it says something which the official translation team translated as “you desire this”
but the old fan translation says:
it’d be interesting to see if the original japanese wording here is the same as the “what you wish for may not be what she wishes for” or w/e line
ooooh ngl it would be a p interesting twist if ‘your wishes may not be her wishes’ is ominious not necessarily because casca’s wishes are going to fuck shit up but because skull knight is referring to the fact that guts still wishes to be griffith’s friend/equal, and it’s guts who’s going to cut and run or go beast of darkness or w/e
like i’d still vastly prefer for casca to do something epic but i wouldn’t say no to guts leaving casca behind again and going griffith hunting. like honestly anything that separates guts and casca and gives them different or even clashing goals/motivations/narratives/etc is all right in my book
ia i think something’s going to go south once casca gets her mind back, miura’s been throwing “your wishes may not be her wishes” at us over and over for a reason after all.
tbh before the most recent chapter i would’ve guessed casca being forced to confront her trauma = despair = behelit
now i’m high key worried that it’s going to be something more along the lines of manufactured drama featuring casca cockblocking guts’ revenge quest because neogriffith grew out of the stupid fetus
i mean it could still be the first thing, or something else entirely, i’m not super pessimistic. on the boat guts did refer to casca falling to pieces because she couldn’t cope with what happened, so what will happen if she does get her sanity back, which does give me hope that miura isn’t just going to sweep her trauma under the rug so he can focus on weird fetus drama. we’ll see i guess.
tw: images of sexual assault (forced kisses)
like sorry but from my point of view the instant a character sexually assaults his former love interest in a direct, visual and textually described parallel to a demon who raped her and traumatized her into insanity, i think it’s a little ridiculous and fucked up to leap to his defense because a character literally described as made out of evil is worse
like yeah no shit a demonic entity created out of the darkness of humanity is worse, but when a good old fashioned human protagonist is directly compared to him in the context of sexually assaulting the same woman, it’s ok to just accept that this story is morally grey and dark and fucked up and gratuitously rapey instead of whiteknighting him
Their idea of a morally gray character is a rapist who plans to dominate humanity by making life inhospitable everywhere except under his domain- I’m sorry, his “paradise”, Falconia.
Not only that, but everything he’s done Post-Eclipse was purely to continue his own selfish desires, and not helping Casca like Guts has.
You know, the guy who’s spent almost the last two thirds of the Manga trying to heal Casca’s mind, entrusted his life and more importantly HER life to new friends, and is currently waiting on the sides for Casca to return because he has faith they well succeed.
Remember, raping an innocent woman and driving her insane = morally gray, but trying to help that innocent woman does NOT equal morally gray, it’s horrible that Guts has trauma and couldn’t escape it and in a fit of madness attacked Casca because it boiled to the surface and he’s spent almost every chapter since brooding over what happened.
Again: Rape = a morally gray act, especially when it’s done with the sole intent to emotionally damage your friend who’s in a relationship with the victim.
The gray morality part was NOT in the context of the rape, but the general character writing and especially Guts, because you say “griffguts shippers paint him black”. We don’t. We paint him grey, because he is written that way and unlike people like yourself, Miura has NEVER seemed to be apologetic about him to me, just like he has never been apologetic about Griffith. But he has also never painted any of them black. He stated himself he does NOT imply good vs. bad logic to Berserk – author’s intention is to tell a story people like you simply dismiss for the sake of their favourites never being criticised. You dismiss the humanity of his characters and their tendencies to do evil things, while NOT being completely evil themselves. I mean if you can’t grasp even this much, read something else, honestly. And if you can’t accept Guts NOT being a good person, but rather gray on the good vs. bad scale, then you are the last person on Earth to defend him, you only make those who like him seem like a mindless mob, who can’t handle actual plot facts being pointed out, lmao.
I have YET to see a Griffith “defender” rant in the main tags, because one single person wrote a meta simply stating Casca hates him for raping her.
And when you say “we never talk about Griffith, who did this and that” we do lol, to every post criticising Guts, there are 5000 posts shitting on Griffith, so what the fucking hell are you talking about? Can’t stand some balance in this fandom? Are people supposed to ONLY ever talked about the Eclipse, because your sensitive ass might hurt if you saw anything even vaguely negative about Guts?
Nope.
i h8 getting involved in this shit but here it is in the author’s own words op:
actually speaking of griffith/rosine parallels one thing i’m real worried about is that falconia is going to end up being another land of the elves style thing compared to guts’ jill.
not in the sense that children are murdering each other or even that there’s a dark underbelly at all, just in that falconia will be portrayed as a childish immature fantastical escape from the horrors of the world compared to the more ‘mature’ concept of just dealing with your life being terrible instead of actively trying to escape or change things, a la rosine’s escape from abuse to her fake fantasy vs jill being portrayed as more admirable for going back home and just… taking the abuse?
i hated the end of the lost children arc, is what i’m saying, but it seems like very apt set up for falconia, which worries me. i don’t want guts and griffith to be jill and rosine 2.0
well that’s a lie i absolutely do, but yk, just with the gay vibes, not with those particular themes.
i keep trying to read this chapter while keeping at the forefront of my mind that this is casca’s dreamscape. so like. assuming mr miura wants to write with that perspective, things should play out like how casca’s internalized it, right?
which means what it comes down to is griffith/femto and guts, both having hurt her so deeply, are still entirely caught up in each other before they give a shit about her
like you’d think otherwise birdy femto would like easily be able to destroy the casket. but like. once dogguts was freed and the chain binding him to it was broken, it was all bird vs hound. sure u can take this as guts occupying him while farny and schierke get down to business, but lets be real here.
casca’s ultimately being saved (hopefully) by FARNESE (and schierke) and that feels Good
but also the emphasis in this chapter on dog guts being in berserker mode now makes me nervous, because if this IS all written from casca’s internalization, that puts casca, farnese, and schierke at risk. from like, GUTS. thats making me nervous.
after reading the translation there was more of an emphasis on guts just fucking off to fight femto while being a potential danger to the coffin in berserk mode than i was expecting, while schierke and farnese do the actual important shit
tbh i’m glad the risk guts poses is being acknowledged bc imo it’s infinitely better than casca’s dreamscape just portraying him as the noble protector, which i was worried about
these two pages are the most strongly visually conveyed theory -> rebuttal i’ve ever seen
like i’m sorry i can worry all i want over ominous fetus-y portents and casca’s narrative, and i am, but i just can’t believe the same guy who wrote this scene is going to skimp on the emotional resolution to guts and griffith’s relationship
he went to see guts to test if anything would shake his heart! and then failed that test! while watching a fight extremely reminiscent of his very first sight of guts! this is just so good
i mean ngl i’m gonna be maintaining this hope until the epilogue of
this story no matter what shit miura pulls because i’m just that
invested in these stupid characters
i’m gonna be like those sherlock fans convinced the season 4 finale was a secret hidden message and there’s a real ending just waiting to be released
tbh that’s a good point, given the choice between the fetus being who she wants to see vs guts or griffith, yeah i’ll take the fetus too. actually not gonna lie I completely forgot about “i want to see that person” or w/e the line was.
i was also kinda thinking that it’s going to mean casca isn’t going to want revenge and will cockblock guts’ revenge quest because ngriff absorbed the fetus. “your wishes may not be her wishes,” if guts’ wish is revenge. i’d find that immensely disappointing though because i want casca to go out and get herself some revenge really bad
plus as a conflict it’s like… bad. guts is already conflicted about revenge, adding another reason for him not to go out and get it is completely unnecessary
but hey who knows, nothing’s set in stone and i could still be pleasantly surprised.
these two pages are the most strongly visually conveyed theory -> rebuttal i’ve ever seen
like i’m sorry i can worry all i want over ominous fetus-y portents and casca’s narrative, and i am, but i just can’t believe the same guy who wrote this scene is going to skimp on the emotional resolution to guts and griffith’s relationship
he went to see guts to test if anything would shake his heart! and then failed that test! while watching a fight extremely reminiscent of his very first sight of guts! this is just so good
you're the only one 