this is a real mood, and I’m ngl one of the bigger reasons I want Casca to use the behelit is because I feel like it’s the best way of totally destroying any possibility of them eventually getting together, while giving Casca an actually interesting role in the story.
I mean ofc my major fear is that whatever goes wrong (and something will, of that I have no doubt) won’t be enough to completely kill the ship and I’ll be stuck dreading it for the rest of Berserk.
And my other major fear is that g*tsca will be dead in the water as a potential future thing but Guts will end up 100% motivated by whatever happens to her/whatever she does/her trauma/etc, with his complicated feelings towards Griffith dropped. But I don’t think that’sall that likely.
But! I think there’s plenty of reason to maintain hope lol. Like in the context of Berserk a happy ending is probably not gonna be a return of the jedi style elfhelm party where guts and casca make out. A happy ending could be Guts dying with his humanity intact lol. It could be Guts’ whole life being a garbage fire, separated from Casca and the rest of his friends, but having a moment of emotional connection with Griffith and choosing not to kill him, thus saving his soul from hell or whatever. Or the next gen children being able to grow up in a slightly better world regardless of what happens to the adults.
Like I’m pretty sure any ending that isn’t “everyone dies and Guts goes to hell” counts as not grim.
Plus that’s from an interview back when he was still in the middle of the conviction arc
–Is it even possible that we’ll see a happy ending?
Miura: I’d say it’s possible. I used to have the
final moves planned out, but lately I’ve been thinking I’d rather figure
them out when I come to it, so now it’s hard to say what could happen.
Being the sort of person I am, though, I actually don’t think I could
let such a long grim story end with a grim ending — like, say, having
him suddenly die. I don’t really like that kind of entertainment. I’ll
leave it to my subconscious.
and it sounds pretty up in the air anyway. I feel like whatever we’ll get will lean more towards bittersweet than purely happy, especially since his example of a grim ending is “suddenly guts dies” lol. There’s plenty of room there, and Berserk hasn’t been grim for ages anyway.
Plus I think Guts and Farnese getting together at least is pretty unlikely after being overtly compared to Casca and her feelings for Griffith several times, and Guts has never expressed interest in her so it would come out of left field imo (not that that stops het ships, but yk, gives me hope).
Aaaaand lastly the vibe I get from Miura when it comes to romance is that he’s not interested in it and just gives all his female characters one-sided crushes because he doesn’t know what else to do with them lmao, so while I could definitely see a bunch of boring side pairings getting together at the last minute/children making significant eyes at each other so you know they’ll get married when they grow up, I doubt we’re gonna get anything like Guts and Casca resuming their relationship for the last quarter or so of the manga. If we do get more g*tsca content I feel like it’ll come in the form of a sad kiss before one of them dies or something.
Guts’ slow realization that
he had Griffith on a completely unrealistic pedestal and
destroyed him because of his belief that Griffith is distant and untouchable and above him is perfectly mirrored, foreshadowed, and summed up by this statement of Casca’s:
Except yk Guts never gets that moment of realization that his feelings have a sexual component.
And it’s just so easy to read this as a statement on that lol, on how if Guts did have that realization maybe the fact that Griffith isn’t a god would’ve followed. Or if he’d had another few minutes between this
and the Eclipse.
Like I’m js you equate removing Griffith from his pedestal and seeing him as a fallible human to recognizing your buried attraction to him w/ one character, I’m obviously going to follow that thread through to the other character and his paralleled feelings towards Griffith.
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:
lol this just sums up the guts-griffith-casca love triangle so perfectly.
Like… it sets up both the way Guts and Griffith use Casca as an intermediary for physical (and emotional) intimacy with each other, making her life a living hell, and the way Casca’s whole existence revolves around her gender in contrast to the men surrounding her, and ties those two things together.
Plus, with Guts’ nightmare and subsequent relief that it’s a woman rather than a man with him, it adds trauma to the mix. It ties everything together.
And man it is thematically neat as fuck.
Like what I’m saying is that if you choose to believe this is purposeful, then what the Golden Age is about is two dudes who are both attracted to each other and can’t act on it thanks to internalized (trauma)*** and externalized (heteronormativity) homophobia, and this fucks up both the dudes in question, and the woman/en (? Charlotte isn’t shown to suffer from this, but I imagine being in a one-sided relationship will eventually take its toll on her) they end up turning to instead out of that internalized and externalized obligation.
Casca’s story is almost entirely about dealing with misogyny, and this makes heteronormativity a part of that. It’s not just a woman’s duty to warm a man – another man can’t. Men can’t be physically intimate with each other, only with women, and more, they have to be physically intimate with women to attain like, an artificial sense of self-actualization – in Berserk, their dreams. And this harms both the men in their enforced isolation from each other and the women in their enforced intimacy with men.
Like, Guts even references Casca warming him here after they have sex, again, tying physical intimacy with her to his trauma.
And while Charlotte is Griffith’s means to achieving his dream, Casca is Guts’ – because attaining Casca’s affection, being “good” for her, means he’s more like Griffith, and closer to his goal of being Griffith’s equal.
I mean Guts leaving Griffith because they couldn’t share their feelings with each other, and Griffith sleeping with Charlotte as a means of denial (“take all those sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire”) and then Guts sleeping with Casca as a means of denial (”don’t think about those things. Right now all you need is to feel alive”) both lead directly to Griffith choosing to destroy his feelings so he can live solely for his dream. Draw your own conclusions about how this culminates in the most destructive display of heterosexuality in the story.
Once the nature of Guts’ dream switches from abandoning Griffith to pursuing him in rage things get murkier on Guts’ side, but this reading still works if you consider that Guts’ problem isn’t exactly his lingering, twisted feelings for Griffith, but his refusal to actually examine and untangle them, with revenge as just another distraction.
And to be perfectly crystal clear I’m not saying this is purposeful, or that even if it somehow is purposeful Miura doesn’t still go about it as offensively as possible. Like, by this reading internalized homophobia is essentially positioned as a result of evil gay pedophiles, to a much greater extent than any vague reference to societal norms. Both these dudes succumb to inner darknesses and assault a woman explicitly because of their feelings for the other dude. I’m not giving him a round of applause here lmao. It’s probably actually less offensive if it’s all accidental.
And lbr it’s probably a side-effect of writing a) a female character whose life revolves around misogyny, b) a homoerotic relationship between 2 dudes and c) a half-assed het subplot between one of those dudes and the aforementioned woman
But like still, it just fits together so freaking well. It’s ridiculous how neat this reading is during the Golden Age.
***to be clear i’m not saying internalized homophobia is always a result of trauma lol, I’m saying that’s how the story does it.
lol despite this being a gr8 essay prompt I’m just going to brainstorm and list a bunch of stuff.
parallels:
larger-than-life figures often compared to storybook characters.
self-harming
while denying feeling responsible about people’s deaths. (Guts does
this a couple times in the Black Swordsman arc lol)
obsessions/dreams (castle vs revenge/becoming griffith’s equal/killing a bunch of stuff)
in
both cases dreams are defense mechanisms/escapes from the pain of the
world. “what do you fear in this place?” *points at castle* vs “when I’m
swinging this sword I don’t have to think about anything.”
personified inner darknesses (maybe you can become a real monster, like your friend)
guts deserting griffith vs neogriffith deserting guts, complete with maudlin comparison from guts
guts picking up the behelit in the black swordsman arc
farnese’s feelings for guts vs casca’s feelings for griffith
guts
similarly gathering followers with the phrase, “do what you want,”
maybe even things like griffith’s “blazing inferno” vs say serpico
musing on being affected by guts’ heat.
ok it’s a stretch but possibly both of them currently doing their damndest to forget the other?
denying feelings of guilt by rambling about their dreams in front of
Casca while dripping blood as Casca screams at them to stop hurting
themselves.
nightmares/visions of being children screaming apologies to corpses? i mean you could sum this up with “guilt issues” I guess lol:
ooh I’d argue the way both their dreams are based in childhood desires, a la:
this
this
(re: dude’s son who died in battle)
this
this
this
Contrasts:
Well there’s the surrendering to fate vs defying fate thing. Griffith embracing destiny by making the sacrifice. Relatedly ofc, defying God vs becoming the messiah.
I
have a post here that kind of boils down to saying that Griffith’s
narrative is about succumbing to evil in pursuit of the good, while
Guts’ narrative is about balancing the good and evil within himself. In a
way you could maybe say that Griffith is about harsh contrasts while
Guts is about shades of grey.
Guts allowing Casca to comfort him vs Griffith shutting her out.
Potentially the way Guts deliberately attempts to “let go” of his obsession with Griffith vs Griffith choosing his obsession,if
Guts’ revenge quest is meant to parallel Griffith’s kingdom. imo the
waters get muddy thanks to Guts’ dream sabotaging his relationship with
Griffith in the Golden Age vs Guts dream being the remnants of his
relationship with Griffith and sabotaging his “relationship” with Casca
post-Eclipse. Like, you could at the same time argue it’s a parallel in that they both try to let go of their obsession with the other by fixating on a goal (kingdom/fix casca). I mean the former is more likely, but fuck it I prefer the latter lol. (Hey Guts didn’t get the ominous armour of inner darkness until choosing Casca and since then his warnings about losing himself to it have gone hand in hand with warnings about Casca’s wishes not being Guts’ wishes. So in a way sticking with Casca is actually subtly tied to his inner darkness even if it is telling him to chase down Griffith. Hey you never know.)
Their Golden Age narratives parallel each other but in opposite directions which makes for a contrast: Griffith shifts from his dream as the most important thing to his relationship with Guts as the most important thing, while Guts shifts from his relationship with Griffith as the most important thing to his dream as the most important thing.
I guess there’s the obvious black vs white colour scheme thing lol. Which goes hand in hand with Griffith’s image as a knight in shining armour vs Guts’ scary black swordsman image. Tho I think it’s an oversimplification to say that eg NeoGriffith is evil with a good image and Guts is the opposite, which I’ve seen a lot lol.
Guts as a human struggling with his inner monster, NeoGriffith as a monster struggling with his inner human?
both struggle with loneliness and isolation but Griffith is social and Guts is a loner.
strategy vs… instinct? not quite the right word, but yk Griffith’s way of fighting is more intellectual and strategic and while Guts utilizes strategy a lot it’s more subconscious – like when he caught Silat’s chakrams because he didn’t overthink their trajectories.
Hmm I’m probably missing some obvious ones ngl, but I have to stop at some point and I feel like I’ve started scraping the bottom of the barrel lol.
I got this pipe dream of Casca using the behelit, being the one to kill NGriff, then ending up an immortal mercenary a la Zodd. (Hey, if the rumours are true about her being named after this book it might be plausible.) It would be a sad happy ending for her – alone, a monster, but like, finally her own sword.
And Casca riding off into the sunset with Farnese as a genuine happy ending is my other pipe dream, so Farnese is another character I’d prefer not to die.
I suppose I’d like Rickert to live too. And I can’t immediately think of a fitting way for Serpico to die, and I like him, so I’ll err on the side of wanting him to survive also.
I’d probably want Puck to live, though I could maybe see killing him off for a huge “shit just got real” moment since he’s the second longest running character in the manga and p much represents positivity lol. But I doubt it.
I’d want Charlotte to outlive NGriff and take over ruling Falconia. With Anna.
I think that’s about it, everyone else I either couldn’t care less if they live or die, or I actively want them to die lol.
On that note, Guts is the character who I probably most want to die. After his whole narrative full of being “the struggler,” refusing to die againt all odds, etc, I’d find it so anticlimatic if he lived happily ever after and died of old age lmao. His story should build to a v meaningful and emotional death imo. Also purposeful – self-sacrifice, dying to take NGriff down with him (lbr the two of them dying together would be gr8), letting NGriff stab him the way he often lets people stab him when he’s upset lol, something like that. It should feel like a choice on his part, a significant and revealing contrast to his struggler thing.
imo the only other fitting cap to his life of refusing to die would be becoming immortal, and I think that would be framed as a sadder ending for him than a meaningful death, since he’d basically be following in Skull Knight’s footsteps in that case, which has always been suggested as a Bad Ending.
Also I want NGriff to either die or live forever haunted by Guts’ memory.
This is all ignoring the ominous afterlife thing, which tbf is a huge thing to ignore, but w/e. I’m not that interested in Berserk’s afterlife, idc whether my faves go to the nice whirlpool or the mean whirlpool. (Tho honestly the happiest ending of all as far as I’m concerned would be Casca and Farnese living happily ever after while Guts and Griffith end up dragging each other to hell and ~becoming one~ so if afterlives feature heavily at the end let’s do that. hey it’d be a fitting end to all the equals shit too. you’re truly equal when you’re just a big mass of souls melding together.)
(I mean theoretically ending up in heaven together works too but I feel like there are too many hoops to jump through to justify that lol. just as long as they aren’t in separate afterlife pools.)
2/2 I just feel like any kind of character development she could have
had was just quickly glazed over like she went from someone who got off
on watching people get burnt to death and wanting to torture serpico for
‘fun’ or whatever to this simpering woman who’s working on bettering
herself way too fast I wish her journey was explored more and not just
kind of put as if she met guts and suddenly all her problems were solved
and she’s just perfectly good other than a little weak and scared now
Idk I agree with most of this but I think you’re being a little harsh.
Like it’s been a while since I re-read any of the later chapters but I never really got the impression that Schierke was keeping her ability to help Guts to herself, more that she’s just… the only person in the RPG group proficient enough w/ magic to help keep the armour at bay. Like Farnese is still a beginner and no one else knows any magic, so there’s nothing they can really do. (Also I’m kind of loling at calling Schierke childish, like, she is a child.)
But otherwise I pretty much agree, there’s nothing I particularly like about Schierke and her crush is annoying and offputting.
Also wrt Farnese, describing her as “simpering” makes no sense at all. The word means coquettish in an affected, ingratiating way, and that is basically the opposite of Farnese’s character lol, both as an enemy and as an ally.
But other than that I mean yeah I do agree that her character development was not well written. I like both antagonist Farnese and ally Farnese but it’s hard to see them as the same character, because Miura really like, did not show how one became the other lol.
It might be believable that after having her religious faith shattered she’d latch onto Guts as something new to believe in, as an emotional crutch, but it’s never depicted that way really – deciding to follow Guts has been 100% positive for her, while religion was 100% negative and evil, even though they’re both presumably filling the same emotional niche for her. (And if they’re not basically the same drive pointed at different objects of belief, God vs Guts, then Farnese’s sudden switch from religion to Guts is actually super weird and nonsensical, so either way it’s not well done.)
Like, her black and white, us vs them, pure vs impure, etc, thinking should still have been an issue, at least at the start of her time with the rpg group, even if the subjects of that thinking have changed. Or if Miura wanted that type of thinking shattered with her religious faith, she should have had difficulty adjusting to seeing the world in shades of grey. Her related buried guilt and self-doubt should also not have just conveniently disappeared, aside from one vague attempt at an apology for burning witches alive to Flora lol.
(Man now that I mention it it would’ve been fantastic to see Farnese struggling with letting go of her pure vs impure thinking and more slowly accepting that everyone is greyscale, and finding self-acceptance in that too. What a missed opportunity.)
Something else that would’ve been good is showing that Farnese dedicating herself to taking care of Casca, learning magic, etc, is a continuation of her tendency to like, violently throw herself into things. “become the storm yourself,” that life philosophy. Like if she was overeager to an off-putting, borderline unhealthy extent. Or if she wholeheartedly devoted herself to taking care of Casca because of her guilt issues, but again in a not-wholly-positive, overcompensating way.
I think this is a basic problem with Guts’ entire side of the narrative actually lol. It’s too damn good. Everyone is bettered by hanging out with him, plain and simple. Not even two steps forward, one step back – everyone just happily grows as a person on his stupid journey. Farnese replacing God with Guts causes no problems for her or anyone else, because Guts is just a good person to build your entire life around, when imo there should be some critique there wrt the concept of building your life around anything or anyone. The problem isn’t what you’re worshipping, it’s that you’re worshipping, but idk if Miura sees it that way.
Tho I still have hope that this apparent sense that Guts is just the fucking bees knees who changes everyone around him for the better could be subverted. I mean we’re about to get the payoff of his whole quest, and he’s just been compared to Griffith again specifically wrt how Farnese feels about him vs how Casca felt about Griffith, which is promising. Like, Golden Age Griffith was the same wrt everyone around him growing and being happy bc of his ~conviction~ and the feeling that they’re all going places, it’s something Guts comments on when he first meets the Hawks lol, and we all know how that turned out.
But even if that is the case it doesn’t really fix the 150ish chapters of Farnese’s super quick, super positive character growth lol. Idk it’s a disappointment to me too. I still like “both” Farneses, but I really feel like Miura half-assed the hell out of her development.
anyway ty for the asks and sorry for being a bit nitpicky, i mostly agree with you, just my contrary streak kicks in if i think some crit is unfair lol.
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.
oh man. ok i’m sorry this is honestly a terrible answer, i got really carried away when it came to griffith lol.
i have a more thoughtful, meta-y answer to a similar question here and i’m linking it to sort of compensate for just answering this with a picspam lol.
under a cut bc it’s long.
Guts:
standing up w/ like 50 broken bones and marching up a staircase with his giant sword to try to kill his ex bc he said he’s beneath his notice:
this one might actually be my favourite guts character moment:
Guts finally getting close to moving on and recovering:
sums it tf up:
i wanted one moment that shows guts’ like, tender, caretaker side, and this is the most painful:
a purely self-indulgent choice bc i love that “he’s back” feeling so much lol:
and how could I not include this:
Casca
love the concept of casca being invested in the dream:
her proud smile here:
physically lashing out with her sword in a rage:
in a good au casca went on to lead the still-undefeated band of the hawks:
sure it’s ruined two pages later, but man i love her attempt at a last stand:
Farnese
i love her early black and white thinking tbh:
this is my favourite character establishing moment for farnese:
stabbing a demon tiger in the eye is probably my fave farnese moment overall:
Serpico
I love this early moment where he tells a dude he doesn’t even know his tragic life story while vaguely hitting on him and makes him uncomfortable:
like he’s a weird but enjoyable combination of diplomatic and offputting:
preventing guts from getting himself killed the same night he tried to kill him himself:
And finally a more dramatic, serious moment because the first three moments there rly don’t do him justice and I love his backstory:
Griffith (I will try to show restraint but I could spam almost every panel he’s in honestly)
I’m including Femto and NGriff:
what an introduction:
getting himself killed for guts:
somehow simultaneously maintaining denial while essentially confessing his feelings:
this:
but especially when paired with this:
there’s a lot to love about this scene but this is the best moment imo:
every single second of chapter 17 but let’s sum it up with this:
this whole exchange but especially this first panel here:
he just heard that he’s achieved one of the most important steps on the way to his dream and this is what he fucking does:
sorry but this is the coolest moment in anything ever:
again literally all of tombstone of flame really but let’s go with this moment in particular:
all of the second duel as well:
of course:
obviously the whole monologue but it always comes back to this:
fuckin ripping my heart out:
and again:
and again:
i’m gonna keep going like this:
The Moment Of Despair Is The Touch Of Guts’ Hand:
and then:
i’m sorry i really did mean to be more restrained than this lmao:
the entire moment of the sacrifice but i’m picking this panel to illustrate it:
can you believe:
OBVIOUSLY but this also includes Griffith blaming it on the fetus because that is so in character:
I wouldn’t change either Guts or Griffith’s backstories tbh, I think they’re actually pretty well done, and important to their characters and narratives without being the be all end all. Well, I’d like to make Gennon less of an evil gay stereotype and Donovan less of a scary black man stereotype but yk, other than those details the existence of rape in their backstories isn’t something I’d change.
With Casca… tough call. Her story is all about gendered violence to the point where if you got rid of the rape attempts you’d have to come up with a whole new story for her. But it’s still a shallower and less well-rounded depiction of abuse than either guts or griffith’s backstories, bc it’s so emphatically gendered, like, rather than informing her personality or her choices it’s just framed as being a woman.
So actually I guess for Casca what I’d change is (actually pretty obviously lol) her motivations. She’s not in love with Griffith, she idealizes his dream because she knows he wants to dismantle those power structures that fuck her over and create a place where those w/ power can’t easily abuse their power over others. She hates Guts not because she’s jealous of him (tho she could still be jealous of his emotional closeness with Griffith, like she’d still admire Griffith here even if she’s not in love with him and I like that rival dynamic), but because she recognizes that he could end up destroying Griffith’s dream.
Also I think we can still cut out most of the rape threats she gets while still showing that she has something to fight against. Maybe keep Adon being a gross dick (in all fairness he kind of mirrors Gennon towards Griffith which kind of shows how they’re fighting for the same dream – ie a world where those kinds of dudes are shut down) but have Casca just fighting for her life rather than against rape attempts as she runs from the 100 man fight.
So nothing really changes much until Guts comes back from his vacation. And now Casca is genuinely, genuinely angry and hateful towards him, because he did exactly what she’s been afraid he was going to do – destroyed Griffith’s dream, and her hope for a better future.
Which means they don’t have sex lol, Casca was never into Guts, they began a friendship towards the end of the war but nothing more. And now that Guts has come back Casca is actively hostile to him, though after Guts lets her stab him she probably forgives him a bit bc it’s not like he intended to destroy absolutely everything, and he’s clearly fucked up about it.
Also no suicide attempt.
So their dynamic during the rescue mission is resentful allies, like a throwback to their first three years knowing each other.
Wyald still happens but no attempted rape w/ Casca obviously.
Now when it comes to the Eclipse, I want it to be all about Guts, and I want it to hit the audience over the head with parallels to his childhood. It’s the Eclipse, it doesn’t need to be subtle. Rather than looking wistful when Griffith sacrifices everyone, I want Guts to look betrayed, I want him to look just as sad and horrified as he did when he was 11 and Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan.
Agh I’d hate to lose the creepy silent monster vibe from Femto, but something like a cold, “you’re still alive?” would be v fitting w/ the “you should have died” parallels. Tho idk I’m torn on that.
And ok I said I want it to be all about Guts but I can’t just kill off Casca. But if she’s gonna live the Eclipse needs some serious personal meaning for her too. So maybe her reaction to being sacrificed, knowing it’s for the dream she’s dedicated her life to and in theory she should be willing to give her life for it, and trying to reconcile that with the horrificness of the situation and her desperate desire to survive anyway. So she survives long enough for Femto to show up, because she’s not the third best fighter in the Hawks for nothing, and then…
torture? Femto has monsters hold Guts down and tortures Casca in a way reminiscent of a kid pulling the wings off a fly. She loses an arm, Guts keeps his because he’s too busy being utterly terrified and possibly flashbacking to hack his own arm off in a rage.
Like, one thing about the Eclipse rape, is that if Miura had to have it as a way of emotionally affecting Guts, how the fuck did he manage to draw like two chapters of awful awful shit with Guts being held down by monsters that he’d just watched rape Casca, and completely fail to allude to Guts’ own rape trauma? How. Hooooow it’s mind boggling. It’s absurd.
But you don’t even need the graphic rape for that, like hell, Miura has absolutely adequately set up the correlation between giant monsters Guts is compelled to fight and his own childhood trauma imo to justify Guts having a very emotional traumatic reaction to just being held down and made helpless by monsters after being essentially given to them.
There’s Black Swordsman Guts in a nutshell, and this is exactly what was implied to have caused him to go full traumatized amoral asshole. Before g*tsca was a gleam in Miura’s eye all he had were those parallels to Guts’ childhood trauma – Guts being given away to monsters by someone he trusted – and that’s all he needed.
So anyway, because Casca lives, she has her own reaction to being casually tortured by Femto before being rescued, which is also a replay of her childhood trauma but without the agency of killing her attacker herself with a sword. So her reaction could very well be similar to Guts’ – a desire to kill monsters and get revenge. Maybe she’s lost her idealism wrt the dream, and she’s more cynical now – a better world is impossible, best you can do is survive this one.
She and Guts go their separate ways because they’re barely friends, let alone lovers, and remember 2 brands = big ghost problems.
After this the narrative splits 3 ways between NGriff, Guts, and Casca.
I’m reaching the limits of my creativity lol. So I’m just gonna suggest that Guts gets the behelit, Casca gets the armour and the rpg group, Casca gets the moving on arc and hooks up with Farnese while maybe finding a happy medium between changing the world and lashing out against the world, and Guts succumbs to his inner darkness and gets a highly emotional confrontation with Griffith. Since he has the behelit maybe he uses it upon realizing that Griffith’s heart is still beating for him, bc the emotional conflict is just too much, and sacrifices Griffith to become a Zodd-esque apostle wandering battlefields and fighting for no reason, basically returned to his pre-Griffith state.
It’s probably shorter than 355 chapters too lbr. I’d say NGriff creates Falconia right before the confrontation with Guts, so yk he achieves his dream b4 ironically getting sacrificed. Otherwise his story doesn’t change much. Maybe stronger suggestions that he’s not as unemotional as he looks, to build up to a guts confrontation better.
Like… I’m not a very creative or good writer lol but I feel this general outline could be written in a very good and satisfying way by someone with talent, like Miura.
lol i’m actually writing a thing right now that gets into that a little, tho it’ll be a while b4 i can post it
but yeah like femto specifically I would argue is essentially griffith’s guilt and self-loathing personified, just as the beast of darkness is guts’, and those feelings relate back to trauma for both of them.
For Guts it’s Gambino selling him and later telling him he’s cursed and evil and deserved it + the guilt of killing Gambino. This is v strongly visually suggested during his sewer nightmare right before he overhears Griffith’s promrose hall speech. Watches a monster kill gambino, then child!guts, then turns out the monster is himself. Voila. (also the trauma of the eclipse, buried guilt + self loathing wrt abandoning griffith leading to the eclipse, and his black swordsman sadism, traumatizing and killing children, etc, all makes the beast of darkness grow)
For Griffith it’s the guilt of the deaths of everyone who follows him and tbqh the deaths of people he kills too, and his self-loathing wrt “dirtying” himself in pursuit of his dream, so yk there’s trauma there too with Gennon. Also I think there’s a case to be made that the year of torture had a significant contribution to Femto’s existence, even if the psychological trauma of it isn’t rly discussed like the physical trauma is – I mean the mask he was forced to wear is incorporated into Femto’s design, that’s a big sign at least, plus the talk of darkness and feeling numb at the start of his torture chamber monologue which is echoed during his transformation into Femto.
idk basically strong yes imo, and i’m probably gonna come back and revisit this topic in greater detail eventually
ty! God I really, really want Guts to be shown as Griffith’s equal at some point. I feel like it’s the only way to satisfactorily conclude their whole… thing. Guts letting go of the desire to be Griffith’s equal just isn’t satisfying to me.
But that said I don’t think becoming an apostle is the way to do it. For that literal equality Guts would have to become a Godhand, and unless there’s a 200+ year timeskip after Elfhelm that’s not possible according to the rules of the world. An apostle is a follower of NeoGriff so becoming one wouldn’t make him Griffith’s equal, it would put him back in that position of looking up at him/feeling looked down on.
Ofc one could say that those technical details don’t really matter, what matters is that Griffith succumbed to his superpowered dark side so if Guts does then that’s still equality in a sense, even if he’s a “lesser” monster. But then, he has the armour to represent his dark side, which makes the behelit kind of superfluous now, and it’s been foreshadowed a lot that he’s going to lose himself to the armour at some point.
And since it’s suggested that Skull Knight became a walking skeleton because he succumbed to the amour himself, I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll get more Skull Knight comparisons and there will at least be a danger of Guts becoming like him – powerful but… lacking humanity I guess, if he doesn’t overcome the armour. And that could potentially lead to ~the beast of darkness~ and ~the hawk of light~ regarding each other as equals in a confrontation.
BUT! What I want more than that is acknowledgement that all these standards of literal equality are essentially a smokescreen obscuring what actually made them equal from the beginning, which is the fact that they both loved each other and they were both emotionally vulnerable w/ the other. So honestly acknowledgement that they’re still hung up on each other despite everything is what would work best here imho.
Guts learns that NGriff failed his test on the Hill of Swords and started getting emotional about Guts again, and NGriff learns that in addition to hate Guts still feels residual love, and guilt and regret etc. Followed by an emotionally charged third duel, their strengths (magic superpower, inner darknesses, fate vs not being beholden to fate, whatever) and weaknesses (emotions, love and regret) equally matched.
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.
i fucked up. why did i stop at the golden age??? both those posts are clearly perfect set ups for this:
ohhh man re-reading those chapters in particular and like
there’s such a clear little mini-arc. This isn’t brand new information at all, but I love seeing it laid out like this so I’m going to talk about it.
Chapter 6 starts with Guts trying to visit Griffith while brooding about Casca’s “it’s your fault!”
He’s prevented by social status.
Casca punches him out and Guts leaves and sulks, and the rest of the Hawks have this exchange:
So we start with the statement that everyone’s feeling a little distanced from Griffith thanks to his promotions, and this is very much affecting Guts too, which is why he threw a couple guards down the stairs and made an ass of himself while trying to visit him.
Then we go straight to Guts angrily swinging his sword on the staircase.
He’s pissed off about Casca making him feel like an outsider. This is a dude who has clearly defined issues when it comes to being blamed for bad shit happening. See, eg, Gambino blaming him for the death of Shizu, calling him “cursed,” along with the rest of his first mercenary band.
Three years with the Hawks, and Guts is mostly content and happy, but there’s still this doubt, still this sense that he’s a little on the outside looking in, a little distanced, and Griffith more recently drifting away from everyone puts that background feeling into sharp relief. This is why we begin our narrative, after the three year gap, when Griffith gets promoted into the nobility.
Guts angrily swinging his sword, alone, probably brooding over Casca accusing him of not caring about his comrades since this scene is placed right after that confrontation, while Griffith gets promoted, rising away from him.
Chapter six returns us to Guts swinging his sword angrily and alone while brooding over his feelings of being an outsider. His place is with the Hawks, but is it really? When it’s “his fault” Griffith nearly died, when he’s accused of not caring about anyone but himself?
And then Griffith seeks him out, joining Guts at the midpoint of a staircase, for that extra bit of symbolism.
He talks about how much he hates the other nobles, talks about how nightmarish their encounter with Zodd was, but how it was also interesting theologically lol. A bit of philosophy, a bit of personal connection and emotional opening up. Guts asks the question.
And the turn of this little mini-arc is, of course, this:
The end of chapter six.
It’s Griffith completely assuaging those fears of being an outsider, of losing him to the nobles, of being looked-down on. It’s Griffith negating his deep-seated belief that his only worth is as an asset.
Three years ago Guts began this sentence:
And now, in chapter seven, he’s finally reached a place where he can finish it.
Idk basically this is the pinnacle of Guts’ search for belonging, and I love how well it’s built up to by emphasizing Guts’ outsider status first, through Casca’s angry tirades and through Griffith’s promotions.
Which ofc also provides a solid foundation for the dissolving of Guts’ feeling of personal fulfillment in another few chapters. Honestly it provides a solid foundation for literally everything that comes after. This is the skeletal structure of Berserk – Guts’ longing for love and acceptance vs Guts never quite feeling like he has it. Except right here and right now.
“Even so, incidentally, I found someone I really wanted… to have look at me.”
That feeling goes as easily as it came, with a few words, but it’s what motivates Guts at least until chapter 130 (potentially til chapter 182), after which trying to forget that feeling and focus on what he does have is what motivates him (”I came this far by letting go of my obsession…”) And we’ll see how that goes.
vs
of only 10 chapters previous
I think it’s really cool that Berserk is basically taking this theme of darkness/light, isolation/connection, and portraying it on both an interpersonal scale and a like, grandiose cosmic scale.
With Ganeshka and Griffith the darkness is the isolation of being singular, unknowable even to oneself, and the light is another being existing on the same plane as you, seeing the world the same way as you, seeing you as you truly are. This sense of cosmic understanding.
With Guts and Griffith there’s nothing objectively grandiose or cosmic about it, it’s just a relationship between two dudes that fell apart and still haunts both of them. But their connection is meaningful enough to them that existing without the other is comparable to being a solitary eldrich abomination who can barely even perceive others.
Griffith’s existence as a monster “beyond the reach of man” is basically a symbol of choosing to isolate yourself rather than surrendering to the vulnerability of loving and being loved, and that’s underscored at the climax of the Millenium Falcon arc just as he achieves his dream (both through that moment of connection up there and through Ganeshka’s backstory of paranoia feeding into isolation which is placed right before that moment).
Like for real, all this untouchable, unknowable, eldrich abomination jesus figure stuff is essentially a metaphor for Guts and Griffith breaking up.
And like, I always get a huge kick out of this concept of playing with scales when it comes to interpersonal connection. This isn’t a groundbreaking thing, this is a relatively common fantasy friendship/romance trope – yk the world only gets saved after the couple confesses their feelings, love is the key to achieving X goal, a single person can’t do the magic thing but when their friends join/support them they can do it, Spock running away from his feelings for Kirk is a parallel to a godlike machine’s inability to understand emotion, etc etc etc.
And Griffith and Guts’ moments of connection are like finding the one being you can see and understand in a world of isolation, and losing that is like becoming a monster in a sea of darkness. See also: the Black Swordsman arc and the Berserk armour for a slightly more down-to-earth fantasy metaphor.
yk what this is what Berserk is about. Like if I had to pick one image to encapsulate Berserk, this is what I’d go with.
The Black Swordsman arc builds up to a reveal that Guts’ revenge-y feelings are a giant mishmash that confuses tf out of Puck because this is how he used to feel about Griffith, and his original feelings for Griffith are still tangled up in his current feelings.
Like, kind of the point of the Black Swordsman arc is to start with this one dimensional portrayal of rage and then unravel and unravel that until all of Guts’ various issues are laid out.
These mixed feelings are the big reveal of the first arc. Our look into Guts’ childhood right after deepens our understanding of these mixed feelings, but it’s his feelings towards Griffith that wholly drive the plot, not his feelings towards Gambino. Then the entire Golden Age continues to deepen our understanding of Guts’ mixed feelings. Like pretty much the whole point of the story up until we pick back up with Guts in the Lost Children Arc is to illuminate the complexity of Guts’ feelings towards Griffith (and vice versa) now that they’re enemies. It’s to build that foundation.
And anyway I guess my point is that with all this attention and time devoted to these painfully mixed feelings, if the ultimate resolution of the story is Guts straight up dropping/moving on from those feelings rather than finally untangling and examining them, that will essentially be a deeply unsatisfying betrayal of the first hundred or so chapters.
But hey the ominous foreshadowing’s got my back at least.
ok so in my defense i hadn’t read this full scene in ages, i only referred back to the saved pages i had which didn’t include the context, which is why i didn’t realize until now exactly why the beast of darkness phrased it as “true light” here
but now i have read the full scene again and i have the context and i’m fucking dying lol
griffith is the true light in comparison to the warm lights that are his current companions, like, fuck me that’s good.
that’s so so good
like yeah i already knew light often refers to companionship and love in berserk but to have that explicitly laid out right before griffith is called guts’ “true light” is so fucking satisfying i can’t handle it.
like there you go, griffith is still the bar by which all other relationships are not just measured but found wanting. as much as guts talks about “letting go” of his obsession the longing is always there.
and like “the true light that burns us,” is literally saying that guts still loves griffith, still “longs for” griffith, and that hurts now, and that’s his motivation for wanting to lash out and kill him. it’s a bit of a repeat of what the bod told him after the hill of swords, but more direct.
lmao i may be a little overenthusiastic about this but reading the full scene literally just made me go from fear that guts is genuinely just going to move on and that will be his happy ending, to feeling like there’s no way we’re not getting a cathartic emotional climax that involves guts finally forced to confront his conflicting feelings.
LIKE!! if it was just “true light” I’d be willing to entertain the idea that it’s just revenge, framed as a dream, in opposition to his companions, the way Griffith’s castle was also a source of light to him. but “true light that burns us”? That’s Guts’ lingering, now intensely painful feelings. That’s love. That’s something he’s gonna have to deal with at some point.
welcome to controversy country
Griffith’s decision to sacrifice the Hawks was perfectly reasonable not just taking into account Griffith’s own values and priorities, ie ensuring the thousands of dead posthumously achieve the thing they died for, but taking into account the Hawks’ own attitudes towards their lives, including Guts’.
It’s all there in Requiem of the Wind.
“More than half of us’ve been killed…”
These are the core group of Hawks. These are the ones who believe in Griffith so strongly that they’re willing to spend a year living as outlaws, dying in raids, so they can rescue him – so Griffith can lead them again.
There were lots of deserters over that year. People who didn’t think it was worth risking their lives for a chance at achieving Griffith’s dream. They’re presumably out there living happily ever after.
These Hawks are the ones who are willing to risk their lives, not out of friendship or loyalty to a man, but out of loyalty to what the man symbolizes for them, what he can bring them, the success that comes to them when they follow him. Out of loyalty to the dream.
Corkus is the only one throwing a tantrum, but he’s voicing all their thoughts, as we can see when his words are placed over their depressed faces.
Wyald spells it all out.
This is who Griffith is to them. He’s the facilitator of their dreams, dreams that each and every one of them is willing to risk their lives for.
And when he can’t be that to them anymore, what happens? He becomes a burden to them.
Judeau offers to take care of him because it’s the least he can do, because he owes it to him, but mostly because if he doesn’t he thinks Casca will, and he thinks it will be a life ruining burden for her. His offer is a personal sacrifice.
Casca offers to take care of him because it’s the least she can do, he’s so small now, he needs someone, and because if she doesn’t Guts will, and she thinks it will be a life ruining burden for him. Her offer is a personal sacrifice.
Guts’ offer is probably the only one based on a genuine desire to stay with Griffith.
Now, Guts doesn’t see Griffith as the guy who can grant him his dreams. Guts is the exception to that. He sees Griffith as a guy he wants to be friends with.
But here’s Guts’ take on the situation:
Finish the battles you start.
Well, that’s exactly what Griffith chose to do. The Eclipse is, in part, a narrative rebuke of Guts’ stubbornness lol, it happens because he seized on the concept of finding his own dream and couldn’t let it go until it was a moment too late.
When Guts finally drops his own “battle” in favour of staying with Griffith, ie makes the right choice contrary to his dogged nature, it comes too late because he’d successfully convinced Casca that he was dedicated to his dream at the expense of his friendships with the Hawks. “I want to draw a line, keep things separate.” He told her he didn’t want to stay with the Hawks, and she believed him, and that attitude is what ruins everything.
And ironically that’s the exact path Griffith chose when he agreed to the sacrifice. Drop his friends and relationships in favour of renewing his committment to a dream, and finishing his own battle.
For the rest of the Hawks, the Eclipse is a rebuke of their choice to live and risk their lives for tomorrow’s success rather than today’s existence.
Now, this absolutely isn’t me arguing that the Hawks deserved to die or anything lol, this is just me saying that Requiem of the Wind is largely set-up for the sacrifice, and I think it’s a clever way of like… depicting the sacrifice not just as a random tragedy that befell a group of people, but as a darkly fitting end to the way they live their lives.
It shows that the sacrifice is consistent with everything the Hawks profess to believe in.
They are all willing to lay down their lives for a victory they may never see.
The Eclipse is the fucked up yet logical conclusion to the Hawks’ very existence as a mercenary band that fights for an ideal, a dream, rather than just day to day living. They agree to potentially sacrifice their lives in every battle. The Eclipse is just one more battle, by this logic, and it’s one they win by losing their lives in it. By dying, they achieve their ultimate victory.
And I think by taking this whole philosophy of dedicating one’s life to a dream to its logical and horrific conclusion, Berserk is basically critiquing the concept of living for an ideal. In making the sacrifice, Griffith gave the Hawks what they wanted at a cost they’ve already agreed to by choosing to risk their lives for Griffith’s victories and the success he can bring them.
Of course, in the moment, knowing that death was inevitable, they would have preferred to live. None of them would knowingly trade their life for a future they won’t live to see. But that’s essentially what they’re doing by fighting battles for future hopes and dreams.
At the end of the day, the moral of Berserk’s story is really simple and basic: live for the sake of being alive. Guts had it right during his three years with the Hawks, before overhearing the Promrose Hall speech: no grand dream, no living for a potential future, nothing but doing the job of a mercenary with a group of people he considered family, enjoying life day to day, fighting just to live a life he considered worthwhile.
Personally I have mixed feelings about this message, but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of Berserk.
Black Swordsman: living for revenge (and, for extra irony, Guts’ own dream of fighting stronger and stronger enemies) is bad, living day to day with those “irreplacable things” – friends – is good. Golden Age: “I was too stupid and stubborn to notice it, but what I really wished for back then was here.” Guts left for a dream and by leaving threw away what he truly wanted – companionship. Conviction arc: the people who survived the shadow Eclipse were the people who acted to save their own lives, rather than out of a conviction, their faith in a higher power. Millennium Falcon: “Dreams can make for courageous challenges or opportune escapes” – emphasis on escapes. Troll village dude wanted to escape the darkness of life through a dream as a child, but eventually found greater fulfillment just living an ordinary life in his village. etc etc. Stop dreaming, focus on living.
And essentially the despair we see from the Hawks upon their realization that the fight is over and Griffith is no longer able to lead them to a greater dream leads directly to the Eclipse and gives it a layer of dark irony.
cutting this for kind of graphic descriptions of sexual assault
I’d argue he didn’t even black out, he was clearly aware when he forcibly kissed her after pointedly noticing she’d been assaulted (we get a closeup from Guts’ perspective of blood dripping from her vag, ffs), we get like literally five whole pages of sexual assault depicted completely without any kind of possession or beast-y imagery, and the subsequent beast of darkness imagery in Guts’ mind that we see after that isn’t indicative of “possession,” it’s an illustration of what’s going on in his subconscious – his own inner darkness gaining strength.
Like it happens in broad daylight for a reason, in contrast to the chapter earlier when he strangled her while actually briefly possessed during a night-time ghost fight, and that reason is so that the readers can’t absolve Guts of blame. There’s nothing but Guts in this scene.
And anyway, at the end of the day the whole point of the Beast of Darkness is to show that Guts’ inner darkness is no better than Griffith’s. According to Berserk practically every dude has an evil rapist lurking in their subconscious, it’s not a great nuanced examination of male entitlement or anything lol, it’s just using rape as a lazy shorthand for inner darkness.
Like imo the only valid reaction to have to this dumb story is to recognize the misogyny on the part of the author, and honestly both excusing Guts and reacting with ott hatred towards Griffith is the exact opposite of that. Like I can’t blame anyone for hating Griffith, everyone’s entitled to their emotional reactions to a rape scene, especially one as offensively depicted as the Eclipse rape, but when that’s your reaction instead of recognizing the author’s horrendous writing, or while praising the author’s writing because he made you feel that angry, that’s an issue, yk?
And people blaming Griffith/Femto for Casca’s character being destroyed, for Casca’s gratuitious and sexualized victimization, etc, lets Miura off the hook. Like, Femto is ink on paper, Miura is the one with actual agency who chose to write Casca out of the story in the most misogynist way possible for the sake of making his protagonist feel bad.
tl;dr berserk is an offensive story about two dudes who both have rapist alter-egos, we all gotta acknowledge that.
Huh, I’ve never rly seen that opinion tbh, maybe we hang out in different parts of fandom. Well, I’ve seen a few people expressing worry that Casca might forgive Griffith, but honestly if Miura writes that I will like, personally fly across the ocean to salt his garden. And I definitely don’t think it’s likely.
As for Guts… hm I’m just going to go all out and explain my take on Guts’ reaction to NGriff bc you gave me an opening lol.
I don’t think forgiveness for the Eclipse rape is on the table. But I definitely think his feelings towards NeoGriffith are very complex and he’s absolutely emotionally conflicted towards him, not just surprised by his appearance.
But yeah I don’t think his emotional conflict stems from wanting to forgive Griffith. What he wants is for Griffith to be or contain the version of himself that like, doesn’t require forgiving, because the only thing human Griffith did that hurt Guts was sacrifice the Band – and Guts never seemed to really blame him for that anyway.
Like when we’re talking about a dude who has undergone two (2) magical transformations and basically exists as three versions of himself, each with apparently very different internal emotional lives, it’s hard not to be conflicted about him.
Guts differentiates between human Griffith and Femto, and Guts does not hate human Griffith. We never ever not once see Guts direct an iota of rage towards Griffith as a human. Not even during the Eclipse, after he sacrificed everyone.
Very consistently, every time Guts thinks about human Griffith it’s with regret, sadness, a sense of loss. He regretfully thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow like a million times, and never expresses anger about how Griffith sacrificed everyone and turned into an evil demon a year later. He thinks about Griffith among the dead Hawks during his run through memory lane, right after the Eclipse, and cries. Griffith is the most prominent shining light Schierke sees in his subconscious. Griffith is a part of the “campfire from those days” that still burns in his chest, and prevents him from being fully consumed by hate. etc etc.
He thinks about demonic-looking Femto when he’s feeling rage and hate, never human Griffith.
And I’m going to suggest that there are three main, related reasons that Guts feels emotional conflict in regards to NeoGriffith.
One is that it’s another change. Guts doesn’t know what exactly to expect from this third version of Griffith, who looks human again rather than demonic. He knows that he’s not “his” Griffith, because Skull Knight told him the fifth Godhand would incarnate, because he flew away from the Tower of Conviction on Zodd, and because the brand bleeds around him, but there’s a reason Guts rather desperately searches for a hint that NeoGriffith has regrets or feels remorse. Deep down he’s hoping that he’s closer to human Griffith than to Femto, basically, or that more of human Griffith is in there and reachable, or however you want to phrase it.
He lets Rickert hold him back from attacking until NeoGriffith directly says he’s free from his emotions, and then doesn’t actually try to strike until NGriff reiterates that sentiment with “I’ll not betray my dream. That is all.”
If NeoGriffith had feelings, if he felt regret, if he was no longer a malevolent demon, then Femto could be considered an anomaly that would carry sole blame for the Eclipse rape. Like, when we’re talking magical transformations that affect your mind as well as your body, the concept of blame is kind of nebulous. If NeoGriffith basically had all of human Griffith’s emotions and was horrified by his actions as Femto, and wanted to regain his relationship with Guts, then tbqh Guts would probably be able to go “oh well it wasn’t really you anyway.”
Yk, kinda like a Berserk fan who doesn’t consider Guts to be responsible for “the beast of darkness” assaulting Casca, but with the handy addition of a literal transformation. You can argue fictional moral philosophy wrt the morality of magically transforming into a monster and back again lol, but I definitely think Guts would seize the opportunity to write Femto off.
So, to split hairs, it’s less about potentially forgiving him, and more about potentially not holding him responsible. But yk, unfortunately for Guts NGriff turns out to be an apparently emotionless asshole who still won’t give him the time of day and says straight up that he regrets nothing, so that’s not an option for him.
The second reason is that, well, he looks like the dude that Guts felt such ridiculously intense feelings for that he rearranged his entire life and abandoned the people he considered his family just to feel like he was worthy of being his friend.
It’s a whole lot easier to feel rage against an aspect of someone you’re p much in love with when they look like a bona fide monster, rather than exactly like the person you love. You’ll even notice that, except in moments that emphasize the potential Guts has of following in his footsteps, Griffith’s face tends to be obscured or completely nonexistent when Guts thinks about Femto.
And the third reason is that he was already very emotionally conflicted over Femto. Femto raping Casca did not make him retroactively hate human Griffith, but his love for the man Griffith once was absolutely complicates his feelings with regards to Femto.
We see this in the way becoming a rage-fueled monster is framed as a temptation because he still wants to be his friend and equal, as per Griffith’s Promrose speech.
It’s also there in how Guts blatantly wants his attention and regard after everything.
He “threw away” Griffith’s love, so if he can’t have that then he wants Femto’s hate. He wants to be seen and acknowledged, even as a threat, so when Femto says that Guts doesn’t even register to him as an enemy, it pisses him off so much it gives him the strength to climb a flight of stairs with like half his bones broken and potentially-fatal pain in his brand, and swing his giant sword at him.
And we see it when he still thinks of him as a shining light in the darkness, despite everything.
Basically, on some emotional, irrational level, he still wants this:
Like, to reiterate, imo Guts’ emotional conflict isn’t about whether he can forgive Femto/NeoGriffith. It’s about the fact that Femto and NeoGriffith are both aspects of a dude that Guts had incredibly intense feelings for. They are distinct from Griffith but also inseparable from him, and that’s really, really hard to reconcile emotionally.
Hence, eg, a bunch of this maudlin shit:
Idk basically no I don’t think Guts is going to forgive NeoGriffith, but I do think that he is still very conflicted about him. He wants to want to kill him lol, but just as much, he wants to be seen by him, he wants his attention, he wants his love, he wants to be his equal, and he also wants to completely move on and just forget all his painfully fucked up and conflicting feelings towards him.
And I guess time will tell whether he achieves any of that.
i still can’t figure this shit out
you got luca’s statement on guts and casca, followed by, on the same page
nina being a helpless baby
then followed by nina meeting joachim again and doing a 180 which it seems we’re supposed to consider a good thing, and deciding to take off with him instead.
this is interspersed with farnese deciding to follow guts and calling him her saint and prophet.
like, is this going somewhere? unequal relationships, guts and casca, guts and farnese, farnese and casca… anything?
we’ve got guts paralleling griffith in a bunch of different ways, from gaining followers by telling them “do what you want,” to wills being admiringly compared to fire, to being compared to a hero out of a fantasy, to even very recently
but it seems like none of this is… depicted as negative really. is following guts good because he struggles to live and miura thinks that’s cool while following griffith was/is bad because ??? is it just a double standard at work?
or is some payoff coming?
yk what as much as i absolutely adore guts’ total lack of rage here, i feel like this is a huge writing mistake.
and not only because miura basically used guts’ resignation upon being sacrificed to try to narratively justify the eclipse rape as a way of actually pissing him off, but also because, frankly,griffith sacrificing him should send guts into a giant tailspin of rage and hurt.
it’s a very clear replay of his childhood trauma.
like while i think it’s not necessarily ooc for guts to feel sad and wistful after griffith makes the sacrifice, rather than heartbroken and rageful, I think a) it would be just as in character for the sacrifice itself to send Guts into Black Swordsman mode, esp with watching all his friends die horribly and b) it would be thematically tighter and fit with what we see of the Black Swordsman arc better if that had been the case.
As of like, chapter 12, we know everything we need to know to understand Guts during the Black Swordsman arc. He’s a walking bundle of trauma because someone he loved essentially handed him over to a hoard of monsters and ghosts, and that reminds Guts of Gambino both calling him a cursed child who should’ve died and selling him to Donovan.
And having Guts be not really all that upset over the sacrifice, but more upset over Femto’s petty demonstration of evil afterwards completely shifts the focus from Guts’ personal trauma and feelings of betrayal to manpain over his girlfriend’s trauma.
like this?
Is extremely good shit, especially after we see his childhood later.
Guts’ frantic denial after Griffith does make the sacrifice, as he’s trying to “save” him, is also perfect set up for this in the way it echoes Guts denying Donovan’s assertion that Gambino sold him. But then instead of giving way to rage and betrayal, Guts just… resigns himself.
The rage and betrayal could’ve even be put on hold until Femto appears. All we’d need to see to justify Guts shifting from regret and dull sadness to pure unadultrated rage and pain would be something akin to what we saw in the Black Swordsman arc – Femto coldly telling Guts he should be dead/he’s nothing but a sacrifice/he belongs to the apostles/something along those lines. Ie an echo of Gambino telling Guts he sold him before trying to kill him.
(and we could have femto sic the apostles on guts + guts survive just long enough for skull knight to show up. we don’t even have to lose femto failing to kill him as he escapes.)
Imo the sense that Guts is personally very fucked up by the fact that he’s once again been traded away by someone he loves, respects, and admires is lost after the Golden Age in favour of the sense that Guts is fucked up by losing someone he loves and gaining an evil demon antagonist in his place, with a side of being mad about Casca.
On the plus side we get the sense that part of his rage comes from just missing Griffith, and I can’t deny that I absolutely enjoy the fact that Guts isn’t angry at human Griffith, but is only angry at demon Griffith. The way Guts separates the different versions of Griffith in his mind and still feels love and regret and guilt and fondness etc for human Griffith is good shit and it’s hard for me to say I’d give that up for anything lol.
But I think it would still be better writing if he was directly angry about the sacrifice, and if his feelings of love and regret and guilt were all mixed together with rage and betrayal and all aimed at all three versions of Griffith. And despite everything I would ultimately rather have that + no Eclipse rape than what we got.
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)
i like my femto as a manifestation of griffith’s self loathing hot take more the more i think about it, bc like, it’s a gr8 way of exemplifying berserk’s “people’s actions/choices/etc shape them” “he who fights monsters” etc theme.
which yk is everywhere from the concept of the sacrifice (choosing to sacrifice your loved ones makes you evil), to guts’ sword gaining more essence-of-darkness power the more ghosts and monsters he kills with it, to regular old non-metaphorical character progression like the black swordsman arc.
but the self loathing specifically is a great touch because what it means, which holds true in berserk, is that it’s not doing generic bad things that slowly fucks you up, but specifically doing things that you yourself find abhorrent. it’s pushing past your own limits.
eg tombstone of flame was a dark moment for griffith, because he felt guilty about the assassinations.
for guts? didn’t make an iota of difference because he didn’t care.
for griffith every battle feeds his dark side because every life lost on the road to his dream makes him feel guilty, and pushing away that guilt and doing it anyway is what shapes him and makes him capable of doing more and more, until sacrificing the hawks (guts excluded) can be framed as just another round of casualties, another scoop of bodies on the mountain.
for guts, the things that feed his dark side tend to be more along the lines of going above and beyond and torturing apostles and killing children or using them as hostages lol. or mistreating his friends eg abandoning and attacking casca. he has a very strong dividing line between people he cares about and canon fodder.
griffith didn’t have that dividing line, he cared about every death he caused, ally and enemy alike, which ironically made him more susceptible to corruption, in that it basically gave him practice burying his heart lol, until by the eclipse he was like, fuck it i’m a monster anyway, might as well make it official.
i don’t think this is the be all end all, i think there’s also a strong ‘one’s environment shapes you’ theme that intersects w/ this, particularly wrt trauma feeding ppl’s dark sides as well. plus this is only part of griffith’s reasoning for making the sacrifice lol.
but yk, it’s a good + interesting element of the story.
you're the only one 