I feel like it’s true that Flora and other witches, and people with brands, and probably Skull Knight, can do things that causality/fate/whatever doesn’t like… expect. So not absolutely everything flows in the currents of causality, and they do still have the power to harm NGriff, so he took the offensive and killed a bunch first. But despite that most of their actions do still flow within causality, like they maybe have a small ability to defy fate, but it’s probably v rare that they do.
Cause I feel like we haven’t seen anyone defy fate yet.
Idk, maybe I’m overthinking it lol, but we know Guts and Casca were fated to survive the Eclipse, because they were instrumental in NGriff’s reincarnation into the world.
Flora and Skull Knight imply that Guts and co are still fating along, and meeting up with the rpg group and taking Casca to Elfhelm together is all part of it. Flora was probably playing into fate’s hands when she handed the Berserker armour to Guts. She has the ability to defy fate, but imo probably most things she does are still ordained by causality. Like I don’t think she’s tried to change anything.
The fact that they have a behelit also indicates that they’re within causality, because behelits work thru fate or whatever. They’re fated to have it right now, and the person who’s fated to use it is going to have it when it’s time.
Consequently, this also suggests that NGriff was fated to save Casca from falling rocks back at the Hill of Swords. Which suggests that his feelings are fated to exist, or at least the Casca-related, potentially fetus-driven ones lol. Jury’s out on his feelings for Guts. Tho if those feelings are still there because Guts survived the Eclipse, and Guts was fated to survive, then it stands to reason that they’re part of causality too.
The way I see it, everyone p much has free will, but everyone is shaped and moulded by circumstance (”encounters”) which is causality’s domain.
So, eg, Guts could’ve chosen not to leave the Hawks in theory. But causality ensured he was picked up by Shizu on the side of the road, that the nature of his childhood shaped him into a certain person, and that he overheard Griffith’s speech. And the person Guts’ childhood shaped him into is gonna decide to leave the Hawks under those circumstances.
So yk, everyone makes their choices based on organic real feelings and life circumstance, but fate’s still there pulling strings.
So Guts is still walking the road of causality leading somewhere quite possibly behelit-related, therefore Griffith couldn’t kill him. But the reason Griffith hasn’t killed him is Griffith’s feelings. His “commandment” from God was still “do what thou wilt.” He didn’t feel like killing Guts, and whatever Griffith feels like doing or not doing is the correct fate-ordained choice.
Like after all this shit about Guts being a step outside causality, I fully expect him to actually defy fate at some point. Or Casca, or maybe Schierke. Probably not Skull Knight, not because he can’t but bc I don’t feel like that’s his role in the story lol. Defying fate seems like it should be a significant moment for a protagonist, not a mysterious tertiary character.
Maybe even NGriff, tho idk. I feel like he might actually be like, extra beholden to fate.
Does this even make sense? lol this subject wrinkles my brain.
But yeah tl;dr I think that like, it’s not that witches, skull knight, and branded ppl are living their lives totally outside of causality and able to do whatever they want, it’s more that they maybe have a small ability to nudge things in a different direction, and we just haven’t seen that happen yet.
it’s so much more interesting for skull knight to be essentially using guts for his own means and only allying with him because they share a common enemy and guts has a sort of “in” to the god hand through griffith than for him to help guts because he likes him on any personal level lol why do people want skull knight to be a total “good guy” with no ulterior motives. like would someone who truly cares about guts well being would let guts have the berserker armour?? nah sis he needs guts to be as strong as possible to serve his own goals like it isn’t rocket science
This is like, the fucking plan. Skull Knight and Danann are conspiring to have the behelit open in Elfhelm, by Danann’s spirit tree, summoning the Godhand, so Skull Knight can do his thing, quite probably aided by Elfhelm tree magic, and entomb them in the vortex. Probably alongside Guts and Casca and everyone else watching the show.
Also something genuinely bad and dark has to happen because of this, like say, Casca becoming an apostle, because Guts needs to feel the full weight of betrayal by SK and succumb to the armour. And this will be a heavy painful betrayal because it’s gonna remind Guts of Griffith, because of the way Skull Knight has rescued him in the past and earned his trust. (tbh more on this whenever I get off my ass and write a long meta post about Guts and what his relationship to Griffith means to him.)
But also the power of friendship is going to prevent Guts from going full Beast of Darkness forever the way it’s been suggested that Skull Knight lost his humanity to the armour. Just, god willing, hopefully not before g*tsca is laid to rest.
So. Still think Guts and Casca are pawns, still think the tree and Dragon’s Road thing are relevant, definitely think the behelit’s relevant, and I’m actually pretty confident that the Godhand are coming to Elfhelm and Danann and Skull Knight have this trap waiting for them.
Whether Danann and Skull Knight’s plan is successful is another story entirely. Whether defeating and trapping the Godhand away in the vortex is even a good idea is also another story entirely. And idk whether NeoGriff figures into this at all lol.
Oh also I know the behelit only opens when the laws of causality like, make it happen, but, a) Skull Knight referred to that in that ominous scene where Flora suggests he might be using Guts and it’s not stopping him from maneuvering things into place it’s just giving him a handy excuse b) fate works thru people’s encounters and choices and Danann and Skull Knight and Guts etc are people c) they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for their own ends or smthn.
Also I know Miura has said he writes on the fly and doesn’t have a plan, but he must have some idea of where things are headed because he has actively been throwing foreshadowing down for 150 chapters. Maybe the details are vague in his mind but I’m quite sure he knows the broadstrokes of the story. Like after all he wrote the entire golden age knowing exactly where it would end up, give or take a few details. I’m willing to bet he’s been planning some Skull Knight shit since Flora’s appearance.
Anyway this is my theory now. I may go about it backwards, ie having a destination I absolutely want and then finding evidence for it, but yk what i want to live in hope until the next chapter so screw it.
Ok so to summarize, my theory is that Casca’s despair is going to open the behelit, this was deliberately arranged by Danann and Skull Knight so they can trap the Godhand in the vortex, and the fall-out of this is going to be Guts going full Berserker for some period of time, most likely (though I am a little less confident about this aspect than the rest of it) because Casca opts for monsterism.
So anyway I was re-reading chapter 328, another one of those chapters that basically exists to be crammed full of foreshadowing, and this jumped out at me
Hey Schierke, quick question for you:
what the hell does deciphering “fates that transcend time” have to do with the elf king showing up as a child to stalk your rpg group?
Nothing. That’s just completely unrelated infodumping that happens to fully support my theory that Danann and Skull Knight are conspiring to have Casca open the behelit.
Up there I wrote
“they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can
tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for
their own ends or smthn” and basically I’m just giving myself a pat on the back because that’s absolutely correct, as Schierke tells us here.
Incidentally I’m also now contemplating the possibility that Schierke is right and moon kid is Danann in disguise, but I have nothing conclusive to say about that, other than it would be another extra hilarious example of Danann playing up g*tsca for the sake of betraying them and tearing them apart for her own ends.
I’d love to see their history tbh, and yeah I hope it’s not just Void = Griffith, SK = Guts because that sounds boring af. Plus Skull Knight has strong parallels to both Griffith and Guts, so if his history with Void is in any way similar it would be cool if it was a remix rather than a repetition, where they both have aspects of both.
I mean there’s a theory of mine where Skull Knight was an earlier incarnated Godhand 1000 years ago, like Griffith, since Gaiseric was the previous ruler of what is now Falconia and has been compared to Griffith bc of it, and tbqh if Void sacrificed him along with the rest of his city to become the first of the next batch of Godhand members that would be like, rly interesting to me.
But that’s just a pipe dream lol. Not something I have evidence for other than Godhands incarnating once every thousand years, and Gaiseric appearing out of nowhere and building an empire with Falconia 1.0 as his central hub a thousand years ago, and Void looking shifty when Slan or Ubik talks about how unprecedented a sacrifice surviving is.
And yeah like I’m over here theorizing that he’s using Guts to get to the Godhand, like I definitely don’t think he’s just a chill friendly ally of Guts, helping him out of the goodness of his heart. He has an agenda. Tho as per Flora (”Old friend, I want to believe you still have the heart of a man” or whatever the line was) if he’s using Guts and co now and fucking them over he might end up making up for it later.
This is like, the fucking plan. Skull Knight and Danann are conspiring to have the behelit open in Elfhelm, by Danann’s spirit tree, summoning the Godhand, so Skull Knight can do his thing, quite probably aided by Elfhelm tree magic, and entomb them in the vortex. Probably alongside Guts and Casca and everyone else watching the show.
Also something genuinely bad and dark has to happen because of this, like say, Casca becoming an apostle, because Guts needs to feel the full weight of betrayal by SK and succumb to the armour. And this will be a heavy painful betrayal because it’s gonna remind Guts of Griffith, because of the way Skull Knight has rescued him in the past and earned his trust. (tbh more on this whenever I get off my ass and write a long meta post about Guts and what his relationship to Griffith means to him.)
But also the power of friendship is going to prevent Guts from going full Beast of Darkness forever the way it’s been suggested that Skull Knight lost his humanity to the armour. Just, god willing, hopefully not before g*tsca is laid to rest.
So. Still think Guts and Casca are pawns, still think the tree and Dragon’s Road thing are relevant, definitely think the behelit’s relevant, and I’m actually pretty confident that the Godhand are coming to Elfhelm and Danann and Skull Knight have this trap waiting for them.
Whether Danann and Skull Knight’s plan is successful is another story entirely. Whether defeating and trapping the Godhand away in the vortex is even a good idea is also another story entirely. And idk whether NeoGriff figures into this at all lol.
Oh also I know the behelit only opens when the laws of causality like, make it happen, but, a) Skull Knight referred to that in that ominous scene where Flora suggests he might be using Guts and it’s not stopping him from maneuvering things into place it’s just giving him a handy excuse b) fate works thru people’s encounters and choices and Danann and Skull Knight and Guts etc are people c) they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for their own ends or smthn.
Also I know Miura has said he writes on the fly and doesn’t have a plan, but he must have some idea of where things are headed because he has actively been throwing foreshadowing down for 150 chapters. Maybe the details are vague in his mind but I’m quite sure he knows the broadstrokes of the story. Like after all he wrote the entire golden age knowing exactly where it would end up, give or take a few details. I’m willing to bet he’s been planning some Skull Knight shit since Flora’s appearance.
Anyway this is my theory now. I may go about it backwards, ie having a destination I absolutely want and then finding evidence for it, but yk what i want to live in hope until the next chapter so screw it.
hohoho
so i did what i said i was going to do, re-read most of the elfhelm chapters to see if i could figure anything out.
and idk how solid this is, especially considering how biased in favour of it i am lol, but i came up with this theory last night
So in 345 they’re all sitting around a table having a nice chat about important spirit realm shit.
The world tree is a “dragon’s road.”
The behelit also creates a dragon’s road.
Just want to point out the little specification of “at your side” and the shot of the behelit in Guts’ pouch vs the way Guts’ cloak billows to give us a view of that pouch as he walks towards Casca.
SO dragon roads.
Schierke pipes up with a question absolutely no reader was ever curious about and is therefore probably very relevant:
With me so far? These spirit woods are lands associated with spirit trees, like Flora’s. These trees feed off the world tree like parasites, keeping it pruned to manageable levels until Griffith destroyed a bunch of them to make way for his high fantasy genre shift.
The world tree is a dragon’s road – it’s not a real tree, it’s a fissure between realms:
Again, the same kind of thing the behelit creates.
Eventually they head on over to Danann’s palace, which turns out to be a giant cherry tree:
It’s a really impressive spirit tree, maybe the last surviving one, or one of the last at least. Elfhelm is probably its associated spirit woods.
Danann specifies that Guts and Casca’s first meeting will take place right by her spirit tree.
And check out the last image of the most recent chapter:
Quite an ominous shot of that tree.
Bear in mind that Danann sensed that Casca was afraid of Guts and refused to let him join Schierke and Farnese in her dreams because of this. It seems a bit strange that as soon as Casca wakes up she’s sending her straight to Guts then, doesn’t it?
Also bear in mind that Skull Knight, who reminds Puck of the elves and is implied to be the Elf King’s oracle, is the one who both told Guts the Elf King could heal Casca, and warned him that “there’s no guarantee your wish will be her wish.”
Schierke thinks the oracle is the Moonlight Boy, because she doesn’t know it’s Skull Knight. But this is how we know that “oracle” is connected to the Elf King. And this is how we know it’s Skull Knight:
And check out this vaguely ominous thread that hasn’t been picked back up yet. Is someone using Guts…? Skull Knight, or the person Skull Knight is playing messenger for – the Elf King? (tbh it looks like he’s justifying it to himself by saying whether he interferes or not causality has the final say anyway. calling Guts “a factor.” A factor in what? What is being facilitated, and by whom? Maybe someone who understands the flow of causality, who is using it for their own ends?)
I also want to note that I had zero memory of Flora asking if Skull Knight is using Guts lmao, the only reason I went back to this part was to prove that SK is the Elf King’s oracle. But I am super stoked that it fits my theory perfectly.
SO yeah the Elf King’s oracle is the one telling Guts this. Seems probable that Danann has been planning to try healing Casca’s mind since long before they showed up on her doorstep asking her to.
Also of note in this scene with Skull Knight on the beach:
This is the explanation for why NeoGriffith had Flora killed.
To
confront him, one must also exist outside the story. Who exists outside
the story to some extent that we know of? Skull Knight, the branded, and witches.
AND one more thing of note in this scene is Skull Knight warning Guts about the armour:
All this foreshadowing is thrown into the same chapter, and I think it could be all tied together.
So, my theory:
Danann is using Casca and Guts, for two possible reasons, maybe both:
1. By healing Casca’s mind and sending her to meet Guts right beside her spirit tree, she knows or hopes that Casca’s memories will send her into despair right there, with the behelit at hand, thereby opening a dragon’s road right beside her powerful spiritual tree thing which feeds on dragon’s roads. Maybe giving Danann and Elfhelm a boost of energy/spiritual power for something.
2. Weapons.
If Casca becomes an apostle, she will be branded, ergo a step outside the reason of the world and able to harm Griffith. She will be powerful. And Griffith will have a weakness against her – that whole wacky fetus thing that made him save her life. It’s entirely possible that Danann knows this, as she has scryers checking things out.
(Granted Casca would also have her own weakness against him, that demon instinct which recognizes NeoGriffith as a messiah, buuut I’m js Ganeshka’s reaction to him was rather similar to Casca’s old feelings, which she’s had several years of experience dealing with and ignoring. Plus he’s responsible for destroying her life and everything that traumatized her into insanity, and Danann has a lot of magic. That potential weakness isn’t the be all end all, is what I’m saying.)
There’s also the foreboding foreshadowing regarding Guts succumbing to the armour. Skull Knight’s warning back there, the Beast of Darkness taunting him here
and this scene
which directly connects Casca regaining her sanity and ~doing something~ ominous to the Beast of Darkness lying in wait. And I feel like Casca choosing to make a sacrifice like Griffith did and become a monster would be a pretty solid incentive for Guts to succumb to his inner beast.
And I’m js Beast of Darkness Guts, with his own foot outside the reason of the world thanks to the brand, and lbr Femto/NGriff’s own host of issues that led to him letting Guts go three times so far, would also be a powerful weapon.
It’s also worth noting that we’ve been warned time and again about the dangers of Guts succumbing to the armour, losing his humanity, etc, and he’s been saved every single time he reaches a danger point by Schierke, or the Astral Kid, or whatever. At some point he has to actually succumb properly, at least for a while, for long enough to shake up the narrative and have Consequences, or there’s no point to all this ominous foreshadowing.
Elfhelm is opposed to NeoGriffith and Falconia and the whole merging of planes thing, it’s suggested that Guts is being used by Skull Knight, who seems to be allied with/working for the Elf King, and all these little ominous moments fit together very well.
Plus let’s be real here – Skellig is obviously too good to be true.
Like, I don’t think there’s a dark underbelly to Skellig, any more than I think there’s a dark underbelly to Falconia. I don’t think they’re secretly killing children or Danann’s going to transform into a cackling demon or that the cloying wholesomeness is all a performance to trick Guts and co lol. But I do think that despite the cutesy elf antics and unicorns and sentencing Magnifico to dishwashing duty etc, they would be very capable of ruthlessness. This is Berserk, after all.
tbh I’m really feeling the behelit dragon’s road thing, all those expository details in the recent chapters add up v neatly.
And I think the weaponizing Cacsa and/or Guts theory is a little more of a stretch, more of a “well it would logically follow” rather than having directly suggestive evidence of its own, but still fits nicely imo. And boy, would that not twist the whole revenge theme in an interesting way? If there’s another secondary antagonist who wants Guts and/or Casca to go and kill NeoGriff for their own reasons? Maybe even for the greater good – but at the expense of our protagonists?
lol I actually theorize that he was a former Godhand, though without any real evidence other than the timeline we’re given. (I think he somehow made his reality warping sword by eating behelits lol.) My theory is that he was the last incarnated Godhand member pre-Griffith, since one supposedly incarnates once every thousand years and Gaiseric’s Falconia 1.0 empire was a thing 1000 years ago. Plus Guts comparing him to Griffith was a solid “hmmm” moment, and the fact that he’s also compared to Guts now (witch friend, possible revenge quest, armour) is more interesting to me if he was the world’s previous “Griffith.”
Never heard those speculations, why 200 years? And like Zodd how? Monstrous, or roaming battle fields, or bloodlusty, or what? Seems like an odd theory since Zodd is just an apostle and Griffith is a god. (Unless you mean become like Skull Knight, in which case I could get behind that theory.)
And I’m not gonna lie, I’m 100% a Griffith fan and I’ll absolutely argue that he wasn’t at all evil pre-rebirth into Femto. Like, the Godhand ultimately convinced him to make the sacrifice not through offers of power or rejuvenation but by guilt-tripping him about all the people who died for his dream. Human Griff ain’t evil, he’s just got stupid (tho imo v understandable) priorities.
After he became Femto, I’d say he’s like, literally evil, in that he’s literally described as being made up of the same evil/dark/negative aspects of humanity that the Idea of Evil is. And NeoGriffith is a mysterious wildcard as far as I can tell, I have no idea if he’s yet another aspect of humanity brought to the forefront, the way Griffith was all human and Femto was humanity’s darkness, or if he’s just Femto with a flesh suit on, or what, so I’m just waiting on more reveals before making up my mind on him.
But I don’t think he’s Satan, or an anti-christ. I think he’s a Christ figure in a world whose God is a manifestation of humanity’s dark side. Yk, if that’s a difference worth distinguishing lol.
you're the only one 