luv this direct sequence of panels

hmm

hmmmm

hmmmmmmm

said:
What are your thoughts about the current Griffith? In my eyes he has
become like the Snow Queen – Beautiful, yet cold and empty. Practically
unable to experience emotion and lacking in any humanity. A pretty
doll. A shell. A walking facade. What do you think?

My answer to this ties into the other thing you asked me to expand on, re: Griffith and contrasts, so I guess I’m just kind of doing both answers at once.

Basically I agree, but I think there’s more to NeoGriffith (ie post Femto, resurrected, godlike Griffith) than that.

Griffith as a human is so interesting to me in part because he’s full of contrasts, which is one of those hooks that really get me interested in a character. And those contrasts mostly stem from this attitude right here:

He hides away all of his weaknesses, his negative thoughts, the truth of what actually drives him on (guilt), his self-loathing, even from himself. He smiles and portrays an image of perfection so well that he essentially believes it himself most of the time.

So you have things like the Promrose Hall speech, where he’s fully embodying that image of himself:

vs Casca’s flashback, which is a glimpse of his darker, much more fucked up self underneath, and directly contradicts the above:

So you have the contrast between the perfect leader, the guy who can take down an army of 30,000 with 5,000, the guy who waxes poetic about how great dreams are, the guy who is this fucking cool while burning a queen alive:

And the guy who self-harms after prostituting himself to a pedophile to prevent as many deaths of his followers as possible despite claiming he doesn’t feel responsible for them, the guy who falls to pieces and destroys his own life when Guts leaves, the guy who hates himself and desperately wants to be told he’s not a monster:

And both are Griffith. Griffith isn’t just faking his confidence, he genuinely is that confident. He genuinely believes that his dream is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself, and he can’t call any of his followers friends because they’re clinging to his dream rather than finding their own dreams.

He’s portrayed that image so fully that it’s a real part of him. But at the same time, sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite underneath: the self loathing, the fear, the fact that he’s in love with Guts and has nearly lost his dream because of that love multiple times (ie nearly dying while trying to save him from Zodd, burning his own life down after Guts leaves, even going back and rescuing him personally that first week).

And that brings me to NeoGriffith, because what NeoGriffith is, is that image, and only that image, with none of the very human weaknesses behind it.

He’s described as a painting, as untouchable, etc, like fifty million times.

He’s basically become the impression he used to leave people with.

If Griffith contradicted himself – confidence vs insecurity, conviction vs self loathing, unwaveringly pursuing his dream vs Guts making him forget his dream, etc – then NeoGriffith is one side minus the other. Confidence, no insecurity, conviction, no self-loathing, the dream, no Guts.

And it’s uncanny too. He’s pursuing the dream, but he’s no longer motivated by his very human feelings of guilt (and also fear/insecurity, which we’re shown here:

I got this whole argument about dreams in Berserk being essentially shitty coping mechanisms lol, which I won’t get into now but is worth mentioning as another aspect of human Griffith that NeoGriffith lacks)

He’s lost his human flaws, and that makes him kind of disturbing imo, because those human flaws drove him, and now he’s driven by nothing, he just is.

And, just as a side note, it’s also worth noting that Femto is the other side imo – the self-loathing, the insecurity – in the sense that Femto is the embodiment of the monster Griffith believed himself to be deep down, the monster he believed Guts saw him as too, after this exchange (and then Guts leaving):

I mean it’s ultimately the final puzzle piece that makes him agree to the sacrifice:

And I 100% believe that NeoGriffith is referencing that here with his “you, of all people”:

So like, tl;dr Griffith is a land of contradictions, and that’s embodied in 2 magical fantasy transformations that make those disparate elements of him literal personifications.

NeoGriffith is the side of himself that he showed the world as a human, stripped of his humanity, and Femto is basically a personification of his own self-loathing, in which he became everything he feared himself to be, everything Guts failed to tell him he wasn’t.

But this is just like, the thematic take lol. This is what I think NeoGriffith essentially represents. But it’s also more complicated than that, because

But when it comes to like, NeoGriffith as a character, rather than a construct, who potentially still has emotions and ties to his previous life, I guess I’ll leave you with links because I don’t really have much new to say:

https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/173364837891/ninjabelle-god-i-was-in-physical-pain-reading

https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/160721048701/so-like-this-is-one-of-my-favourite-non-golden-age

https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/162388988876/mastermistressofdesire-bthump-well-so-far

https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/176251529761/im-lightweight-confused-about-the-whole-neogriff

Basically I think there’s plenty of indication that Griffith failed to entirely purge himself of emotion and isn’t quite the serene image of perfection he seems.

the next 90 chapters:

Swords/dreams as poor substitutes for human connection in Berserk.

Maybe it’s a bit much to equate Guts swinging his sword several hundred times until his hand is covered in blisters to Griffith scratching himself, but hey both are forms of self-harm associated with their dreams. (Plus the blisters work as a solid symbol of Guts’ typical self-destructive way of fighting, letting monsters stab him so he can shoot them, that kinda thing).

Anyway I just noticed that Guts’ hand was bandaged the morning he left the Hawks despite it having been a month since he had to kill anyone, and was like, hmm.

This parallel/contrast is a great little illustration of the significance of the Zodd encounter.

Cuddling with his sword the way he did as a child when faced with mistrust and derision vs dedicating his sword to Griffith – in the first his sword is a comfort object, an escape, a distraction. In the second his sword is a tool – he’s not wielding it as a distraction from his own pain, he’s wielding it for someone else, as a symbol of a meaningful connection with another person.

It’s also worth noting that right before the conversation with Griffith, Guts was angrily swinging his sword as a distraction while remembering Casca making him feel like an outsider (”you’re just a mad dog!” “it’s your fault!”), essentially underlining this contrast between the way Guts regards his sword before and after Griffith says he saved his life for his sake.

And check out these matching visuals of Guts looking at his blistered hands, just to drive the point home:

I allude to how the monsters Guts fights are reminiscent of his childhood trauma a lot, so I decided to finally illustrate it.

under a cut for length and for images implying sexual assault/csa

glowing/monstrous eye(s) in a dark background, reaching hands:

and Gambino gets similar visual treatment after telling Guts he sold him, neatly showing how Gambino’s betrayal compounds Guts’ trauma:

glowing/monstrous eyes and reaching hands in nightmare form:

in flashback form:

and in monster form:

this could be an interesting early version from his nightmare in chapter 2:

Skull Knight also gets this imagery:

and i’m ngl his consistently glowing eyes as a design choice make me highly suspicious lol:

here’s Guts’ vision in the sewer before promrose, the imagery depressingly contextualizing the self-loathing he feels:

more giant hands emphasizing helplessness:

And Guts himself gets a lot of this imagery ofc:

plus you can argue the design of the beast of darkness incorporates the bright eyes on a dark background motif:

Also it’s worth noting that while this imagery comes from Guts’ trauma, Miura uses it to illustrate fear in general from other characters’ points of view too:

and I’d argue this is the point of the stylization of Ganeshka’s backstory of extreme paranoia:

Berserk is Guts’ story after all and it makes sense to expand his own motifs to illustrate fear as a concept in general imo.

oddly Femto does not get this imagery very often at all. In fact this is the only instance I can think of that comes close:

Usually he’s stylized as monstrous by totally removing his face and just portraying the mask, or his face is shown in full. Now I could see an argument that his design automatically incorporates bright eyes in a dark background due to the black helmet:

But it’s really not emphasized, like even when we get five thousand closeups of his staring eyes during the rape scene, they don’t pop against a dark background, they’re not the brightest things in the panel like other monsters’ eyes:

So idk. Maybe the stylization of the mask, the way his face can disappear within it like so

is meant to be reminiscent of the more mundane and natural way Miura has of making someone/thing look intimidating, ie shadowing their eyes. Or maybe it was more important to him to be able to draw Femto as either monstrous (no face) or unnervingly human (fully visible human face) with little in between.

Anyway that’s just an aside, the only point of this post is to illustrate some recurring concepts and show how the imagery ties Guts’ urge to fight monsters back to his childhood trauma.

I mean it’s not exactly a hard sell lol, but I’m just like a big fan of
the recurring stylized imagery and I think it’s a great touch.

As a sacrificial offering for the Invocation of Doom, not just any lump of flesh and blood will do. It must be someone important to you, part of your soul… someone so close to you that it’s almost like giving up a part of you.

bc the war’s over but he doesn’t actually want to leave.

I will never get over how well this flashback puts so much we’ve seen in a new light.

I will never be over the way these two monologues play off each other as a point, counterpoint.

There are few things I love more than how the early chapters of the Golden Age reflect, build on, deepen, inform, and contrast the Black Swordsman arc.

King of avoidance.

King of denial.

halves

like i think the reason i love griffith so much is that he’s made up entirely of huge contrasts lol, because his whole thing is denying his weaknesses and pretending to be perfect so hard that he basically convinces himself, except in occasional moments where all his insecurity and guilt and self loathing comes seeping out.

“It’s not that he’s strong. Griffitih had to make himself strong.” Like this line is in reference to this

and it’s such a perfect summarization of Griffith’s character.

So idk like when it comes to pondering Griffith’s characterization in AUs and stuff, or even not in AUs, just in general, I basically think that like 90% of what we see is essentially a facade… but complicated by the fact that it’s a facade Griffith himself buys into most of the time.

So idk it’s a weird line because you can’t say he isn’t, eg, confident, because he walks the walk as well as talking the talk – this is a dude who defeated an army of 30,000 with 5000, who went from street kid to nearly becoming the next king of Midland through sheer force of will – but it’s like, manufactured confidence that can be shattered, yk? That occasionally cracks and reveals the exact opposite underneath.

The plot of Berserk in 3 pages

Have you noticed that in the movie Griffith doesn’t have the single wound on the shoulder but multiple scratch ones? I dunno if they got Miura to suggest it or if they took some liberties, but it always bothered me how in the manga he had that weird wound: it didn’t look like his scratching from the Casca flashback at all.

Okay, this is totally overkill, I know, but your ask has motivated me to just lay it all out, so ty!

Yeah, I can see why people look at this image and see it as one huge raised scar. It’s fairly ambiguous looking, and it’s the visual interpretation the anime went with, which reinforces this common perception:

But look at this:

You can see when he traces it that the “outline” of that “wound” fits his two fingers exactly. It’s not one scar, it’s two self-inflicted parallel scratch marks.

They’re not in the same place as the river scratches, there are only two instead of four, and they’re also older and therefore either mostly healed scabs or scars which he’s tracing instead of tearing open in that moment, which is why they’re not the same as the bleeding open wounds we see in chapter 17, but they are definitely two separate marks, not the edges of one giant scar.

Tbh I think Miura put them on his shoulder instead of his arms this time mainly for dramatic effect so Griffith is more curled in on himself when he traces them.

imo the movie is closer to the spirit of the manga in making them scratch marks and showing Griffith seemingly tempted to add to them. It’s still a little weird considering their placement further back, and idk what they expected new audiences to think since they cut out every relevant aspect of those marks being there, ie his backstory and the night Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and co. But whatever, it’s close enough for me.

And to just briefly explain those scratch marks a bit further, basically, as much as it looks a bit like a big scar in the manga, like you said, it really makes no sense for it to be.

If Guts’ sword had hit him in the second duel he’d either have a gaping wound or a discoloured bruise later that day, not a scar, and if he got it somewhere else that we never get to see then he has absolutely no narrative reason to trace it and cry while thinking about Guts. It would be nonsensical and meaningless for him to trace some random mysterious scar that has no relevance in this highly emotionally charged moment.

On the other hand we know he has a history of self-harming by scratching himself, and we’ve seen him viciously scratch himself under circumstances very similar to Tombstone of Flame Part 2 – the moment Griffith flashed back to just as we see his bare shoulder with those marks on it for the first time in that first image up there: “You believe that, don’t you?”

Griffith has done something he considers “dirty” for the sake of his dream, asks someone else what they think of him (”Am I dirty?” // “Do you think that I’m cruel?”), both Casca and Guts inadvertantly reinforce his belief that he’s dirty/cruel with their responses (”N- why… why were you alone with him before?” and “Ain’t that part of the path to your dream?”), and in the river in front of Casca he self harms while talking himself through the necessity of dirtying himself for his dream, so it feels safe to assume that sometime shortly following his conversation with Guts in Tombstone of Flame he also self harmed while telling himself it’s necessary to be cruel for his dream.

Now that Guts has left in what Griffith believes is a rejection of the “cruelty” and “dirtiness” that he let Guts in to see, he traces those old scratch marks and tries to convince himself again that it’s worth it for his dream. And the point of this moment is that he can’t convince himself this time. Instead he just curls up and sobs, because in the face of Guts’ apparent rejection, it’s not worth it.

Like I said lol, this is overkill as a response to your ask, but like I saw an excuse to explain my take on this moment in its own post, instead of buried in a much longer post, so I took it.

Question:

Answer:

I wanna improve my skills more and challenge myself by crossin’ swords with stronger and stronger enemies… If I stay there may be no lack of battles… but I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough of the battles I want. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll never entrust my sword to another again. I’ll never hang from someone else’s dream.

(for clarity’s sake this is an illustration of Guts’ dream of becoming Griffith’s equal, not a ship thing lol)

the placement of the “i’ll st-” panel on griffith before he wakes up is so pointed. the one part of their conversation he should’ve heard, but didn’t.