lol p much. like i’ll argue forever that dreams in berserk are ways to avoid dealing with your feelings and the whole story is about repression due to trauma.
not even in a guts and griffith are attracted to each other but can’t figure it out way, tho it’s so easy to read that as part of it, but repression due to trauma also describes guts’ whole monster hunting campaign post eclipse, the way behelits and turning into monsters work, and imo like 90% of guts, griffith, and casca’s characters in general. and farnese, at least pre-guts. and serpico.
guts leaving casca doesn’t show that he isn’t loyal- it shows that he could not think and wanted to keep her out of pain and wanted to take matters into his own hands. he only had sex with that apostle so he could lure her out and kill her. i’m not even sure if it really counts as sex. you have to remember that guts’s intension wasn’t to leave casca to rot, but to keep her safe, even if it was the wrong thing to do. i’m not sure that you understand the importance of casca to guts…
just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I don’t understand. I’ve tackled this subject like, a lot, so I’m not going to fully repeat myself here, but suffice to say I’ve read Berserk multiple times and, whatever Miura’s intent is, absolutely nothing has convinced me, or even strongly suggested to me that Casca is all that important to Guts beyond being a symbol of his humanity he’s clinging to.
And I can think of so many examples of Guts treating her like garbage, up to and including sexual assault (twice! treated as a joke during the Golden Age, and treated seriously as drama later on), that it baffles me that other people find their relationship like, positive lol, let alone endearing or something that reflects well on Guts.
anyway here’s the scene where Guts ditches her:
Rickert: dude, I think you should stay with your girlfriend in this magic safe cave instead of hunting monsters for no reason.
Guts: mmmmm no, I’d rather hunt monsters.
He had at least a month at Godo’s to decide on his course of action, and he’s perfectly calm and controlled here. If her safety was his first concern, he’d stay with her instead of leaving her for two children and an old man to (fail entirely to) protect. To say he left her because he couldn’t think and he wanted her to be safe is an extremely forgiving interpretation which isn’t backed up by the text of the story.
He’s not even considering her a person in her own right at this point, with his casual “nah” when Rickert suggests like, saying goodbye lmao. She’s basically just a representation of the Hawks to him here. Like imo the kindest interpretation to Guts is that he’s deliberately avoiding her because she reminds him too much of everything he lost/threw away, and that’s still pretty fucked up.
On the off chance you’re interested in a more in-depth look at how I think Guts actually feels (and yeah I know that’s not particularly likely lol, but I like linking stuff) here are some other posts I’ve written on the topic:
yeah and for me, since we already had the flawless original, this just felt like a soulless copy. idk. i’m notoriously salty about miura’s art “progression” and i guess i’ll continue to be. i don’t know if i trust him enough to believe it was an intentional tonal shift but even if it was the tone is far from all that’s bothering me about it so yeah. but here’s to hoping ig
legit af, but man i just want to cling to any hope that the final confrontation between guts and griffith isn’t gonna look like this lol
I do not, but this is a good question and one I’m also curious about. I can say that the anime replaced it with “love” (whether the word itself changed or the translation, idk) so it wouldn’t surprise me if it sounds just as suggestive in japanese as in english, or more so.
@chaoticgaygriffith no pressure to answer this, but do you have any insight on the word? (i’m sure you know exactly the page we’re talking about but just in case, chapter 49)
And actually while I’m wondering about this I’ve always been curious, is it the same word Ganeshka uses on this page? (chapter 282)
oh wow this is so cool to hear, i’m so glad something i wrote could motivate someone to get into this story! thank you for letting me know 😀
But also before you read too far please let me know if you have any triggers or just want to be warned for any types of dark (and sometimes offensive tbh) content in general, because Berserk seriously has it all, and as much as I still love the story I’d hate for anyone go in and be blindsided by some of it. I’d be happy to give you a rundown if you want to be forewarned.
Oh and the official translation of the manga is what I’d recommend, there are some pretty dodgy scanlations floating around that aren’t nearly as accurate. Here’s a link if you happen to need one:
yesss the moment of the sacrifice probably is my second favourite scene too. and also special mention to guts’ monologue about how he wants griffith to look at him.
and it’s true even those brief meetings/eyes meeting across a plain lol have such a weight to them because of both how miura portrays those scenes and because of their history informing them. like there’s a reason guts keeps thinking about griffith on that hill now even though he was barely a speck on the horizon to him. their connection is just that intense.
no offense to the anon but i’m gonna disagree and say that it didn’t look like his old art style at all. like yeah it was detailed and it was dark sort of by default just by being a drawing of a tortured body. but for me personally, and art is subjective of course, it lacked like … all heart. it was technically impressive and that’s all, which cannot even compare to what miura was able to do. so i’d say maybe don’t get your hopes up
anyway the art style shift was at least
partly due to miura switching to digital … other possible culprits are:
assistants, editors telling him to moe it up for wider readership, or
even an injury/health issue of sorts (though i haven’t heard anything
like that)
hm yeah ikwym, i feel like that spread of griff hit a v dark tone, but not a particularly emotional one. griffith’s tortured body was emphasized, but unlike the original scene it was less about the tragedy of seeing a beloved character in that state and more… simple ominousness.
but i feel like it was maybe fitting for the context of casca flashing back to something she found horrific as a lead-in to a potential breakdown.
but yeah ty for the addition. one thing i really hope is that it isn’t just a case of miura absorbing that moeish style and vomiting it back out onto the page. i’d much rather blame assistants or digitalization or a deliberate shift to fit the cutesy elfhelm and idyllic falconia tones.
I feel like this should probably be a harder question to answer because there are so many amazing scenes, but honestly it’s easy: Griffith’s torture chamber monologue.
It’s the absolute heart of Berserk and it’s everything I could possibly ask for in a ship.
Griffith starting off with the pages on his dream. The brightest thing he’d ever seen. Then darkness. And every single time I turn the page from this
to this
it takes my breath away lmao.
It’s a monologue about how Guts holds Griffith’s heart in his hand.
And like look at this shit!
The sole sustenance keeping him alive oh my god. Why just him? Why indeed.
And the monologue that begins with showing us the dream Griffith dedicated his entire life to pursuing ends with this:
I just fucking can’t handle it. This is seven pages of absolute perfection, and these seven pages are what Berserk’s about, both literally and thematically, and that’s why I’m stuck in this fandom no matter how many other aspects of the canon disappoint me lol.
Like, a few of my favourite ship tropes are: love/hate, someone ruining their own life because of love, power dynamic reversal due to desperately intense emotions, someone forced to choose between love and the thing they value most in life, betrayal and obsession/desperate need, two people who are singular to each other, etc and this scene hits every branch on the way down.
how bout you, if you have a favourite scene you want to talk about?
I just wanna say, there are 2 possible reasons Guts wants to keep feeling the pain Griffith caused him.
1. Because he wants to want to kill him, and it’s a reminder of why he wanted revenge in the first place. His rage needs fuel.
2. Because Griffith (Femto) deliberately wanted to hurt him. yk as opposed to NeoGriffith saying he doesn’t give a fuck and leaving him moping in the snow. He’d rather be looked at with hatred than not seen at all.
and imo it’s both.
i am so sleepy + i have no idea what i’m really going for here but like
i think trees and branches are like, symbols of connection or reaching for connection or smthn like that. or like, at least when they’re white
“since when was it that despite her bent shape lady farnese came to have feelings for me beyond those of a mistress for her servant?“
ok those branches aren’t white but i just like the similar phrasing lol
like i just glanced at a couple pages of serpico’s backstory and was like, woah that’s a lot of branch imagery lol. and there’s obviously the whole creation of the world tree, ganeshka’s loneliness breakdown, etc.
i am putting a pin in this for if i think of more significant seeming tree imagery. or yk pending how the whole fantasia arc goes. world tree fast travel system branches, casca having a breakdown beside danann’s cherry tree, yadda yadda yadda.
i mean it just seems to fit this whole idea i got where like half the fantasy content of berserk works as a metaphor for interpersonal relationships and all that jazz.
yk I also wondered/hoped that. I mean idk the Griffith panel was pretty stand-out in detail and realism compared to the rest, and the tone was fairly dark at times in Casca’s dream but I still wasn’t into the art, so I’m not super hopeful that the style will completely shift back to something more say Golden Age-y or early Millenium Falcon arc.
But the shift from the Millenium Falcon art to the Fantasia art seemed weirdly abrupt to me, so it does give me hope that at least some of the style now is deliberate rather than just natural art shift, and maybe he’ll at least shift styles again to something different and hopefully better lol. I want to believe.
also i’m in absolute awe of the sheer number of varying degrees of nearly-same-sentiment facial expressions miura pulled off in this single panel
lol for real
and in the same vein one thing i love about miura’s art (give or take the earliest and latest stuff) that jumps out to me in that panel especially is the lack of sameface in his female characters, even in the background
ia, guts/serpico has some real interesting potential imo
like i’m a griffguts otper for sure so i can’t get into any guts/serpico happily ever after scenarios myself lol, but they’d be a perfect fling or temporary rebound or weird one night stand
for ref the pics are guts fantasizing about neogriffith’s ass during the “he looked so human” panel, and gennon being creepy while imagining nearly the same image
i mean it’s not really to compare guts and gennon lol, more that yk miura knows how to visually illustrate the concept of someone’s physical attraction to griffith and that’s what he’s doing on both those pages l b r here
straight up, he would’ve murdered casca. like no doubt in my mind, basically the whole point of the chapters between the hill of swords and the rpg group catching up to him is to tell the reader that without the rpg group casca would not have lasted much longer w/ guts.
after he killed casca?
boring default answer: revenge rampage part 2 to distract himself from this new giant heap of guilt, now with more passive suicidal tendencies
better answer: behelit opens, he sacrifices griffith, everything comes full circle
best answer: revenge rampage part 2 to distract himself from this new giant heap of guilt, but he feels like he’s just as bad as griffith/femto now and ends up joining him after a confrontation (and probably sex as a substitute for uh “giving him a heap of raw iron” lbr). all the thematic stuff about inner monsters becoming literal outer monsters is a build up to guts as an example of a human just succumbing to his dark side without the help of a magic transformation
caveat to best answer: with griffith he may actually recover some of his “good” self, as he’s still an echo of that last glimmer of the whole campfire in his chest metaphor, and depending on what’s going on with neogriffith internally they could end up both sort of balancing light and dark. would also fit neatly with the way the apostles do under ngriff’s influence, but this would be the emotional version rather than the metaphysical one lol.
Whether by accident or design (since yk from the sounds of it Miura wrote the first chapter or two before really figuring out where he wanted to go with the story) I actually consider the opening few pages to be very in character lol, which might be an unpopular opinion, idk.
Consider: it fits perfectly into Guts pattern of self-destructively doing whatever it takes to get close enough to his enemy to blow their head off. He’s deliberately let monsters throw him around, break bones, shove him through walls, eat him, and stab him just so he can maneuver himself into position to take them out. This is an apostle that likes to fuck her victims, ergo.
It also like… actually I’d never thought about this before so bear with me bc this is going to get rambly, but damn it’s actually perfect, because it also makes the connection between Guts’ sex related issues and his stupid monster fighting rampage very direct on page one.
Like if that’s not purposeful then Miura accidentally hit it out of the park with our intro to Guts. But actually it’s gotta be purposeful. Even if it’s just to equate Guts’ particularly phallic violence (big sword, shoving his fist into the monster’s mouth mid-sex and blowing her head off) to sex right off the bat because Miura wants to like… well I think it’s part of what Miura wanted to kind of examine. Swords are dicks in Berserk, just like they’re dicks in a lot of action stories. But what does that mean – why? What’s the connection between violence and sex that makes that imagery fit?
And the answer here is Guts’ rape trauma. Liiiiike ok I completely think that Guts lashes out at enemies, particularly enemies that are bigger and stronger than him, particularly monsters once he learns they exist, because of that trauma. He is very driven to destroy anything that scares him, and that’s the root of it. Monsters scare Guts, we see this very viscerally during the first Zodd encounter and the Wyald encounter, and (particularly after he abandons his emotional support in the snow) Guts is driven to destroy them.
So like on one level Guts fucking the apostle is like, a hook for the dudes and a surface image for Miura to unravel: cool manly action hero bangs chicks and kills monsters, sometimes at the same time! On a character level, it’s a self-destructive strategy to get close enough to kill her because Guts absolutely isn’t the kind of cool hero who regularly bangs chicks, he’s the kind of dumbass who would do anything to kill a monster. And potentially on a thematic level it’s a story opening that primes the audience to equate sex and sex related issues to Guts’ monster killing revenge rampage, ie set up for an undertone of Guts lashing out not because he’s righteously angry or a hero who protects the innocent and kills evildoers, but because he’s traumatized and killing monsters makes him feel better.
(god that panel is gr8 shorthand for everything i want to say lol)
Or idk maybe it’s not that deep. But damn it now I’m definitely going to include this scene in the next big meta post I write about Guts, his dream, trauma, and his relationship with Griffith.
Anyway I definitely 100% believe the first bit I said, about it being in character for Guts because it’s a self destructive ploy to kill her. The trauma theme stuff is more of a stretch but it’s worth thinking about.
(Also lol @ Guts being faithful to Casca when he left her to rot in a cave for two years. I mean they had sex once and the last significant interaction they had before the Eclipse was Casca essentially breaking off whatever form of relationship they’d begun.
I feel like people reach for that bc they need an explanation for why cool badass protagonist Guts is basically celibate and has never expressed attraction to a woman other than casca (and tbqh casca’s debatable), but honestly it’s cause he’s gay.)
“rugged handsomeness” is a good word that griffith would definitely use when describing guts… i think he also really likes guts legs and hands. he thinks his perpetual frown is endearing and also thinks he’s very clever and smart in his own way. guts obviously loves griffiths hair a
lot and he also loves his lips and hands. and broad greek athletic youth
shoulders and small waist + frame. he’s actually bonkers for griffiths
mix of soft/feminine features and masculine features. griffiths voice is
a soft tenor and guts thinks it’s like, masculine and sweet in an
elegant prince sort of way
i was gonna day guys loves griffiths
devotion tho i realize now that’s just “determination” flavored
differently-which makes it fitting from a certain perspective. like,
devotion to his dream sure but also the potential for devoted adoration
and sweetness + attention turned guts way. i like to think guts heart
would burst when he realizes how sweet on him griffith is
this is all extremely good i just wanna second everything
especially the detail of griffith being fond of guts’ default frowny face, and extra emphatic yes to guts liking griffith’s masc and fem traits in combination
and yeah to that last bit, I think they both love like, each others’ intensity and determination/devotion because they want it aimed at least partly at them. or like, they both know, whether consciously or not, from the start that that intensity is aimed at them and they crave it.
(honestly makes me want to frame the current state of their relationship as both deliberately witholding it from the other lmao. ngriff: fuck you i only care about my dream now. guts: well fuck you too i only care about uhhhh casca)
@madchen said:
first one is when all
the pta mom are asking him if he can really organize the fundraiser bake
sale in less than 24 hours after debbie tragically had a recreational
hiking accident
If I do write the fic I would also throw Charlotte. I feel like she would be a part of the group’s extended circle through Farnese. They prob grew up together in this au since they’re both from old money and she prob begged Farnese to let her tag along so she could see Griffith. Oh my god I wonder how she is like drunk. Since she’s so innocent I can imagine that she would be the complete opposite while intoxicated.
ngl drunk charlotte sounds like she would be fun to write lol.
Honestly, Black Swordsman Guts, especially in the Black Swordsman arc (tho he’s also p good in the Lost Children arc). The way he starts out as the epitome of the asshole antihero out for revenge and that image almost immediately starts crumbling until you’re shown that he’s terrified and pathetic and not a whole lot better than the monsters he’s fighting and really sad about a bad breakup.
The way he opens the story by banging an apostle on page one and eventually you realize that is one of a grand total of two occasions on which he’s had consensual sex. The way he ends the first arc crying after a kid swears vengeance against him. The end of the first chapter when he tortures the snake apostle and the art and tone shift to make Guts the villain and the monster the pitiable victim. Encouraging children to kill themselves because he’s upset. Refusing to admit how monstrous he’s getting when he gets temporarily possessed. Letting a zombie kid stab him.
The driving mystery of why Guts is so obsessed with revenge followed by the reveal that it’s because he had a relationship comparable to marriage with the dude he wants to kill and Griffith didn’t just betray him, they betrayed each other and like half of Guts’ motivation is guilt/distracting himself from guilt.
The way his current situation, haunted by monsters claiming ownership of him after being given to them by someone he loves reflects his childhood so effectively.
I mean yeah part of what makes Black Swordsman Guts great is what the Golden Age reveals about him too, but I’ll still take Black Swordsman over the happy Golden Age version.
For one thing, when Black Swordsman Guts is a dick, the narrative is very clear on that being a negative thing. While when Golden Age Guts is a dick (eg most of his scenes with Casca) it feels like we’re supposed to find that at least somewhat endearing. And also like… I just really, really love the way Miura starts Guts out as strong badass archetype and then immediately sets about complicating it by answering the question of: what would make a real human person this fucking over the top and ridiculous? What’s actually underneath the cool image?
Like Guts goes from badass mccool 80s action hero send up to being directly compared to Vargas in terms of how sad and pathetic he is within a couple chapters, and it’s So. Good.
Answer to your second question under the cut
This question… is actually a very tough call lol. Like yeah okay the smart money’s on the character whose introduction didn’t include a gratuitious rape scene, but I genuinely love Femto regardless? Mostly because I disregard that choice of intro since it was um Badly Written lol, and Femto had me at
And I just love dark inner monsters as a concept in general despite the author’s reliance on rape as his primary illustration of evil.
On potential alone I’d go with NeoGriffith, because boy he is full of potential to be amazing depending on where those hints about his feelings, isolation of being a singular god, etc go. But what we actually see from him is like… so bland 99% of the time. Like yeah that’s purposeful, that’s a big part of the point, but still. He does feel like a shell of the old Griffith, literally – the outside with v little of the depth (so far).
I can headcanon and theorize a bunch to make him interesting to me, and I do, but idk if that counts lol.
So as for what we’ve got on the page and how seeing him makes me feel, I’m actually going to pick Femto. Like, the same way I inwardly cheered when we saw Guts’ slasher smile at Godo’s after he killed the pig apostle, because it was such a “he’s baaaaaack” moment, I cheered when we saw Femto confront Ganeshka. I love his stupid offensive camp villain makeup, I love his stupid exoskeleton, I love what a petty asshole he is, I love how silent and scary he was when he first appeared and I love how awkward and pathetic he was when he lowered his hand and let Guts escape, I love that he expresses emotions, I love that Void had to basically tell him to shut up during his petty back and forth with Guts in his first scene, and I love him partially out of spite because Miura tried to make me hate him in the shittiest way possible.
Like yeah okay put your super gay character in vampy makeup and make him a rapist to piss off the manly protag while writing out the woman you have no idea what to do with, fuck you I love him anyway.
I have a tendency to love the characters the narrative goes above and beyond to try to get me to hate, because I don’t like being told what to do lol, and if I feel like the narrative is pushing me to feel something without properly selling it/while poorly and/or offensively illustrating it I get contrary. Like basically the Eclipse rape only made me feel hate for Miura. If I hated Femto for it, then I feel like I’d be validating Miura’s bad and offensive writing.
Which is not to say I don’t fully understand and respect people who do respond to the Eclipse by hating Femto. This is just how I personally respond to fiction lol.
lol sorry anon i’ve gotta be honest, I didn’t watch this because the odds of my sense of humour meshing with a berserk parody are extremely low, especially going in completely blind.
not to discourage you or anyone from sending me links to stuff they think i’d enjoy, i appreciate it, but i rarely watch fandom related youtube videos in general and berserk fandom has me extra wary ngl
I think that’s a reasonable way of reading their relationship.
The Beast of Darkness is definitely pretty overt about suggesting that Griffith is Guts’ first choice, calling him his “true light” while Casca gets grouped in with the RPG group as “warm lights,” as well as suggesting that Griffith is more “precious” to him than Casca.
And ofc I definitely agree that Griffith is Guts’ number one choice. Casca I’m less sure about, I think she was more torn between them and maybe ended up prioritizing Guts by the end, when she told him to leave to pursue his dream. But that’s p ambiguous.
My own opinion on Guts and Casca’s feelings for each other is that they’re… complicated lol, but imo genuine romantic love doesn’t really enter into it. I don’t enjoy their relationship so I’m biased ofc, but I do think Miura was like, conscientious about portraying their relationship as a more low-key realistic hookup between friends, rather than burgeoning true love, and motivated by a number of complex feelings and factors other than straightforward romance.
Like both rebounding from Griffith, “licking wounds” and comforting each other after experiencing some extreme self-destructive feelings, genuinely liking each other as friends by now, the fact that Guts saved Casca and Casca feels like she owes him the same way she wanted to be Griffith’s sword after he saved her (Casca pointing out Guts’ scars from the 100 man fight when he saved her then, and asking for a wound in return), Judeau’s heavy-handed manipulations pushing them together, Guts inviting Casca along for sex while prioritizing his dream (”I don’t know whether you’ll get in the way of what I want to do or the opposite”), Guts letting Casca comfort him the way Griffith didn’t, etc.
Additionally I think that their hookup serves as a distraction for Guts, a way to continue repressing the realization that he fucked up when he left for as long as possible because accepting that he ruined everything because he was wrong about Griffith’s feelings is… not easy lol, and this is shown in how he invites her along and still intends to leave the Hawks again, rather than rethinking things based on new information and deciding to stay this time. It takes him like four days to finally accept that he shouldn’t’ve left.
And post-Eclipse I think Guts sticks with Casca in part because of what the Beast of Darkness suggests, that she’s a reminder of the pain Griffith caused, and in part because he wants to try to move on from Griffith now that NGriff has soundly rejected him, and in part because he’s longing for a piece of his happy past and that’s what Casca represents, and in part to atone for abandoning Griffith the first time, and in part because she’s his friend and comrade and he wants to help her.
So like, basically tl;dr I think they care about each other, but the romance aspect did end up being forced and I would’ve liked their relationship a lot more if they’d stayed platonic friends, and it probably would’ve been better for them too.
Also I headcanon them both as gay and repressed lol, and I think the story makes that fairly easy to do, which is nice.
i linked a few related posts under the cut if you happen to be interested
BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC BLACK SWORDSMAN ARC
I want to see it animated so bad. I wish the 97 anime had done it, because honestly the style would’ve suited the subject so well, and also for vid purposes it would be so damn useful to have black swordsman and golden age all animated in the same style and not missing any super significant scenes (lookin at you, ovas).
also I want to see petty bitter ex femto animated, and i want to hear his voice.
The gang has to bail them out. Good thing Farnese is loaded. Actually, she’s the one who arranged for the trip. Lets say that in this au she’s famous for coming from the world’s oldest ‘old money’ and somebody recognizes her(her face ends up being in the tabloids the next day)
Oh and Serpico ends up coming back when its time to leave. Where he went? He won’t tell
lol the idea of famous heiress farnese and her extremely dubious friends is delightful
i’m kinda torn because i also like that aspect but it felt like the animators stopped just short of pointing a giant arrow at ngriff saying “this dude is evil, hate him” lol so overall the lack of subtlety wasn’t worth it imo
the first time i saw a gif of that moment i spent a few days assuming it was someone’s joke edit ngl, like not only is it completely ooc but it also just looks hilarious and ridiculous
anyway from what I saw of the hill of swords reunion in the anime they made griffith look sinisterly evil and kind of pissed off the whole time too so yeah, just add that to the long list of reasons the newer anime sucks
Judeau, Guts,and Griffith would go to the casinos. Judeau is a decent
gambler but Griffith, he’s like a god at it. He ends up pissing many
people off every a while since he keeps winning(they think he’s cheating
but he’s not) its safe to assume that a fight would prob break out.
Later on, they hit the bar, which isn’t really much of their
scenes(especially Guts) but after that brawl, they need a hard drink or
two. (2/3)
I wanna say that Judeau gets picked up by a girl at the bar/club. Girls
try to flirt with Guts and Griffith too, Guts just ignores them and
Griffith charmingly lets them down. I wanna be very self-indulgent and
say that they get drunk and wake up married to each other(very cliche
and unlikely to happen but still very cute.) The only way that could
happen is if Griffith is in one of his rare random moods to have
reckless fun n gets Guts to join in(somehow Idk. Guts doesnt like
getting drunk)
lol this is a modern au idea i never would’ve thought of. but i could absolutely see guts and griffith getting drunk and married in vegas.
i feel like serpico would either trail farnese or hit the nearest gay bar tho ngl
you're the only one 