Based on like, plot set up stuff in the last few chapters, my guess is that there’s going to be a time skip when everyone leaves Elfhelm. Rickert will have spent the last 10 or however many years in the Bakiraka village, he’ll be a cool warrior/inventor, he’ll give everyone weapon upgrades lol, and yk, village full of super intense assassins who do nothing but train + a wizard = handy canon fodder allies.
Now ofc I’m hoping really really hard that doesn’t mean we’re just going a rote route of Guts and co leaving Elfhelm to attack Falconia/Griffith and hitting up the Bakiraka and Rickert along the way for allies and power ups lol. I mean god could you imagine anything more boring?
Guts is due to go Beast of Darkness, so another possibility is that whichever of his friends survive whatever goes down trail him on his way to kill Griffith, stop at the village along the way, swap Guts stories with Rickert, get power ups and allies, and then go kick Guts’ ass and try to bring him to his senses.
Then there’s my Void (probably but hell maybe Elfhelm, I got some vague hopes there) is the actual big bad theory and Rickert and co could end up being part of an enemies teaming up to fight the worse dude plot.
Anyway I guess regardless of the circumstances my answer boils down to Rickert probably being the archetypal helpful ally who
provides weapons, maybe helps fight, and knows more about Guts and Griffith than just
about everyone else (pending Casca’s narrative future) and so can potentially provide ~wise insight~ wrt how the past could inform the future.
And also since he visited Falconia and met NeoGriffith there he could also tell Guts what happened, though I didn’t get the impression that he discovered anything particularly insightful. Unless the fact that he was able to slap Griffith goes somewhere interesting.
God, I was in physical pain reading this chapter. My heart just breaks for Rickert. The Griffith he followed, whose dream he shared and who he adored- who he wanted to save- that’s not the man who stands in front of him now, in this gorgeous prosperous city that was build on the corpses and dreams of hundreds upon hundreds of men. I always wondered if Rickert would feel like he shouldn’t have survived, if he ever found out the truth of what happened during the eclipse and met Griffith again. And this chapter kind of confirmed it for me. But unlike Guts he cannot drown in hatred and stake his life on revenge. All he could do, and all he had to console him was build that hill of swords. I can’t even imagine how lonely and helpless he must have felt, being the only survivor left with no answers and a thousand questions. But even so, the Griffith he faced this chapter cannot answer him, not really. I know I happily lost my shit and joked along with all of the ‘Rickert’s balls of steel and impending doom’ crap over the bitchsmack panel when it came out as a spoiler, but seeing it in the context of the chapter as a whole- wow. It took my breath away for a plethora of other reasons. People say he’s brave as hell for daring the slap the almighty Griffith but honestly I don’t think he even had time to work up courage, and it just happened on this spur of instinct- of way overdue hurt and that hurts me because jesus, Rickert deserves better dammit. Griffith’s reaction was on point though- I didn’t expect him to immediately chop Rickert’s head off or anything, but it’s impossible to read him nowadays. Is it just apathy? Like always? Does he even feel anything at all when Rickert rejects his new self- his pretty new kingdom? I can’t tell- I want to believe, but, alas. It’s Berserk. It kills. And I’m done.
Totally agreed about Rickert, I don’t often think about his survivor’s guilt but it’s a huge part of his character and it was rly satisfying to see him get to express some of his feelings about everything, directly to Griffith.
As for Griffith, his reaction is the most intriguing part of the scene to me ngl.
Like overall I think NeoGriffith is automatically interesting because of what Miura doesn’t show us? The last time we saw into his head was
like the first and only thing we find out about his internal life is that he’s not as unemotional as he appears, and every scene w/ NeoGriffith afterwards where his emotions are conspicuously hidden from us just adds to my sense that inevitably we’re heading towards a big revelation about his feelings specifically.
The scene with Rickert is especially interesting because it’s the first time we see NeoGriffith at a loss.
Like this is his only response to Rickert’s tirade, and it’s an acknowledgement of the difference between, well, who he is now and who he used to be, essentially.
Ngriff’s got nothing. And that is so damn interesting to me lol.
“Don’t throw away what you can’t replace,” is something Guts reminds Rickert right after the Reunion on the Hill of Swords and right before Guts does this:
NGriff starts putting a new Band of the Hawk together like he’s trying to replace the old one, and he’s invited Rickert to join. I got this idea from @mastermistressofdesire a while ago lol and it’s so perfect, like, basically NGriff invited Rickert along because deep down he wants validation from one of the original Hawks. It would be proof that “nothing has changed.” That he has successfully replaced the original Band.
But Rickert rejected him, and it seems like it throws him off. He’s supposed to be literally untouchable, but Rickert was able to slap him. He has nothing to say to Rickert in response other than to quietly agree that the Hawk symbol is different now. And his face is hidden from us while watching Rickert leave both times:
Like this ties in with this theory/hope of mine that NeoGriffith’s thing is going to end up being identity/isolation. As the absolute with no equal, as someone who has undergone huge changes and denies it (”this is the man I am.”), as a parallel to ascended Ganeshka, because he failed his own test and his heart started beating when he saw Guts and the first thing he did was deny to himself that it had anything to do with his feelings for Guts, and a few other little details, like eg this page at the end of a chapter all about sonia feeling lonely and isolated as the only person who sees the world the way she does:
Like c’mon Miura, all this suggestive emotional ambiguity has to be there for something.
this being in reference to whether griffith sent an assassin after rickert is extra interesting.
rickert: griffith wouldn’t have me assassinated… but griffith isn’t even human anymore… and even back when he was he did some shady shit… and he sacrificed the rest of the band… but still…
just the fact that that the narrative is reminding us thru rickert’s musing that griffith did indeed care about the band a whole lot when the subject is neogriffith and his feelings towards rickert now is good shit
like clearly rickert here is erring on the side of ‘yeah he probably did send raksas after me’ so there’s no reason for him to maintain that little bit of doubt at the end unless it’s relevant. and it’s not relevant to rickert’s decision making or actions soooo
idk this is just a long way of saying ambiguity is only worthwhile if the truth is (at least somewhat) unexpected.
i really want to know what guts told rickert. like i want to know how guts phrases the explanation, what he mentions or doesn’t mention, how he describes it and what he emphasizes, etc. i feel like we were kind of robbed by skipping it, even though it does make sense to skip bc an explanation of something we already saw is redundant.
but idk it could’ve been a good character moment bc we’ve never actually seen guts rly talk about the eclipse and griffith etc. especially not to someone who also knew griffith.
Neo-Griffith is honestly really hard for me to understand. Like what’s going on in that mind of his, it’s so difficult to tell.
I’m not really sure about offended because he didn’t seem angry to me just dissapointed and slightly deflated but I do think he was shocked, much like most of us didn’t see that slap coming.
However I don’t think that Rickert’s refusal came as a complete surprise to Griffith, he’d already considered the possibility, he’d already said “It’s possible you may hate me after knowing the truth…”
But it’s interesting that he didn’t say probable. That’s most probably Griffith’s personal desires warping the truth of the facts around him. Griffith wants to go back to that stage in his life when he had it all figured out, and the Band of the Hawk was by his side. He wants to think that Rickert may chose to join him because he Wants Rickert to join him. All his actions with the Neo Band of the Hawk reflect his desire. He’s trying to rebuild what he’s lost. But They are empty replacements, and so to have Rickert back , a real part of the past he’s trying to recreate is important to him.
It reminds me of two lines from the Manga which have been recurrent themes
“Don’t abandon what you can’t replace”
“Even if you painstakingly put something back together piece by piece it will never be the same.”
They were said with respect to Guts but I feel are highly applicable to Griffith right now too. And is I feel one of the many parallels between them that we get.
So in conclusion, yes the slap was definitely a harsh reality check for Griffith. Which is precisely why he’s playing it cool and saying it doesn’t matter. But yes he’s shaken and contemplative now.
When he first saw Rickert in Falconia, You could see the enthusiasm in Griffith’s body language. It was self delusional yes. But he dropped everything and practically ran to him. He’d obviously been looking forward to seeing him.
Also I think he’d taken it for granted that the fact that Rickert came at all meant he had already decided to accept. I mean most people don’t come all that way, braving monsters and climbing a million stairs just to deliver a well deserved slap.
He opens the conversation grandiosely, many words and poetry. Exposition and greeting. He’s already expecting things to go up from here, they have been for sometime after all. Nothing has changed he wants to believe that. Then the refusal comes and all that comes out for the rest of the interaction is a muted ‘so it is’ because I think he’s coming to come to terms with the fact that truly? Everything has changed.
@bthump Because you always have the best neo-griffith thoughts. 🙂
oh my gooood i got to the bolded bit and started practically rubbing my hands together in glee at your insight. this whole answer is amazing.
The exploration of identity with NeoGriffith has the potential to be so so good. The way it does seem like he wants Rickert to join him because having a former Hawk accept the NeoBand would be a kind of validation that he needs on some level.
The way Rickert phrases his refusal is one of my favourite moments because of the emphasis he places on how it’s not his Band, and Griffith isn’t his Griffith, and the small differences between insignias matter. And all Griffith can do is passively agree. Now that you’ve drawn the comparison between the NeoBand and those significant lines about forcing back what was and abandoning irreplacable things I am dying to see where that leads even more.
Also it occurs to me that this is the first scene we see where NeoGriff is taken aback and not in control – the way Rickert slaps him, the way he has no response to Rickert’s speech – since the very first scene where his heart started beating and he saved Casca and went ‘wtf’ to himself. Add the fact that he apparently didn’t see the slap coming despite his magic powers of being essentially untouchable, and I think it’s a fair guess that his beating heart and surviving emotions are throwing him off his game again here. (Which incidentally is another solid sign that it’s not the fetus screwing with him bc i doubt very much the fetus gives a fuck about Rickert.)
ty for tagging me! I don’t think there was really much to add to your answer so this is mostly me nodding vigorously and flailing a little lol.
you're the only one 