Tag: b

seisans
replied to your post “seisans
replied to your post “phydia63
replied to your post “never…”

yeah though he’s clearly way more emotional than neo griff? neo griff is very poker face while femto is over there handing out glares and saying petty hurtful shit as often as possible

you’re right. tbh it could make sense with the fact that femto is just plain made out of negative emotion and so lets his asshole flag fly, while neogriffith being corporeal probably doubled down on his emotional repression

but the fact that neogriffith figured he had to test his capacity for emotion just seems weird with that explanation since yeah he obviously had the capacity for it as femto. i guess ‘griffith lives in denial and this is true of every incarnation’ could kinda work as an explanation for that inconsistency tho.

seisans
replied to your post “phydia63
replied to your post “never forget”
…”

to be fair femto vs neo griff is still unclear

true

but you’d think femto would be even less capable of emotion than neogriff since he got the whole frozen blood crystalization of your last tear shed thing, while neogriff had to test himself now that he’s in a flesh and blood body, and then failed the test

but yeah it is still like ambiguous and up in the air so i guess we can’t do more than throw educated guesses at the wall lol

@phydia63 said:
People conveniently forget about that moment too. It’s propaganda I say xD 

yeah it gets ignored way too often when it’s like the high point of the post-sacrifice eclipse stuff.

I mean, no pressure to answer this but what would be your predicted possible Worst Case ending(/griffguts emotional conclusion) and your Best Case one that you could actually see happening in canon either way?

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

WORST CASE ENDING

all plot, no substance. any heart bthumpy emotions NeoGriff is feeling are actually the fetus’ feelings. it’s his weakness™ and if Guts and Casca defeat NeoGriff they’ll be able to magically separate it out and fuse it with its soul, the Moonlight Boy, achieving a Happily Ever After™ as a Picturesque Family™

Or possibly if they defeat NeoGriffith they free their child’s soul to go to swirly soul heaven, and the ending is bittersweet™

Miura retcons Femto letting Guts go, and all the hints that NeoGriffith feels things that are entirely unrelated to whatever tf the fetus might care about are red herrings/misdirection.

In a flash forward we find out that Rickert and Erika are happily married in a terrible Guts/Casca parallel.

ummm what else… NeoGriff is defeated through a power-up/Elfland magic after a volume long physical battle.

Guts bones Casca and thus conquers his obsession with Griffith and is finally able to move on™ but NeoGriff attacks Elfhelm, forcing the final battle.

possibly the other godhand are there too, what with fusing the physical and spiritual worlds and miura hinting that void’s gonna be important yadda yadda yadda. it turns into Good Spirit Elemental Guardians against Evil Godhand in the most boring fight ever while Guts and NeoGriff fight.

Oooh Casca experiences some strong negative emotions upon regaining her sanity, but the Moonlight Boy appears to her and her maternal feelings™ soothe her.

Guts kills NGriff, rides off into the sunset with casca.

oh also there’s undertones of falconia being a naive fantasy while guts’ ‘just struggle your way through everything instead of finding/creating a safe happy paradise’ philosophy is touted as more mature and better

ok that’s enough dwelling on the negative

BEST CASE ENDING

the fetus is affecting Griffith only insomuch as being fused with its physical flesh makes his heart start beating because he’s corporeal and thus subject to those worldy emotions he’d thought he’d left behind.

The shot of it at the end of this chapter shows that Casca is kind of obsessed with it, and therefore when she wakes up with all her sanity and memories she demonstrates that her wishes were not Guts’ wishes and falls into despair and sacrifices that little fucker. I mean, half the apostle sacrifices we’ve seen have been parent/child, it’s possible right?

this destroys Moonlight Boy, aka the essence of the fetus, and whatever hope the audience had for a happily ever after family with Guts Casca and child. it’s meant to be seen as a tragic low point. I cackle gleefully.

I wouldn’t actually enjoy this but i think it would make sense: along with that low point Miura hints that NeoGriff’s feelings are gone thanks to Casca’s sacrifice – oh no, his one weakness! now he’s unstoppable! etc – but psych later on it turns out the feelings were his own all along.

casca, now an apostle, leaves to get revenge on neogriff. guts goes after her to either help or stop her, he’s not sure which. also if casca steals guts’ armour, i will die of happiness, but that + being an apostle might be overkill.

we get casca’s point of view, and it’s quite similar to black swordsman guts and full of parallels. guts has now achieved some character development which is why he’s torn between helping casca get revenge vs trying to just save her because she’s no match for neogriff (vs deep down wanting to save neogriff and/or stick his own sword in him because his feelings are still all fucked up. undertones of guts and casca’s old griffith-related romantic rivalry but dark)

thematically, Elfhelm is soured – the whole magical therapy for Casca thing turned out to be a terrible idea, the people there are unwilling to help clean up their mess because they’re isolationist dicks, AND maybe there are hints that the four spirit guardians schierke calls on for protection are other forms of the godhand?

however it happens, ultimately the thematic takeaway is that rather than there being a good vs evil thing going on in the spirit world, good and evil are two sides of the same coin and what you perceive really depends on what you’re calling on the spirit world for, and most things are both at once. yk, aren’t gods and devils the same thing?

i’m skipping over plot stuff and more theme stuff because i’m willing to accept a lot of possibilities and i really don’t care much.

the important thing is that guts and griffith have a final emotional confrontation after the dust of the big action climax settles, and it comes in the form of a 3rd duel.

also at some point in the lead-up to it, they figure their shit out. possibly this involves schierke’s or sonia’s or both’s magical mind exploration magic. we see griffith’s unemotional facade starting to crack. we see guts’ ambivalence towards griffith – does he want to kill him or plead with him or fuck him or reject him entirely?

and guts realizes that griffith’s heart is beating again for him, and everything he wanted – griffith’s respect admiration and love is still there, residing in his worst enemy. and griffith realizes that guts admired and loved him and never once saw human him as the monster he saw himself and allowed himself to become.

tragically idk how you could depict both without looking really silly, but either guts’ residual guilt for his part in the lead up to the eclipse gets the better of him and he lets a still-repressed griffith kill him, the way he always lets himself get stabbed when he feels bad about something, OR neogriffith’s irrational love gets the better of him and he lets guts kill him – guts ends up sticking him in the throat in a mirror of how he killed gambino.

either way there’s a lot of crying and cradling a corpse.

tbh i’m leaning towards griffith killing guts for that devilman ending, and this way casca gets to play the role of angry god by swooping in and killing him. if that’s the case griffith lets her because his irrational emotions have finally truly burst free and taken hold over him after he kills guts. his crying is a call-back to his ‘last tear shed.’

(maybe casca becomes zodd 2.0, living for battle and becoming a sword just for herself. kind of a darkly fucked-up “happy” ending for her lol.)

BEST CASE ENDING WITH NO FUCKS GIVEN FOR PLAUSIBILITY

all of the above but after finally understanding each other they make out instead of dueling and then casca kills neogriff and an adult theresia kills guts, and they both ride off into the sunset with their respective girlfriends, farnese and jill.

A) I’m with you pretty strongly on the Do Not Want for the Happy Family parent/child relationships are the Be All End All thing, and I really hope that Miura doesn’t fall into that one (he’s pretty good with not idolising family relationships at least??? Augh).

and B)

Oooh Casca experiences some strong negative emotions upon regaining her sanity, but the Moonlight Boy appears to her and her maternal feelings™ soothe her.

I am screaming this is the darkest timeline oh my GOD do not WANT and yet THIS I can see potentially happening? That is SO grim. Like the idea of Casca’s story being even further reduced to a set of cliches about female characters kills me.

however it happens, ultimately the thematic takeaway is that rather than there being a good vs evil thing going on in the spirit world, good and evil are two sides of the same coin and what you perceive really depends on what you’re calling on the spirit world for, and most things are both at once. yk, aren’t gods and devils the same thing?

This is one of the things I love about Berserk and I hope it plays a part in the ending in some context. If it doesn’t somewhat play out in a way that emphasises this then Miura’s played himself.

neogriffith’s irrational love gets the better of him and he lets guts kill him – guts ends up sticking him in the throat in a mirror of how he killed gambino.

!!! You have killed me. This would actually make me cry if it happened.

(I mean the make-out ending is good too).

Ahhh I fully expect one or both of them to die– I’d honestly be shocked if either of them lived tbh.

It’s true every single family in Berserk, from blood relations to adopted, has been awful. The only exception I can think of is Godo and Erika. I kinda like that about Berserk, I’m not big on stories about happy families. So I do have hope that Miura might tease the concept of a Guts and Casca and baby happy family before fucking it all up and ending that prospect in weird tragedy.

Honestly though Casca being obsessed with the fetus – possibly even mentally regressed and insane not because of the rape or not just because of it but also because the fetus was corrupted and miscarried, now that I consider how Miura portrayed Shizu – just makes me lose hope that Casca’s going to get to be anything ever other than a projection screen for Miura’s fucked up thoughts on women. Like are we really going from her narrative being all about rape and her relationships to men to her narrative being all about motherhood? It’s so depressing to think about.

And lol yeah, tbh I kind of want them both to die? Idk I like a good death scene and these have the potential to be epic and extremely satisfying. Give or take the whole afterlife thing, I tend to think that actually seeing Guts and/or Griffith’s souls being carted off to whichever whirlpools they end up in would ruin it, but yk, Miura could leave that in implication.

whatever happens, we always have that second of hesitation that allowed guts and co to escape i guess. i cant guess what else having the fetus there could mean will happen :(

yeah v true. and considering our most recent foray into neogriffith’s storyline involved him teasingly having potential feelings related to rickert/his old life/his identity, none of which the fetus should gaf about, i still feel fairly safe assuming that we’re not going to venture down the darkest timeline where neogriffith actually is totally emotionless after all and it’s just that a magical fetus sometimes takes the wheel.

on the other hand seeing the fetus there does not exactly fill me with hope for casca’s storyline. god knows i fucking hate precious fictional children, i hate maternal/paternal feelings, so personally i’m probably going to be highly annoyed unless miura does something spectacularly unexpected like the theory i just posted of having casca sacrifice it lol.

(and i am also filled with fear that certain horrifying theories will prove to be true, ie casca leaves and joins neogriffith because of the fetus connection or something. i’d like to believe miura won’t go there, but is there anything he won’t do to ruin casca’s story? puts ‘your wishes may not be her wishes’ in a very chilling light.)

I mean, no pressure to answer this but what would be your predicted possible Worst Case ending(/griffguts emotional conclusion) and your Best Case one that you could actually see happening in canon either way?

WORST CASE ENDING

all plot, no substance. any heart bthumpy emotions NeoGriff is feeling are actually the fetus’ feelings. it’s his weakness™ and if Guts and Casca defeat NeoGriff they’ll be able to magically separate it out and fuse it with its soul, the Moonlight Boy, achieving a Happily Ever After™ as a Picturesque Family™

Or possibly if they defeat NeoGriffith they free their child’s soul to go to swirly soul heaven, and the ending is bittersweet™

Miura retcons Femto letting Guts go, and all the hints that NeoGriffith feels things that are entirely unrelated to whatever tf the fetus might care about are red herrings/misdirection.

In a flash forward we find out that Rickert and Erika are happily married in a terrible Guts/Casca parallel.

ummm what else… NeoGriff is defeated through a power-up/Elfland magic after a volume long physical battle.

Guts bones Casca and thus conquers his obsession with Griffith and is finally able to move on™ but NeoGriff attacks Elfhelm, forcing the final battle.

possibly the other godhand are there too, what with fusing the physical and spiritual worlds and miura hinting that void’s gonna be important yadda yadda yadda. it turns into Good Spirit Elemental Guardians against Evil Godhand in the most boring fight ever while Guts and NeoGriff fight.

Oooh Casca experiences some strong negative emotions upon regaining her sanity, but the Moonlight Boy appears to her and her maternal feelings™ soothe her.

Guts kills NGriff, rides off into the sunset with casca.

oh also there’s undertones of falconia being a naive fantasy while guts’ ‘just struggle your way through everything instead of finding/creating a safe happy paradise’ philosophy is touted as more mature and better

ok that’s enough dwelling on the negative

BEST CASE ENDING

the fetus is affecting Griffith only insomuch as being fused with its physical flesh makes his heart start beating because he’s corporeal and thus subject to those worldy emotions he’d thought he’d left behind.

The shot of it at the end of this chapter shows that Casca is kind of obsessed with it, and therefore when she wakes up with all her sanity and memories she demonstrates that her wishes were not Guts’ wishes and falls into despair and sacrifices that little fucker. I mean, half the apostle sacrifices we’ve seen have been parent/child, it’s possible right?

this destroys Moonlight Boy, aka the essence of the fetus, and whatever hope the audience had for a happily ever after family with Guts Casca and child. it’s meant to be seen as a tragic low point. I cackle gleefully.

I wouldn’t actually enjoy this but i think it would make sense: along with that low point Miura hints that NeoGriff’s feelings are gone thanks to Casca’s sacrifice – oh no, his one weakness! now he’s unstoppable! etc – but psych later on it turns out the feelings were his own all along.

casca, now an apostle, leaves to get revenge on neogriff. guts goes after her to either help or stop her, he’s not sure which. also if casca steals guts’ armour, i will die of happiness, but that + being an apostle might be overkill.

we get casca’s point of view, and it’s quite similar to black swordsman guts and full of parallels. guts has now achieved some character development which is why he’s torn between helping casca get revenge vs trying to just save her because she’s no match for neogriff (vs deep down wanting to save neogriff and/or stick his own sword in him because his feelings are still all fucked up. undertones of guts and casca’s old griffith-related romantic rivalry but dark)

thematically, Elfhelm is soured – the whole magical therapy for Casca thing turned out to be a terrible idea, the people there are unwilling to help clean up their mess because they’re isolationist dicks, AND maybe there are hints that the four spirit guardians schierke calls on for protection are other forms of the godhand?

however it happens, ultimately the thematic takeaway is that rather than there being a good vs evil thing going on in the spirit world, good and evil are two sides of the same coin and what you perceive really depends on what you’re calling on the spirit world for, and most things are both at once. yk, aren’t gods and devils the same thing?

i’m skipping over plot stuff and more theme stuff because i’m willing to accept a lot of possibilities and i really don’t care much.

the important thing is that guts and griffith have a final emotional confrontation after the dust of the big action climax settles, and it comes in the form of a 3rd duel.

also at some point in the lead-up to it, they figure their shit out. possibly this involves schierke’s or sonia’s or both’s magical mind exploration magic. we see griffith’s unemotional facade starting to crack. we see guts’ ambivalence towards griffith – does he want to kill him or plead with him or fuck him or reject him entirely?

and guts realizes that griffith’s heart is beating again for him, and everything he wanted – griffith’s respect admiration and love is still there, residing in his worst enemy. and griffith realizes that guts admired and loved him and never once saw human him as the monster he saw himself and allowed himself to become.

tragically idk how you could depict both without looking really silly, but either guts’ residual guilt for his part in the lead up to the eclipse gets the better of him and he lets a still-repressed griffith kill him, the way he always lets himself get stabbed when he feels bad about something, OR neogriffith’s irrational love gets the better of him and he lets guts kill him – guts ends up sticking him in the throat in a mirror of how he killed gambino.

either way there’s a lot of crying and cradling a corpse.

tbh i’m leaning towards griffith killing guts for that devilman ending, and this way casca gets to play the role of angry god by swooping in and killing him. if that’s the case griffith lets her because his irrational emotions have finally truly burst free and taken hold over him after he kills guts. his crying is a call-back to his ‘last tear shed.’

(maybe casca becomes zodd 2.0, living for battle and becoming a sword just for herself. kind of a darkly fucked-up “happy” ending for her lol.)

BEST CASE ENDING WITH NO FUCKS GIVEN FOR PLAUSIBILITY

all of the above but after finally understanding each other they make out instead of dueling and then casca kills neogriff and an adult theresia kills guts, and they both ride off into the sunset with their respective girlfriends, farnese and jill.

@phydia63​ if you want spoilers

kissing-monsters
replied to your post “reddit fan: that was amazing, i gasped when i got to that last page…”

oh jesus what now

the return of my most hated fictional entity of all time: the fucking fetus

i haven’t seen an english translation yet but fetus(/moonlight boy) is like representitve to me of all the ways berserk could end up being absolutely terrible and disappointing so i’m 😡 about seeing it in casca’s mind right after imaginary guts fights imaginary femto

regardless of what the context might end up being i doubt it’s gonna make me happy. at the very least it seems like a strong indication that the fetus is influencing NeoGriff and Casca sensed it which, while not a final nail in the coffin yet, feels like a hammer poised to hit one

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

kissing-monsters:

please look at guts facial expressions as he fights then thinks of griffith waugh

lmao can i just say i love that in the black swordsman arc miura was obviously thinking: well guts is pissed off about being sacrificed and stuck fighting ghosts and causing ppl’s deaths just by hanging out with them. that’s a reasonable reason to want revenge

and by the end of the golden age he was like ‘lol that’s not even close to enough to make guts hate griffith. all his friends dying horribly? nope. griffith offering him up for sacrifice and making his life an unmitigated hell? nope. better go above and beyond in the worst way possible for this one.

and guts still doesn’t hate griffith lmao. he hates femto and wants revenge but every time he thinks about human griffith he still just feels regret and sadness lol.

#lol i hope it’s ok to use your posts as springboards sometimes

I literally love it when you do that!

also the way guts acts through the entire eclipse is insane– he can’t hate griffith, at first he won’t let himself comprehend what griffith has done and when he DOES he STILL looks like this towards him. it’s just sadness and regret. there’s no hate there. 

also speaking of the worst way possible: boy did I not quite realise just HOW long the rape portion of the eclipse went for. wow. 

oh good!

and lol god ikr it’s like you could find that scene in the dictionary next to the word gratuitous

kissing-monsters:

please look at guts facial expressions as he fights then thinks of griffith waugh

lmao can i just say i love that in the black swordsman arc miura was obviously thinking: well guts is pissed off about being sacrificed and stuck fighting ghosts and causing ppl’s deaths just by hanging out with them. that’s a reasonable reason to want revenge

and by the end of the golden age he was like ‘lol that’s not even close to enough to make guts hate griffith. all his friends dying horribly? nope. griffith offering him up for sacrifice and making his life an unmitigated hell? nope. better go above and beyond in the worst way possible for this one.

and guts still doesn’t hate griffith lmao. he hates femto and wants revenge but every time he thinks about human griffith he still just feels regret and sadness lol.

kissing-monsters:

there’s a lot in this scene and tbh it’s one of the things in the story I have trouble with– why does griffith do this? is he grasping like he was with charlotte when guts left? that’s my best interpretation, but there is A Lot here, including some pretty grim foreshadowing.

i can think of like so many possible explanations for this depending on what u want to be emphasized, it’s frustrating lol

eg

griffith seeing sex as transactional + emphasizing his vulnerability/fear of being tossed aside = trying to get casca to stay with him by offering her something he knows she wanted at one time

emphasizing griffith’s desperation and irrationality = trying to return to the status quo by returning casca’s attention to him

griffith overhearing casca saying to guts ‘i just wanted someone to be near me’ + casca reflecting on how griffith used to be able to comfort her at the start of this scene + casca clumsy and shaking + casca comforting griffith at the end = griffith trying to physically comfort casca, emphasizing his patheticness when he’s the one who needs to be comforted and held instead

or maybe it’s a combination of everything, idk. i think the eclipse foreshadowing works best as a contrast – here he’s helpless and weak and maybe offering himself in desperation or unable to even comfort or entice casca or whatever, w/e it is it’s humiliating, whereas when he becomes femto he establishes his power and control thru rape.

it’s taken me forever to get through the golden age arc despite really enjoying it, and now i’m looking at the over 300 chapters that lie ahead and it feels very daunting. i don’t want to lose interest in the series, but i feel like i don’t have the attention span for that much content, especially with many staunch fans saying some of it really drags. do you recommend any chapters/arcs after the golden age in particular?

bthump:

HMMM it’s hard for me to recommend skipping around since I personally am a stickler for chronologically going through everything lol, and no matter what you’ll probably feel like you’re missing some stuff since there are always flashbacks, plot points leading to more plot points, character development, etc. But if you can live with that here’s what I’d recommend.

The Lost Children arc comes next and I’d recommend it. It’s fairly well paced, starts getting into Guts’ darkness interestingly, and there’s some good potential for griffguts parallels with Jill and Rosine. But I think you can skip it without missing too much plot relevant stuff, and it’s fairly disturbing with csa triggers too, if that affects whether you’d like to check it out or not.

If you skip it I’d recommend reading chapter 118 (The Beast of Darkness). It comes right after Guts fights Rosine and right before Guts gets caught by Farnese and her knights who’ve been tracking him due to prophecy shit blah blah blah.

The rest of the Conviction arc can get draggy and tonally it’s kind of weird and campy lol. I think you could probably get away with skipping it, all you really need to know is that the world sucks, nobles are dicks using religious persecution to terrify the masses, and Farnese starts out as an apparent sadist using religion as an excuse to burn people alive while Serpico is her doormat. Guts escapes Farnese fairly quickly and shakes her faith a little. You get their backstories and more depth for them later so I don’t think it’s super important to see their introduction. Oh also Guts meets Isidro who helps him rescue Casca.

In this arc I’d still recommend reading chapters 126 (Revelations Part 1) – 130 (A Feeble Flame) because that gets into NeoGriff foreshadowing and thematic stuff and Guts’ internal conflicts when he returns to Godo’s cave to discover Casca missing.

You can probably skip a bunch of chapters here. You might want to check out 142 (Spirit Road, Part 2) because while it’s mostly foreshadowing for plot stuff you’ll be skipping, there’s some good shit w/ Guts’ feelings on Femto.

I’d pick the story back up after the big fight and Casca rescue etc, and read 174 (Daybreak) onwards, since this has Guts and NeoGriffith’s turbulent reunion.

I’d actually probably recommend reading the entire Millenium Falcon/Hawk of the Millenium Empire arc, because while Guts’ side can get draggy with like a troll sidequest and long fights etc, Griffith’s is more interesting imo, and a lot of plot stuff happens in both. Plus Guts has a lot of character development and internal conflict, there are lots of new characters introduced and you get Farnese and Serpico’s full stories, and despite some overlong fight scenes on Guts’ side there are quite a few engaging hooks, and the art is pretty gorgeous.

If you DO get bored during the troll fight stuff, which is overlong and annoying, you can probably skip it while only missing some stuff about how magic works, which gets repeated later on I think. I’d recommend skipping it starting on chapter 207 (Magic Sword) and picking it back up on chapter 219 (Vicinity of the Netherworld).

So assuming you read the rest of the Millenium arc, the next things you’d want to skip are the fucking boat fights in the Fantasia arc. Read NeoGriffith’s storyline, skip Guts’, is my recommendation. Well specifically my rec is to read up to the end of 307 (Falconia), then skip to chapter 329 (Flowers of Distant Days), which is a little Guts flashback interlude, and read the rest from there. You literally don’t miss anything you haven’t already seen during the Millenium arc, except Farnese doing some helpful magic.

I think that’s about it. lmk if you have any questions or want a better summary of the Conviction arc lol. And if you really don’t want to read the whole 130 chapters of Millenium Empire I’d be happy to write a summary of that too while pointing out the really relevant chapters for you to read, but let me know in advance because that would probably take a while lol.

#also imo it drags out a little less when you’re reading it all at once   #still drags out but the fandom is mostly frustrated bc the manga is constantly on hiatus   #and when we do get a new chapter it’s guts hacking up some monster AGAIN   #i’m tired   #i recommend reading those official summaries in the manga when you skip stuff   #so you can follow the story better 

good additional advice for anon, just in case you don’t follow cgg or don’t check every reblog

you had made a post about how griffith deflects the question ‘why are you saving me’ and he said once ‘don’t speak you’ll bite your tongue’ and i was reading the eclipse recently and judeau said the same thing to casca lol. i don’t like his character much but still we saw what his real feelings were for saving her and deflecting the question. it’s a good mirror imo

dude rescues the person he’s low-key in love with by scooping them up onto a horse and then tells them to stfu

idk whether it’s a purposeful parallel (tbf those 2 panels w/ judeau and casca are pretty far apart) but it’s still cute and the circumstances are pretty similar after all.

craigslost
replied to your post “craigslost
replied to your post “craigslost
replied to your…”

EXACTLY… also like i feel like. its Too sugary. and the most infantilized cascas ever textually been i think maybe? CASCAS LIKE… OLDER THAN FARNESE BY A GOOD HANDFUL OF YEARS… of course serpico knows very little about her and her past but still. Like. �� mister miura this better be a game and it best be coming to a close. im getting sick of playing

like tbh there is a ton of talk about Farnese growing thru taking care of Casca and Casca’s trust in Farnese and how Casca is the person Farnese misses most when she leaves temporarily and how no one else can take care of Casca like she can and now Farnese being the best candidate to help her get her mind back, yadda yadda yadda that summing up their relationship in an overly sweet way as child/caretaker-y siblings-esque right before Casca gets her mind back and that dynamic inevitably ends seems like a good way to segue into something more complex and interesting

like i don’t think miura’s gonna go full gay but he’s damn good at writing complex friendships full of gay subtext i’m js

craigslost
replied to your post “craigslost
replied to your photoset “farnesca is real and guts and…”

it was in the more recent “guts rod and serp have boys night whilr the girls are doing business” chapter.
he talks about how much stronger fsrnese is now… becausr she has something to Protect…….. her silly little sister haha (:

ohhh lol i just went to double check and yeah, ugh.

oh well like that’s gonna stop me from hoping for vibes and subtext when casca wakes up 😛

it’s taken me forever to get through the golden age arc despite really enjoying it, and now i’m looking at the over 300 chapters that lie ahead and it feels very daunting. i don’t want to lose interest in the series, but i feel like i don’t have the attention span for that much content, especially with many staunch fans saying some of it really drags. do you recommend any chapters/arcs after the golden age in particular?

HMMM it’s hard for me to recommend skipping around since I personally am a stickler for chronologically going through everything lol, and no matter what you’ll probably feel like you’re missing some stuff since there are always flashbacks, plot points leading to more plot points, character development, etc. But if you can live with that here’s what I’d recommend.

The Lost Children arc comes next and I’d recommend it. It’s fairly well paced, starts getting into Guts’ darkness interestingly, and there’s some good potential for griffguts parallels with Jill and Rosine. But I think you can skip it without missing too much plot relevant stuff, and it’s fairly disturbing with csa triggers too, if that affects whether you’d like to check it out or not.

If you skip it I’d recommend reading chapter 118 (The Beast of Darkness). It comes right after Guts fights Rosine and right before Guts gets caught by Farnese and her knights who’ve been tracking him due to prophecy shit blah blah blah.

The rest of the Conviction arc can get draggy and tonally it’s kind of weird and campy lol. I think you could probably get away with skipping it, all you really need to know is that the world sucks, nobles are dicks using religious persecution to terrify the masses, and Farnese starts out as an apparent sadist using religion as an excuse to burn people alive while Serpico is her doormat. Guts escapes Farnese fairly quickly and shakes her faith a little. You get their backstories and more depth for them later so I don’t think it’s super important to see their introduction. Oh also Guts meets Isidro who helps him rescue Casca.

In this arc I’d still recommend reading chapters 126 (Revelations Part 1) – 130 (A Feeble Flame) because that gets into NeoGriff foreshadowing and thematic stuff and Guts’ internal conflicts when he returns to Godo’s cave to discover Casca missing.

You can probably skip a bunch of chapters here. You might want to check out 142 (Spirit Road, Part 2) because while it’s mostly foreshadowing for plot stuff you’ll be skipping, there’s some good shit w/ Guts’ feelings on Femto.

I’d pick the story back up after the big fight and Casca rescue etc, and read 174 (Daybreak) onwards, since this has Guts and NeoGriffith’s turbulent reunion.

I’d actually probably recommend reading the entire Millenium Falcon/Hawk of the Millenium Empire arc, because while Guts’ side can get draggy with like a troll sidequest and long fights etc, Griffith’s is more interesting imo, and a lot of plot stuff happens in both. Plus Guts has a lot of character development and internal conflict, there are lots of new characters introduced and you get Farnese and Serpico’s full stories, and despite some overlong fight scenes on Guts’ side there are quite a few engaging hooks, and the art is pretty gorgeous.

If you DO get bored during the troll fight stuff, which is overlong and annoying, you can probably skip it while only missing some stuff about how magic works, which gets repeated later on I think. I’d recommend skipping it starting on chapter 207 (Magic Sword) and picking it back up on chapter 219 (Vicinity of the Netherworld).

So assuming you read the rest of the Millenium arc, the next things you’d want to skip are the fucking boat fights in the Fantasia arc. Read NeoGriffith’s storyline, skip Guts’, is my recommendation. Well specifically my rec is to read up to the end of 307 (Falconia), then skip to chapter 329 (Flowers of Distant Days), which is a little Guts flashback interlude, and read the rest from there. You literally don’t miss anything you haven’t already seen during the Millenium arc, except Farnese doing some helpful magic.

I think that’s about it. lmk if you have any questions or want a better summary of the Conviction arc lol. And if you really don’t want to read the whole 130 chapters of Millenium Empire I’d be happy to write a summary of that too while pointing out the really relevant chapters for you to read, but let me know in advance because that would probably take a while lol.

Well my review of Farnese and Casca is almost ready in 1 week and I’ll finish it, but you know, since I had to read the manga back and I was just also seeing Utena as I mentioned, I realize that Griffith is so gay, Although in the series Utena is very subtle with its lesbian subtext, in Berserk it is totally aggressive, you know there is much more to compare from that series but from Griffith with Guts than there is with Casca and Farnese that made me laugh that I said ” fuck this is so gay”

Awesome, looking forward to checking it out 🙂

And lol yeah, I remember when I re-read Berserk after 8 years of forgetting it existed I was so surprised over and over again by how blatant the subtext was and how consistently like straightforward dialogue beats you over the head with their feelings for each other, and how thoroughly the whole plot revolves around Guts and Griffith’s relationship lol.

You know something I’ve always found very curious, in Guts and Casca’s relationship I never saw Casca being sexually attracted to Guts, I saw an emotional attachment, feeling “needed” by someone and sometimes being protected … but that sexual attraction I did not see her, what do you think of that? if there is a panel where you see that I would like to see it, since even Farnese I have seen physically attracted to Guts on some occasions but Casca does not

I don’t think I could find a panel where she seems attracted to Guts, partially because I agree with you and partially because my memory of the het interactions in Berserk is not the greatest lol.

But yeah I think part of the reason I find her relationship with Guts so unconvincing, and part of why I find it really easy to hc her as gay, is because her relationships to men are based around wanting to be needed, rather than her own desire.

With Griffith she wants to be something indispensible to his dream, a “sword” he can’t do without. Later on we get Judeau saying, “If she loves him… shouldn’t she want to be held by him?” And Casca saying, “Griffith’s not a god… and I am a woman.” And it’s like, if you’re going to describe a woman’s attraction to a man in terms of falling into the natural hetero order of things, it makes it easier to see it as internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality lol. Casca like, hmmm my feelings for Griffith are extremely strong, he’s a man I’m a woman, this must be attraction? Without realizing there are other possibilities.

I’m sure Miura didn’t mean it that way, but that’s why it’s a headcanon.

And anyway it’s the same with Guts – it’s all about Casca’s desire to be needed, to be able to comfort someone and feel necessary to them. And I think partly it’s an obligation to her, pay back for being rescued, by Griffith, by Guts in the 100 man fight. She notices Guts’ scars from that fight before they have sex and says she wishes for a wound from Guts. And it’s what she thinks about while they have sex: “not just being given to… maybe I can give something as well.”

I think that’s purposeful on Miura’s part. That’s a consistent part of Casca’s characterization that seems to stem from her childhood trauma and being rescued by Griffith, and it’s what informs her two major relationships. She only started warming up to Guts after he rescued her. Miura wants us to see it as attraction, but he didn’t really show us any actual desire from Casca, it’s something the characters, and the audience, take as read just based on the fact that she’s a woman and they’re men lol, and since I don’t agree that woman + man = automatic sexual attraction it’s pretty easy to take another route imo.

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

seisans
replied to your post “I read a random comment where sb said that Miura was asked once about…”

see i told yall … it’s always like this, they use gay subtext to ~deepen the story~ lol

i missed this yesterday, but yeah lol. like idt it even matters what miura’s intentions are, if the gay subtext is only there to make the story feel deeper and more intense then it’s still there to be picked up on and enjoyed.

I would add to this added to the story to deepen it, as opposed to what? that’s what all story elements of any kind are for. so what he essentially said it “yea, it gay as fuck.” tbh.

not to be disappointing lol but miura didn’t actually acknowledge the gay subtext at any point afaik, this is just speculation on why it’s there