mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
Tag: b
fun fact guts has always had a dream and it’s not “fight tough dudes at exhibitions” or “fight monsters” or “avenge the hawks” or “be the best at the sword”
griffith’s dream:
guts’ dream:
guts’ dream:
guts’ dream:
guts’ dream:
which is why this is so utterly cutting:
and why this just left guts totally dejected and made him give up that dream:
and why if guts finds out that griffith’s heart is bthumping for him that’s going to be either a serious game-changer, or a serious test of guts’ resolve in moving on from his dream.
Same, this is a real problem for me because I like trying to predict things, but I just can’t with Berserk lol.
I feel like he could swing an ending where somehow the Idea of Evil/Fate in general is like… defeated by humanity, who, thanks to whatever, would now rather struggle in an uncaring universe than blame all their problems on God. But I feel like that’s kind of unlikely because, idk, it just feels a little too big of a metaphysical change and too positive of a take on humanity for Berserk.
Honestly for me if Griffith does something irrational because he (not the damn fetus that’s a red herring as far as I’m concerned) still feels those pesky life-ruining emotions for Guts, and in turn Guts demonstrates his mixed-feelings towards Griffith in a powerful way, I’ll consider myself satisfied. Basically I’m thinking a 3rd duel (assuming Guts’ brand of sacrifice, which removes him a little from fate according to Skull Knight, means he can potentially hurt Griffith) where emotions are at their peak.
I’ve also vaguely considered an ending where Guts lets Griffith stab him, because he has a bad habit of doing that when he’s feeling conflicted about killing someone, or when he’s confronted with something that makes him feel guilty (in this case, the memories of human Griffith and their first two duels). In this scenario Griffith would be shocked because he expected Guts to block or w/e a la that time Casca stabbed him, and maybe have a breakdown beside his corpse.
I have a whole long speculative post here too but I can’t commit myself to one perfect ending lol, there’s so many possibilities. At the end of the day I just want that heavy emotional GutsGriff drama.
Another perfect ending i have thought of is Griffith dying by someone else’s hand. And Guts arriving there too late, wanting to actually fight Griffith himself, but once he gets there, Griffith is already gone – probably even turned back to his broken state before the eclipse. And all that’s left of him is his body. Guts sees it and cannot handle it – he didn’t even have the chance to put all that happened behind himself and seeing Griffith so destroyed makes him completely break down, eventually let the Beast take over completely to not feel the pain any longer. He eventually gets killed by Casca or Serpico. Happy ending!
Nice! And with this inspiration, I just want to throw out: what if Casca does it? Say she goes apostle or gets a power up and is pissed off and leaves to avenge herself. And you have Guts going after her, not sure whether he wants to help Casca, or stop her to save her soul from the ravages of revenge, or stop her because he wants to kill Griffith himself, or stop her because he still doesn’t fully want Griffith to die. But he’s too late.
Same, this is a real problem for me because I like trying to predict things, but I just can’t with Berserk lol.
I feel like he could swing an ending where somehow the Idea of Evil/Fate in general is like… defeated by humanity, who, thanks to whatever, would now rather struggle in an uncaring universe than blame all their problems on God. But I feel like that’s kind of unlikely because, idk, it just feels a little too big of a metaphysical change and too positive of a take on humanity for Berserk.
Honestly for me if Griffith does something irrational because he (not the damn fetus that’s a red herring as far as I’m concerned) still feels those pesky life-ruining emotions for Guts, and in turn Guts demonstrates his mixed-feelings towards Griffith in a powerful way, I’ll consider myself satisfied. Basically I’m thinking a 3rd duel (assuming Guts’ brand of sacrifice, which removes him a little from fate according to Skull Knight, means he can potentially hurt Griffith) where emotions are at their peak.
I’ve also vaguely considered an ending where Guts lets Griffith stab him, because he has a bad habit of doing that when he’s feeling conflicted about killing someone, or when he’s confronted with something that makes him feel guilty (in this case, the memories of human Griffith and their first two duels). In this scenario Griffith would be shocked because he expected Guts to block or w/e a la that time Casca stabbed him, and maybe have a breakdown beside his corpse.
I have a whole long speculative post here too but I can’t commit myself to one perfect ending lol, there’s so many possibilities. At the end of the day I just want that heavy emotional GutsGriff drama.
in the golden age always looked too big to me. I think there was this colour illustration once where they were all sitting around a campfire. and griffiths profile was in the foreground and he looked much much skinnier than the impression he gave whenever we usually see him in armour.
I wonder if it was a deliberate thing. To make himself look bigger?
i remember seeing a post somewhere about Griffith’s flashback armour with musculature details and how it thematically fits with Casca’s statement that Griffith is ultimately a weak human who has to make himself strong for his dream. Anyway i totally agree with you, the other armour fits that idea too, if less overtly.
wait wait wait I was going to say that I like that Guts can’t finish his sentence bc he wants to call Griffith his friend but yk the whole source of the drama is that he feels like he can’t…
but isn’t that the scene with Zodd? Where there’s absolutely no reason for him not to finish that sentence with “friend”? So the fact that he trailed off and failed to define their relationship is actually super gay, js.
God I know right? Like they’ve been separated for 20 real world years, aside from one brief meeting and that one meeting-each-other’s-eyes-from-across-a-distance moment and Guts has spent a large chunk of that time trying to forget him, but GriffGuts still feels hugely relevant.
I guess because the readers know they have to meet again (I mean could you imagine the story fizzling out with Guts deciding to retire in Elfhelm while Griffith rules the world lmao? No GriffGuts reunion, no epic climax) and we keep getting these occasional hints from the story that they’re nowhere near finished with each other emotionally, even as their current narratives have nothing to do with each other.
Guts has his temporarily chained inner beast still haunting him and threatening to take over and hunt Griffith down, and every few volumes the subject of Griffith comes back up to make him feel things and periodically remind the reader that it’s not over (the RPG group gossiping about the old Band of the Hawk, Laban asking
after him, meeting apostles and knowing Griff is nearby, witches in
Elfhelm asking after him, etc)
And on Griffith’s end we have that beating heart, and imo every volume of Griffith narrative we get where that’s conspicuously not brought up again and yet implied by the pointed ambiguity of Griffith’s emotional state (gorgeous portrait at the end of Sonia’s chapter on loneliness, serenity contrasting with transformed Ganeshka’s panicked loneliness, letting Rickert slap him, the question of who sent Raksas after him, etc), is just more tension added that will make the moment we do get to learn about Griffith’s emotions extra satisfying.
tbh structurally the way Miura showed Griffith’s pov as his heart was unfreezing, and then for every subsequent part of Griffith’s narrative gave us absolutely no information on his internal emotional state, and human Griffith’s downfall (and the thing that kept being brought up over and over and over and over again during the Golden Age) was his irrationality caused by his feelings for Guts – it just makes me intrinsically feel that we’re heading for something big. It’s a tease for a reason.
oh my god falconia is cypress creek
griffith is hank scorpio
it all makes sense
yay the return of luca
tbh one thing i adore about falconia is how well miura has built up the people there as extremely likeable. Like, most of the apostles we see these days, mule is a cute everyman, I know sonia’s polarizing but she’s sympathetic, charlotte and anna, luca who we already know and like, owen and laban, the leader of the defected kushians, etc.
there’s some tension with locus and rasksas and rickert now, and ofc zodd and grunbeld have both fought guts, and griffith is mysterious but still the antagonist
but at the same time silat and the kushian magician, whatever his name was, were both antagonists too and they’ve joined rickert so yk
that’s pretty much canon imo. he only went to one noble function and he avoided everyone while he was there. plus he ignored propriety all the time, like trying to walk in on Griffith while noblemen were visiting him in the hospital, only kneeling for the king when Griffith told him to, and angrily “hey pal”ing the king’s brother when he slapped Griffith lol.
oh also one of my favourite moments at Farnese’s family’s ball:
cue farnese saying, “wait a minute please, all my family are here in this place.”
Yeah tbh I really like his speech patterns/voice in the official translation. idk if he’s ever said y’all specifically in the official version (definitely ain’t tho), but the translator did a gr8 job with character voices.
so for a hot second i was vaguely wondering whether neogriff has magical rebranding powers, able to raise a city from underground and add hawk statues everywhere
but i guess it’s more like the return of a legendary city now with hawk motif because enough people around here subconsciously want a hawk-y city for their hawk-y saviour. another result of griffith cracking open the world and bringing everyone’s fantasies into reality.
i kinda love that.
I want a time skip bc I really want to see what Falconia looks like compared to the rest of the world after a few decades
I’m rly looking forward to finding out what the conflict is going to be when the antagonist is on the side of world peace.
“more Griffith.” That’s so fitting with the notion that he’s basically become the impression he used to leave people with, with none of the depth of humanity.
Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.
Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.
So I remember saying that I had many thoughts on this but going back an examining them I found that pretty much all of that was mostly just me agreeing with the things you had already gone over in your post.
One thing though, Guts visualising Griffith in the moon is kind of a very interesting image for me. Because we have two other strong instances of similar imagery. The night Guts kills Gambino and at the end of Run he makes from Godo’s cave post-eclipse. In both cases he’s down, flat on his back, exhausted, doubting everything he’s ever known, not having any particular desire to go on.
And just then he looks up at the moon, and slowly pulls himself up again.
The presence of the moon almost seems to galvanise his actions and light up the way for him. Guts in that moment, seeing Griffith’s face in the moon and dedicating his current life path to him kinda seems like a symbolic extension of this fact.
Actually It’s interesting how Griffith is visualised in Guts head as to do with sources of lights, On the stairs of promrose hall he appears like a beacon, visualised as light at the end of the tunnel, as an inferno, as the moon, campfires, “Dazzling”, “burns so bright”.
Guts is one of the maybe only characters who has never compared Griffith to inanimate things or commodities- Never a doll, painting, statue, fine wine, idol or sculpture.
Fires are quite alive.
Nice! I’ve been checking out the moon imagery as I read and scratching my head ngl. I feel like the full moon represents fulfillment of some kind. Magic is at its strongest, moonlight kid shows up, Guts finds the will to keep going, Guts dedicates his sword to Griffith, etc.
Conversely, the eclipse is technically a new moon, and non-full moons appear prominently occasionally during signficant moments like Guts and Griffith’s last assassination together, Sonia’s chapter on loneliness, Rosine flying back home and dying, Ganeshka leveling up to Eldrich Abomination status (”on a night when you can’t see the moon”), etc
But idk it’s not completely consistent or anything and it’s nothing I can draw conclusions from.
Also gooooood point about Griffith as a source of light to Guts I don’t have anything to add to that, but it’s perfect.
like a traditional narrative would have guts going on his fix casca sidequest, which is overall framed as A Good Thing, succeeding, and then getting a reward at the end in the form of a loving sane gf because he Did Good.
Berserk instead fills it with ominous foreshadowing because yeah Guts is growing as a person and trying to do good, but it’s not that simple. When he first chose Casca over Griffith he was a huge danger to her and he needed companions to mitigate that danger, and she’s still afraid of him. Guts’ motives are also in question – for one it’s suggested that he’s being selfish in trying to fix Casca because he’s not taking her needs into account (”That’s right, she went to pieces because she can’t fully cope with it. What will she do if she does get her sanity back?”), and for another, he was still planning to ditch Casca again right up until Griffith showed up and soundly rejected him, suggesting that part of his motivation for trying to move on from his obsession with Griffith is straight up spite.
Nothing in Berserk is ever simple and pure and uncomplicated. No motive, no goal, no relationship, no emotion.
Guts is overall doing a whole lot better than he was during the Black Swordsman revenge rampage fiasco. He’s made new friends, he’s subdued his inner beast for now, he’s maturing, etc. But the same was true of Guts during the Golden Age. I don’t think anything as bad as the Eclipse is going to go down, but the way Berserk rolls, you don’t get an A for Effort. Guts had a very noble goal when he chose to leave the Hawks, and it was still a mistake.
Guts has learned from his mistakes enough to recognize that friends are more important than stupid dreams and he’s embodying that lesson now, but I suspect there’s a new one waiting around the corner: not just ‘you can’t force back what was lost’ but ‘if you try anyway be prepared for the consequences.’
woah woah woah i just realized i called that panel of sexy guts a griffith point of view shot but it isn’t, he can’t even see his face. But in the context of the shot reverse shot set-up (Griffith’s eyes, followed by what he’s actually seeing, followed by a closeup of Guts looking sexy actually from Casca’s pov, followed by what he’s actually seeing again, followed by Griffith’s eyes again) it’s an even clearer indication that he’s jealous of Casca and wants to be her in that moment imo. Like that shot of sexy Guts is a v straightforward visual depiction of desire centred so wholly between Griffith’s gaze that it feels like what he’s imagining she sees.
And the panel directly after it visually emphasizes Griffith’s removal and distance from them. Like damn the longing is palpable.
bc this is basically an addition to my reply to you, i just didn’t add it to the original post bc it was getting long and yk my point is still the same.
@yesgabsstuff said: I think that Berserk’s
central conflict at least during the Golden Age is how you plan on
dealing with your shit? All of them (Casca included) minimize or reframe
what happened to them. Guts absolutely lashes out at others to deal
with his anger but they are impersonal others and it’s done in a, dare I
say, socially acceptable way so it doesn’t feel abusive. He isolates
himself. Casca throws herself into being hyper competent and into her
relationships so that she can keep a fear that would freeze her to the spot at bay. Griffith
has his dream and in case of emergencies, self destructive behavior.
That is of course until he decides to manage his helplessness by
actually becoming an abuser himself. Guts of course teeters on the edge
of this coping style too. It’s very interesting
I don’t really have anything to add to this but it’s basically perfect. I love your character insights so much. Like, damn, that bit about Guts lashing out but he (mostly) gets away with it because he’s a mercinary and later his war is with monsters. That’s so spot on and something I never would’ve thought of.
And now that you mention this about coping, it occurs to me that all the parallels he has to Griffith during the Black Swordsman arc that I noticed are in how they respectively respond to trauma. They both deny feelings of guilt, they both physically scratch themselves, they both suggest that a young dead soldier died happy, they both single-mindedly pursue a goal.
This is so interesting!
@yesgabsstuff said:
The poor man.
Seriously like he’s stuck in this hell of idealizing people that hurt
him. Even as an adult he’s not able to really see Gambino as both his
father and the person who was responsible for his rape. The Eclipse
always felt like a similar rape by proxy situation to me.
Totally, like… the way Miura writes as far as I can tell from interviews is that he doesn’t plan stuff out much, but as he goes he’s very good at recalling what he’s already written and picking up threads and using older material to enrich newer material. So while I don’t think Casca’s rape was planned from the beginning, I do think it might be purposeful that it mirrors Guts’ original trauma in that Gambino is Guts’ rapist by proxy, and Guts is Femto’s victim by proxy.
Which, disclaimer, I think is v misogynist bs and an immense disservice to Casca, but she 100% is there as a bridge between Griffith/Femto and Guts. Like if Femto’s laser stare at Guts isn’t enough then the Hound explicitly spelling it out by telling Guts to assault her to be closer to Griffith p much cinches it.
I feel like he does the same splitting
thing with Griffith after the speech. It’s very indicative of having
lived in an abusive, invalidating environment that he holds a monster
and man “who did his best” almost as two separate people in his memory.
Also, having to get up the next day as though his rape never happened is
pretty much the ultimate in invalidation. His survival as a child
certainly required him to have this idealized view of Gambino but it
takes a long time to grow out of that. He
does it to a less extreme extent with Casca too.
Oooh this is a great insight – the fact that Guts can’t reconcile the “dark” and “light” parts of a person also feels incredibly thematically relevant. In Griffith/Femto’s case they are literally almost separate people, and Guts draws a distinction between them, when, eg, he tells Rickert “that’s not the Griffith you knew.” But when it comes to Gambino, Guts is just unable to accept the fact that he betrayed him in such a horrific way. He denies it for years at first, and then when Gambino himself tells him that he sold him, it’s like he chooses to focus on the guilt of killing him and represses the fact of his betrayal.
With Griffith and the speech, it explains why, rather than realizing that the speech doesn’t invalidate the fact that Griffith still risked his life for him for no reason, it takes over his perception of Griffith to such a huge extent that he denies everything that belies it (eg do i need a reason, do you think i’m cruel, etc) as irrelevant, until it finally becomes impossible for him to dismiss all those moments. Guts is just not good at reconciling disparate parts of a person.
And with Casca it makes sense that he treats her current state as an aberration that needs to be fixed so she can return to being the person in his memories, and adds a layer to the ominous foreshadowing that he’s rushing her to ill effect when she’s dealing with the trauma in her own way on her own time.
I feel like I know Guts a little better now actually. Like, he’s still not bad at understanding people, but these are where his blind spots are.
And like Griffith
assuming he’s being abandoned because he’s “dirty” and fundamentally
unlovable? It’s both of their trauma reactions that caused all of this
to happen. (I’m not implying that any of what happened after he left was
Guts’ fault, just that his reaction triggered another.)
Ok now this is something I was actually thinking about earlier today when I was talking about how totally purposeful the gay subtext is. I didn’t go into it because it’s a weaker point and I’m not sure I have a full grasp on it, but this comment actually fills in a gap for me and makes this point more solid to me.
Because yes! Their respective traumas inform and deepen the meaning of both of their “breakups.” I’ve written an essay before on Griffith’s issues with feeling “dirty” and how that’s a direct line from Gennon to thinking Guts is walking away from him in disgust. And ofc the eclipse is a mirror of Guts’ initial trauma, Griffith is a parallel to Gambino particularly at the bitter end of his mortal life, and Guts’ inability to understand that the Hawks were his home and Griffith loved him is, like you were saying up above, the same type of thinking Guts used to deny that Gambino sold him, and probably started there.
So I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that part of the point of all the sexual trauma in these characters’ pasts is to inform some of their bad decisions in the present.
I mentioned the gay subtext and this is a little beside the actual point, but the fact that Miura heaped it on and verbally suggested it when they meet, both characters have sexual trauma, and everything bad happens because they misunderstand each other due to, one can make a solid argument for, that trauma and split up… well it seems like a pretty good depiction of how trauma can fuck up your life and future potential relationships.
I mean at its core Berserk is a story about reacting to trauma. It’s right there in the title. So it never feels irrelevant to tie things back to it imo.
Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.
Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.
I love all of this. And can I say that the whole thing with his flashback and Casca and him saying sorry to Gambino broke my heart? It hurt so much that he felt any guilt about it. If I remember correctly Casca at first says something like; “And he assaulted you?” And Guts is like; “No. Yes? I killed him. I killed my father.” That whole thing just broke my heart and the fact that we know that it’s what they have in common that tears them apart hurts to think about. I wonder if Guts reminded Griffith of anyone?
Oh maaan yeah that exchange is so good and sad. Verbatim (bc I have the page handy and I absolutely love this dialogue) it’s:
“Gambino assaulted you… so you killed him?” “No! Gambino was different! I never meant to kill him! He took me in when I was a baby and almost dead. He taught me the sword. So why…?! Why’d he sell me out to that pig-bastard?”
which is just so heartbreaking. Then it’s a page later that he tells her how he accidentally killed him and finishes with, “I’m sorry… Gambino. Father…”
And good question. You have to wonder, with Griffith’s love at first sight thing, what it was about Guts that had him so entranced from the start. He talks about his tenacious ‘throwing himself into danger and then fighting to survive’ fighting style, but it does make you wonder if that’s all there is to it. If Griffith had slowly grown to love Guts i think i could fully understand why, but dude was fixated and risking his life for him from the very beginning.
1. while i still have to wonder if magical griffith-induced contentment is enough for apostles who were formerly like, rich assholes who regularly ate people and terrorized cities and are now underground brawling out their aggressiveness, irvine here’s got a sweet set up
dude just wants to hunt, going out and saving people from monsters every day is probably his ideal life. i’m happy for him.
2. irvine is so cool.
lol @ these two kids being the ones protecting a caravan of wagons from a troll attack. like okay rickert is a former hawk and therefore a legit badass, but still, does erika have to be the one assisting him
yk now that i think about it, it’s worth pointing out that the apostle/sacrifice relationship first and most directly compared to griffith and guts’ is also the only sacrifice of a romantic partner we’re told about. the others are parent/child, the abstract concept of “the world,” and a city.
Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.
Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.
Griffith is everything Gambino never was, but that Guts needed him to be. Dude has daddy issues, let’s be real here, and Griffith was a bigger, better, brighter Gambino who actually loved him. Who risked his life to save him and didn’t even have a reason. To Gambino he was p much only worth the money he brought in, but to Griffith he was worth risking his life for, for no reason or reward at all. Griffith in turn is similar to Gambino in that he’s a mercinary leader with a hold over Guts, but he’s otherwise superior in every way. More noble than Gambino in that he’s driven by ideals rather than money, has greater ambitions, greater skill, better manners, better morals, etc.
He was another person Guts respected, admired, and looked up to, and another person who Guts desperately wanted to have look at him, with some v explicit comparisons drawn by the manga:
After the Zodd debacle but before the Promrose Hall speech is a period of just about limitless potential for them. Guts accepts that Griffith loves him, or at least feels some kind of strong emotions for him – he recognizes the significance of the words “for your sake” here – and returns the sentiment by pledging his sword to him.
I don’t know if this is the answer I was searching for or not… but for now… For now I’ll wield my sword. For his sake.
Look at that – recalling the night he killed Gambino just before he pledges his sword to Griffith. Replacing one man with a new, vastly improved version.
This is also why the Promrose Hall speech hits him so hard, imo. Because for a brief period here Guts knew some extent of Griffith’s feelings, and the speech ripped that knowledge away and made him feel insignificant in Griffith’s eyes. We the audience know perfectly well that Griffith is head over heels regardless of the speech, but all Guts knows is he isn’t seen as Griffith’s friend/equal and he desperately wants to be. Because he needs him to be that better version of Gambino who actually loves him, not Gambino all over again.
Of course unlike Gambino, Guts’ perception of Griffith is based on a misconception, likely fueled and heightened by his own issues. Guts doesn’t get to see Griffith crash and burn when he leaves and then contemplate how brightly he shines within him, even compared to his castle, but we do.
Anyway so Guts inadvertantly breaks everything, fast forward a year and Griffith, like Gambino was for a time, is now disabled and dependant and really fucked up about it. Like Gambino he blames Guts, though unlike Gambino he still loves and almost immediately forgives Guts, and also unlike Gambino Griffith’s state actually is in part because of Guts (ofc you can’t blame Guts for Griffith’s own shitty decision-making, but you also can’t dismiss the fact that Guts leaving without explanation caused Griffith to have a breakdown lol). And, finally, like Gambino, this culminates in lashing out at Guts.
Gambino irrationally blames Guts for the death of his lover and all his bad luck since, Griffith blames Guts for making him fall in love with him (”only you made me forget my dream.”). Very different reasons, very similar result.
Now, and this isn’t a direct parallel imo but it’s one that I feel may be somewhat suggested, Guts blames himself for both Gambino’s death, and Griffith’s “death.”
Gambino was a terrible person who Guts killed accidentally in self defense, and he still has serious guilt issues because of it. When he has a flashback his panicky explanation to Casca ends with him crying and saying, “I’m sorry Gambino. Father…” Guts acknowledges and understands that Gambino betrayed him but that doesn’t make his feelings about him simple, and it doesn’t lessen his guilt.
I think this is also a large part of the reason Guts takes ages to stop hacking at Femto’s egg and trying to save Griffith after “I sacrifice.” Because he does blame himself. And even after he admits to himself that Griffith did betray him, this is how he looks back before leaving and fighting more monsters:
Anyway this brings me to Femto I guess.
In a way the Black Swordsman arc is a version of Guts’ missing years between Gambino and the Hawks: cursed and a bad omen, but now very literally because he draws evil spirits who kill people who get too close. “You should have died eleven years ago beneath your mother’s corpse!” = you should’ve died when you were sacrificed during the Eclipse.
Routine fighting to survive vs literally fighting every night to survive thanks to the brand.
Continuing on after killing Gambino vs continuing on after Griffith becomes Femto, with hints of survivor’s guilt all around, and strong visual comparisons:
But the real parallels are in how he responds to Femto.
Guts still craves acknowledgement.
His first reaction isn’t raaaagh I’ll kill you, that’s what he does after Femto dismisses him to focus on the issue at hand. His first reaction is hurt followed by, straight up, a need to be acknowledged. This scene starts with Guts basically fighting for attention, powering through his attack on Femto while the rest of the Godhand cheers him on until Femto knocks him into a wall and they move on to the Count’s backstory. Void even tries to get them back on track and then has his ‘…okay ANYWAY’ moment lmao (Enough of the sideshow.)
Same thing happens when he meets NeoGriff for the first time. His initial reaction isn’t to swing his sword at him, it’s to let Rickert hold him back while he pleads for him to acknowledge his betrayal (which, as this post points out, is similar to his morning confrontation with Gambino).
In fact, there’s a pretty interesting contrast drawn just in the Gambino
chapters – when Gambino lashes out and gives him the scar on the bridge
of Guts’ nose, he admits he might’ve been a dick and gives Guts
medicine for it. “Perhaps it was for no other reason than to soothe his
guilty conscience.” When Gambino sells him to Donovan, he doesn’t even acknowledge what he did let alone regret it, and even throws it in Guts’ face to hurt him a couple years later.
But this comes back after Guts’ flashback.
Despite just violently reliving the worst thing Gambino did to him, the last thing he thinks of is his seemingly contradictory mild kindness.
NeoGriffith never gives him the regret he wants him to feel either. But despite that:
My point is that Guts’ feelings are just as complex towards Femto/NeoGriffith as they are towards Gambino. He feels betrayal and rage, but also inadequacy, guilt, and a continuing desire to be looked at and acknowledged. He’s still driven by a v basic need to make Gambino proud – it transferred to Griffith during the Golden Age, and now it’s still there, complicating his hatred.
Which ties into the larger themes of Berserk, the good and evil in the heart of humanity. Gambino demonstrates this subtly – he’s a dick who shows just enough complexity and v mild compassion for Guts to crave more kindness from him. He’s very human in a very negative way. Griffith is the larger-than-life fantasy equivalent, who starts out as a positive version of Gambino – loves and is interested in Guts, behaves selflessly for him, is admirable in a fantasy-hero kind of way, etc – and literally transforms into a personification of evil, becoming a more heightened version of all the negative humanity in Gambino.
at this point is there even any functional thematic difference between guts and an apostle
and i don’t mean like guts descending into monstrosity, with or without the armour he’s doing pretty good on that front. i mean like these apostles acting humane and reasonable
idk i feel like… a sacrifice seems to have been treated as a moral event horizon there’s no going back from, since, y’know, it turns you into a monster and whatnot. but despite the literal transformation, both in power/physicality and personality, apostles still get choices which can mould them.
i mean we got puck’s whole thing about how count slug was still human at his core, and the more he denied it the more obvious it was, and then he failed to sacrifice his daughter. we have rosine dying while filled with remorse.
i feel like maybe apostles embody the idea that some decisions are permanent. peekaf leaving home and never being able to return, that sort of thing.
sometimes there are no second chances, the people you screwed over are gone forever, and you yourself are forever changed. but despite that you still don’t have to live consumed by… all that bullshit apostles are so into. sadism and bloodlust and cannibalism and rape etc. consumed by the swirl of negative emotions, let’s say.
i’d like to get a real spotlight on an apostle like zodd (or grunbeld I guess, sure gimme that novel) who has principles, and who still strives to like… make good choices, yk? they’re not gonna redeem themselves back to becoming human and bringing their sacrifice back to life, but hey, like, do all apostles end up in hellnado?
it seems to me that apostles have the same choice guts has – succumb to the beast or make it your controlled weapon – if perhaps on a higher difficulty setting due to being monsterized, and i wanna see more.
so scrolling past this and i remembered another thing i noticed while re-reading black swordsman stuff:
so yeah what this implies to me is that apostles are not “demonkind” by default. presumably their souls can still vibrate away from the hell whirlpool.
re-reading black swordsman stuff for my gambino/griffith comparison post and i just want to point this out with visuals this time. the sheer number of guts/griff parallels during this arc is ridic but this is my fave.
seisans said:
this was episode 5
ty!
@gatsca said: I LOVE the “did you get so caught up in
the moment that you didn’t think about the consequences?” with things
golden age guts said, ie like, not realizing where it was he belonged?
as well as like, basically everything that went down in the golden age.
they were all so young. god
yesss that was exactly my first thought when i got to that panel too. i love that he calls the flower spirit a “kid” because guts really was. (but hey that gives me hope that he’s going to continue to mature out of it)
guts says weakness, i say whatever the opposite of the hound is. yk all that good humanity stuff.
idk about analysing this too much. i’m just calling it a microcosm of a cycle guts is in between losing his (positive) humanity thru his sword and safeguarding his humanity with a little help from his friends, and ofc it ends ambiguously. idk that it’s foreshadowing except as far as this struggle is going to continue. (though ngl the hill of flowers gives me hill of swords vibes so… mb)
this is the most endearing thing i’ve ever seen in my life
you're the only one 