Join me on Pinterest ^^ I could defo use some company!
i could never adjust to pinterest, like it’s just not what i want in a social media platform, but honestly i’ll still keep this in mind if tumblr breaks down even more lol
Honestly, ihni where that line is drawn lol, I don’t think I’ll be any help. Sorry, I wish I could give you a good thorough answer, but I‘d just as likely be completely wrong lol and accidentally advise plagiarism or smthn.
I hope you figure it out though and write your thing because any story inspired by some aspects of Berserk is probably worth writing!
@madchen said: berserk is literally an edgy spin off of
devilman and the dark souls franchise is heavily influenced by berserk
for like. a frame of reference. good artists steal etc etc
@griff-guts said:
also to add onto what maddy said which i 100% agree with: the themes of
berserk are rly quite common in literature and other fiction. being
betrayed by a best friend, isolation and loneliness, dreams becoming
destructive, the nature of humanity and evil etc are all big parts of
berserk you can transfer into just about anything. berserk as a story
rly isn’t that revolutionary or original when you strip it down to its
essentials. its the writing, the tone, the characterization tht make it
original
I just want to add that the character of Laurent from the book series Captive Prince is also loosely based on/inspired by Griffith, and it’s not really the plot points that make that obvious (although there’s that too), it’s his, you know, “inner turmoil,” the themes around his feelings and such. So think about the themes of Berserk that you like and try exploring them in ways Miura, and maybe also other writers, didn’t.
omg lol i just started reading captive prince the other day. i was already enjoying it but if this is true i’m like, extra into it
@bthump literally the conclusion i came to when i was thinking about scenes in which he was, to some degree, relaxed
i want to like brainstorm personality traits that he didn’t deliberately manufacture to help him achieve his dream now lol.
like yeah, playful. i think he’s naturally confident, charismatic, and a leader type. competitive, but still a graceful loser. empathetic too tbqh, he’s very aware of ppl’s feelings and he genuinely cares, and you’d see that way more if he didn’t constantly bury it lol. also a bit of a mediator? he doesn’t like real interpersonal conflict (his reaction to guts and casca’s rivalry, or casca being pissy at corkus, etc). he still cares what people think of him, dream or no dream imo. but he might take pride in being hated by awful people. i don’t think he’d necessarily try to get everyone to like him – just the people he likes.
would he still be ambitious? if he didn’t have the one dream, would he find another, maybe less soul destroying goal to latch onto? I think he’d still feel a need to prove his worth as a person, to justify his existence by contributing something to the world. but if he didn’t get people killed when he first started maybe he’d be more chill about it. maybe he’d volunteer at a non profit or something instead.
would he still be a complete idiot about his own feelings or would he be more self-aware if he didn’t need to bury his emotions for the sake of his dream? i could def see him being more self-aware, but that’s not as fun lol.
Well, I like Griffith so much because his thought process and belief system is just so utterly SAME, for me, down to the fact that if I was also a super smart super hot guy and was having a mental breakdown from Guts leaving I too would probably fuck Charlotte (and down to the fact that part of me feels personally attacked and had close to a literal life crisis after reading bthump’s psychological analysis of him lul….), and while it’s definitely a self destructive act and not an act of love or pleasure, it’s also because she’s …. hot is the wrong word? But I do think he is physically attracted to her. I also think he is attracted to Casca physically in some way. I think those attractions are twisted and warped and spring largely from psychological darkness, but that there is a genuine biological attraction.
I went through several times wondering if I was really bi, or if I only wanted to sleep with men to use them to punish myself because I associated it so much with having to do with conquest and punishment because of past trauma. But my therapist said that most likely if I wasn’t attracted to men to begin with I wouldn’t take it out that way… so that’s my reasoning for Griffith being attracted to women. I know it probably wasn’t a seriously question, though, so sorry for being so extra. I’ve been in a mood. xD
…further thoughts…. I do feel a lot like both times, I think there’s a pattern it’s a power thing for him, because that’s my projection. That Guts leaving made him feel helpless, so he fucked Charlotte because he could. That being physically wrecked from being tortured made him feel helpless, so he raped Casca to prove he could. I guess that doesn’t…really? prove he’s attracted to women?…. but I just feel like maybe something sexual wouldn’t be the route he’d take if he was totally unattracted? Just my personal feeling.
Fair enough, we all have our headcanons based on whatever we get out of the manga + our own experiences + what we find enjoyable/entertaining/reasonable/etc. No worries about answering seriously, I just gave a flippant answer lol bc ngl that’s kind of been my mood today, but god knows I’m all for getting serious and meta-y at any and all possible opportunities lol.
Anyway yeah, as another bi who definitely has done (and still sometimes does lol) a lot of “am I bi or gay?” soul searching I definitely get where you’re coming from even tho I see him as gay myself. Thanks for sharing your input on this tbh, and I hope this isn’t too personal to reblog tho I will ofc delete if you prefer.
I don’t even get how that would simplify anything lol, tbqh Griffith (and Guts) being gay would make the story make 50x more sense and also make it more complex.
But I mean we all know that “X can’t be gay that’s too simple/too reductive/you can’t reduce their relationship down to sexual attraction it’s more ~profound~ then that/X is beyond things like sexual orientation but also he’s straight/etc etc” is just badly disguised homophobia anyway.
But I also feel like deep entangled not specifically romantic relationships are unexplored. People are allowed to feel really intense and complicated emotions about friends and I feel like people ignore the fact that that exists, especially between men. I’m not particularly for or against the gayness in Berserk though, though I like Griffith to be bi because I project and he’s my fave.
Ok I lied it’s not that unexplored, but I feel it’s increasingly unacceptable and disbelieved in recent times.
This is true but I absolutely think the reason for that is because society is increasingly aware that gay people exist and are afraid of being associated with gayness. I mean ia that you wouldn’t get (i know I use this example all the time but it’s a good one) Kirk and Spock’s relationship now – I mean we clearly don’t, we have the reboot movies that downplay the hell out of their relationship and give Spock a het romance, because it’s become common knowledge that their friendship is often interpreted as gay and the creators are afraid of that association.
So yeah I’m all for portraying deep friendships and bonds between men! I personally am still gonna read them as sexual more often than not bc that’s what I enjoy doing, and if that fact scares people away from writing those friendships, that’s their problem, yk?
um griffguts berserk au ish idea where guts changes his mind and comes back to the hawks like a few weeks later and rescues griffith who isnt physically destroyed but pretty fucked up and his tongue is gone and then they just gotta deal with that. bonus if behelit casca somehow? also has griffith been castrated post year of torture or?
it would make so much sense for guts to hear a rumour or smthn that the hawks were declared traitors etc before a whole year passed tbh and come running back. i want to read this.
also like, ignoring the behelit, the idea of griffith totally losing his chance to be king after being declared a traitor but not being able to come to terms with it/being in denial for a while has so much good angst potential.
Okay, this is totally overkill, I know, but your ask has motivated me to just lay it all out, so ty!
Yeah, I can see why people look at this image and see it as one huge raised scar. It’s fairly ambiguous looking, and it’s the visual interpretation the anime went with, which reinforces this common perception:
But look at this:
You can see when he traces it that the “outline” of that “wound” fits his two fingers exactly. It’s not one scar, it’s two self-inflicted parallel scratch marks.
They’re not in the same place as the river scratches, there are only two instead of four, and they’re also older and therefore either mostly healed scabs or scars which he’s tracing instead of tearing open in that moment, which is why they’re not the same as the bleeding open wounds we see in chapter 17, but they are definitely two separate marks, not the edges of one giant scar.
Tbh I think Miura put them on his shoulder instead of his arms this time mainly for dramatic effect so Griffith is more curled in on himself when he traces them.
imo the movie is closer to the spirit of the manga in making them scratch marks and showing Griffith seemingly tempted to add to them. It’s still a little weird considering their placement further back, and idk what they expected new audiences to think since they cut out every relevant aspect of those marks being there, ie his backstory and the night Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and co. But whatever, it’s close enough for me.
And to just briefly explain those scratch marks a bit further, basically, as much as it looks a bit like a big scar in the manga, like you said, it really makes no sense for it to be.
If Guts’ sword had hit him in the second duel he’d either have a gaping wound or a discoloured bruise later that day, not a scar, and if he got it somewhere else that we never get to see then he has absolutely no narrative reason to trace it and cry while thinking about Guts. It would be nonsensical and meaningless for him to trace some random mysterious scar that has no relevance in this highly emotionally charged moment.
On the other hand we know he has a history of self-harming by scratching himself, and we’ve seen him viciously scratch himself under circumstances very similar to Tombstone of Flame Part 2 – the moment Griffith flashed back to just as we see his bare shoulder with those marks on it for the first time in that first image up there: “You believe that, don’t you?”
Griffith has done something he considers “dirty” for the sake of his dream, asks someone else what they think of him (”Am I dirty?” // “Do you think that I’m cruel?”), both Casca and Guts inadvertantly reinforce his belief that he’s dirty/cruel with their responses (”N- why… why were you alone with him before?” and “Ain’t that part of the path to your dream?”), and in the river in front of Casca he self harms while talking himself through the necessity of dirtying himself for his dream, so it feels safe to assume that sometime shortly following his conversation with Guts in Tombstone of Flame he also self harmed while telling himself it’s necessary to be cruel for his dream.
Now that Guts has left in what Griffith believes is a rejection of the “cruelty” and “dirtiness” that he let Guts in to see, he traces those old scratch marks and tries to convince himself again that it’s worth it for his dream. And the point of this moment is that he can’t convince himself this time. Instead he just curls up and sobs, because in the face of Guts’ apparent rejection, it’s not worth it.
Like I said lol, this is overkill as a response to your ask, but like I saw an excuse to explain my take on this moment in its own post, instead of buried in a much longer post, so I took it.
Great analysis, I would like to add a couple of points, if you don’t mind.
Guts didn’t want to hurt Griffith during the duel, he stops his sword before it hits him: he doesn’t have cut hair, nor clothes. No signs of bleeding whatsoever too (he didn’t change his clothes when he got to Charlotte, so he would’ve been soaked with blood).
And since Miura is very precise with what he draws, we can clearly see the hypothetical sword wound would’ve gone from his neck to his shoulder, not from his back to his collar bone:
The way the scar it’s drawn still bothered me, so I searched for it in the other chapters, and in chapter 39 it looks the same, while in chapter 40’s cover it looks like two separate scratch marks:
So either Miura changed his mind about its origin or he noticed people didn’t understand what it was supposed to be.
I’d like to think the movie got the “corrected” version, but we’ve seen they took some liberties with stuff such as Griffith’s tortured face, so who knows. I prefer the scratching as an explanation for that wound.
ty for the addition!
yeah i really wish Miura would’ve made it say, three scratch marks instead of two for the sake of clarity, but oh well.
I could even mb see an argument that maybe it’s meant to be ambiguous and deliberately looks reminiscent of a scar, maybe to emphasize that Griffith came away from that duel wounded emotionally, if not physically. Buuuut that’s a huge stretch and almost certainly not intended lol.
js if guts and griffith made out griffith would freak out not just about his dream but also about the fact that guts might have just been drunk or had a little lapse of judgment and would regret it in the morning & leave
this is an extremely good point
man there are so many ways for griffith to be a complete mess about this lol. i feel like guts would be the relatively chill one.
Like Guts would be chill with it but it’s not in his nature to aggressively pursue something like that also like his track record of taking a little while to catch up with the full extent of his emotions.
So he’d be waiting for cues from Griff,
And Griffith would basically see the laid back thing as both a relief as well blow because on one hand it would be easy to write off all these new emotional feels and go back to status quo on the other hand Guts not seeming concerned would be taken as him not being as into it as Griffith is, which could make him feel less empowered and thereby pretending to not care either because he doesn’t want to be the one who’s being emotional about it.
And Guts would just be like “okay well not a surprise, I may have gotten ahead of myself anyway”
lol there are so many ways they could blow little miscommunications out of proportion.
i think guts could at least save the day here with his tendency to try to have conversations and speak his mind about stuff.
though now that i think about it guts does only tend to force conversations w/ griffith if he’s surprised about griffith going above and beyond for him/demonstrating his feelings. he didn’t talk about the promrose hall speech because it made sense to him, unlike griffith saving him from zodd or w/e lol.
so yeah if griffith withdrew after a kiss or a night together or w/e i could totally see guts being hurt but going along with it. 😦
maybe they could figure their shit out next time griffith does something stupid for guts and guts is like, ‘okay wtf is the deal here.’
or, as per tradition, a hawk member forces them to face the gay reality
lol yeah this was originally about casca being the one to tell them what the deal is, wasn’t it
js if guts and griffith made out griffith would freak out not just about his dream but also about the fact that guts might have just been drunk or had a little lapse of judgment and would regret it in the morning & leave
this is an extremely good point
man there are so many ways for griffith to be a complete mess about this lol. i feel like guts would be the relatively chill one.
Like Guts would be chill with it but it’s not in his nature to aggressively pursue something like that also like his track record of taking a little while to catch up with the full extent of his emotions.
So he’d be waiting for cues from Griff,
And Griffith would basically see the laid back thing as both a relief as well blow because on one hand it would be easy to write off all these new emotional feels and go back to status quo on the other hand Guts not seeming concerned would be taken as him not being as into it as Griffith is, which could make him feel less empowered and thereby pretending to not care either because he doesn’t want to be the one who’s being emotional about it.
And Guts would just be like “okay well not a surprise, I may have gotten ahead of myself anyway”
lol there are so many ways they could blow little miscommunications out of proportion.
i think guts could at least save the day here with his tendency to try to have conversations and speak his mind about stuff.
though now that i think about it guts does only tend to force conversations w/ griffith if he’s surprised about griffith going above and beyond for him/demonstrating his feelings. he didn’t talk about the promrose hall speech because it made sense to him, unlike griffith saving him from zodd or w/e lol.
so yeah if griffith withdrew after a kiss or a night together or w/e i could totally see guts being hurt but going along with it. 😦
maybe they could figure their shit out next time griffith does something stupid for guts and guts is like, ‘okay wtf is the deal here.’
Some mild spoilers below fyi, but short answer, yes imo, and ngl I hope something fucked up happens lol. I also like the characters but Guts’ story has been too happy recently with super low stakes and it’s been so boring to me.
But yeah it’s been leaning pretty heavy on ppl saying that the rpg group’s journey together has been gr8 and worthwhile etc pretty recently and yeah I’d call it like the central ~thing~ going on rn lol. Schierke and Farnese putting Casca back together and using symbols of all their friends/relationships/histories etc as weapons in Casca’s mind, Farnese saying she thinks she can help Casca get over her trauma bc they bonded over the course of their journey, and Guts talking to Serpico and Roderick about how grateful he is that they’re with him, that kinda thing.
The real question is whether it’s talking the friendships up so the audience will be extra sad when tragedy ruins everything, or whether it’s set up for narrowly averted tragedy through the power of friendship. Or, what I think is probably most likely, some tragedy but also friendship saving everything from being completely horrible.
I like the friendship thing as long as it’s gay … Like, Farnese and Casca being each other’s support? I love it, please, more. Guts and Serpico bonding a little bit? Delicious. But all of them being like this big polyamorous yet platonic family who can get through anything with the power of friendship is just so … yawn ………….. I’m sorry I just really hate those kinds of themes and find them mind-numbingly boring
Oh yeah same, sometimes it’s the main highlight of the guts narrative lol, like serpico going from trying to kill guts again to jumping in front of a monster for him in one night, and everything farneseca ofc.
But like, what it kind of signifies for Guts’ arc is letting go of his ~obsession with griffith~ lol and if Miura’s pitting one thing against the other, friendship vs that obsession, man I’ll happily throw those friendships under the bus lol.
Also if g*tsca goes hand in hand with the rest of the rpg group bonding, which is not definite (could even be the opposite, ie his friendships are the only thing that prevents him from going super dark again if everything w/ casca goes south) but it’s something I worry about lol. It’s like you have revenge obsessed fucked up black swordsman guts on one side and chilled out family man protector-of-the-branded-girl guts on the other, and lbr I know what I’m about.
Now if there was some way to preserve those relationships to an extent, but darken them, and bury g*tsca while keeping some kind of farnesca, and have guts backslide back to obsession at least for a while… like give me everything miura, i’m greedy!
ok anime aside, anyone know if there’s any proof that these are guts’ thoughts, like in the original japanese wording or smthn? because they read so griffith to me in phrasing, and also if these are guts’ lines then it kills alot of my sympathy for him lol.
like kinda turns it from guts leaving without a word bc he didn’t think griffith would care, to guts leaving without a word despite knowing he was causing some amount of emotional damage, bc he’s thinking w/e griffith will get over it. like, surprise dude, he did not get over it. or, to be more cutting, he did in fact eventually stand up and start walking, and that was a bad time for everyone.
(on the other hand if i was adapting this and if it is genuinely ambiguous, i’d rly want to have both vas say these lines lol. i mean maybe it’s not completely a bad thing for guts to not be super sympathetic in his choice to leave. understandable, yes, but a mistake is a mistake and if guts gets these lines that’s just kind of underscoring it.)
honestly I never even doubted that these were 100% guts’ words, I mean now that you’re bringing it up I guess maybe they could be griffith’s (the like stumbling on a rock, a small thing part aka him lying to himself about how much it impacts him) but that makes zero sense to me considering in this very moment he’s just sitting there utterly defeated (like… even more so mentally than physically) so him internally monologuing this deeply feels really out of place. (i always considered him so completely shocked there everything else was just static to him. like he hears no sounds. doesn’t even feel the cold. can’t think. it’s just guts walking further and further away booooo) but you’re right about it killing a bit of the guts sympathy tho because yeah, why leave at all if you’re aware you’re already important enough to cause griff at least SOME form of pain. I mean isn’t that what he wanted all along like why willingly walk away if you’re semi-aware you already mean enough to someone to cause them a minor breakdown. (lol understatement of the century but then again guts at this point knew nothing of the true depth of griff’s feelings)
and this brings up another issue, if these are guts thoughts, and we then assume he was aware he was at least ‘a rock on griff’s road’ yet still left, can we then also safely assume that whatever he was aware of that griff felt for him, was not enough for him, like this whole scene always read to me as guts leaving because he wanted MORE (like yeah i know that’s the whole plot but hear me out) and steeling his resolve to go by winning back his freedom because his eventual return as griffith’s equal would magically undo the hurt and anger griff might’ve felt over guts breaking from his hold. like he had to at the very least know damn well that griffith valued him greatly as a captain and treated him different than the rest of the band, casca deadass tells him that and the only thing that stands in the way of him accepting it personally is his inferiority complex or whatever you wanna call it.
I know guts is a self-unaware idiot esp. in the golden age but cmon dude, he saw the way griff was sitting there stunned before him after that strike, he saw how he was completely shocked he’d lost the duel and thus his hold on guts. take into consideration guts’ own represses feelings for griff and you can imagine his heart must’ve ached at seeing griff so completely shook up.
BUT HE STILL WALKS OFF, monologues the above complete bs of an excuse to himself to justify why it is somehow okay for him to leave and become worthy of being griffith’s equal (that in any case, he already more than was but hnngg berserk is not a happy love story unfortunately)
Its actually good if that kills some of the sympathy because yes this is what inevitably kicked off all events that led to the eclipse and yes it was partly guts fault and YES he should feel very fuckin sorry.
and since the whole plot of berserk is in essence based on the weight of choice and how much of it is really your own or set in stone by fate this is a really good example of a really realllly reallllllly bad one with unimaginable consequences.
tldr; those have to be guts’ lines and yes its cool if you resent him alil for them lmao because this page is the arguably the worst moment in the entire manga cause it kicks off the end of all good things era.
It’s funny bc I just assumed they were Griffith’s words when I read it, since I didn’t remember the scene in the anime at all at the time, and imo it feels like something Griffith would think. Tho I do get your point about Griffith being beyond internally monologuing to himself, and idk I’m kind of torn… like I don’t rly disagree, he is absolutely emotionally fucked here lol, but the way I see Griffith, if there’s anything that would be running through his head at this moment it would be, “it’s fine it’s nbd idc at all it’s nothing” all the while kneeling frozen in the snow while the rest of the hawks there shuffle their feet and glance at each other awkwardly.
But I’m like, all about Griffith denying his feelings to himself so it’s an aspect of his character I mmmmay exaggerate a bit lmao.
But yeah wrt it being from Guts’ pov, I agree with everything you said, and like… yeah it rly does work. tbh I don’t think you’re wrong about anything there, there’s a lot of evidence that Guts at least knows Griffith has strong feelings for him and was devastated when he walked away. But omg I just… can’t handle that lmao.
Like, I need to see Guts as completely blinded by his inadequacy issues because otherwise I feel actual anger towards him and honestly I almost never get angry at fictional characters, I’m generally way more detached than that, so this is a very weird feeling lmao.
Like, it really does shift my attitude towards Guts leaving from seeing it as a
very innocent mistake since he never in a million years believed leaving would genuinely hurt griffith, to really actually
assigning him some serious blame bc he knew it would hurt griffith and
the only mistake there was miscalculating how much.
And like, that’s not just low self esteem, that’s callousness, and it’s callousness that resulted in my fave being tortured for a year and then deciding to become a monster so like, i guess that’s probably why it pisses me off lol. fuck you guts.
So tbh I still want to cling to things like Guts’ complete lack of understanding and denial when he comes back, during Casca’s tirade and his chat with Rickert, and in the tunnels on the way to rescue Griffith, etc, as evidence that Guts’ mistake was being genuinely blind to Griffith’s feelings towards him no matter how obvious they are bc of his low self esteem and inadequacy issues, rather than like, knowing Griffith cared to an extent but miscalculating how easily he’d get over it. And like, “this says to me I’m still worth spillin blood over in your eyes,” also kind of makes me hope that he thought Griffith only gaf about him as a soldier.
idk it’s a lot more palatable to me as another mistake in a big pile of golden age mistakes that no one can really be blamed for because they all have serious issues fucking them and their relationships up, alongside things like griffith failing to recognize his feelings and making his speech to charlotte, and casca running to grab griffith to stop guts from leaving, and both of them choosing to fight rather than talk, etc. And idk maybe if I was unbiased it would still feel like another one of those mistakes bc it’s not like Guts’ issues aren’t contributing lol, but idk it feels like Guts walking away goes above and beyond.
And agggh yeah like that moment is given an above and beyond treatment in Guts’ memories and related guilt issues, so that’s still perfectly reasonable… lmao it feels weird to be the one wanting to defend Guts when I was just saying that narratively everything is his fault and tbh I always feel like most of the fandom lets him off the hook way too much lol.
tl;dr I think you’re most likely right but that makes me feel negative feelings :((( and yeah ok those negative feelings fit the story but still :(((
What if Guts just meant that Griffith would survive the humiliation that he has lost or to be more precisisely lost a very strong soldier?
@chaoticgaygriffith said:
I’m on the “definitely assumed they were Guts’ words” train, and that’s
why I was so frustrated with him lol and wanted to see way more guilt
from him. But I think he thought the damage would be more like, you
know, Griffith losing a good soldier, instead of losing the man he loves
& the only person he can be vulnerable with. Let me check the
original Japanese though, just in case!
(I’m combining these responses to avoid reblogging the same long post twice in a row lol.)
but yeah lol this… really makes a lot of sense and idk I think I’m blinded by feelings here bc I can’t believe I didn’t think of looking at it like this lmao.
tho now that you’ve suggested it i’m suddenly missing all the angst and guilt involved in @ninjabelle‘s interpretation l q l
tbh
i think i could go either way depending if i’m in the mood for angst or
if i want to feel sympathy for everyone lol, guts either walking away
thinking griffith will get over losing a fight and a soldier vs guts
walking away knowing griffith cares somewhat on a personal level but
thinking of that as just more evidence that he needs to leave because
those feelings mean he’s the guy who can eventually become his
friend/equal.
ok anime aside, anyone know if there’s any proof that these are guts’ thoughts, like in the original japanese wording or smthn? because they read so griffith to me in phrasing, and also if these are guts’ lines then it kills alot of my sympathy for him lol.
like kinda turns it from guts leaving without a word bc he didn’t think griffith would care, to guts leaving without a word despite knowing he was causing some amount of emotional damage, bc he’s thinking w/e griffith will get over it. like, surprise dude, he did not get over it. or, to be more cutting, he did in fact eventually stand up and start walking, and that was a bad time for everyone.
(on the other hand if i was adapting this and if it is genuinely ambiguous, i’d rly want to have both vas say these lines lol. i mean maybe it’s not completely a bad thing for guts to not be super sympathetic in his choice to leave. understandable, yes, but a mistake is a mistake and if guts gets these lines that’s just kind of underscoring it.)
honestly I never even doubted that these were 100% guts’ words, I mean now that you’re bringing it up I guess maybe they could be griffith’s (the like stumbling on a rock, a small thing part aka him lying to himself about how much it impacts him) but that makes zero sense to me considering in this very moment he’s just sitting there utterly defeated (like… even more so mentally than physically) so him internally monologuing this deeply feels really out of place. (i always considered him so completely shocked there everything else was just static to him. like he hears no sounds. doesn’t even feel the cold. can’t think. it’s just guts walking further and further away booooo) but you’re right about it killing a bit of the guts sympathy tho because yeah, why leave at all if you’re aware you’re already important enough to cause griff at least SOME form of pain. I mean isn’t that what he wanted all along like why willingly walk away if you’re semi-aware you already mean enough to someone to cause them a minor breakdown. (lol understatement of the century but then again guts at this point knew nothing of the true depth of griff’s feelings)
and this brings up another issue, if these are guts thoughts, and we then assume he was aware he was at least ‘a rock on griff’s road’ yet still left, can we then also safely assume that whatever he was aware of that griff felt for him, was not enough for him, like this whole scene always read to me as guts leaving because he wanted MORE (like yeah i know that’s the whole plot but hear me out) and steeling his resolve to go by winning back his freedom because his eventual return as griffith’s equal would magically undo the hurt and anger griff might’ve felt over guts breaking from his hold. like he had to at the very least know damn well that griffith valued him greatly as a captain and treated him different than the rest of the band, casca deadass tells him that and the only thing that stands in the way of him accepting it personally is his inferiority complex or whatever you wanna call it.
I know guts is a self-unaware idiot esp. in the golden age but cmon dude, he saw the way griff was sitting there stunned before him after that strike, he saw how he was completely shocked he’d lost the duel and thus his hold on guts. take into consideration guts’ own represses feelings for griff and you can imagine his heart must’ve ached at seeing griff so completely shook up.
BUT HE STILL WALKS OFF, monologues the above complete bs of an excuse to himself to justify why it is somehow okay for him to leave and become worthy of being griffith’s equal (that in any case, he already more than was but hnngg berserk is not a happy love story unfortunately)
Its actually good if that kills some of the sympathy because yes this is what inevitably kicked off all events that led to the eclipse and yes it was partly guts fault and YES he should feel very fuckin sorry.
and since the whole plot of berserk is in essence based on the weight of choice and how much of it is really your own or set in stone by fate this is a really good example of a really realllly reallllllly bad one with unimaginable consequences.
tldr; those have to be guts’ lines and yes its cool if you resent him alil for them lmao because this page is the arguably the worst moment in the entire manga cause it kicks off the end of all good things era.
It’s funny bc I just assumed they were Griffith’s words when I read it, since I didn’t remember the scene in the anime at all at the time, and imo it feels like something Griffith would think. Tho I do get your point about Griffith being beyond internally monologuing to himself, and idk I’m kind of torn… like I don’t rly disagree, he is absolutely emotionally fucked here lol, but the way I see Griffith, if there’s anything that would be running through his head at this moment it would be, “it’s fine it’s nbd idc at all it’s nothing” all the while kneeling frozen in the snow while the rest of the hawks there shuffle their feet and glance at each other awkwardly.
But I’m like, all about Griffith denying his feelings to himself so it’s an aspect of his character I mmmmay exaggerate a bit lmao.
But yeah wrt it being from Guts’ pov, I agree with everything you said, and like… yeah it rly does work. tbh I don’t think you’re wrong about anything there, there’s a lot of evidence that Guts at least knows Griffith has strong feelings for him and was devastated when he walked away. But omg I just… can’t handle that lmao.
Like, I need to see Guts as completely blinded by his inadequacy issues because otherwise I feel actual anger towards him and honestly I almost never get angry at fictional characters, I’m generally way more detached than that, so this is a very weird feeling lmao.
Like, it really does shift my attitude towards Guts leaving from seeing it as a
very innocent mistake since he never in a million years believed leaving would genuinely hurt griffith, to really actually
assigning him some serious blame bc he knew it would hurt griffith and
the only mistake there was miscalculating how much.
And like, that’s not just low self esteem, that’s callousness, and it’s callousness that resulted in my fave being tortured for a year and then deciding to become a monster so like, i guess that’s probably why it pisses me off lol. fuck you guts.
So tbh I still want to cling to things like Guts’ complete lack of understanding and denial when he comes back, during Casca’s tirade and his chat with Rickert, and in the tunnels on the way to rescue Griffith, etc, as evidence that Guts’ mistake was being genuinely blind to Griffith’s feelings towards him no matter how obvious they are bc of his low self esteem and inadequacy issues, rather than like, knowing Griffith cared to an extent but miscalculating how easily he’d get over it. And like, “this says to me I’m still worth spillin blood over in your eyes,” also kind of makes me hope that he thought Griffith only gaf about him as a soldier.
idk it’s a lot more palatable to me as another mistake in a big pile of golden age mistakes that no one can really be blamed for because they all have serious issues fucking them and their relationships up, alongside things like griffith failing to recognize his feelings and making his speech to charlotte, and casca running to grab griffith to stop guts from leaving, and both of them choosing to fight rather than talk, etc. And idk maybe if I was unbiased it would still feel like another one of those mistakes bc it’s not like Guts’ issues aren’t contributing lol, but idk it feels like Guts walking away goes above and beyond.
And agggh yeah like that moment is given an above and beyond treatment in Guts’ memories and related guilt issues, so that’s still perfectly reasonable… lmao it feels weird to be the one wanting to defend Guts when I was just saying that narratively everything is his fault and tbh I always feel like most of the fandom lets him off the hook way too much lol.
tl;dr I think you’re most likely right but that makes me feel negative feelings :((( and yeah ok those negative feelings fit the story but still :(((
Yeah like imo I don’t think it’s really in question, there’s so much creepy suggestivity there. tbh, and I’ve talked about this before lol so I’m not going to go on another long ramble about it but in brief, I think the real question is why is it only implicitly discussed and not explicitly discussed? I mean it’s not like Miura has ever shied away from sexual assault before in image or in dialogue lol. Griffith’s got the distinction of being I think the only character who gets assaulted in subtext instead of text.
One could argue that it’s not overly relevant since in the face of a year of torture Griffith’s going to be fucked up no matter what specifically happened, but if that’s the case, why hint at it at all w/ the tongue licking and the husband and wife comment and the fairly prominently featured gynecological tool and the fixation on beauty? Miura kinda missed his shot if he was aiming for classy understatement lmao.
Anyway idk I think it’s a major writing misstep personally.
I’m 100% certain it wasn’t explicit because he’s not a woman, but it’s imo implied to rile Guts up even further, among other things. Since he’s especially sensitive to sexual assault
actually yeah I’m gonna have to co-sign this. like griffith being the only adult man who’s been sexually assaulted (at least by another man, since Guts being kissed by Slan doesn’t have the same impact/connotations to a presumed readership of heterosexual men) def seems relevant here.
oh wow yea… if he were a woman the innuendo would be waaaayyy less subtle too. its just on the line of overtness and too vague to be very frustrating bc i can easily see a regular reader just glossing over the without regustering the complete implication.
Yeah I’ve def seen lots of Berserk fans who either don’t register the implication or don’t think it matters, so I think you’re right about making it easier to gloss over.
Yeah like imo I don’t think it’s really in question, there’s so much creepy suggestivity there. tbh, and I’ve talked about this before lol so I’m not going to go on another long ramble about it but in brief, I think the real question is why is it only implicitly discussed and not explicitly discussed? I mean it’s not like Miura has ever shied away from sexual assault before in image or in dialogue lol. Griffith’s got the distinction of being I think the only character who gets assaulted in subtext instead of text.
One could argue that it’s not overly relevant since in the face of a year of torture Griffith’s going to be fucked up no matter what specifically happened, but if that’s the case, why hint at it at all w/ the tongue licking and the husband and wife comment and the fairly prominently featured gynecological tool and the fixation on beauty? Miura kinda missed his shot if he was aiming for classy understatement lmao.
Anyway idk I think it’s a major writing misstep personally.
I’m 100% certain it wasn’t explicit because he’s not a woman, but it’s imo implied to rile Guts up even further, among other things. Since he’s especially sensitive to sexual assault
actually yeah I’m gonna have to co-sign this. like griffith being the only adult man who’s been sexually assaulted (at least by another man, since Guts being kissed by Slan doesn’t have the same impact/connotations to a presumed readership of heterosexual men) def seems relevant here.
Yeah he rly is drawn in a v extra overly beautiful way. Though I think this is more Miura’s art style changing, rather than an in-universe change, mostly because of this:
I think NGriff is probably more perfect looking than human Griff, like if you took human Griffith on the best looking day of his life and gave him that perfection all the time, but I don’t think any of his features or anything have changed, even if Miura draws them slightly different – like curlier hair eg.
ok lemme just hijack this post real quick cause the way i always read griff getting ‘more beautiful post eclipse’ was to show us that distance, to make him just that much more unavailable, i.e. he’s looking the way he did through the eyes of his followers when placed on that pedestal of absolute leader/the man who’s gonna bring them all glory, and later how he looks to guts himself (beautiful as always but very much more distant) once he started to feel like they were not equals after the fountain speech etc. etc.
because to me golden age griff as seen through guts’ eyes was always muuuch more human looking, less composed in his expressions, more open because he felt he could show that side to guts because ‘i’ve never talked to anyone like this before’ and ‘…only you’ and so on. He looks this ethereal now because it makes him unavailable visually, (e.g. wow that dude’s so perfect a lowly peasant such as i could NEVER–) and since we see him through guts’ eyes during a couple of the most powerful post eclipse scenes (honestly hill of swords is like the only one im talking about here but let’s pretend i care as much about other scenes too lmao) that unreal, unattainable beautiful look is the look that sticks, because griffith looks just as gorg. through others eyes, (like charlotte, or rickerts when they meet again) but it’s only when guts looks at him that the difference is so jarring, because TLDR; when guts looked at him before we saw a man, and now we see a god.
(or… like.. none of this and miura just evolved and his new skillz finally enable him to draw griff the way he always wanted to. (BUT I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THERE COULD BE A STYLISTIC CHANGE THIS OBVIOUS THAT DOES NOT HAVE SOME DEEP GRIFFGUTS ROOTS SOMEWHERE IN THERE.)
✌
ia with all of this!
and like, even if ngriff isn’t meant to be overtly physically different looking from regular griffith in any concrete way, he’s still always described as like a painting, like someone out of a fairytale, “more griffith,” etc.
I’ve framed it before as NeoGriffith becoming like the embodiment of the impression human Griffith used to leave people with, and the way you put that through Guts’ eyes specifically really makes a lot of sense to me.
NeoGriffith is totally like, an encapsulation of what Guts saw when he was looking up at him on the stairs to Promrose Hall, when he stopped seeing Griffith as just a man and he became this distant figure. And that just makes it extra depressing.
reading berserk meta not written by me or someone i know
Why afraid? You’re very open minded person or bc these people may say something very ignorant?
oh lol just bc i have strong and unpopular berserk opinions so even in a post with a lot of good points there’s usually something that’ll make me go “ugh not this again” and start laying out an argument in my head
it’s just a jokey exaggeration lol, not being afraid of reading something i’ll disagree with so much as just waiting for the other shoe to drop
At least we’ve seen Griffith in action again! I missed him :3. Despite his human body, Neo Griffith is far more powerful than his counterpart, the actual human Griffith. The new witch (I forgot her name) seem to be a very helpful fellow to him.
The new monsters were terrifying, though. I like Miura’s take on them. They’re like the ghouls we’ve seen in Lost Children arc (I think), but bigger in size. While the ghouls, depite their brutal nature, acting on instinct to survive, those new ghouls, however, are more blood-thirsty and even a little smarter. They even enslaved the smaller ghouls lol. (maybe this is strange comparation, but this pattern similar to the ant kingdoms)
yeah I enjoy NGriff’s narrative so I don’t really mind a digression to it.
it might be kind of interesting, showing that some of these monsters are smart and have societies of their own, making griffith’s army w/ apostles not just roaming bands going out and rescuing refugees, but an actual army fighting opposing armies of monsters. and at least it gives him something to do lol.
I’ve probably touched on it before but hell if I can remember where or
how much lol, and I like talking about this so I’ll totally share my
thoughts here.
I think the main reason, which I generally come back to, is because Guts doesn’t treat Griffith with the same awe and reverence the rest of the Hawks tend to treat him with.
Their relationship is very wrapped up in power dynamics – Guts joining the Hawks after losing a duel to him, Guts feeling inadequate after Promrose, Griffith stuck on a pedestal wanting someone to share in the aspects of his rise to power that he feels he has to keep hidden from the rest of the Hawks, Griffith proclaiming none of the Hawks are his friends because they aren’t his equals, “how long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand… instead gain such a strong hold on me?”, Guts internally waxing poetic about how untouchable and perfect Griffith is until remembering moments where Griffith was extremely vulnerable w/ him, etc etc.
This is a moment when they both felt like they were equals. “Now we’re even.” Just two kids having a water fight.
Griffith distances himself shortly after this with his speech about his dream, but I feel like it kind of encapsulates them. There are all these artificial power dynamics standing in their way – leader/soldier, dude with a dream/dude without a dream, griffith trying to maintain an image/guts buying into that image after overhearing the Promrose speech – but at their core they’re just two people who have a strong connection.
This shows through when Guts treats Griffith’s orders as suggestions and gets chewed out by Casca, when Griffith asks him to assassinate Julius like a favour rather than an order, when Griffith risks his life and dream for Guts, when Griffith asks if Guts thinks he’s cruel, when Guts says Griffith can take off the mask since it’s just the two of them, etc. All these little glimpses of equality that can never last – and every time they fall by the wayside in favour of reinforcing the power dynamics, it leads to tragedy.
Like
But someone has to win the duel they insist on fighting.
lol I think I kinda veered off topic. But basically Guts is the one person who comes closest to treating Griffith as a person rather than a figurehead, and this marks their relationship as different, and brings them closer than Griffith is with anyone else. It’s why Guts is the person Griffith chooses to help assassinate people. You can even see this in Guts’ decision to leave – Casca hears the speech too and pretty much resigns herself to playing second fiddle, but Guts decides to do whatever it takes to become Griffith’s equal, misguided as his reasoning was.
Yk, rather than upholding the artificial dream criteria of equality, ignore it and recognize that it’s just getting in the way of actual equality.
Buuuut that explains like, why Griffith came to rely so heavily on Guts, and let him be the only person to see underneath the mask of perfection. It doesn’t explain why he was so drawn to Guts in the first place, or why he risked his life to save him the very first time, after only knowing him like a week.
Honestly idk lol. I think this was partially meant to be a little ironic, coming right after the Black Swordsman arc – showing that what fascinates Griffith about Guts is exactly those qualities Guts embodies to an extreme extent as the Black Swordsman, and which Femto claimed to have no interest in.
Overall I think it’s definitely the case that Griffith is enamoured of these traits of Guts’ – his stubbornness, his willingness to do anything to win, the way he faces danger head on, etc. I’m not entirely sure what that says about Griffith though, or even if it’s intended to reflect on Griffith’s character beyond that irony of how Guts is at his most “interesting” by this criteria when he’s Griffith’s enemy.
Though…
I wonder if it still kind of comes back to that equality.
The fight Griffith reminisces fondly about is the one where he got punched in the face and nearly lost because the other dude bit his fucking sword and pushed him off a hill lol.
Like it kind of comes down to Griffith being knocked off his pedestal, and Guts having the ability to do that?
Ooooh and that makes the second duel really interesting. Guts is the only person Griffith has lost a fight to, and that maybe straight up symbolizes his love. Like Guts walked away after demonstrating exactly what Griffith loves most about him.
Idk lol this has kind of devolved into me just like musing outloud, sorry.
And actually I do know I talked about the whole equality thing more here (this is the 2nd part of a very long analysis lol) if you feel like reading more of my thoughts on that lol. I kind of want to sit down and think about how the duels and Guts’ “struggler” thing fit in more now lol.
Anyway ty for the question and comments, and I hope you had a lovely day when you sent this lol, and are having another lovely day now!
There’s two things I gotta add:
1. I’m not one to deny that, aside from being really fucking gay, Griffith saw an excellent soldier in Guts at first, a good investment. It quickly changed into not being about that at all, but when he first saw him and didn’t know him at all, I feel like it’d be naive to claim that Guts’ potential played no part in Griffith’s fascination. On that note,
2. “Like it kind of comes down to Griffith being knocked off his pedestal, and Guts having the ability to do that?” I could see some kinky sex come out of this, js.
extremely good addition, ty
actually wrt 1, yk maybe I am overthinking it lol. Like, clearly Guts is extra special from the start, according to Casca’s internal commentary and Griffith saving his life, fighting a duel for him, etc etc. But there’s no reason that can’t be his assessment of Guts’ fighting prowress/recognizing an asset when he sees one + like, plain old physical attraction.
also wrt 2, nice, and also i feel like this is like a big part of the appeal of guts/neogriff especially lol.
like guts particularly loving griffith’s more masculine features and maybe angsting about it? bc yeah that sounds like, good and interesting and well-rounded, as opposed to shit like “it’s ok for him to be attracted to griffith because he looks like a girl/griffith as the one exception to guts’ heterosexuality.” Which is not to say that wouldn’t also be interesting, but yk, as an examined part of Guts’ internalized homophobia, not played straight like a lot of ppl tend to do (not so much in griffguts fandom that I’ve seen, I just mean as a gay fic trope in general).
actually the whole general idea of exploring griffith’s androgyny and how guts relates to that wrt internalized homophobia sounds rly potentially interesting. Dealing with recognizing that he’s not just attracted to his long curly hair and full lips, but also his masculinity, and what that means to Guts as a closeted dude who may be still in denial over his sexuality.
(which is not to say that a dude being attracted to a dude’s feminine features isn’t still gay attraction, but i mean from guts’ un-nuanced pov ofc)
I hope this is what you meant lol.
YEA VERY GOOD i was just sort of batting around thinking about how actual gay guts attraction would pan out lol
and like this is great guts has always aknowledged that griffith is beautiful etc and its like to contextualize that beyond placing him on a pedestal is difficult bc it comes wth the realization that guts is attracted to griffith not obly because of what he is conceptually but also bc he is a man. and he is attracted to his masculine features and how his feminine features look on him. this doesnt make sense because im sttuggling organizing my thoughts today but this is all good and griffiths adrogyny is imho like a physical mode of him “rationalizing” that attraction, like griffith being so cool and shining and awsome is a la romantic mode or whatever.
tbh yeah like that works rly well with how guts refers to him as “beautiful” and “pretty” in canon too imo. when he refers to his appearance or fixates on it it’s that, and it’s his long hair
but like how he admires him – for having a dream, honing himself to the limit, no room beside him for the weak, blah blah blah, all that bullshit – it’s kind of based on masculine traits (not rly physical but ykwim and I think in like fic you could extrapolate guts tricking himself into thinking his sexy masculine qualities, like his shoulders or toned arms etc, are just admiration of like, how Griffith is also physically ~ideal~ or w/e lol)
and then he calls him dazzling because of this.
it’s like, it’s all attraction, my dude. he’s “beautiful, noble, and larger than life” and you’re into all of it.
@a-girl-named-chester I’m not reblogging that post to talk about it because I thoroughly disagree with the op and I don’t want to start shit lol
but basically I am constantly low-key irritated at people who conflate femininity (a set of traits that any given society encourages women to adopt and discourages men from adopting) with women and therefore call anyone exasperated with compulsory femininity and/or fictional portrayals of femininity (especially those written by men lbr) misogynist.
Casca isn’t a real person, she doesn’t have her own opinions on what she wants to wear, those are given to her by the man writing her character, and I personally hate how Miura goes to great lengths to feminize Casca once she becomes a viable romantic interest for Guts – by putting her in a dress and literally having her ask Guts to validate her attractiveness, but also by things like this:
and by depowering her through her period of all things so Guts can save her, and by having her try to kill herself because of unrequited love so Guts can save her again, and by having her feel fulfilled when she is able to take the role of nurturer and (sexually) comfort someone else, all culminating in turning her into a helpless long haired childlike waif in a dress after being raped to make Guts feel bad and give him someone to protect.
Like, Miura plays lipservice to Casca as a Strong Woman lol, but he never follows through. We hear that she can beat ten men, but we see her feverish and at the brink of exhaustion needing to be saved more often than we’ve ever seen that.
I don’t even necessarily mind moments like Casca feeling insecure about how she looks in a dress, like it’s fine as a character trait and I think it makes sense that Casca might be self-conscious, but it goes hand in hand with things like Casca “showing a soft side” to hamfistedly indicate her burgeoning feelings for Guts, so it’s impossible to separate moments like Casca asking Guts if she looks okay in a dress from Miura deliberately making Casca more feminine as she becomes a love interest.
And that sucks, and is itself deeply misogynist, so I can’t with anyone saying that people who are disappointed at seeing Casca put into a dress (as she herself protests) in the most recent chapter are misogynist lol.
Like we’re not even deriding a real woman putting on a dress, we’re deriding a male writer putting a female character in a dress explicitly to make a reunion feel more romantic. Because who cares that she’s a mercenary who doesn’t feel comfortable in dresses, as a love interest she needs to be appropriately feminine to complement Guts’ rugged masculinity. Gag.
I mean personally I’m actually reserving judgement on this scene in particular because I think(/hope/pray/oh my god do i pray) this is going to end up being sinister and not actually romantic lol. But god if it is played straight, fuckin yikes.
There’s nothing progressive or worth celebrating about a dude writing a romance between a man and a woman and consistently and overtly making sure the woman’s masculine traits are offset by heaping on more femininity.
I sort of figured you’d stand somewhere along that line. I p much agree with you, and really really wanted to hear your thoughts, so thank you.
I definitely wish that her feminine interests were less obviously contrived to make her a better love interest for guts. It feels like there are too few female characters whose battle prowess genuinely coexists with their more traditional feminine interests and it’s such a shame that Casca was shoehorned the way she was.
lol I was getting so into my response I forgot to add ty for asking lol, it’s cool to know ppl are interested in your thoughts ❤
and yeah I think like, Casca could’ve easily been written with a set of masculine and feminine traits without it feeling misogynist but the way the femininity went hand in hand with the romance, and almost always correlated with making her weaker either physically or emotionally, ruins it for me.
1. This is another one of my favourite expresions in Berserk tbh
2. I’m not saying this is deliberate, I’m not sure it would even be in character, but I can’t help but imagine this as Guts taunting Femto/Griffith about the fact that he was in love with him, his life was destroyed because of him, Guts drove him to make the sacrifice by leaving him, and Guts knows it.
Like yeah logically it’s just Guts being pissed off over the fact that Griffith sacrificed him to become a demon, especially with the follow up “thanks to me who’s fighting an army of the dead because of you,” but man, I’m js that knowing how the Golden Age goes gives this line potential Layers. You’re where you are now because this petty existence had all that power over you.
On the other hand this whole scene exists to set up Griffith making the sacrifice to bury his fragile heart bc of whatever went down w/ Guts, so like, it could be that deep?
Plus Femto’s response:
Just gonna reiterate that you mean absolutely nothing to me.
Whether that’s what Guts meant to say or not, I’m pretty sure he’s well aware of the irony of Femto emphasising his insignificance now, considering everything that went down between them. He might even stubbornly refuse to go back to post-Speech-to-Charlotte Guts, clinging to the fact that, no, I meant something to you and you meant something to me, and we both know that.
But then he would also have to know that it’s his fault that Griffith went this far. Which we know that he does, but idk, whenever I re-read the manga I feel like we should get to see more guilt from him.
Anyway, I don’t think Miura was fully taking all this into consideration while writing these first few chapters, but in retrospect you have to think about all the layers of meaning behind nearly every word Femto & Guts exchange. Like, this is off topic, but it’s in these chapters that Guts first finds out what sacrificing someone really means, and he doesn’t really react in any significant way, when realistically he should.
To be fair he’s unconscious when the Godhand actually explain the sacrifice and tell the Count that a sacrifice has to be someone you love so much it’s like they’re part of you. Which imo is kind of a hmmmm in and of itself, like there’s no reason Guts had to be unconscious at any point at all since he could barely move anyway, except to miss the explanation of who can be sacrificed. When he does wake up he just lies there and listens to the Count’s backstory before finally telling Puck to heal him. So I feel like it kind of suggests that Guts knowing that info might affect some things.
But otherwise yeah ia. I’m actually kind of rly into the idea of Guts stubbornly clinging to the knowledge that he was important to Griffith, hard earned as it was, now that you mention that. At least between the Eclipse and Griffith’s rebirth.
It’s like… idk I think there’s an argument that he left the Hawks because he knew he did mean something to Griffith, and that gave him the confidence to believe he could truly become his bff4ever if he changed his whole life lol. Whereas if he thought Griffith genuinely couldn’t give a shit about him he wouldn’t even try.
And then I think a similar way of thinking could be informing his behaviour during the Black Swordsman stuff. Like, I know I meant something to you, deny it all you want, I’m going to find you and force you to acknowledge me.
But after NGriff ditches him I think he kind of gives that up? Which is why he’s able to put his revenge thing on hold – it starts to feel futile when he genuinely believes NGriff feels nothing at all towards him. (Which is why that beating heart is a game changer in waiting js.)
idk lol I’m just thinking outloud.
And yeah like, it’s textual that he feels guilty for Griffith’s breakdown, from letting Casca stab him to:
But I do wish we saw more of that post-Eclipse other than the recurring moments when he thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow and mopes lol. It kind of makes sense to me that we don’t see Guts feeling guilty after the Eclipse because I feel like the point of the Eclipse rape was to piss Guts off enough that he’d basically channel his guilt into rage, but I feel like we should still see more inner conflict. Not that we don’t see any, but yk, I always want more.
Ohhh, man, I remembered he got knocked out but I thought we didn’t get to see the exact moment when he came to … so I thought, you know, we don’t know exactly how much he’s heard?
But I went to check and this is him twitching awake after all the juicy details have been laid out:
Which is honestly even better than him hearing all that and not reacting.
He does get to hear these parts though:
I honestly like to interpret his expression here as loathing directed specifically @ the God Hand sans Griffith/Femto, for waltzing in and ruining everything lol.
And I agree with everything else you brought up! Like, Guts can actually be pretty confident and even cocky, so it’s not like he’s constantly putting himself down. He’s just a little naive, bless his heart.
I can’t WAIT for Neo-Griff to finally snap lol
It’s gotta happen. Even if Guts’ storyline is wall-to-wall disappointment I know in my soul NGriff’s is going somewhere good.
And yeah I’m sure the parallels aren’t lost on Guts lol, but i guess it’s not quite as direct as essentially saying ‘being able to sacrifice someone is proof that you love them.’ Also yeah I’m into that interpretation of his anger there, like imo he hates Femto on a personal level for being an evil version of the dude he loves, but he def hates the rest of the Godhand for facilitating it. His reaction when seeing Slan in the troll cave was even more overwhelmingly rage-y than when he saw NGriff on the Hill of Swords, eg.
1. This is another one of my favourite expresions in Berserk tbh
2. I’m not saying this is deliberate, I’m not sure it would even be in character, but I can’t help but imagine this as Guts taunting Femto/Griffith about the fact that he was in love with him, his life was destroyed because of him, Guts drove him to make the sacrifice by leaving him, and Guts knows it.
Like yeah logically it’s just Guts being pissed off over the fact that Griffith sacrificed him to become a demon, especially with the follow up “thanks to me who’s fighting an army of the dead because of you,” but man, I’m js that knowing how the Golden Age goes gives this line potential Layers. You’re where you are now because this petty existence had all that power over you.
On the other hand this whole scene exists to set up Griffith making the sacrifice to bury his fragile heart bc of whatever went down w/ Guts, so like, it could be that deep?
Plus Femto’s response:
Just gonna reiterate that you mean absolutely nothing to me.
Whether that’s what Guts meant to say or not, I’m pretty sure he’s well aware of the irony of Femto emphasising his insignificance now, considering everything that went down between them. He might even stubbornly refuse to go back to post-Speech-to-Charlotte Guts, clinging to the fact that, no, I meant something to you and you meant something to me, and we both know that.
But then he would also have to know that it’s his fault that Griffith went this far. Which we know that he does, but idk, whenever I re-read the manga I feel like we should get to see more guilt from him.
Anyway, I don’t think Miura was fully taking all this into consideration while writing these first few chapters, but in retrospect you have to think about all the layers of meaning behind nearly every word Femto & Guts exchange. Like, this is off topic, but it’s in these chapters that Guts first finds out what sacrificing someone really means, and he doesn’t really react in any significant way, when realistically he should.
To be fair he’s unconscious when the Godhand actually explain the sacrifice and tell the Count that a sacrifice has to be someone you love so much it’s like they’re part of you. Which imo is kind of a hmmmm in and of itself, like there’s no reason Guts had to be unconscious at any point at all since he could barely move anyway, except to miss the explanation of who can be sacrificed. When he does wake up he just lies there and listens to the Count’s backstory before finally telling Puck to heal him. So I feel like it kind of suggests that Guts knowing that info might affect some things.
But otherwise yeah ia. I’m actually kind of rly into the idea of Guts stubbornly clinging to the knowledge that he was important to Griffith, hard earned as it was, now that you mention that. At least between the Eclipse and Griffith’s rebirth.
It’s like… idk I think there’s an argument that he left the Hawks because he knew he did mean something to Griffith, and that gave him the confidence to believe he could truly become his bff4ever if he changed his whole life lol. Whereas if he thought Griffith genuinely couldn’t give a shit about him he wouldn’t even try.
And then I think a similar way of thinking could be informing his behaviour during the Black Swordsman stuff. Like, I know I meant something to you, deny it all you want, I’m going to find you and force you to acknowledge me.
But after NGriff ditches him I think he kind of gives that up? Which is why he’s able to put his revenge thing on hold – it starts to feel futile when he genuinely believes NGriff feels nothing at all towards him. (Which is why that beating heart is a game changer in waiting js.)
idk lol I’m just thinking outloud.
And yeah like, it’s textual that he feels guilty for Griffith’s breakdown, from letting Casca stab him to:
But I do wish we saw more of that post-Eclipse other than the recurring moments when he thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow and mopes lol. It kind of makes sense to me that we don’t see Guts feeling guilty after the Eclipse because I feel like the point of the Eclipse rape was to piss Guts off enough that he’d basically channel his guilt into rage, but I feel like we should still see more inner conflict. Not that we don’t see any, but yk, I always want more.
i just can’t get over the fact that you started writing that awesome meta on what’s gonna happen along with skullknight’s role and you didn’t even remember that flora had suggested that as well lol
lmao i’m glad you appreciate that fact lol, honestly it was a real fist pump moment when i coincidentally re-read this part after coming up with the idea of sk and danann plotting behelit shennanigans together
idk tho in say an au where like, guts never overheard the promrose hall speech and they made it to tombstone of flame i could see griffith reaching a point where he’d be able to accept his own feelings
“do you think that i’m cruel” is just so like, emotionally vulnerable. he was totally getting there, to like, yk, being more honest w/ himself
and then you have him crying after charlotte which is also an emotional admittance
so it’s not like i exaggerate his ability to deny shit to himself (well maybe i do but i love that so fuck it) but i may not give him enough credit for occasional moments of honestly
then again that’s short term. it’s one thing to say griffith could throw care to the wind in the heat of the moment and have emotionally intense sex, it’s another thing to think he could live with himself knowing he’d rather have guts + love than charlotte + dream
on the other hand there’s no reason he has to think of it that way since there’s no reason he can’t have both. like… in theory there’s a perfectly legit berserk au where griffith and guts hooked up and griffith still became king, successfully having his cake and eating it too
so idk maybe if he got with guts it wouldn’t be so much denying that he values guts more than his dream as just dismissing that as irrelevant bc he’ll just get both
So much good fic has tones of both. Analyzers have some of the best fic ideas, and good fic is based on examining the source. Idk man ydy bc whatever it is it’s hella good shit.
But like Guts gets such puppy eyes sometimes when he’s sad, like after the Primrose Hall speech. Imagine Griffith withdrawing emotionally (and physically) after sex and Guts just not being able to contain his sad confused expressions?? (Let’s be real he was basically just a rlly sad puppy throughout the entire Golden Age.)
Idk man let’s be real would Griffith be able to shut out those unintentionally honest and sad puppy eyes?
Yeah v true, a lot of my favourite fics are rly analytical lol. and ty!
omggg I can just see it. I think that would actually be more devastating than the promrose hall speech for Guts. Like Griffith’s speech was impersonal, Guts felt inadequate but decided he could change to fit Griffith’s definition of a friend and then everything would be fine. But a much more personal rejection after the most intimate he’s ever been with anyone would really fuck him up.
Though I guess it would depend on how obvious Griffith was about withdrawing. Like if it was a full on rejection as he tries to re-orient himself back around his dream I could see Guts basically cutting and running in a fit of self loathing (or self destructing a la Griffith but in some other more Guts-y way); if it was just becoming more distant that would also fuck Guts up but like, more slowly over time rather than immediately. Maybe the 2nd one is better bc there’s more room for puppy dog eyes that way lol.
I pray there be happy worlds where Griffith had a moment of self awareness and realized he was about to seriously hurt Guts. Imo he doesn’t have the courage to admit he loves Guts, but he’s even less capable of letting something hurt Guts.
like they wouldn’t work everything out in a single heartfelt night, but before things went to hell Griffith was showing some real emotional openness.
Oh yeah I don’t think like, it’s inevitable that a sexual encounter between them is going to end in tears. I think this is just one plausible possibility. Bc yeah especially w/ Tombstone of Flame, Griffith was getting a lot more open. And def, I could totally see Griffith immediately regretting a negative reaction when he sees how hurt Guts is.
Like my Official Statement™ on griffguts as a potential couple
(yk like basically what I think Berserk genuinely suggests, at least according to my interpretation lol)
is that they would’ve worked, and without Promrose Hall the trajectory of their relationship was headed straight for both finding exactly what they each want and need most in the other. I actually totally think that if he had to, Griffith would choose Guts over the dream and would eventually be able to live with that.
But there’s also so much gr8 potential for drama lol, it’s hard to resist.
idk tho in say an au where like, guts never overheard the promrose hall speech and they made it to tombstone of flame i could see griffith reaching a point where he’d be able to accept his own feelings
“do you think that i’m cruel” is just so like, emotionally vulnerable. he was totally getting there, to like, yk, being more honest w/ himself
and then you have him crying after charlotte which is also an emotional admittance
so it’s not like i exaggerate his ability to deny shit to himself (well maybe i do but i love that so fuck it) but i may not give him enough credit for occasional moments of honestly
then again that’s short term. it’s one thing to say griffith could throw care to the wind in the heat of the moment and have emotionally intense sex, it’s another thing to think he could live with himself knowing he’d rather have guts + love than charlotte + dream
on the other hand there’s no reason he has to think of it that way since there’s no reason he can’t have both. like… in theory there’s a perfectly legit berserk au where griffith and guts hooked up and griffith still became king, successfully having his cake and eating it too
so idk maybe if he got with guts it wouldn’t be so much denying that he values guts more than his dream as just dismissing that as irrelevant bc he’ll just get both
So much good fic has tones of both. Analyzers have some of the best fic ideas, and good fic is based on examining the source. Idk man ydy bc whatever it is it’s hella good shit.
But like Guts gets such puppy eyes sometimes when he’s sad, like after the Primrose Hall speech. Imagine Griffith withdrawing emotionally (and physically) after sex and Guts just not being able to contain his sad confused expressions?? (Let’s be real he was basically just a rlly sad puppy throughout the entire Golden Age.)
Idk man let’s be real would Griffith be able to shut out those unintentionally honest and sad puppy eyes?
Yeah v true, a lot of my favourite fics are rly analytical lol. and ty!
omggg I can just see it. I think that would actually be more devastating than the promrose hall speech for Guts. Like Griffith’s speech was impersonal, Guts felt inadequate but decided he could change to fit Griffith’s definition of a friend and then everything would be fine. But a much more personal rejection after the most intimate he’s ever been with anyone would really fuck him up.
Though I guess it would depend on how obvious Griffith was about withdrawing. Like if it was a full on rejection as he tries to re-orient himself back around his dream I could see Guts basically cutting and running in a fit of self loathing (or self destructing a la Griffith but in some other more Guts-y way); if it was just becoming more distant that would also fuck Guts up but like, more slowly over time rather than immediately. Maybe the 2nd one is better bc there’s more room for puppy dog eyes that way lol.
i think hes meant to look more feminine/pretty/awe inspiring now but you can just say miura exaggerates these features a lot now. like look at casca?
yeah it’s def true that everyone looks like… softer in a way i really dislike. a bunch of people have been pointing it out and it’s super true. tho tbf i think griffith has actually suffered from this the least, he looks the same amount of feminine to me lol. tbh my personal biggest problem with the fantasia art wrt griffith is that he looks half assed and generic now, like a collection of his “pretty” features thown together rather than yk, an interesting drawing of a person
but this is true of everyone, it’s like the backgrounds keep getting more and more detailed while the faces/expressions get more generic. or like… the features are detailed, like look at how he draws eyes in closeups, they just don’t come together in an interesting way anymore
tbh I’ve noticed this in most manga…
In Rurouni Kenshin, the art was theoretically less “good” at first as far as proportions and realism, however, there was a lot more detail, and the style was a lot more lively. By the like idk… second story arc after Shishio was defeated, things get a lot more consistent but also a lot more boring and simplified looking.
I feel it’s the same in Naruto and to some degree in One Piece after the time skips.
I think maybe mangaka start out kind of outdoing themselves trying to make their art the best because they want to make an impression and also are still trying to feel out their style and how to make art look good, then once they get stability, over time they figure out shortcuts and tricks to make the art just look good enough.
I think it also changed a lot I think around elfheim? because I noticed it looks like he switched from using traditional media to digital media, and honestly, if you started out as a traditional artist imo it’s really really really difficult to breathe the same level of life and passion into digital art. For me, at least, it’s like there’s always this extra layer between my brain and the computer that doesn’t exist when I’m using paper. Just my personal theory.
I know next to nothing about art but this all makes sense. I’ve heard some speculation that switching to digital may be hindering him and taking a while to adjust to, and what you said about finding it way more difficult to make digital art feel lively and passionate does rly fit.
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
this
vs
Wtf it doesn’t even look like the same person. It’s the angle and shape of the eyes and brows that’s doing it I think. Her eyebrows got done at a hella nice salon.
(she looks sort of elfish. Maybe elf magic is to blame, or (probably) he’s just forgotten how to draw her.)
lol yeah the eyebrows are super conspicuous too
i guess to miura’s credit he got a lot better at shading her lips, thankfully. so you win some you lose some.
she looks as neogriff looks to original flavour griffith which could just be art choices but is frankly SUSPICIOUS
agreed, his whole art style has pushed faces closer to the chin and it makes everything look childish, you could see it heavily in his venture on Gigantomachia.
oh yeah her chin has def shrunk too. i’ve never looked into gigantomachia but yeah i see what you mean from a cursory google images search, it looks the same as the fantasia arc. idk i know it’s a popular style but it’s so ugly and unpleasant looking
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
this
vs
Wtf it doesn’t even look like the same person. It’s the angle and shape of the eyes and brows that’s doing it I think. Her eyebrows got done at a hella nice salon.
(she looks sort of elfish. Maybe elf magic is to blame, or (probably) he’s just forgotten how to draw her.)
lol yeah the eyebrows are super conspicuous too
i guess to miura’s credit he got a lot better at shading her lips, thankfully. so you win some you lose some.
she looks as neogriff looks to original flavour griffith which could just be art choices but is frankly SUSPICIOUS
hmmmm
(probably the art shift, but still. this is some ~i want to believe~ shit right here. gimme sinister came-back-wrong Casca)
i just wanna point out that griffith actually has the angled cat eyes & always has
miura: hmm need to make casca look like the perfect image of the protagonist’s love interest when she wakes up for reasons
miura: i know i’ll give her griffith’s patented sultry eyes
Holy shit so that’s what she used to look like. I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with her face, but it just unsettled me.
Maybe muira just needs a sec to get used to drawing Casca as Casca with~sanity~ (personality) again?
casca’s face in this chapter was seriously so jarring. i don’t think
it’s even really the proportions so much as the more feminine angle of
her eyes maybe?
this
vs
Wtf it doesn’t even look like the same person. It’s the angle and shape of the eyes and brows that’s doing it I think. Her eyebrows got done at a hella nice salon.
(she looks sort of elfish. Maybe elf magic is to blame, or (probably) he’s just forgotten how to draw her.)
lol yeah the eyebrows are super conspicuous too
i guess to miura’s credit he got a lot better at shading her lips, thankfully. so you win some you lose some.
she looks as neogriff looks to original flavour griffith which could just be art choices but is frankly SUSPICIOUS
hmmmm
(probably the art shift, but still. this is some ~i want to believe~ shit right here. gimme sinister came-back-wrong Casca)
you're the only one 