yeah that is such a huge issue i have with like, everything post eclipse.
i mean i feel like, idk there are a few moments that suggest that rather than just fixing guts’ trauma and then immediately replacing it with eclipse trauma, it’s more that the eclipse echoed his childhood trauma and compounded it. i feel like that might’ve been miura’s intent even. eg:
And it absolutely was his clear intent during the Black Swordsman arc. But I feel like Miura let this just kind of, like, fall to the wayside, and totally failed to follow through on this idea through actual characterization, instead deciding to completely downplay Guts’ actual personal trauma.
Like there are so many moments that by rights should’ve referenced Guts’ csa trauma that glaringly ignored it. A big one I’m thinking of is when Guts assaults Casca. Like come on, he had a violent flashback during consensual sex with her and you’re telling me it’s not even on his mind after nearly raping her? Or maybe yk at some point during that arc right after the Eclipse that was all about child abuse and Guts becoming a monster. Or maybe during the actual Eclipse itself. At least show us that paralyzing fear that was strongly implied during the Black Swordsman arc instead of boring one dimensional outrage.
I feel like Griffith is the expected answer, and I almost said Griffith automatically, but no it is definitely Guts, and Griffith is really like, the opposite of a drama queen. He’s cool and collected to a fault. Even during the second duel – we saw his frantic thoughts, but he didn’t express them. He was cold, and rational enough that everyone there except Rickert and Casca thought his challenge was reasonable (including Guts). His reaction when Guts walked away was to slump into the snow and silently repress really hard. He was hallucinating and breaking from reality when he finally broke down over his post-torture situation – before that he was shockingly calm and chill about it, even at the moment he silently let his dream go. Fucking Charlotte was a terrible decision but it was a method of repression, and he was pretty calm and composed during, even making cute jokes.
He smiled calmly when he made the sacrifice.
His breakdown in the river in front of Casca was spoken calmly and he stopped and put on a fake smile the instant he realized how badly his mask had slipped. He casually referred to being taken advantage of by a child predator as “seducing an old man.” He was completely cold + polite + perfunctory when he killed Gennon. “Do you think I’m cruel?” was one of his more emotional moments and it was v quietly so. His replies to Guts asking why he risked his life for him were all v chill, either rationalizations or calm admittances of irrationality. His most emotional, unconsidered moment (other than like, the suicide attempt) was probably lifting his hand to strangle Guts in the torture chamber, and that came after a year of torture and brooding over Guts, and he immediately switched to holding his hand when Guts started crying lol. yk, etc etc etc.
I honestly can’t really imagine Griffith completely losing his self-control and throwing a drama queen type fit. He’s understated.
Guts on the other hand makes a big production out of everything. Guts loses control and declares wars to get a demon’s attention. Guts screams at ghosts, Guts threatens dudes by throwing severed heads at them, Guts cracks wise when he’s fighting people whether it’s in fun tournaments or in life or death situations, Guts loses control and strangles people, Guts lets people stab him when he’s upset, Guts cries a lot, Guts screams a lot, Guts makes dramatic bitter speeches a lot, Guts, let’s be honest, throws tantrums and lashes out at whoever happens to be nearby when he’s upset. He tells kids to kill themselves, tortures apostles when he’s extra mad, fights a hundred men because he just wants to swing his sword, exaggeratedly pouts when Casca is mean to him, rushes into battle before everyone else, and is honestly really, really self-centred in general imo. (Which, to be clear, is something I love about him. Guts’ brand of self-centredness is a gr8 flaw.)
Plus like canonically his central motivation for just about everything he does is wanting attention, specifically Griffith’s attention.
So yeah I would say Guts is by far way more of a drama queen than Griffith. Griffith completely downplays everything that affects him as much as humanly possible, while Guts thrives on melodrama and big emotional responses.
(tbh I wouldn’t exactly call Guts a drama queen either lol, he’s also p chill and understated about a lot of things, but compared to Griffith he totally is.)
Consider:
vs
It’s like the Conviction arc takes these super cynical lines from Guts which, in the Black Swordsman arc, are clearly meant to show how fucked up he is and not something we’re meant to agree with, and pretties them up or makes them sound badass and legitimizes them.
I mean it’s even the same essential circumstances: Guts’ brand calls up spirits that kill innocent people. In the Black Swordsman arc Guts feels immense guilt and covers it up with cynical bravado. In the Conviction arc, Guts and Luca both blame the dead for failing to survive.
And idk if that’s a sign if we’re maybe supposed to take the themes of the Conviction arc with a grain of salt, or if Miura’s opinions just 180ed somewhere along the way.
Like do
people deserve to die for not being strong or resourceful enough to survive
against a force stronger than them or not, Miura?
In fairness this could very well be purposeful – showing like, both the negative side and the more palatable side of Guts’ survival of the fittest thing. Similar to how we get the positive side of Griffith’s utopia where the weak are protected from harm and exploitation (which come to think of it is also partly shown to us by Luca, hmm) and the negative side (it may be great but it’s the only peaceful place to live).
But also incidentally, if you’re on Guts’ side of this whole thing, yk you gotta be strong to survive and if you’re not it’s your own problem – you can’t really have an issue with Griffith filling the world with monsters lol. The world outside of Falconia right now pretty much illustrates Guts’ philosophy to a tee.
I could see this coming up again along those lines actually. Doesn’t someone actually say that now everyone has to deal with what Guts deals with, directly comparing brand-life to Fantasia? So there you go, you got Griffith’s world (Falconia) and you got Guts’ world (Fantasia), pick one.
tbh I actually love it in the Black Swordsman arc bc I don’t think it was meant to be anything particularly significant, like, plot-wise (tho lmao i wish, but it’s probably only a coincidence that it looked kind of like a fetus lol)
I think it was just supposed to be a recurring demon that represents like, the self destructiveness and futility of Guts’ revenge rampage. like a proto beast of darkness but instead of being scary and cool it’s just sad and pathetic. the twisted remains of yourself after you’ve been consumed by revenge.
which i say mainly because of that one image where guts sees it with vargas’ face. but also if you re-read its early appearances with that in mind it fits very nicely with the rest of the black swordsman arc’s themes and the way it unnerves guts more than anything else he sees, and the way it appears when he’s feeling self-doubt and fear of failure, makes a lot of sense.
also his chapter 2 nightmare where it chases him works super well with that in mind. This nightmare is later echoed by his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s a monstrous representation of donovan chasing him, which is echoed again after Guts kills Adonis and sees himself as that monster. It’s very neatly cyclical – chronologically, it goes Guts’ own personal monster followed by Guts’ fear of becoming a monster followed by Guts well on his way to becoming that monster. And I just love that the fetus thing isn’t a cool monster, it’s just pathetic, which is perfect in the Black Swordsman arc where Guts is paralleled to Vargas.
relatedly it’s really off-putting to re-read the scenes where it appears after miura retconned it into being his weird demon kid lol. Totally fucks up that interpretation. Like you can maybe read it as a reminder of Guts abandoning Casca/his repressed guilt over it, but I have no idea how that’s supposed to work with the nightmare, or the direct comparison to Vargas, etc.
Maybe it still kind of works as a symbol of Guts becoming a monster in that the fetus is is all demony because it was corrupted by Femto or w/e, but like… considering all its later appearances are helpful and protective rather than sinister, it really doesn’t work for me. It’s a big mess.
I genuinely think the authorially intended reading of Guts’ decision is that it’s complicated and there are multiple reasons Guts is choosing to take Casca to Elfhelm over revenge right now. It’s not a simple matter of Casca straightforwardly being more important to him or just choosing Casca over Griffith.
Hopefully this is the kind of answer you’re looking for, idk the subject is a little broad. I’ve kind of said this in some other posts too but I think it’d be handy to have a nice and orderly list to link to so I’m just throwing it all out in response to you.
So here are the various complicated reasons I think Guts has for going on his take Casca to Elfhelm quest:
1. He gives a fuck about Casca. He gave a fuck about her and saved her life even back when he hated her, because she was his comrade, and I’d certainly hope he cares about her now.
2. Elf cave is gone, and he’s not so shitty a person that he’s just going to abandon her in a field for ghosts to eat.
3. He is aware that revenging made him a worse person and he wants to be better. Guts at his best is someone who does not abandon his friends and family but rather stands by them in their hours of need, and he wants to be that person again.
Good Guts:
Bad Guts:
Good Guts:
Bad Guts:
Like, yk, abandoning people or staying with them is kind of Guts’ major thing throughout the story.
4. He is longing for a piece of his lost past, and Casca represents the Hawks.
Additionally suggested by how every time he pictures her from the past, after that last pic, it’s as a Hawk commander.
And statements like this:
And the general fact that he’s trying to “force” her sanity back despite forboding warnings and actually contemplating on page how awful it might be for Casca, suggesting that it’s less for Casca’s own sake and more Guts’ selfish need to regain some of his happy past.
5. Griffith looking human and sexy makes him forget his urge to kill, lessening the temptation of revenge and probably making Guts doubt his ability to follow through.
nuff said
6. Guts’ whole revenge campaign was less about revenge and more about making himself feel better and getting Griffith’s attention. Last time he saw Griffith the dude declared that he was completely free of his feelings for him and then “deserted” him in the snow lol. This has also lessened the temptation of revenge – now pursuing Griffith feels extra fruitless, because Griffith (claims he) doesn’t give a fuck.
7. He feels guilty for abandoning Griffith back in the Golden Age and refusing to abandon Casca (this time) is a way to make up for that mistake.
8. Like the Beast of Darkness says, Casca reminds him of “the wound Griffith left” because he wants to keep feeling the pain he caused him. Both because it helps simplify his conflicting and confusing feelings into rage, and because, harkening back to point 6, imho it’s a masochistic reminder that he meant enough to Griffith for him to be worth lashing out at.
I mean consider the context of some discussions of wounds in berserk. “I too want a wound… that I can say you gave me.”
Or Griffith tracing his shoulder where Guts’ sword failed to touch him, maybe:
Anyway regardless of how suggestively that statement can be taken in the greater context of Berserk and wounds, there’s definitely some truth to it because it’s what Miura gave as the reason he didn’t kill Casca:
9. He’s still planning to return his focus to Griffith eventually. He hasn’t so much given up his revenge quest as put it on hold. It’s probably easier to say “not now” to himself than to say “never.”
10. Narrative convenience keeps him on the straight and narrow. eg:
cue Guts literally passing right out ten seconds later. it’s pretty easy to decide to get on a boat instead of get revenge when you can barely stand and going for revenge would be literal suicide. and even then Guts needed Serpico to step in and tell him not to be a dumbass.
Soooo yeah I think that about covers the various reasons Guts has for putting aside his revenge quest to take Casca to Elfhelm, which add up to smthn a lot more complicated than choosing Casca over revenge. I contemplated adding another section that’s like… a giant list of Guts utterly failing to prioritize Casca or demonstrate that she’s “more precious than Griffith” lol, but I might just do that in a separate post next time I’m feeling salty.
Can I just say all of chapter 2? I was tempted to go with the end of chapter one as a character establishing moment, yk Guts looking scarier than snake man as he gleefully tortures him, but honestly chapter 2 is where it’s at when it comes to Black Swordsman Guts.
4.
Guts finally, somberly realizing he shouldn’t’ve left, telling Judeau and Casca he’ll stay with Griffith, both of them telling him to leave because he did such a thorough job of proclaiming he’s got a nobler goal and separating himself, just hammering home how it was a mistake.
3.
This is a double feature because I couldn’t decide between these two scenes and they essentially say the same thing anyway:
and
Guts haunted by the fear and temptation of becoming a monster. I love the sewer nightmare, especially coming right before Promrose Hall. The way it conflates Zodd, Donovan, and Guts after he kills Adonis. Guts’ self-loathing here informing why he reacts so badly to the overheard speech too.
And then after Rosine and a fun child-killing spree, these ghosts voicing his inner thoughts. The self-loathing, muddied by the temptation of giving in and following in Griffith’s footsteps, ironically the same choice he made after Promrose Hall. Griffith’s dream made him a monster, and Guts’ dream is doing the same – and the Black Swordsman content is absolutely Guts pursuing his own dream, to fight stronger and stronger opponents.
2.
Guts channeling all his painful feelings into rage here. I can’t really say the whole rampage through Midland lol, there are moments I like less, but definitely the start of it, the reunion in the depths, killing the torturer, one man army-ing up the stairs and out the door. It’s just so good. Exactly how Guts avoids dealing with his feelings, really awesome to watch, nice sense of protectiveness, and excellently illustrative of how devastated he is to find Griffith after a year of torture.
1.
Guts finally, finally beginning to accept that he’s found a new home, the place where he belongs, here with the Hawks and Griffith, after Griffith risked his life to save him from a monster (in a particularly meaningful contrast to his childhood). Finally beginning to move on and heal a bit. This is the moment of greatest potential for Guts and p much the pinnacle of his life and it’s so effective at putting the reader and Guts at like, a height from which to fall.
Bonus 6:
This only gets a bonus spot bc I’ve mentioned it a few times before as one of my favourite Guts moments and I don’t want to be too predictable lol, but it’s so good. This whole scene. Guts ostensibly wanting to fight Femto but more than anything wanting his attention and only being spurred on to even stand up when Femto says that.
ennnnnnnnnnnnh arguably like a city’s worth of people iirc lol. like, tens of thousands. of refugees.
it’s a bit of a stretch to say Guts sacrificed them, but essentially yeah if either he or Casca had died then all those tortured souls wouldn’t’ve been drawn out of the ether by their two brands, which is what destroyed everyone and allowed Griffith to resurrect himself into the world
Mozgus and the townspeople were trying to kill Guts and Casca during the climactic fight, not because they knew the ins and outs of how the brands worked but because they were like, blaming them for all the ghosty shit going on and trying to pacify god or whatever. Ironically they were completely on the right track, if for the wrong reasons, bc killing either of them would’ve saved everyone.
To be fair to Guts he didn’t know this. Puck kept this shit to himself.
On the other hand, his attitude when Mozgus is like, don’t you care that you’re trading thousands of lives for the life of one witch isn’t “I don’t believe you” but rather “i don’t give a shit, those people suck anyway” lmao
What’s kind of fucked up is that this is the narrative’s attitude too lol, like it 100% backs up Guts here. Luca even got her little statement at the end that
everyone who acted out of faith in a higher power died, while everyone who acted out of self-preservation managed to survive. Like the
narrative really did not give a shit about these people.
Forty Hawks? The most tragic of tragedies. Tens of thousands of refugees? Fuck em, they deserve it, they are the faceless violent masses. Nothin fucked up about that. (Even though both groups end up dying because they clung too hard to their faith in someone, so by Berserk’s own ridiculously cynical logic it serves everyone right.)
It is kind of weird tho, like I wouldn’t expect Guts to give a shit
about thousands of innocent people, but I would expect him to feel some
kind of way about his part in resurrecting Griffith. But the narrative
kind of just ignores that.
Also Skull Knight’s prophecy kind of muddies the waters a bit, because he says that man cannot divert the course of the festival or w/e, but like… if Guts had jumped off that tower and killed himself, festival over. If he was like, yeah good point, and broke Casca’s neck, festival over. Femto stuck in the astral plane. Thousands of people don’t die. So idk what that’s about. Maybe it’s meant to be ironic.
After all, the mock Eclipse is a reflection of the regular Eclipse. Guts and Casca both survived the regular Eclipse, and they’re meant to survive the mock Eclipse, because their presences there is what causes it. But Guts seems to believe that he’s defying fate by surviving, and it feels like the narrative is pushing that, even though logically it’s simply not the case.
Like, the mock Eclipse follows the actual Eclipse exactly even while we’re repeating the words “it doesn’t mean it will be exactly the same” and “maybe you’re like a fish breaching the water’s surface” over Isidro saving Casca and then Guts winning against Mozgus the first time (before he levels up with rocks). Guts is still on top of a giant hand focused on Griffith while someone else is saving Casca lmao. Guts and Casca both survive, just like they survived the first time. I have no idea what the story is going for here because everything played out perfectly to imitate the first Eclipse and resurrect Griffith.
So idk maybe the point is that Guts is a stubborn dumbass who is ironically playing into actual God’s (and Griffith’s) hands by defying Mozgus and maybe eventually we’ll revisit this?
Or maybe the conviction arc is so convoluted and weird that even Miura couldn’t keep track of what he was trying to say with it lol.
UGH i hate how entirely plausible this all is because it makes everything that’s already terrible even more tragic 😦 … and running with it being a possibility, it’d give guts a really bad association with his very thoroughly thwarted near-attempt at being purposefully affectionate towards griffith, possssibly even an acceptance of his own gayness. i know this is all just wild speculation but, jesus. ughhhhhhhhh it hurts.
oh man i kinda want to explore that now
like i always say the eclipse puts everyone’s potential character development on hold/cuts it down in its tracks, imagine if it also slammed the door shut on guts’ potential realization that he’s not straight
i mean it’s all there – the parallels to casca realizing she was in love with griffith when she stopped seeing him as a god, the realization that he fucked up because griffith was in love with him, guts taking this away from griffith’s sacrifice:
Like ending up burying a burgeoning realization about himself and his feelings fits right in here
(idt i ever posted it but i remember thinking once that guts’ post-eclipse character development would work so well if there was an element of him coming to terms with his sexuality. i think i was thinking about a hypothetical “what would change about the story of Berserk if all the subtext was intentional and going somewhere” angle lol. i bet that half baked thought is in my drafts somewhere.)
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.)
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.
I’m not gonna argue that Guts doesn’t care about her at all lol, but I do think the fact that she’s a reminder of the pain Griffith caused is a very important aspect, and is likely to come up again since Miura mentioned it as the reason he kept her alive (ie to keep Guts from moving on) in a 2017 interview.
I don’t think that’s the only reason Guts is sticking with Casca now, I think there are like, a bunch of other reasons as well. The fact that she’s a reminder of his past with the Hawks and he wants to bring her mind back to recover a piece of that idyllic past. The fact that he wants to try to move on from Griffith after Griffith pronounced himself free of him tbqh, and focusing on a new objective is a good way to attempt that. (And incidentally I think it’s purposeful that keeping her around as a reminder of the Eclipse and trying to move on thru taking her to Elfhelm are contradictory, but that doesn’t mean Guts can’t be motivated by both reasons.)
And also the fact that he does genuinely care about her. Like even if I don’t think he’s actually in love with her, and I don’t, Guts cares about his friends and comrades. He saved her even back when he hated her, when she fell off that cliff. His revenge campaign was damaging to himself in part because like… by abandoning Casca he kind of betrayed himself, because at his core he wants to help the people he cares about, he wants to be there for them. Abandoning her in a cave for 3 years is like, the exact opposite of our (chronologically) first image of him, when he was three and held his mother’s hand as she died.
So yk, another aspect is that at his best, Guts stands up and does the right thing for the people he considers friends and family, and at his worst, he fucks off and leaves them to fend for themselves. And Guts is trying to be more his best and less his worst.
Oh and ofc relatedly he’s trying to atone for leaving Griffith in the snow. He draws that parallel a lot when he decides to focus on Casca lol.
And then guts have sex wt casca and that stops. Now hes just a strong
character,never defeated, afraid only of himself bc ooh theres a scary
monster inside him teehee,like every shonen.He wants to defeat his evil
former bff with lingering sentiments (naruto?). His vulnerabilities, his
dependance on smo else opinion,his loneliness and lack of meaning of
his existence,which were rare traits in protag?disappeared. GA was how
life conditions impacted real ppl,now bersek is just a shonen wt rape
2/2
Yeaaaaah I agree with a lot of this. I’ve ranted about it before but I can always go on more about how much it bugs me that Guts’ personal trauma is basically ignored during and after the Eclipse in favour of switching to being angry about someone else’s trauma (someone who didn’t even get her own reaction to it, at least not for 20 years).
Cause yeah like ia, Guts’ trauma – and not just the csa trauma but also the more overarching abuse from Gambino as he was growing up – is so vital to his entire character in the first two arcs. It informs everything about him from his insecurities, to the way he fights, to the reason he stayed with the Hawks and the reason he left the Hawks, etc. In the Black Swordsman arc, the reason he’s so angry is because Griffith sacrificing him wasn’t just a betrayal, but a replay of that childhood trauma. The ghosts haunting him and claiming him are an echo of Gambino calling him cursed and selling him to someone else. It all fits together perfectly and it’s so good.
And it is a relatively unique backstory when it comes to badass manly man action hero protagonists. I mean to be nitpicky Berserk is a seinen, not a shonen, but the csa backstories seem to be more inspired by classic shojo, based on some of the influences Miura cites (like Kaze to Ki no Uta), and combining those elements with typical seinen action stuff, especially since imo Miura did it very thoughtfully and very well up til the end of the Golden Age, does create a unique and v interesting story.
And then during and after the Eclipse Guts’ trauma is basically dropped, and he does feel more generic to me – more typically cool and badass, much less interestingly vulnerable. Like eg, his very personal, actual fear-for-himself during the Black Swordsman arc was a really compelling element! And the only post-Eclipse instance I can think of where he was shown to be genuinely afraid for his own life and well-being, rather than afraid of his own potential to do harm or afraid for the people he’s trying to protect, is when Slan shows up in the troll cave. And because there was a sexualized threat there I do think that was a deliberate reference to Guts’ own trauma. But it was one scene over a hundred chapters ago that didn’t really have any emotional resonance (unlike, say, the early Golden Age Zodd encounter which changed everything, or the Wyald encounter which imo shed a lot of light on Guts’ dream), and was far from overt.
So like I unfortunately also get the impression that Miura has largely dropped Guts’ personal trauma as a significant factor of his character and story in favour of the far more common and boring fridged girlfriend backstory.
But! I also still have hope that that’s not the case. I feel like Guts’ post Eclipse monster hunting rampage was largely a way to avoid dealing with his complicated feelings, and I feel the same way about Guts’ fix Casca quest. Like, maybe it’s not Miura dropping Guts’ personal trauma to focus on manpain – maybe it’s Guts deliberately cultivating rage to avoid confronting his more difficult feelings like fear and loneliness and longing etc.
Avoidance is kind of his thing, after all.
This may be (is probably) wishful thinking, but it does give me hope
that if the fix Casca quest goes pear shaped (eg Casca uses the behelit,
or something), Guts’ issues – his childhood, guilt, all his mixed feelings regarding Griffith, etc – will come back front and centre. We
have all the ominous foreshadowing about the Beast of Darkness and the
armour,
and if something makes him go wild and succumb to it it would be nice if it wasn’t just like a one-off bad event but rather a cumulation of everything he’s (I hope) been spending the last 3 years trying to distract himself from.
And then at some point after that he can be pulled back from the armour and yk, actually grow as a person by confronting his issues rather than hitting stuff with a sword, now armed with the knowledge that avoiding stuff just makes them fuck you up harder when your avoidance strategies fail you.
ofc that said, even if that is the case I think Miura’s fucked up w/ pacing. It’s been 250 chapters since the Eclipse, there’s a reason I feel like this is a vain hope even if it does make perfect sense to me as an explanation lol. Plus like… some details do seem to not be pointing in that direction. Like:
Are we meant to regard his choice to take Casca to Elfhelm to be immersing himself in sorrow? Because that is absolutely not the vibe I’m getting, but the dichotemy between chase Griffith for revenge = avoidance vs stick with Casca = positive healing is so explicitly drawn here that maybe Miura’s just half-assing the positive healing to the point where it looks like avoidance lmao. Like that is my genuine fear, is that everything from chapter 130 on is actually meant to be seen as Guts dealing with his shit lol.
But idk like there are still intriguing elements that may be evocative of Guts’ deeper issues, back even to his childhood, that pop up now and then, that I can point to as evidence that they may still be actually dealt with in the future. Like the aforementioned Slan scene, the way he’s still drawn to Griffith as his “true light,” the fact that the Beast of Darkness is personified as a dog
uhhh the self-destructiveness of the armour (the way he doesn’t feel pain and it knits his broken bones together etc) as a metaphor for the way fighting is basically a form of self-harm for him… idk like none of these things are addressed, but they’re there to be picked up on and therefore will hopefully cumulate in something more interesting eventually.
I like this analysis. I agree that this potential is unfortunately most likely not going to get explored, at least not any time soon – especially the way the manga is heading right now. But who knows, I’ve been wrong about predictions before… guess we still have fanfiction though if anything.
thank you!
Yeah my hopes aren’t high but I think there’s a chance Miura might explore some aspects once we get back to Guts’ side of the narrative. After all we’re at the culmination of his journey of the last 150ish chapters, so it’s the perfect time to bring those themes home and make a statement about Guts’ relationships etc. Like, if things go wrong w/ Casca’s mind coming back (thinking of omnious foreshadowing featuring the berserk armour and behelit), will his new friendships help prevent the worst from happening? Or will Guts’ emotional distance from them have negative consequences? That kinda thing.
But yeah it could also be that we’re just supposed to take it at face value that they’re a happy found family and it won’t really be examined in more depth than that. But I have my fingers crossed at least.
I think there’s a strong argument to be made that, rather than being
depicted as burgeoning true love ruined by the Eclipse for the
sake of extra tragedy, Guts and Casca getting together is depicted as a mistake from the start.
This is really cool and all but, if Guts didn’t love Casca in the true sense of the word, why did he travel half the world to rehabilitate her?
Well canonically there are a few alternative motives suggested:
That’s the darkest one. Incidentally it’s also the reason Miura gave for not killing Casca off – because Casca keeps Guts angry and prevents him from fully moving on – so it’s not just the Hound spinning his wheels, it’s a legit factor.
There’s also making up for past mistakes:
Longing for a piece of the good old days:
Which I suggest because almost every time Guts thinks of the old Casca it’s as a Hawk commander, rather than as a lover. Plus his insistence on “forcing” Casca’s sanity back despite warnings suggests to me it’s not really selfless on Guts’ part.
And honestly I think partially it’s because:
Prior to NGriff’s dismissal Guts still planned to go after him:
Erika suggests making the cave homier and staying with Casca, so Casca will be content and won’t run off again. Guts is like, yeah that’s true, and then:
Then he goes into his “the instant I saw him, I’d forgotten my urge to kill” internal monologue, raging at himself for his lack of desire to kill Griffith (”and that can’t be!”)
He’s still planning to go after him again, but then NGriff completely refuses to even give him the time of day, mysteriously saves Casca, and fucks off, and that’s when Guts decides to stick with Casca this time.
So imo it’s also partially because “I’d forgotten my urge to kill” + NGriff “deserting” him = losing his drive for revenge. Now he’s emotionally capable of trying to move on, so he’s seizing on that because revenge was a big self-destructive mess and he totally failed in his goal of either killing Femto or getting his attention, and Godo + Rickert etc all kept hammering it into his head that he’s better off taking care of the last remnant of the Hawks.
And bc Griffith’s apparently successfully moved on from him, so he wants to move on from Griffith and he’s focusing on Casca to do so.
I mean if you ship Guts and Casca and think love is Guts’ strongest motivator then go for it, it’s also one potential explanation, and maybe it’ll end up unambiguously confirmed as true love, but I honestly don’t get the impression that Guts is in love with her at any point myself. I think Guts’ actions make perfect sense even if romantic love isn’t a genuine factor, and some of his actions make very little sense if he’s truly in love with her (like leaving her in a cave for two years and then needing to debate with himself before he actually decides to take a time out from revenge and rescue her in the conviction arc.)
Like I think he’d make the same choice to go to Elfhelm if his relationship with her had remained platonic the whole time, or if it was Judeau who survived but lost his sanity, etc.
On the more headcanony side I think that like, Guts would be possessive but he wouldn’t really think of it as possessiveness – it’d feel like a natural extention of their v exclusive, v intense relationship. Griffith would be possessive in turn ofc.
And it wouldn’t manifest in like, being jealous of Charlotte if Griffith still plans to marry her for power. I figure they’d talk about that and Guts would understand it’s business lol, he wouldn’t be threatened by Charlotte. But at the same time he would demand Griffith’s attention and time. Maybe not literally demand lol, but he’s really emotionally needy lbr and I think he’d get sulky if he didn’t get enough time with Griffith bc he’s busy being a king or w/e. We see that in canon even, when he tries to visit him after Zodd but can’t bc of the nobles.
But then like in canon Griffith would reassure him and go out of his way to give him that time and attention because well, he’s also needy and they’re both obsessed with each other and neither wants to spend time apart.
So things like Griffith putting off some king stuff to laze around in bed with Guts would be perfect for Guts. Or things like having sex on the throne at three am when the room’s empty lol, or leaving tea with Charlotte early because the Raider Captain has something important to “discuss” with him. Guts would want to make his claim on Griffith, and have Griffith show that he’s the most important.
But again like, he wouldn’t express that, and Griffith (unless something drastic has gone down) wouldn’t admit to himself that Guts is the most important aspect of his life. But it would still show through in little moments and Guts would notice them (yk assuming no Promrose Hall speech colouring his perception etc etc).
Sexually you got leaving marks under clothes, fucking him hard enough that he still feels it the next day, teasing and drawing it out as a way of focusing Griffith’s attention wholly on him. Like, considering how needy they both are when it comes to wanting the others’ attention and regard and desire, sex could get ridiculously intense lol. We’ve talked about this before a bit but yk it holds true. They just both want to be wanted by the other so badly lol.
On the more meta-y side, I’d argue that their relationship comes with a side of possessiveness from both – again, as a kind of natural byproduct of the singular intensity of it. They are each others’ only one, and they both want to be each others’ only one. I don’t think there’s a lot of like, canon elements that demonstrate Guts being possessive to the same explicit extent of eg Griffith’s “if I can’t have him, I don’t care,” but imo it’s there under the surface.
Guts wants to make Griffith look at him. At first that’s the whole quest for a dream thing, but after the Eclipse it’s his revenge quest. He wants to kill him because, more than anything else, he wants acknowledgement that he matters to him.
This hold on Griffith is exactly what Guts wanted, and still wants.
It doesn’t manifest as jealousy, like we see him trying to set Griffith and Casca up for a while, but it’s more like, yk, that need for attention. He’s possessive of Griffith’s priorities. The reason I think he’s ok with setting Griffith and Casca up is because lover isn’t a category he can see himself fitting into, and moreover, true friend and equal trumps lover anyway as far as he’s concerned. His competition is Griffith’s dream, not Griffith’s other relationships.
I mean you can split hairs on the definition of possessiveness and whether Guts’ feelings count if it’s less jealousy and more wanting to be the most important person to Griffith, but yk I think it’s an element.
My ideal ending is Femto dying in worst way possible or getting trapped in some endless loop of suffering and misery. “If Guts does happily kill NGriff without hesitation, that’ll be a v dark ending that indicates he’s lost his humanity, imo.” I like how some fans keep idealizing Guts like some sort of a righteous shounen hero… Dude is literally a savage. Look at how he treats his enemies or the apostles who have done way less shit in compare with Griffith.
I’m responding mainly to this part so I’m not c/ping the other messages (also i think your last message got cut off btw) but like, yeah Guts is a very dark character, but again that’s framed as a bad thing. We’re supposed to think he’s a huge dick during the Black Swordsman arc, eg. We’re meant to see his darkness as a sign that he’s close to becoming exactly the same as, or even worse than, the monsters he fights. He sexually assaulted Casca in part to feel “closer to” Griffith lol.
Like, my favourite Guts is when he’s at his most dark, but that would suck if the story was totally unselfaware and we were meant to cheer him on. In the first chapter when he tortures the snake dude, it’s a reversal of expectation, because we’re meant to find Guts frightening and to nearly pity the monster in that moment. Similarly when he tortures the Count in front of his daughter – except that is also much clearer in showing that Guts is pretty pathetic at that point, eg:
I think Miura kind of lost that sense of patheticness (another good example is the blatant comparisons to Vargas) after the Eclipse, which is a shame imo. But while his dark side gets a bit cooler (the Beast of Darkness, the armour), it’s still like… unambiguously negative. We’re not supposed to root for the part of him that wants to kill his friends.
Guts’ growth as a character is associated with making friends and not seeking revenge, Guts’ monstrousness is associated with going on a revenge rampage.
Anyway basically I think Berserk is more complex than a simple good vs evil revenge story. I think it’s very likely that Guts is going to backslide into revenge mode, losing himself to the armour and going after Griffith after some bad thing happens in Elfhelm, that’s like my major prediction for the future lol, but I don’t think it’s going to end with Guts self-assuredly “punishing” Griffith and living happily ever after.
Oh also there’s this:
Part of his decision to save Casca instead of keep seeking revenge is realizing he doesn’t really deserve revenge.
Like, I argue his whole Black Swordsman campaign was way less “righteously avenge the hawks and casca” and way more “I am upset so I am going to kill every monster I can find until I reach Griffith because swinging my sword makes me feel better.” And it’s an attitude he needs to grow out of.
Anyway aside from all that if anyone gets revenge and kills Griffith it should be Casca imo.
Like, Guts feeling possessive of
Griffith as a response to Casca telling him that Griffith was
emotionally dependent on him? yk the knowledge that Griffith ended up
in a torture chamber because of him, whether he’s ready to acknowledge
that or not, basically making him feel like he’s allowed to express that
possessiveness bc Griffith has ott feelings for him back? Because if so I could def see that.
We see Guts musing on this fact in the tunnels on the way to Griffith too. I definitely think it’s informing a lot of his behaviour here, and in the lead-up to the Eclipse, maybe not consciously since he keeps trying to bury that realization (because guilt), but definitely subconsciously.
I also think it’s the main source of the rage that fuels his rampage through Midland, killing hundreds of soldiers and a monster. It’s a way of ignoring his guilt by turning the feeling outward onto acceptable targets. You could maybe also add that it’s why he snaps at Casca – he already has the urge to lash out at something, and a minute later the torturer shows up and then he’s able to fully express his feelings lol.
Also plz feel free to explain further if I missed something, I want to know your thoughts and idk if I interpreted what you mean right.
I was hoping you would make another post to respond to that ahaha.
Well what I actually meant is for Guts to kill Femto. Because Neo Griffith is apparently closer to a temporal illusionary image that appears in this world, just like.. Well, Neo. To actually kill him you should be able to go beyond the matrix, or as it was described in this case, go “outside” the story of the physical world. So even if NGriff is killed (which I doubt he would even mind) he would be still
existing as Femto in
the astral dimension. In order to bring the story to its ultimate
conclusion, Guts would prpbably need to face Femto in his true form. I
just can’t wait to see what happens from that point on… I hope Guts is
able to realize his revenge.
I think this makes sense as a theory but we don’t really have enough information right now about how the metaphysical world works in Berserk to confidently say what would happen if NeoGriffith was killed.
Like eg I’ve seen a lot of people who think that NGriff can change into Femto and that’s what he did when he killed Ganeshka, but imo we only saw him as Femto then because that’s how Ganeshka saw him, because he could see his “true” or “spiritual” or whatever form, because they were both ascended beings. But yk it’s all up in the air still.
I feel like Guts vs Femto on the astral plane would work in a different story with a greater focus on action, but Berserk is driven by complex emotions and relationships moreso than straightforward action so I feel v confident that the climax between them is going to have a strong emotional component. NeoGriffith has his inconveniently unfrozen heart, while Guts has his inconvenient mixed feelings, and I think both of those aspects are going to inform the climax.
I kinda figure that the big action sequence part of the climax is going to be Guts vs Zodd actually. I’d be surprised if we saw any actual physical fighting between Guts and Griffith/Femto/NeoGriffith, at least beyond a v emotionally-driven third duel kinda thing, along the lines of the second duel where the victor is decided by who’s less emotionally compromised.
We yet have to see keeping his own promise to himself:
I think that is fulfilling his promise to himself. I always saw that statement of Guts’ as ominous, especially considering the pointed shot of the behelit in the full thing.
He is what he is, and what he is is a dude getting a little too monstrous for comfort. His inner beast is part of who he is, and Guts reasserting his revenge quest “I will make my way to him” strengthens it.
very similar to this from the black swordsman arc:
“You and I got nothin in common” is blatant denial, immediately undercut by Guts continuing on his monstrous revenge quest. He’ll do it with his own flesh and blood, but that doesn’t actually make him much different than the revenge-obsessed ghosts trying to possess him.
does guts ever refer to anyone in the current rpg group as a friend
i re-read my reply to that ask and it kind of struck me that guts distancing himself from them emotionally because he’s afraid of losing them/killing them could be similar to griffith distancing himself from the hawks. promrose hall speech.
i mean this is based on 2 extrapolations lol (guts distances himself from current group, griffith distanced himself bc he leads them to their deaths a lot) so it’s tenuous and i wouldn’t be surprised if i was wrong and we do see guts calling them his friends and i’ve just forgotten
or maybe ‘companions’ which i know he calls them is close enough to count anyway
but i do wonder if he kind of kept his raised standards for friendship after hearing that speech lol, and eventually for v similar reasons
yeah, big mood. I’ve kind of got some mixed feelings because I hate Isidro and I don’t want him to have more importance lol, and I dislike parenthood narratives in general, but it’s still so true that Guts could’ve had much more meaningful relationships with everyone in the rpg group, and it’s kind of glaring to me that he doesn’t.
idk I keep wondering if it’s just because I’m biased towards the golden age lol, if I’m willfully downplaying significant moments between Guts and his new group, or if the interesting aspects are there but subtle and I’m just failing to appreciate it, but idk I mean I’ve read the latter stuff twice or more recently and Guts’ new relationships leave me cold. imo the most interesting relationships in Guts’ narrative are between Farnese and Casca, Farnese and Serpico, and Schierke and Farnese. The one relationship Guts has to anyone that I feel any emotion about is Guts and Puck’s friendship, and that’s been almost dropped completely lol.
Like, I feel more genuine warmth and love between Guts and various random background raiders than Guts and anyone in the rpg group lol.
And I think it does actually make sense for that to be the case from a character standpoint – Guts deliberately keeping them at a distance because he’s been burned before when he lost people he cares about, because he doesn’t trust himself not to turn on them, because he still intends to drop them eventually and return to his revenge quest, etc – but if it is purposeful then I wish I could be shown that from Guts’ perspective. And not just through the Beast taunting him while he’s unconscious (eg ”make them precious to you, it’s all the more to lose”).
I want more moments of self-reflection and telling emotion from Guts, basically. Like, I would’ve loved to see, say, Guts starting to push Isidro too hard during swordfight training and then realizing what he’s doing with a bit of horror and ending it early. Or maybe Guts himself drawing a comparison between Farnese wanting to be useful and Casca wanting to be Griffith’s sword and being a little perturbed. Or in a positive direction, maybe include a scene on the boat where Guts thanks Serpico for stopping him from challenging Zodd with some similar language to the old staircase conversation. Or a million other possible examples of showing what Guts’ current relationships mean to him that I just feel we don’t really get.
yk what’s great about berserk
it’s not just the story of two dudes obsessed with each other and trying to deal w/ that obsession in various stupid ways
it’s the story about a dude whose every plot relevant decision is based on how he thinks another dude feels about him
joining the hawks? dedicating his sword to him and feeling at home? deciding to leave the hawks? deciding to stay again but too late? war declaration followed by a three year monster murder spree? deciding to try really hard to get over his obsession and take casca to elfhelm?
like, when it comes right down to it, griffith’s feelings are the really important ones. they’re the feelings that drive the plot, because guts’ every fucking decision is made based on what he thinks those feelings are. that’s why the golden age revolved around them, and that’s why the current big mystery is “how does neogriffith really feel?”
from back in the black swordsman arc:
to the current decision he’s still on:
and that’s another reason I think NGriff’s beating heart is going to become very relevant to Guts eventually. it’s what berserk is about.
like the ~academic~ way of putting this is that
Berserk is the story of a man’s desire for interpersonal connection due to his abusive childhood, but that keeps coming back to Griffith. He’s the connection Guts wants and later doesn’t want to want. The true light every other light is measured up to.
So yk Berserk is a story about a dude whose motivation is almost solely based around another guy’s apparent feelings or lack thereof for him.
yeah i feel this tbh. I haven’t watched the anime in its entirety for years but just from checking out a few scenes and episodes here and there i def get this impression, and I think it’s largely because of the character design/animation? like yeah cutting his rape trauma prob doesn’t help but I’m aware of that so it doesn’t affect my take on the character, but i’m still way less fond of anime guts than manga guts.
idk he just comes across as angrier, even when he has no real reason to be during the golden age, yk the happiest time of his life. his default expressions strike me as kind of dour and he doesn’t have that warmth i get in the manga ime.
like just to illustrate this w/ a minor example i picked at random (i was actually gonna look at the rooftop scene from the scene after but i didn’t actually mind the vibe guts gave off there):
doesn’t really have the same vibe, yk?
and i mean yeah you can cherry pick examples, like i mentioned there are scenes in the anime that i think they depicted pretty well, but this does seem to be a recurring problem i have w/ guts in particular, as far as I’ve seen.
i’ve pointed this one out b4 but
idk maybe it’s the angle of the eyebrows more than anything lol. he always just looks low key pissed off.
ia, I think Guts and Serpico have a lot of potential for an interesting relationship dynamic, parallels, contrasts, both wrt their relationships and each other as individuals. Yk in the conviction arc serpico and farnese had some griffguts vibes (well everyone in the conviction arc did lol), they both have abusive childhoods that involved taking care of a parent and eventually killing them, they’re actually both relatively chill people but guts has a force of personality and a drive that serpico doesn’t have, idk there’s a lot of interesting comparisons to make imo.
tbh their relationship feels way shallower than it could, but honestly I feel the same way about most aspects of guts’ narrative from the millenium falcon arc on. so I’d love to see more development, but I’m not like counting on it lol.
(maybe it’s purposefully shallow to show that Guts isn’t really fully connecting with anyone in his new group. like guts and serpico dueled but… guts doesn’t really give a fuck. serpico saved guts from zodd but guts doesn’t really reflect on that or care. anything interesting between them is from serpico’s point of view, eg reflecting on how being around guts has changed him. guts just gets his bland little ‘hey thanks for the help you guys’ moment in elfhelm and that’s about it.
i’d like to think that’s a purposeful contrast to guts’ actual meaningful relationships of the golden age lol, buuuuuuut yeah right lol, that’s wishful thinking. miura’s just halfassing it.
it’s like guts going to get farnese back from her family. it’s nice, it makes me happy that guts values farnese, but what does that mean for guts? how does his relationship with farnese, or serpico, or schierke, or isidro, etc, make him feel? he likes them, he wants to protect them, but how do they fit in to his complex inner life? i can come up with a million ways griffith and the hawks reflected and refracted guts’ childhood for instance, but not the rpg group.
maybe the difference is that guts is now fulfilling gambino/griffith’s role. he’s switched from needer of attention to distant giver of attention. there are parallels there in theory, yk farnese’s admiration, teaching isidro to fight, casca/shizu similarities potentially, serpico comparing guts to fire/blazing inferno that is griffith, blah blah blah. but they also… don’t seem to emotionally affect guts much. like damn imagine if guts himself was making a comparison between himself and gambino and fearing his own potential to be a shitty abusive life ruiner. instead that all gets channeled into the beast of darkness stuff, easily blamed on a magic suit of armour, without a hint of awareness on guts’ part of the potential parallels there.
i’d like your thoughts on this please! i’d forgotten about this singular instance of guts clawing at his skin in the black swordsman arc. i have my own ideas, but i don’t have time to thoroughly analyze them right now with all the packing and moving—but basically—(and tumblr somehow didn’t save my previous wall of text about this) i’m assuming, that this is guts either/or/a bit of both;
1. guts dealing with his internalized grieving and rage, coupled with sleep deprivation, and even more sleep deprivation and rage driven by survivors guilt. not to mention all the tough guy posturing and denial of his true nature, he needs to stay angry. he wants to keep that anger burning at 1000% because anything less, i don’t think he’d be able to justify. his guilt is overwhelming. griffith does this for much the same reasons imo (compounded by his other awful reasons of course) … guilt over the fallen, while he/they remain/s “clean”/alive. lots of other parallels and reasons i’m sure too. maybe the physical pain feels better than the mental anguish, which guts clearly isn’t able to parse yet.
2. is it this particular scar though? the ellipses are definitely suggesting that looking at that scar triggers something within him. does anyone know what scar this is from, in particular? or could it just be a memory of seeing griffith’s own self-harm scars, giving him this idea even? miura might not have even written griffith’s self mutilation into the story yet though, who knows. maybe this is his way of showing characters dealing with trauma and ptsd in terrible ways.
if i weren’t in the middle of moving i’d look into it myself, but alas, i’m out of time. this scene is very intriguing, though. and please take my half baked analyses with a grain of salt, i often miss very basic stuff because i tend to hyper-focus on details rather than broad ideas … but i didn’t want to forget this.
Totally agree with #1. I think it’s partly guilt over the Eclipse (or whatever Miura was imagining this far back, but as early as Guts blatantly comparing himself to Vargas we know he lost loved ones), but also guilt over the people he gets killed just existing around them while ghosts show up to fuck with him every night lol, which we see in the 2nd chapter when he tells himself he doesn’t care what happens to the people he travels with, then they die and he’s sad.
Yk, he tells himself other people don’t matter because they’re weak (”If someone can’t live their life the way they please… they might as well die.”) but the self-harm is a v quick way of showing the audience that Guts doesn’t actually believe that, and he kinda hates himself for trying to convince himself of it.
Just like Griffith saying “I don’t feel responsible for my comrades who’ve lost their lives under my command. I guess… because they chose to fight. It’s just the way I am.” while he’s simultaneously tearing his arms open lol.
I think #2 is really interesting and something I never noticed actually. ihni where Guts got that scar, and since Miura never drew Griffith with si scars on his arm I doubt it’s actually a memory of Griffith, tho that concept is amazing and I’m about to just adopt it as headcanon regardless.
One thing that just occurred to me wrt that scar is that Guts looking at it before self harming over it ties Guts’ self harm to, yk, swinging his sword at giant monsters and groups of a hundred men. Miura maybe suggesting it’s all variations of self-harm? And foreshadowing Guts’ particular style of fighting, ie leap into danger, get his ass kicked, and maneuver himself close enough to exploit a big monster’s weakness.
Guts, and Griffith, and Judeau, and Pippin, and Corkus:
Because it’s true lol, this is genuinely a conflict they could’ve theoretically fixed by talking it out.
Tho I do think the story really effectively shows us why neither of them are going to talk it out, so it doesn’t feel like… stupidly frustrating the way dumb miscommunication does in fiction. It’s rooted deeply in character – Griffith can’t explain why he needs Guts to stay bc he doesn’t really know, Guts can’t explain why he wants to leave because that defeats the whole purpose, ie:
Like, I’m rearranging my entire life to be your friend based on some weirdly specific criteria you have that I happened to overhear, criteria which explicitly precludes basing your life around another person, so it’s kind of awkward to fully explain.
So even if they did try to talk I could easily see it going nowhere because neither is quite able to explain themselves without additional motivation/understanding/etc. But yk, if they had that motivation and an opportunity to hash it out I could also see them figuring their stuff out, and then their lives would’ve been a lot happier lol.
Like if Casca had resorted to the old “lock them in a room together” sitcom plot lmao.
lmao i think about this all the time. also audience leniency and sympathy towards guts moral failings is amplified due to him being the narrative point of view and protagonist for the majority of chapters, and in comparison to starkly standard evil characters like apostles, femto, etc he SEEMS to be a good guy, even though realistically he isn’t. the grey morality of berserk extends to literally everyone even guts. it’s like really no coincidence that miura draws guts visually similar to
femto and the apostles
often lol. i mean i can’t insert examples or whatever bc this is just a
rambling reply but i’m sure you’ve seen the comparison posts of guts in
berserker armour or just in battle to femto. it’s like….. so not subtle
that he’s an asshole and not presented as a shining example of perfect
morality yet bc the fandom can’t read and he’s their macho straight guy
testosterone hero he gets a pass for doing bad stuff lol
yeah absolutely lol, like most of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he gets pretty damn indistinguishable from demons/monsters even without a magical transformation. Like yeah definitely visually, but tbh it’s also directly stated a lot lol. Like ngl this is actually one of my fave (well, non griffguts) lines:
And then once we’re in NeoGriffith’s narrative and meeting the cool apostles, a lot of them seem way better than Guts by any moral standard lol. Grunebeld, Zodd, Irvine.
Like the dock fight really directly compares Guts and Zodd and both of them balancing humanity/reason and bloodlust.
Idk I love this aspect of Berserk basically lol, I’m all about dark monstery protags. And it’s dumb that so many people want to see Guts as an admirable beacon of virtue because that’s like the opposite of the point.
I mean I genuinely do think (human, obviously) Griffith is by far a more “moral” person than Guts by most standards lol, which ironically is partly why he ended up succumbing to his inner darkness – pushing past your own moral limits is what makes it grow.
Guts doesn’t push past his own moral limits very often because his moral limits are fewer and far between than Griffith’s, while Griffith pushes past his moral limits p much every time he goes into battle.
It’s a really really fun irony to me.
Swords/dreams as poor substitutes for human connection in Berserk.
Your writing is so good! I love you brought up Guts tenderness and helping attitude with holding Shizu’s hand. I wonder how much different Gut’s life would be if she lived? He probably would be a Merc still but would he have the same characteristics that attracted Griffith to him?
thank you so much ❤ and yeah I find that moment so touching ngl, it’s such an interesting character establishing moment for Guts, after the Black Swordsman arc especially.
Good question tbh. We know at least some of Gambino’s abusiveness is rooted in blaming Guts for Shizu’s death (he says it’s why he sold him to Donovan), and it also contributed to the rest of the band considering him cursed. Plus yk just having a mother around, assuming Shizu would’ve been an alright mom, and I’m fine with defaulting to assuming parents aren’t going to suck, would probably be a good influence on Guts. So Guts’ issues with feeling like an ousider would be way lessened, probably.
He’d live a much happier life if Shizu never died imo. More love in his life, Gambino as a distant but maybe not actively horrible father figure. I imagine Guts would’ve started learning the sword at a more reasonable age under these circumstances, being mostly raised by Shizu until he’s actually old enough to fight. No oversized sword in this AU.
Also I think his rape trauma is largely responsible for his run directly into danger by himself and then claw his way back out style of fighting. I think it’s how he deals with a deep seated fear that started there (compounded w/ Gambino trying to kill him later too) and that hits him again every time he faces an opponent and makes him want to lash out to a somewhat irrational extent (tho he wouldn’t be conscious of it when it comes to typical human soldiers imo. monsters bring it out more). Hence things from pre-emptively charging the ram knights as a one-man army to insisting on taking wyald one on one.
So yeah without that trauma I think he would be much chiller on the battlefield. He wouldn’t be as strong as he is, or as driven, or as singular, and he might not’ve caught Griffith’s eye at all. Though I like to think there still would’ve been that spark between them. But they would lose that two lonely dudes finding their loneliness eased around each other vibe. Also Guts would probably not be as desperate for attention, though he might still be a little, since lbr Gambino wouldn’t be a doting parent under any circumstances.
I mean okay I guess I gotta admit that 99% of Guts’ character stems from his childhood and Gambino’s treatment of him, so if that changed, anything and everything could be different, and his relationship with Griffith especially is informed by his shitty childhood imo.
So even if Gambino and Shizu both died b4 he was 15 and he ended up with the Hawks anyway, I feel like his relationship with Griffith just wouldn’t have that intensity. He wouldn’t feel driven to be his equal and have him look at him, Griffith saying he wants him wouldn’t affect him much, Griffith saving him from Zodd wouldn’t have the same impact, same w/ Guts finding a new family with the Hawks, etc etc.
(Maybe this would be good actually lol. I could see this version of Guts telling Griffith what he needed to hear in Tombstone of Flame, eg. And he wouldn’t leave the Hawks even if he did overhear the Promrose speech. He’d probably be more in a position to recognize that Griffith isn’t so much admirable as fucked up. And he’d be more likely to actually apply Casca’s story about him to what he thinks he knows about Griffith and reach a greater understanding of him, when not blinded by a desperate need to be loved.)
you're the only one 