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strangemonochromes:

Berserk (ベルセルク) // Kentaro Miura

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 a lot 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 :(((

mastermistressofdesire:

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ninjabelle:

God, I was in physical pain reading this chapter.
My heart just breaks for Rickert.
The Griffith he followed, whose dream he shared and who he adored- who he wanted to save- that’s not the man who stands in front of him now, in this gorgeous prosperous city that was build on the corpses and dreams of hundreds upon hundreds of men.
I always wondered if Rickert would feel like he shouldn’t have survived, if he ever found out the truth of what happened during the eclipse and met Griffith again. And this chapter kind of confirmed it for me. But unlike Guts he cannot drown in hatred and stake his life on revenge. All he could do, and all he had to console him was build that hill of swords. I can’t even imagine how lonely and helpless he must have felt, being the only survivor left with no answers and a thousand questions.
But even so, the Griffith he faced this chapter cannot answer him, not really. I know I happily lost my shit and joked along with all of the ‘Rickert’s balls of steel and impending doom’ crap over the bitchsmack panel when it came out as a spoiler, but seeing it in the context of the chapter as a whole- wow. It took my breath away for a plethora of other reasons.
People say he’s brave as hell for daring the slap the almighty Griffith but honestly I don’t think he even had time to work up courage, and it just happened on this spur of instinct- of way overdue hurt and that hurts me because jesus, Rickert deserves better dammit.
Griffith’s reaction was on point though- I didn’t expect him to immediately chop Rickert’s head off or anything, but it’s impossible to read him nowadays. Is it just apathy? Like always? Does he even feel anything at all when Rickert rejects his new self- his pretty new kingdom? I can’t tell- I want to believe, but, alas. It’s Berserk. It kills. And I’m done.

Totally agreed about Rickert, I don’t often think about his survivor’s guilt but it’s a huge part of his character and it was rly satisfying to see him get to express some of his feelings about everything, directly to Griffith.

As for Griffith, his reaction is the most intriguing part of the scene to me ngl.

Like overall I think NeoGriffith is automatically interesting because of what Miura doesn’t show us? The last time we saw into his head was

like the first and only thing we find out about his internal life is that he’s not as unemotional as he appears, and every scene w/ NeoGriffith afterwards where his emotions are conspicuously hidden from us just adds to my sense that inevitably we’re heading towards a big revelation about his feelings specifically.

The scene with Rickert is especially interesting because it’s the first time we see NeoGriffith at a loss.

Like this is his only response to Rickert’s tirade, and it’s an acknowledgement of the difference between, well, who he is now and who he used to be, essentially.

Ngriff’s got nothing. And that is so damn interesting to me lol.

“Don’t throw away what you can’t replace,” is something Guts reminds Rickert right after the Reunion on the Hill of Swords and right before Guts does this:

NGriff starts putting a new Band of the Hawk together like he’s trying to replace the old one, and he’s invited Rickert to join. I got this idea from @mastermistressofdesire a while ago lol and it’s so perfect, like, basically NGriff invited Rickert along because deep down he wants validation from one of the original Hawks. It would be proof that “nothing has changed.” That he has successfully replaced the original Band.

But Rickert rejected him, and it seems like it throws him off. He’s supposed to be literally untouchable, but Rickert was able to slap him. He has nothing to say to Rickert in response other than to quietly agree that the Hawk symbol is different now. And his face is hidden from us while watching Rickert leave both times:

Like this ties in with this theory/hope of mine that NeoGriffith’s thing is going to end up being identity/isolation. As the absolute with no equal, as someone who has undergone huge changes and denies it (”this is the man I am.”), as a parallel to ascended Ganeshka, because he failed his own test and his heart started beating when he saw Guts and the first thing he did was deny to himself that it had anything to do with his feelings for Guts, and a few other little details, like eg this page at the end of a chapter all about sonia feeling lonely and isolated as the only person who sees the world the way she does:

Like c’mon Miura, all this suggestive emotional ambiguity has to be there for something.

Mmm all of this.

I personally subscribe to the idea that neo-griffith has a lot of damn emotions.

A glitch in the matrix.

Which he is now trying to cover up.

However without doubt he has intact memories of everything, as much as he has leftover resentment from the pain that letting himself fall in love eventually led to, he also remembers that his happiest memories have to do with the time he spent with the Hawks and specifically Guts.

In a way I see him trying to recreate that situation, rebuilding the good while clinically removing the parts he thinks were problematic – Guts and his own emotions.

So inhuman god with frozen heart or not all he’s ultimately trying to do is chase after the memories of happiness.

How utterly, devastatingly human.

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human griffith could kick neogriffith’s ass

ninjabelle:

God, I was in physical pain reading this chapter.
My heart just breaks for Rickert.
The Griffith he followed, whose dream he shared and who he adored- who he wanted to save- that’s not the man who stands in front of him now, in this gorgeous prosperous city that was build on the corpses and dreams of hundreds upon hundreds of men.
I always wondered if Rickert would feel like he shouldn’t have survived, if he ever found out the truth of what happened during the eclipse and met Griffith again. And this chapter kind of confirmed it for me. But unlike Guts he cannot drown in hatred and stake his life on revenge. All he could do, and all he had to console him was build that hill of swords. I can’t even imagine how lonely and helpless he must have felt, being the only survivor left with no answers and a thousand questions.
But even so, the Griffith he faced this chapter cannot answer him, not really. I know I happily lost my shit and joked along with all of the ‘Rickert’s balls of steel and impending doom’ crap over the bitchsmack panel when it came out as a spoiler, but seeing it in the context of the chapter as a whole- wow. It took my breath away for a plethora of other reasons.
People say he’s brave as hell for daring the slap the almighty Griffith but honestly I don’t think he even had time to work up courage, and it just happened on this spur of instinct- of way overdue hurt and that hurts me because jesus, Rickert deserves better dammit.
Griffith’s reaction was on point though- I didn’t expect him to immediately chop Rickert’s head off or anything, but it’s impossible to read him nowadays. Is it just apathy? Like always? Does he even feel anything at all when Rickert rejects his new self- his pretty new kingdom? I can’t tell- I want to believe, but, alas. It’s Berserk. It kills. And I’m done.

Totally agreed about Rickert, I don’t often think about his survivor’s guilt but it’s a huge part of his character and it was rly satisfying to see him get to express some of his feelings about everything, directly to Griffith.

As for Griffith, his reaction is the most intriguing part of the scene to me ngl.

Like overall I think NeoGriffith is automatically interesting because of what Miura doesn’t show us? The last time we saw into his head was

like the first and only thing we find out about his internal life is that he’s not as unemotional as he appears, and every scene w/ NeoGriffith afterwards where his emotions are conspicuously hidden from us just adds to my sense that inevitably we’re heading towards a big revelation about his feelings specifically.

The scene with Rickert is especially interesting because it’s the first time we see NeoGriffith at a loss.

Like this is his only response to Rickert’s tirade, and it’s an acknowledgement of the difference between, well, who he is now and who he used to be, essentially.

Ngriff’s got nothing. And that is so damn interesting to me lol.

“Don’t throw away what you can’t replace,” is something Guts reminds Rickert right after the Reunion on the Hill of Swords and right before Guts does this:

NGriff starts putting a new Band of the Hawk together like he’s trying to replace the old one, and he’s invited Rickert to join. I got this idea from @mastermistressofdesire a while ago lol and it’s so perfect, like, basically NGriff invited Rickert along because deep down he wants validation from one of the original Hawks. It would be proof that “nothing has changed.” That he has successfully replaced the original Band.

But Rickert rejected him, and it seems like it throws him off. He’s supposed to be literally untouchable, but Rickert was able to slap him. He has nothing to say to Rickert in response other than to quietly agree that the Hawk symbol is different now. And his face is hidden from us while watching Rickert leave both times:

Like this ties in with this theory/hope of mine that NeoGriffith’s thing is going to end up being identity/isolation. As the absolute with no equal, as someone who has undergone huge changes and denies it (”this is the man I am.”), as a parallel to ascended Ganeshka, because he failed his own test and his heart started beating when he saw Guts and the first thing he did was deny to himself that it had anything to do with his feelings for Guts, and a few other little details, like eg this page at the end of a chapter all about sonia feeling lonely and isolated as the only person who sees the world the way she does:

Like c’mon Miura, all this suggestive emotional ambiguity has to be there for something.

chaoticgaygriffith:

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chaoticgaygriffith:

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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.

a-girl-named-chester:

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a-girl-named-chester:

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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.

chaoticgaygriffith:

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kissing-monsters:

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a-girl-named-chester:

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a-girl-named-chester
replied to your post “355 spoilers[[MOR] ok i just saw a pic of sane again casca that…”

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

kissing-monsters:

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a-girl-named-chester:

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a-girl-named-chester
replied to your post “355 spoilers[[MOR] ok i just saw a pic of sane again casca that…”

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)

Saw your Judaeu posts; wanted to weigh in a lil cuz I love him. I’m always sad we never got to know much about him (rpg group gets so much backstory!) I always felt like ye, his advice was misguided but that he was trying to help make people happy. Like Casca, who maybe could be happy with Guts if she couldn’t have Griffith, since HE never felt good enough for her. Also, that maybe he didn’t see a point in hooking Guts and Griffith up if he figured the dream and princess still took priority?

a-girl-named-chester:

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a-girl-named-chester:

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a-girl-named-chester:

bthump:

Yeah I think his heart was in the right place, it seems like he genuinely just wanted what was best for everyone even if his methods were a little… underhanded and dishonest. Like towards the end eg, he probably thought Griffith would be better off with him and his thieves than with Guts and Casca as well as vice versa (and if Guts and Casca stayed together while taking care of Griffith he might’ve even been right, bc lbr that would’ve been a shitshow lol.) He’s likeable, and fun, and he has some great moments, like telling Guts he’s sure he’ll find what he’s looking for with the Hawks. Ngl his death scene always makes me cry lol, I do def like him overall, in part because he makes mistakes too.

Also I wonder if there isn’t a subtle indication from Miura that Judeau and Casca should’ve gotten together instead of Guts and Casca, and it’s its own little sub-tragedy based on stupid self-esteem issues that they didn’t. The way during the Eclipse Judeau does his best to save her and defends her with his own life while Guts is up on the hand still trying to “save” Griffith lol feels kind of starkly telling. I don’t ship them myself, I like their friendship and I kind of wish Judeau hadn’t had a crush the whole time lol, but it fits into the whole missed opportunity vibe of the Golden Age.

It is kind of a shame that the Golden Age side characters got way less backstory and development than the current RPG group, but the current group has so much more time. Like 200+ chapters vs 70. I did love the little enriching hints we got about the Hawks though, like Judeau feeling inadequate as a jack of all trades, the hints that Corkus is bitter about his own lost dreams. I’d say ‘etc’ but actually that’s about it really. Wish we got more on Pippin too.

Holy moly, what have we even been doing for the last 200+ chapters?? As much as I love the rpg group, nothing beats the original Hawks for me.

I definitely think that the Golden Age was all about people missing what was right in front of them, and losing their chances, or screwing them up on purpose. I mean, it can’t just be Guts and Griffith in this crapsack world that do it.

You mentioned how during the eclipse Guts was focusing of Griffith while Judeau was focused on Casca. Got me thinking about how his final acts were to be a literal shield over her body, and how he fell from her arm as he died. I don’t have the scans, but it reminded me of how Guts and Casca always compare themselves to swords. A sword and shield go mighty well together.

Lmao right? It really puts it into perspective when you realize the Golden Age was less than 100 chapters and we’re on 354 now.

Yeah that really sums up the Golden Age in a nutshell lol. And Judeau’s thoughts at the end do include, “I missed my chance to say it,” which fits.

tbh good call with the sword/shield imagery. Like yeah he does literally use himself as a human shield against that one weird apostle, and then Casca leaps up and kills it with her sword. I could def see that being purposeful. Also like… Judeau is Casca’s last real human interaction with someone before she’s driven insane. I’d love to see that acknowledged when she wakes up tbh.

You found the image I was talking about! I already put it on the post itself, but the way he fell off her arm reminds me of how shields are worn on the arm and get dropped when they’re broken!

This chapter was pure badassery on so many levels. I really hate that basically every female character is subjected to assault tho. All of them. (Sadly, I guess it’s not so different from the world we live in.)

On a GriffGuts note, I wonder if the reason Guts focuses so much on casca’s assault is because it drives home for him what Griffith has become. Griffith being his singular focus and all.

Whereas in the last chapter that got released, Casca’s memories encapsulate the whole Eclipse.

Yeah it’s genuinely fantastic, badass and touching and emotional and then it ends… like that

tbh ia. It’s like the way Guts wasn’t angry at Griffith, just sad and regretful, even while all his friends were dying and he was being attacked by a hoard of monsters, up until the rape scene. In a way it makes sense for Guts to focus on that since it’s like, the source of his violent rage that keeps him going and keeps him wanting to kill Griffith/Femto, as opposed to the rest of the Eclipse which is probably more a source of guilt (”was I the one who drove you…?”)

the beast of darkness pretty much suggests that this is why Guts was keeping Casca with him, basically so he could brood. (As did Miura in one interview :/)

Idk I wish it wasn’t so utterly manpain-y, with Guts being so focused on something that didn’t even happen to him, to the detriment of the person it actually did happen to, just so he can stay angry. You’d think his missing arm would be enough of a reminder. But it is what it is, and at least it’s not really portrayed in a positive light I guess.

Ye, the manpain is rlly intense. Muira basically fridged her and Farnesca is my only solace. And the hope that she gets badass again and bitchslaps N.Griffith and Guts tbh.

Personally the way I read it is that Guts put Griffith above acts like that, and what he did to Casca is a display of how corrupted Femto is compared to HIS Griffith. Guts would have gladly given an arm for Griffith under any circumstances, but to see him attack Casca was unthinkable from original Griffith in Guts’ mind.

I definitely don’t agree with the fact that it happened in the narrative, and even less with how she was treated as a character afterwards. (I feel like I’d be more ok with her insanity if the assault had been left out.) But considering I don’t buy the idea that Guts and Casca were “meant to be together”, my only conclusion in terms of Guts’ character is that it demonstrated how far the Godhand had perverted the man he loved. I’m really crossing my fingers that the upcoming chapters don’t focus too much on that part of her narrative.

yeah pretty much agreed on all counts.

While Guts accepted that Griffith made the sacrifice and even seemed to understand to an extent, raping Casca was like a harsh dividing line, and I’m sure that was the whole point from a writing perspective. Griffith saved her from rape, Femto destroys her through it, contrasts, yadda yadda yadda.

tbh it’s very telling that while Guts’ feelings towards Femto/NeoGriff are “tainted” by his love for human Griffith – eg still wanting his attention, still can’t stand to be looked down on by him, forgets his urge to kill when NGriff sheds the evil exoskeleton, acts like he got dumped when NGriff flies away on Zodd, etc – his feelings towards human Griffith haven’t changed. He doesn’t think back on him and hate him, he only feels longing/regret/loneliness/guilt/love/friendship/etc when he thinks of him.

Like it really does seem to show that Guts hates Femto/NGriff because he’s not his Griffith. When he reminds him of his Griffith, ie, when NeoGriff shows up, he suddenly finds it a lot harder to hate him.

Guts echoes NeoGriffith’s “nothing has changed. This is the man I am.”

Has Guts come this far, letting go of his “obsession” with Griffith, by letting himself buy Griffith’s own hype?

Like I’m not sure about this but I don’t remember any moments where Guts reminisces about human Griffith after this:

Is there an underpinning of Guts letting himself forget and downplay how much Griffith loved him, in order to let go of his fruitless obsession?

Guts’ obsession with killing Griffith has ultimately been about wanting his attention, which Femto/NGriff has consistently refused to give him, at least overtly. (lbr the fact that he goes to see guts to test his capacity to feel, and the constant eye contact and needling taunting as femto belies the shit out of that)

Like to lay this out real quick, “you of all people,” is Griffith asserting that he was always a monster, and Guts knew it. Part of the reason Griffith was devastated when Guts left is because he saw it as a rejection of him, based on everything he hates about himself. He let Guts in to see those things he hates, and he thinks Guts left him because of it.

Of course we know that Guts left entirely because he loved and respected Griffith. He “shone before [him] as beautiful, noble, and larger than life.”

The last 30ish chapters before the Eclipse revolve around Guts slowly realizing that he already had Griffith’s love and respect, and therefore leaving was a mistake. Even he knew that Griffith ended up in that dungeon because of him.

Guts knew Griffith loved him.

But does he still know it, after being “deserted” by him? After NeoGriffith’s assertion that “it seems I am free,” “nothing has changed,” “this is the man I am,” “you of all people,”?

And if he’s let himself forget, what happens if Griffith finally does start paying attention to him again?

Ignore this if these kinds of random asks aren’t your thing, but q: what’s your favourite (or one of your favourites) Griffith scene (or panel or line or whatever) and why?

chaoticgaygriffith:

bthump:

seisans:

i love these kinds of questions! but please prepare yourself because this is going to be long and incoherent

so, to be perfectly honest, i know this is a cop out but all griffith scenes are my favourite scenes?

if i had to pick a few that stand out the most, however, i love griffith & guts’ first and last duels so much

these panels especially, but also:

i also LOVE:

this whole entire thing. all of it, every panel, every word, i love it.

then there’s the entire sequence starting with him overhearing casca telling guts to leave again and ending with him sacrificing everyone. love all of that, especially: his suicide attempt which breaks my heart whenever i re-read it, the moment when guts is approaching him and he’s thinking “stay away!!!” and his thoughts leading up to the sacrifice, about how guts outshone his dream.

this obvious parallel

also, needless to say, i have a complicated relationship with his nightmare wherein he is in a lifesucking heterosexual marriage with casca .. lol.

another big scene for me is, obviously, the bthump scene. i love it so much. i love how he came to guts to check if he still had feelings. very subtle. and then he was like “ok sweet i don’t have feelings bye” and then he had a feeling. I LOVE IT.

OH and allllllll of those femto + black swordsman interactions from the nonnumerical chapters. kisses fingers like a chef.

those are the first few scenes that come to mind, honestly. but there’s a lot of other gems too, like his and guts’ very first meeting when he tells guts that he wants him, that moment when he shows guts the behelit smiling like a little kid, that time he was talking to guts about their duel and how fun it was and just looked really fond, every time he risked his life for guts and every time he lied about his reasons, that time he gave julius a dangerous smile (and every time he talked shit about the nobles), when he asked guts to do him the favour of killing julius, these two scenes god

the scene with casca in the lake, that moment when guts’ sword broke in the middle of their important fight and he looked like … idk what that emotion even was, probably fear? that moment he told gennon he meant nothing to him, god that scene when he sets the room with the queen inside on fire and takes off the ribbon tying his hair …… all of his little smiles and glances @ guts. all of his little 😮 moments.

i’m not fond of the fuck scene with charlotte for obvious reasons, but i do like how he was thinking about guts and also afterwards when he just … curls in on himself and starts crying. that destroyed me.

this isn’t a scene people talk about a lot but i love when he tells charlotte’s gross father off? he just knows … exactly which buttons to push. and we didn’t even know he had all this dirt on the king until that scene, i just love it so much

i love that moment when they find him in the torture chamber and he wakes up and sees guts. puts his hand on his neck, but then guts starts crying, and his hand slides down to guts’ instead. fuck me.

AND ok you already know about this ‘cause we’ve talked about it but:

this moment of clear, undeniable jealousy. love.

obviously i love his little private moment with guts in the carriage. i love neo-griffith’s mind-numbingly boring tea parties, and his talk with rickert. … like i said, i love pretty much any scene where griffith showed up in the manga lol.

if you ask me why … i apologise ’cause this isn’t going to be anything profound, really, but i just love him as a character, literally everything about him. looking at this array, i seem to prefer scenes where he loses control and shows some kind of intense emotion, generally directed towards guts. but i also love the scenes of clear emotional repression, be it him telling guts he doesn’t really have a reason for risking his life to save him, or him telling himself and everyone else that he doesn’t feel guilty for all the lives that were lost for his cause. i love his messy emotions, whether he tries to hide them or they take over him completely and cause him to make his disastrous decisions. i love his impulsivity, i love his jealousy, i love his guilt. i just love him so much.

i feel like i already know a few of your favourite scenes but still wbu? feel free to ramble @ me like i just did @ you

Keep reading

I drafted this for when I’m less busy, hoping I would have a reply that isn’t just “yes @ everything you said,” but I have all the time in the world now and I’m still like … yep that’s pretty much it, I have nothing good to add.

The tragedy of Griffith (or one of, I guess, lol) was that he had to be selfish in order to achieve his completely selfless dream (though, like you pointed out, he still tried to make it as fair as possible by pulling his own weight and more), and people misinterpret his character and his motives (sometimes intentionally) to make it easier to make sense of his actions … at least for themselves lol. The problem is not only does that do him injustice, but it also does the story of Berserk injustice, making it boring and one-dimensional.

I’m genuinely hoping that Miura isn’t going with Falconia where everyone but a handful of us seems to think he’s going. For me personally, that would kill nearly everything that I think makes Berserk interesting and unique. But I guess we’ll see.

Ignore this if these kinds of random asks aren’t your thing, but q: what’s your favourite (or one of your favourites) Griffith scene (or panel or line or whatever) and why?

seisans:

i love these kinds of questions! but please prepare yourself because this is going to be long and incoherent

so, to be perfectly honest, i know this is a cop out but all griffith scenes are my favourite scenes?

if i had to pick a few that stand out the most, however, i love griffith & guts’ first and last duels so much

these panels especially, but also:

i also LOVE:

this whole entire thing. all of it, every panel, every word, i love it.

then there’s the entire sequence starting with him overhearing casca telling guts to leave again and ending with him sacrificing everyone. love all of that, especially: his suicide attempt which breaks my heart whenever i re-read it, the moment when guts is approaching him and he’s thinking “stay away!!!” and his thoughts leading up to the sacrifice, about how guts outshone his dream.

this obvious parallel

also, needless to say, i have a complicated relationship with his nightmare wherein he is in a lifesucking heterosexual marriage with casca .. lol.

another big scene for me is, obviously, the bthump scene. i love it so much. i love how he came to guts to check if he still had feelings. very subtle. and then he was like “ok sweet i don’t have feelings bye” and then he had a feeling. I LOVE IT.

OH and allllllll of those femto + black swordsman interactions from the nonnumerical chapters. kisses fingers like a chef.

those are the first few scenes that come to mind, honestly. but there’s a lot of other gems too, like his and guts’ very first meeting when he tells guts that he wants him, that moment when he shows guts the behelit smiling like a little kid, that time he was talking to guts about their duel and how fun it was and just looked really fond, every time he risked his life for guts and every time he lied about his reasons, that time he gave julius a dangerous smile (and every time he talked shit about the nobles), when he asked guts to do him the favour of killing julius, these two scenes god

the scene with casca in the lake, that moment when guts’ sword broke in the middle of their important fight and he looked like … idk what that emotion even was, probably fear? that moment he told gennon he meant nothing to him, god that scene when he sets the room with the queen inside on fire and takes off the ribbon tying his hair …… all of his little smiles and glances @ guts. all of his little 😮 moments.

i’m not fond of the fuck scene with charlotte for obvious reasons, but i do like how he was thinking about guts and also afterwards when he just … curls in on himself and starts crying. that destroyed me.

this isn’t a scene people talk about a lot but i love when he tells charlotte’s gross father off? he just knows … exactly which buttons to push. and we didn’t even know he had all this dirt on the king until that scene, i just love it so much

i love that moment when they find him in the torture chamber and he wakes up and sees guts. puts his hand on his neck, but then guts starts crying, and his hand slides down to guts’ instead. fuck me.

AND ok you already know about this ‘cause we’ve talked about it but:

this moment of clear, undeniable jealousy. love.

obviously i love his little private moment with guts in the carriage. i love neo-griffith’s mind-numbingly boring tea parties, and his talk with rickert. … like i said, i love pretty much any scene where griffith showed up in the manga lol.

if you ask me why … i apologise ’cause this isn’t going to be anything profound, really, but i just love him as a character, literally everything about him. looking at this array, i seem to prefer scenes where he loses control and shows some kind of intense emotion, generally directed towards guts. but i also love the scenes of clear emotional repression, be it him telling guts he doesn’t really have a reason for risking his life to save him, or him telling himself and everyone else that he doesn’t feel guilty for all the lives that were lost for his cause. i love his messy emotions, whether he tries to hide them or they take over him completely and cause him to make his disastrous decisions. i love his impulsivity, i love his jealousy, i love his guilt. i just love him so much.

i feel like i already know a few of your favourite scenes but still wbu? feel free to ramble @ me like i just did @ you

Yesss, ngl I asked because I’ve been craving some pure certified organic griffith positivity and I read this post with just a big grin on my face lol. so ty for the long and awesome answer ❤

Like, other than going ^^^^all of the above^^^^ I guess right now I really want to ramble about like… the genuinely good stuff. I never shut up about Griffith’s flaws, his self loathing, his guilt, his emotional repression, the way he lashes out in interesting yet horrifying ways when he can’t just repress his feelings, the sacrifice, etc…

But yk what despite how fucked up he is as a person he has a lot of good aspects that always get downplayed for the sake of villainizing him, and I want to talk about those.

Like dude wanted to create a socialist, non-discriminatory paradise in the middle ages? His goal was literally to become king so he would have the power to carve out a place where people’s bodies and lives wouldn’t be bought and sold. I’d side-eye the shit out of Miura for making that the antagonist’s motivation if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s consistently portrayed as a good thing. Still keeping my side-eye on hold tho for when we find out exactly where Miura’s going with Falconia.

And he walked the walk in addition to talking the talk. His second in command was the only woman we ever see fighting in an army in Berserk, and she joined him because he saved her from a noble who bought her. Then he got her, and a bunch of other former peasants, knighted. If Griffith had become king the normal way rather than taking the magical god route, the… idk military command. Head General? Whatever, the commander of his armies would’ve been Casca.

Like yeah there’s some ye olde sexism in the mix but that comes from every dude we see, including beloved ones like Guts and Judeau (especially Guts, yeesh).

He was a beloved commander for a reason. His strategies aren’t just brilliant, they’re a way of minimizing casualties as much as possible. Despite always having to project an image of perfection, he was able to be personable too, making the Hawks feel valued. He partied with them after victories, all he said to Casca when she was full of guilt for going into battle with debilitating cramps was “welcome back,” he got Casca to rescue Corkus from Guts and then came over and rescued Casca when that wasn’t enough, he had a personal recollection of the kid who died in the flashback who Casca didn’t know anything about, remembering the way the kid looked at him.

He hides the dark underside of his rise to power not just because he doesn’t want anyone (except Guts) to see it and judge him for it, but also because he doesn’t want the Hawks to have to worry about it.

Guts thinks it’s cruel to not let them in on the plan, but Griffith thinks it’d be cruel to burden them with the knowledge of some of the fucked up things getting them those knighthoods.

The way he says, “But for hundreds, thousands of lives to hang in the balance and myself alone not to be unclean…” which completely fails to acknowledge that his life is on the line exactly the same as everyone else’s since he leads his army at the front, but he thinks that doesn’t count, he has to do something extra basically as penance.

And like, sorry but that extra thing is literally selling himself to a child rapist, as a child, to prevent as many soldiers from dying in battle as possible. I’m like, so done with watching fandom downplay that at every turn. Also while I’m listing good deeds, personally murdering that dude.

How being in love with Guts makes him automatically do things from little stuff like asking Guts to assassinate Julius instead of ordering him to, to huge things like basically straight up dying for him w/ Zodd. I mean, Zodd won, if it wasn’t for fate Griffith would’ve died right there while running to Guts to grab his hand.

And this is after ordering the rest of the Hawks to retreat and running in alone to try to rescue Guts.

Also not just doing good things, how about being awesome? Like taking five thousand people and winning a battle against thirty thousand. Like the way it’s set up with Casca thinking that Griffith might be being reckless by volunteering because his rapist is head of that army, but it turns out that he knew he could win entirely because of his history with Gennon, basically using his predatory lust against him. Like burning a bunch of murder-plotting conservative nobles alive while doing this:

Like going through at least two days of torture without making a sound. And coming out the other side after a full year still sane because his feelings for Guts kept him going. And then saving everyone during the escape attempt despite being helpless and voiceless. Wanting desperately to be able to grab a sword and help Guts fight a giant terrifying monster.

I just love him so much and I talk about his stupidity and self loathing and emotional fucked up ness and how he succumbs to his flaws all the time and have been especially focusing on it recently due to this thing i’m ~~procrastinating on~~ still writing, but he has a lot of genuine virtues too and sometimes u just wanna sit back and be a Griffith apologist.

u burn those nobles babe, you earned it

How do you feel about Casca and her relationship with Griffith? Especially with her possibly trying to protect him from getting hurt again. I am interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think she has no concept of love? Or that she genuinely loved Guts?

Overall I actually really like Casca’s relationship with Griffith, and I think if a) Berserk was a very different story and b) Miura didn’t make Casca’s life revolve around romantic pining, I’d really love them as a v interesting platonic brotp style relationship with lots of layers and depth.

Casca has a v unique perspective and insight on Griffith, with her combination of hero worship and the way she’s seen him at his worst (pre-torture).

She’s aware that he hides himself behind a veneer of perfection, that he feels immense guilt, that he buries his emotions. She watched him self harm in front of her after prostituting himself to a pedophile. She’s more aware of his vulnerable humanity than even Guts is.

And knowing that he’s human, seeing some of his darker and sadder flaws first hand, only makes her admiration grow. I love that. I think it’s sad for Griffith because he doesn’t know this and knowing it would’ve probably really helped with his self loathing issues, and I think it’s a little… messed up, the way Casca sees Griffith’s ability to suppress his feelings and be perfect for everyone as a strength, but it’s really interesting as a dynamic.

When it comes to Griffith’s point of view, I think it’s kind of a shame that he remained so closed off to her. Casca and Guts have very similar feelings towards Griffith, but where Casca is largely shut out after he turns and puts his hand on her shoulder in the river, Guts is let in. So Casca and Griffith feel kind of like a missed connection. Not in a romantic way, but in a “if things had been slightly different between them, they could’ve been great mutual support for each other” kind of way.

If the river scene had gone a little differently, like say if Casca had assured Griffith she didn’t think he was dirty instead of asking why he was with Gennon, or if Griffith had allowed himself to accept her comforting hug, I think Casca could’ve been solid, affirming emotional support for Griffith. If she knew about the assassinations, say, she’d’ve been fine with them. She probably would’ve been a better assassin than Guts, too, lol.

lbr, Griffith desperately needed someone to see all of him and tell him he wasn’t a monster, and Casca would’ve been great at that. For Casca’s part, she wanted someone to prioritize her and trust her enough to accept her emotional support (as we see pretty clearly in the scene where she and Guts fuck.) And I think getting this platonically would’ve been just as good or better for her than getting it with a side of sex.

But at the end of the day it was Guts who Griffith turned to (and tbqh the fact that Casca’s jealousy is explicitly because she’s in love with Griffith absolutely means that Griffith trusting Guts, prioritizing Guts, and wanting Guts to see all of him, ie exactly what Casca wanted to be to Griffith, all boils down to attraction and Griffith choosing Guts over Casca as essentially his emotional support because he’s in love with Guts and not Casca. But I digress) and Casca’s relationship with Griffith never met its full potential.

But despite that, they still have a really cute, generally fairly positive relationship before everything goes down. Griffith sends a search party not just for Guts but also specifies her when they fall off the cliff. When they get back Casca’s falling over herself apologizing and Griffith just smiles and welcomes her back. At Guts’ prompting he mentions her dress to her just to say something nice and slightly make up for letting her think he was dead. When he first saves her she becomes devoted not just because he threw her a sword, but because he helped calm her down after she killed the dude, seemed to empathize with her (”he just nodded, deeply and slowly,”) and gave her a blanket. After the rescue there’s a moment where he sees her crying near Judeau from afar and clearly wishes he was still able to comfort her.

Idk honestly their relationship isn’t perfect, it has some sadness, some missed opportunities, some dark moments (I’m talking pre-Eclipse, I’m not touching Femto bc as far as I can tell the Eclipse rape had nothing to do with Casca or Griffith’s overall relationship with her and everything to do with Guts), but overall I think it’s a sweet, mostly positive friendship.

Ok lol sorry about that essay that doesn’t even address most of your ask.

As for Casca trying to protect Griffith from getting hurt, I think it makes perfect sense from a character perspective, though I’m a little cynical when it comes to my thoughts on what Miura may have intended. Like, eg, I think Casca’s violent diatribe against Guts near the waterfall was meant to be a mix of genuine anger over the way he broke Griffith, partially projecting her own feelings of abandonment, and partially her feelings of jealousy getting involved too – why couldn’t Guts have stayed for her, and why couldn’t she affect Griffith the way Guts could? We see both issues come up shortly after – jealousy right before she tries to kill herself, and raging at Guts for (she thinks) wanting to leave her behind again after they have sex.

So I guess now I’m thinking Casca’s feelings when she tells Guts to leave are probably a complicated mixture of like, everything.

I think what you described plays a large part. She knows how Griffith feels about Guts, and that seeing her and Guts together every day would be torturous for him. Also lbr, a few days with another dude aren’t enough to erase anyone’s like, near decade of feelings for the first dude, and we see them come up again during the rescue mission, when jealousy starts creeping between Guts and Casca, so she’s not exactly over her feelings for Griffith, which includes wanting to protect him.

I think there’s also an element of Casca being self-sacrificing, telling Guts to leave to pursue his dream because she thinks Guts’ dream is the most important thing to him, and she believes Guts staying would be a sacrifice on his part.

I think Casca is aware enough of the weird love triangle between the three of them that she knows if they both stayed with Griffith things would get weird and fucked up real quick for everyone, probably especially Griffith. She’s jealous of Guts and Griffith, Griffith loves Guts and would be jealous of the relationship between him and Casca, plus he’s the most vulnerable, and I think there’s a strong indication that Guts would be caught in the middle, but probably would end up prioritizing Griffith.

AND THEN there’s another aspect to Casca pushing Guts away that I think could, at least in theory, be the strongest motivating factor, at least when it comes to my interpretation of Casca and my love of flawed female characters who make terrible choices just like the men do, which is that she’s been given an opportunity to take Guts’ role.

Now Griffith needs her. Now she’s the one who can comfort him and Griffith finally accepts her comfort. And sex is also maybe on the table which, taking the narrative at face value, is something Casca also wants.

There is a “yet,” there, ofc. I think Casca’s feelings are mixed. She genuinely wanted to leave with Guts, she was probably glad of the chance to get over her one-sided feelings for Griffith, but at the same time, she still has those feelings.

So like, ultimately, once she’s faced with the reality that Griffith desperately needs someone who loves him and she can’t just take off with Guts, there are three options available: her and Guts both stay, only Guts stays, only Casca stays.

Both her and Guts staying would be an unmitigated disaster of jealousy issues, only Guts staying would fucking suck for Casca (right now from her pov, in the long run lbr it would by far be the best option bc Casca needs to find herself away from dudes), but only Casca staying would give her something she used to desperately want, and still does want on some level.

So she tells herself Guts would be unhappy without his dream and he shouldn’t stay for his own sake, and tries to send him off, but the actual driving emotional reason is that only one of them can stay with Griffith and she wants it to be her.

(For the record I think this would’ve been a huge mistake for Casca even if the Eclipse didn’t happen. Despite Griffith’s nightmare vision I can’t imagine her being happy living a quiet domestic life with him. But what’s the point of a Berserk character if they’re not making huge mistakes?)

lol man this is a lot longer than I thought it would be, and I think a lot of this is a stretch and probably not what Miura intended, but it’s the explanation I want to land on.

Oh and finally, just to briefly hit the last two things, I’d say Casca can’t tell the difference between love and a feeling of obligation she gets when someone saves her. Both her feelings for Griffith and Guts started after being saved by them, and both manifest in wanting to comfort them and be their emotional support and give them something in return for what they’ve given her.

“Not just being given to… maybe I can give something as well.”

So while maybe Miura wanted us to believe Casca loved Guts, or could’ve fallen in love with Guts (tho idk maybe this is purposeful, I talk a lot about how I think he deliberately went a relatively non-romantic route with Guts and Casca’s hook up), I don’t think she genuinely loved him, or Griffith for that matter, in a romantic sense.

@poppy-moon because you asked a while back re: meta about casca and griffith and now I’ve written something lol. and the first half is more the positive kind of thing you were suggesting.

therainykitty:

bthump:

“You bled so much for me. These are wounds from the hundred man battle, right? Even the wound I gave you…”

“I too want a wound… that I can say you gave me.”

When it comes to Guts’ guilt issues surrounding Griffith’s tragic narrative, and the highly sexually charged nature of the scene where the Beast of Darkness suggests this, and the fact that the Guts and Casca sex scene is already chock full of references and parallels to Griffith, I’m feeling like this is a legit comparison, at least from Guts’ guilt-ridden and Griffith-obsessed point of view.

(brought to my attention by therainykitty here, ty! also s/o to this post)

Very nice and I think Guts wants to feel as hurt as Griffith does, with Guts trying to engage Griffith as an enemy. For Griffith to attack him, hurt him back anything to make Griffith feel towards him again.

But Griffith is burying his scars underneath that frozen heart (except Guts can still make it beat).

And for more scar comparisons because why not

Guts words to Casca “Nobody lies their way into a body with this many scars.”

Griffith buries his emotional pain pretending it doesn’t affect him but always still that sorrow and how he cares is shown with his scars

Guts leaving and the flashback to asking Guts is he a horrible person

Guts in danger and Griffith harming himself again (clenching his teeth so hard they bleed) because he can’t reach Guts to protect him

His suffering and the fracturing of his soul

And Femto the armor over Griffith’s scarred soul

Femto acts as the personification of Griffith’s suffering and the armor to protect Griffith’s wounded inner core.

So I guess it is Griffith’s body that express the scars in his soul but no one ever sees them. They are hidden from all but Casca (at least at first) and Guts.

therainykitty:

bthump:

There are two important parallels during the waterfall scene, when Guts and Casca fight, then fuck.

The first is this parallel to Guts and Griffith’s second duel.

Casca is the new leader of the Hawks, replacing Griffith’s role. She
challenges and fights Guts when he returns, in a mirror of Griffith
challenging and fighting him before he leaves. Then she falls to her
knees and has a self-destructive
breakdown. The last time the leader of the Hawks had a breakdown after
fighting him, Guts walked away. The scenario has presented itself again,
and this time Guts makes a different choice, one that might have
changed everything a year ago: he comforts her.

Sex with Casca is Guts subconsciously (from a character perspective) or symbolically (from a narrative perspective) trying to fix past mistakes, imo.

Throughout the fight by the waterfall, Casca is screaming at him that he broke Griffith by leaving, that it’s his fault. This scene is all about Griffith and their feelings towards him. For Guts, it’s the beginning of his eventual revelation that leaving was a mistake because Griffith didn’t look down on him after all – because Griffith’s “no good without” him.

The fact that Guts lets Casca stab him as she screams this tells us that her words hit home and he feels guilty, even as he denies it. It’s a pattern of behaviour for Guts that we’ve seen before and will see again, eg, when he let the zombie child stab him in the second chapter because he blamed himself for her death, and then denied feeling responsible to Puck afterwards (”If you’re always worried about crushing the ants beneath you… you won’t be able to walk.”)

He represses that guilt and doesn’t manage to acknowledge his mistake until about five minutes before the Eclipse, unfortunately, but this is how we know he feels it regardless, and this is how we know it’s informing his choices now – specifically, his choice to comfort, kiss, and have sex with Casca.

Guts’ denial of guilt while clearly feeling it is reminiscent of another character too:

This is the second parallel, to Casca finding Griffith in the river.

Casca eventually yanks her sword out of Guts, admits to him that she’s romantically in love with Griffith, proceeds to list all the ways Griffith is wholly unavailable (he needs to marry Charlotte, Guts took the place she wanted at Griffith’s side, and now he may not even be alive), bequeaths Griffith to Guts, and tries to kill herself. Griffith Griffith Griffith – the lead-in to sex revolves around him. Guts thinking about how he abandoned him in the snow, Casca thinking about how Griffith doesn’t need her, and Guts beginning to realize that Griffith needed him.

So Guts saves her from her suicide attempt, then comforts her through sex.

And Casca does the same in return:

She couldn’t comfort Griffith, she couldn’t be Griffith’s “woman,” she couldn’t be be something indispensable to Griffith’s dream, but she can comfort Guts, she can have sex with Guts, she can help Guts achieve his dream.

The situations requiring her comfort are even v similar – Guts has just had a flashback to his rape, and Griffith was calling himself “unclean” after selling himself to a pedophilic rapist. Griffith buries his feelings and refuses to be comforted, but Guts pours his heart out to Casca and lets her hold him.

My point is that Guts and Casca having sex is not about the other for either of them – it’s about their respective relationships to Griffith. Guts is presented with a similar scenario to the morning he left the Hawks, and after being told by Casca that he fucked up then and broke Griffith, he chooses a different course of action this time, and comforts and has sex with Casca. Casca is presented with a similar scenario to finding Griffith in the river after Gennon, but instead of being shut out she’s able to comfort the man in emotional turmoil this time.

tl;dr they’re both on the rebound from Griffith here, giving to each other what they didn’t or couldn’t give to him, and there are deliberate visual and situational parallels to illustrate this.

This is what I have thought for years. Casca and Guts whole “relationship” came about because they are in love with the same man. Griffith. Every time they are together conversation turns towards Griffith and lets face it they were both most likely thinking of Griffith during the sex.

Btw I want to say thank you for this post.

In a fandom as vitriol as most of Berserk’s western “fans” are they don’t allow for any kind of insight or discussion like this. But when I read things like this post it reminds me that I wasn’t just fucking seeing things because I swear certain types of people had me believing I was crazy.(I guess that is what those people wanted me to think).

It is posts like yours that make me want to get right back into everything that I love about Berserk.

Edit: Oh yeah I just remembered the all these talk about scars

and how the beast say that Guts basically only holding on to Casca because she is the scar Griffith give him.

Kind of like all the scars Guts indirectly gave Griffith due to his time in torture.

A nice reminder of how Guts subconscious won’t let him forget and how he really doesn’t want to let go of Griffith.

Also Guts looks fucking board after he and Casca had sex

Not to mention he out right lies here

Because

and with Griffith

There is no shoving away or telling him to not to touch him (like with Casca).

So Guts is really forgetful about whose touch it is he didn’t mind or unless you know he is projecting on to Casca that he is talking/being with someone else, a particular someone else.

Oh man I know what you mean. I’ve written so much about my interpretation of Berserk by now and sometimes the rest of the fandom still makes me wonder if I’m just seeing things or making things up. That’s one reason it’s important to find like-minded people imo, especially in a fandom that can be as hostile as this one.

Luckily I’ve managed to find a good place on tumblr where I don’t really have to deal with the majority of the fandom that hates griffith and griffguts lol.

And ty for the addition! That point about the scars and the Beast of Darkness referring to Casca as the wound Griffith left him, like damn I never thought of that but holy shit it’s perfect and fits into that scar discussion between Guts and Casca like a puzzle piece.

And lol yeah, I’m not sure whether that’s Guts fudging the details or Miura conveniently forgetting that moment with Griffith, but either way Guts’ statement that Casca was the only one who could touch him is demonstratably false.

therainykitty:

bthump:

ALSO speaking of “the desired”

this is a pretty glaring omission. we saw zodd and the king’s griffith dreams but not guts’, our protagonist with a “profound connection” to him???

i’m not saying guts’ canonical dreams about griffith are too gay and revealing for berserk’s general readership but that’s exactly what i’m saying

Hey considering how often Griffith was naked in the Golden age, I’m sure one of Guts’ dreams had a naked Griffith in it.

lmao right?

and lbr the odds that guts has not dreamed about griffith naked after spending half the golden age thinking about this moment

and then goes straight to intently pondering this moment for a while

are zero

Rosine and Griffith

thekeenbouquetcrown:

a little post about Rosine, the “villain” of the arch of lost children and its parallels with Griffith, a little introduction about Rosine

Rosine is basically Peter Pan with all its dark nuances in the world of Berserk since it has all the qualities and of course that part of the story is about the escape of reality:

Rosine goes out; frees and kidnaps other children, and gets each of them to buy in their dream and vision of what the world really is like, see her as the Queen of the Elves, and accept the total freedom that she offers them (which validates her own choice ). But his new themes do not make sense to his friends. There is no true sense of attachment. All are disposable and replaceable, because you can use them and create more when you want, because there will always be a lot of desperate children, as I said before, it is a satire to the original “lost children” who look for the charismatic figure of Peter Pan to take them to a world but of course in Berserk there is no such thing

In this case, Jill is like the “Wendy” in this story

That’s why I’m not surprised that Rosine’s interactions have a romantic middle tone with Jilll after all is very consisten

I miss quite a lot because Miura gave this apostle to make the parallel with Griffith in so many ways.

The kingdom of the elves of Rosine and the kingdom of Griffith Falconia are both fantasies that help people escape from their cruelt realities

Its initial shape is beautiful and attracts anyone

Repressed feelings

Refusing to face reality and falling into despair and using the Behelit

What I want to mention is that NeoGriffith supposedly no longer has feelings for Guts

But then Rosine comes to mind, despite being Apostol, her feelings for Jill were remarkable and the worst thing is that not only did she keep them, now that Jill grew up they became half romantic and of course I think it is clear that Jill was the only one In part, he forgot that horrible reality of abuse and clear his dream of living with the elves, how ironic was Jill’s single essence that destroyed all his escapist fantasy because Rosine really loved her friend more than her “kingdom of elves ”

which makes me ask “Griffith in I seriously abandon everything I felt for Guts?

Since I’m focusing on Casca for the review, right now I can not even speculate only that it left me thinking, Rosine’s death when her humanity had returned to her was a sad thing..

Although like Wendy our dear Jill grew a lot thanks to this experience and now can face reality.

All this makes me wonder what will happen to Guts after the final encounter with Griffith?

There is much more to say about the parallels of Griffith and Rosine but those are enough since I just wanted to make a small comment and I think it came out very long, I hope you liked it until next time.

chaoticgaygriffith:

i feel like the double standard stems partially from the fact that guts “feels bad” about what he did to casca

but griffith would fucking feel bad too if he had the ability to feel anything lol. he is literally the king of feeling bad about fucked up shit he’s done, please

griffith:

berserk fans: i am shocked, shocked and absolutely appalled that neogriffith said he has no regrets

griffith:

those same berserk fans: griffith has clearly been an evil unfeeling sociopathic monster from the beginning

I mean, no pressure to answer this but what would be your predicted possible Worst Case ending(/griffguts emotional conclusion) and your Best Case one that you could actually see happening in canon either way?

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

WORST CASE ENDING

all plot, no substance. any heart bthumpy emotions NeoGriff is feeling are actually the fetus’ feelings. it’s his weakness™ and if Guts and Casca defeat NeoGriff they’ll be able to magically separate it out and fuse it with its soul, the Moonlight Boy, achieving a Happily Ever After™ as a Picturesque Family™

Or possibly if they defeat NeoGriffith they free their child’s soul to go to swirly soul heaven, and the ending is bittersweet™

Miura retcons Femto letting Guts go, and all the hints that NeoGriffith feels things that are entirely unrelated to whatever tf the fetus might care about are red herrings/misdirection.

In a flash forward we find out that Rickert and Erika are happily married in a terrible Guts/Casca parallel.

ummm what else… NeoGriff is defeated through a power-up/Elfland magic after a volume long physical battle.

Guts bones Casca and thus conquers his obsession with Griffith and is finally able to move on™ but NeoGriff attacks Elfhelm, forcing the final battle.

possibly the other godhand are there too, what with fusing the physical and spiritual worlds and miura hinting that void’s gonna be important yadda yadda yadda. it turns into Good Spirit Elemental Guardians against Evil Godhand in the most boring fight ever while Guts and NeoGriff fight.

Oooh Casca experiences some strong negative emotions upon regaining her sanity, but the Moonlight Boy appears to her and her maternal feelings™ soothe her.

Guts kills NGriff, rides off into the sunset with casca.

oh also there’s undertones of falconia being a naive fantasy while guts’ ‘just struggle your way through everything instead of finding/creating a safe happy paradise’ philosophy is touted as more mature and better

ok that’s enough dwelling on the negative

BEST CASE ENDING

the fetus is affecting Griffith only insomuch as being fused with its physical flesh makes his heart start beating because he’s corporeal and thus subject to those worldy emotions he’d thought he’d left behind.

The shot of it at the end of this chapter shows that Casca is kind of obsessed with it, and therefore when she wakes up with all her sanity and memories she demonstrates that her wishes were not Guts’ wishes and falls into despair and sacrifices that little fucker. I mean, half the apostle sacrifices we’ve seen have been parent/child, it’s possible right?

this destroys Moonlight Boy, aka the essence of the fetus, and whatever hope the audience had for a happily ever after family with Guts Casca and child. it’s meant to be seen as a tragic low point. I cackle gleefully.

I wouldn’t actually enjoy this but i think it would make sense: along with that low point Miura hints that NeoGriff’s feelings are gone thanks to Casca’s sacrifice – oh no, his one weakness! now he’s unstoppable! etc – but psych later on it turns out the feelings were his own all along.

casca, now an apostle, leaves to get revenge on neogriff. guts goes after her to either help or stop her, he’s not sure which. also if casca steals guts’ armour, i will die of happiness, but that + being an apostle might be overkill.

we get casca’s point of view, and it’s quite similar to black swordsman guts and full of parallels. guts has now achieved some character development which is why he’s torn between helping casca get revenge vs trying to just save her because she’s no match for neogriff (vs deep down wanting to save neogriff and/or stick his own sword in him because his feelings are still all fucked up. undertones of guts and casca’s old griffith-related romantic rivalry but dark)

thematically, Elfhelm is soured – the whole magical therapy for Casca thing turned out to be a terrible idea, the people there are unwilling to help clean up their mess because they’re isolationist dicks, AND maybe there are hints that the four spirit guardians schierke calls on for protection are other forms of the godhand?

however it happens, ultimately the thematic takeaway is that rather than there being a good vs evil thing going on in the spirit world, good and evil are two sides of the same coin and what you perceive really depends on what you’re calling on the spirit world for, and most things are both at once. yk, aren’t gods and devils the same thing?

i’m skipping over plot stuff and more theme stuff because i’m willing to accept a lot of possibilities and i really don’t care much.

the important thing is that guts and griffith have a final emotional confrontation after the dust of the big action climax settles, and it comes in the form of a 3rd duel.

also at some point in the lead-up to it, they figure their shit out. possibly this involves schierke’s or sonia’s or both’s magical mind exploration magic. we see griffith’s unemotional facade starting to crack. we see guts’ ambivalence towards griffith – does he want to kill him or plead with him or fuck him or reject him entirely?

and guts realizes that griffith’s heart is beating again for him, and everything he wanted – griffith’s respect admiration and love is still there, residing in his worst enemy. and griffith realizes that guts admired and loved him and never once saw human him as the monster he saw himself and allowed himself to become.

tragically idk how you could depict both without looking really silly, but either guts’ residual guilt for his part in the lead up to the eclipse gets the better of him and he lets a still-repressed griffith kill him, the way he always lets himself get stabbed when he feels bad about something, OR neogriffith’s irrational love gets the better of him and he lets guts kill him – guts ends up sticking him in the throat in a mirror of how he killed gambino.

either way there’s a lot of crying and cradling a corpse.

tbh i’m leaning towards griffith killing guts for that devilman ending, and this way casca gets to play the role of angry god by swooping in and killing him. if that’s the case griffith lets her because his irrational emotions have finally truly burst free and taken hold over him after he kills guts. his crying is a call-back to his ‘last tear shed.’

(maybe casca becomes zodd 2.0, living for battle and becoming a sword just for herself. kind of a darkly fucked-up “happy” ending for her lol.)

BEST CASE ENDING WITH NO FUCKS GIVEN FOR PLAUSIBILITY

all of the above but after finally understanding each other they make out instead of dueling and then casca kills neogriff and an adult theresia kills guts, and they both ride off into the sunset with their respective girlfriends, farnese and jill.

A) I’m with you pretty strongly on the Do Not Want for the Happy Family parent/child relationships are the Be All End All thing, and I really hope that Miura doesn’t fall into that one (he’s pretty good with not idolising family relationships at least??? Augh).

and B)

Oooh Casca experiences some strong negative emotions upon regaining her sanity, but the Moonlight Boy appears to her and her maternal feelings™ soothe her.

I am screaming this is the darkest timeline oh my GOD do not WANT and yet THIS I can see potentially happening? That is SO grim. Like the idea of Casca’s story being even further reduced to a set of cliches about female characters kills me.

however it happens, ultimately the thematic takeaway is that rather than there being a good vs evil thing going on in the spirit world, good and evil are two sides of the same coin and what you perceive really depends on what you’re calling on the spirit world for, and most things are both at once. yk, aren’t gods and devils the same thing?

This is one of the things I love about Berserk and I hope it plays a part in the ending in some context. If it doesn’t somewhat play out in a way that emphasises this then Miura’s played himself.

neogriffith’s irrational love gets the better of him and he lets guts kill him – guts ends up sticking him in the throat in a mirror of how he killed gambino.

!!! You have killed me. This would actually make me cry if it happened.

(I mean the make-out ending is good too).

Ahhh I fully expect one or both of them to die– I’d honestly be shocked if either of them lived tbh.

It’s true every single family in Berserk, from blood relations to adopted, has been awful. The only exception I can think of is Godo and Erika. I kinda like that about Berserk, I’m not big on stories about happy families. So I do have hope that Miura might tease the concept of a Guts and Casca and baby happy family before fucking it all up and ending that prospect in weird tragedy.

Honestly though Casca being obsessed with the fetus – possibly even mentally regressed and insane not because of the rape or not just because of it but also because the fetus was corrupted and miscarried, now that I consider how Miura portrayed Shizu – just makes me lose hope that Casca’s going to get to be anything ever other than a projection screen for Miura’s fucked up thoughts on women. Like are we really going from her narrative being all about rape and her relationships to men to her narrative being all about motherhood? It’s so depressing to think about.

And lol yeah, tbh I kind of want them both to die? Idk I like a good death scene and these have the potential to be epic and extremely satisfying. Give or take the whole afterlife thing, I tend to think that actually seeing Guts and/or Griffith’s souls being carted off to whichever whirlpools they end up in would ruin it, but yk, Miura could leave that in implication.

Guts: This time it’s by my own will. I will never entrust my sword to another again. From now on every battle will be my own.

Also Guts: *throws away his entire life and the found family he holds dear so he can fulfill Griffith’s friendship criteria down to the letter*

ALSO can I just say “I don’t know what’s ahead. Whether bein with you will get in the way of what I want to do… or the opposite… I can’t tell now.”

Well what Guts wants to do is fight stronger and stronger enemies, like Wyald. He’s been thinking about fighting monsters since he left and decided he was sore about losing to Zodd.

And then he does get to fight a monster, and this is what happens when Casca’s with him:

so like, you’re telling me they would’ve lived happily ever after pursuing Guts’ monster-fighting dream together if Griffith turned out to be fine and fit to lead the Hawks after all?

Bc this is directly telling me that Guts would see Casca as a liability to that dream and Casca would probably stop supporting it pretty quickly if Guts kept on going the way he’s going.

Yo I’m re-reading the entire manga to build up the hype now that the hiatus has ended and I’m on the GA arc bearing in mind numerous metas of yours. I wanted to ask, wrt your Guts attraction metas, how do you interpret Guts trying to push Casca and Griffith together? Re-reading this personally I see Guts subconsciously sympathizing with Casca’s feelings towards Griff. She says he finds him increasingly distant and that’s accompanied with a panel of Guts looking at him from the distance. (1)

So I think that he is trying to push those two together because he is
projecting his feelings on Casca. He wants to get them together because
he can’t insert himself in that situation. Casca is possibly a stand-in
for himself without him realizing it. That’s why he wouldn’t feel
jealous too imo. What do you think and what’s your take?

My probably-gayer-than-Miura-intended take is basically the same as yours, with the addition of Guts thinking that Casca is worthier of Griffith than he is.

From his silent and sullen reaction shots to Casca talking about him in the cave that definitely strike me as identifying with Casca’s feelings

to Casca directly telling him she’s jealous of him

to Guts feeling like all he’s good for is swinging his sword while insisting Casca has to live for something more important

this all seems like set-up for Guts throwing Casca at Griffith. He starts doing it after he decides to leave like he’s setting Casca up to take the place she wants, his place, at Griffith’s side, but Casca gets the addition of romance that Guts can’t begin to envision for himself thanks to repression and heteronormativity.

Also, good point about the bit where they’re both looking at him from a distance and Guts decides to take Casca down to bridge that gap for her, while he plans to leave. ia that seems like another moment of identification.

Idk basically yeah I totally agree, I think Guts is hardcore projecting, and the fact that the way he sets Casca up to take his place as Griffith’s confidante and “sword” involves shoving her into his arms, telling her to ask him to dance, telling Griffith she’s quite a sight in her dress, etc, is pretty telling.

Idk if it’s purposeful on Miura’s part, but it’s a really solid reading imo.

griffith’s moment of ultimate despair was guts touching his shoulder, like jesus fucking christ

void appeals to reason, logic, the thing griffith falls back on to hide from his emotions. you are special, this is your destiny, everything you’ve done has been right all along and you’ve been preparing for this all your life

and then immediately after, the way he looks at Guts. like holy shit look at that expression. that is pure love.

“You’re the only one… who made me forget my dream.”

That’s what he’s desperate to escape from, that’s the real reason for his despair, for burying his human heart. His ambition collapsed, his body was fucked up to the point of helplessness, he spent a year being tortured, but the despair that opens the Behelit is Guts touching his shoulder. We get two chapters of the Godhand laying out their argument but the final moments of Griffith’s decision are given to Guts’ appearance and his statement of all-encompassing, life-ruining love.

like ik i’ve already written actual posts about the count and griffith and griffith’s moment of despair etc i just suddenly felt compelled to throw all these bits together and ramble about them incoherently

bthump:

yk the anime is a good guide to how to copy really gay scenes shot for shot and suck the homoeroticism right out of them

more examples bc i’m bored and bc the contrast also rly illustrates how well the manga sells it

chaoticgaygriffith:

kissing-monsters:

chaoticgaygriffith:

kissing-monsters:

consider: guts, a teenager (? how old was he at this point in canon? young anyway) just killed a man in cold blood and accidentally killed a child (not a thing he does in either case, at this point) for griffith, then is wounded and hits his head

… this is somehow the first time I noticed he hits his head that hard and probably has a concussion at this point…

has just hallucinated his childhood traumas with himself in a villain roll, staggers in and asks immediately for griffith

at this point he must be delirious to some extent and he’s just focussed on finding griffith to report, but I think also for comfort? to be told he did the right thing, he did well, it’s all okay

(and what happens is he overhears that stupid conversation while still fucking concussed and oh my god berserk is PAIN)

yeah this was one of the worst sequences in the entire manga lol at the end all this he was just so needy and just wanted to talk to griffith so bad. like the first thing he did was he went looking for him and he completely ignored casca when she started asking him questions

and then he sees finds griffith but he’s with charlotte and guts fucking. makes this expression

and just proceeds up the stairs. when casca stops him he flinches and again look at his face

then griffith delivers his speech and:

like. highkey fucking hate this chapter and my only consolation is that griffith knows this is where he hurt guts because:

would griffith actually know what they were talking about, though? his reaction suggests something like that, but it could also suggest him thinking something else was happening between guts and casca that night, or that guts had told casca what he’d done for griffith? then again I haven’t gotten to this chapter in the manga yet ha

but holy shit yes this is one of the most painful things in the manga and the way guts has this semi-concussed expression the whole time jada’dad’adjlk’’ ow

oh! sorry for the spoilers then fdkjsdf

but, after that casca says

so i think if griffith remembers his own speech he should know what they’re talking about, though it is possible that he doesn’t

Casca back into a love interest I don’t think so also her and Guts didn’t start as a couple they got to know each other before mingling with each other. As a fan of Berserk and being a girl doesn’t mean I’m leaning towards Casca, but towards Guts because of his struggles Casca has flaws and it makes her more human, but I dislike her and wouldn’t want them to end up the together because her feelings are not genuine towards Guts. GutsCa is bad and one sided and she needs to develop on her own.

The way Miura wrote the story I’d say Guts is by far the stronger and more relatable character. Unfortunately Casca really gets the “the token chick” treatment where her whole story and all her issues and half her personality is about being a woman surrounded by men, and written by a dude, so yk, I don’t blame anyone for being unable to relate to her lol, and personal preference is whatever, so it’s not like you should have to like her just because you’re a girl.

And I definitely agree that Casca should develop on her own, away from Guts. The way she jumped straight from being overinvested in Griffith and his dream to being overinvested in Guts and his dream was pretty fucked up imo, and a sign that she needs to get independent.

But I’d have to disagree with you about their respective feelings, because while I think they both felt genuine affection for the other, neither of them felt genuine love, and I’d say even moreso than Casca did, Guts consistently prioritized/s Griffith over her.

cut for length

Rather than staying and supporting her he still wants to go out to become Griffith’s equal, and this is how he invites her along when Casca is outraged by his priorities:

which is pretty far from romantic or commital lol.

While Casca is jealous of Charlotte during the rescue, Guts’ reaction is basically, well that kinda sucks but lbr I got it even worse than she does so it’s not like I can blame her:

When they find Griffith this is the next thing he says to Casca:

During the Eclipse this is what Guts does when he sees the Band, including Casca, about to be eaten by monsters:

And of course after the Eclipse he dumps her in a cave for two years to pursue Griffith/continue pursuing his dream of fighting stronger and stronger opponents and therefore being Griffith’s friend/equal, once again prioritizing Griffith:

When he finally does end up sticking with her to take her to Elfhelm, this is how he makes that decision:

This is what he’s thinking about when he starts off on his journey:

and of course i’d be remiss if i didn’t mention how Griffith grabbing Guts’ attention away from rescuing Casca is framed:

AND then there’s the whole Beast of Darkness fiasco.

And even when they’re on the boat, he’s still planning to run back to Griffith once his sidequest with Casca is over:

Idk basically I would argue that Guts is by far shittier to Casca than Casca is to Guts, and neither are genuinely all that invested in their potential relationship. It’s a rebound for both, an attempt to get over Griffith that doesn’t work for either, but in fairness to Casca she tried, and even when she decided to stay with Griffith she told Guts to leave because she was prioritizing his stupid dream lol, while Guts’ investment in becoming worthy of being Griffith’s friend had him refusing to stay and suggesting Casca come with him only insofar as she doesn’t fuck up his dream from the very start.

So, less one-sided, and more no-sided lol.

Anyway this is Guts uncomfortably identifying with Casca’s worshipful admiration (which we are later told is a romantic crush) of Griffith. Like we get a …. shot of Guts looking broody every time Casca starts waxing poetic.

Uncomfortably because he wants to be Griffith’s equal and he feels like he’s looking up at him while Griffith is looking down.

And THIS is either Guts thinking Casca is wrong about how Griffith feels about him, or (more likely imo) being moody because he thinks Casca deserves her place at Griffith’s side more than he does, because she has a dream to live for.

It leads to the 100 man fight, which he spends thinking about how pointless it is because he’s swinging his sword for no other reason but to swing it, and gets Casca to escape because she has something more to live for than he does. Which then leads to campfire of dreams, where he concludes that everyone has a dream except for him, says compared to what Casca and Griffith have to live for nothing he does is important, so he’d better leave to find one so he can be worthy of standing beside Griffith.

Casca and Guts have been rivals for Griffith’s affections, that’s their main relationship up til now. But this is the point where Guts concludes that he’s lost the fight, and starts throwing them together while he prepares to bow out, at least til he can come back feeling worthy of Griffith.

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

bthump:

Browsing through the rebirth chapters and it just leaps out at me how utterly sexualized Griffith is, especially in comparison to Casca, who is (at least by Miura’s standards) totally desexualized.

Guts’ internal conflict is essentially desire vs responsibility, ie revenge vs escorting Casca to Elfhelm, ie Griffith vs Casca, and the visual depiction of that conflict is straight up, extremely loud and clear, naked sexy Griffith vs Casca all childlike in a shapeless cloak

Keep reading

yk what I was partly wrong here and over simplifying things

it’s not that Guts’ desire for revenge is sexualized through Griffith, it’s that Griffith’s sexualization is actually at odds with Guts’ desire to kill him. You can’t rly ignore “the instant I saw him… I’d forgotten my urge to kill.”

Revenge and sexual desire aren’t rly equated yet. Guts wants to kill faceless masked bird boy with great prejudice

he does not want to kill sexy naked Griffith.

Now that he’s actually reachable I’m having second thoughts oh no what the fuck.

So when the hound says he’s longing for Griffith and tells him to give him a heap of raw iron, what’s actually going on is less sexualization of revenge, and more… revengalization of sex, yk?

Sexual desire and violent stabby revenge are being equated by the hound to encourage Guts to pursue Griffith. Guts wants to stick something in him all right, and he should still want revenge, so it’s best if that something is a literal sword. As opposed to his desire for revenge becoming sexualized, the inherent sexualization of Guts’ desire for Griffith is what the hound seizes on and twists to lead Guts back to revenge.

Anyway basically Griffith’s desirability is still hardcore contrasted to Casca’s lack thereof, but honestly I think it’s less a metaphor for wanting revenge vs being stuck babysitting and more plain old straightforward gay subtext which is then utilized to give an added layer of complexity to Guts’ desire for revenge (and desire to desire revenge.)

ik this comes across as fake jokey analysis and/or giving the subtext too much weight so I can reach super hard, but tbh idk how to read this part without it. i mean you could just say that Guts fantasizing about Griffith’s pretty hair and ass and forgetting his urge to kill and whining about being stuck with Casca and Griffith abandoning him and the hound’s many innuendos are all unrelated or accidental but

l
b
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I’d actually love to see a dead serious analysis of this like you’ve done but deliberately disregarding any gay subtext just to see if it could make anywhere near as much compelling sense? I don’t think there’s a way this makes sense without at least some gay subtext– nor does basically the majority of berserk in general, which makes me curious but also scared to branch outside of tumblr for people’s meta on it.

tbh i’m kind of curious too lol. i’ve seen bits and pieces of non gay meta/opinions/etc on brief forays onto reddit and skull knight etc but nothing involving Guts and Griffith’s characters/relationship that I didn’t immediately think of counterpoints to.

and like for a thought experiment i tried wracking my brain to come up with a heterosexual explanation for one of the most homoerotic moments

and the best I got is that Guts is picturing NeoGriffith like that to serve as a strong contrast to Femto, yk all naked with flowing hair as opposed to the exoskeleton + helmet look.

and it still doesn’t explain why an image meant to convey a sense of humanity is the most sensual image of a person we’ve seen in 176 chapters of Berserk give or take actual sex scenes, and that’s including Griffith’s resurrection (in which he’s described as “the desired”) a few chapters earlier.

like idk at the end of the day I think Berserk does mostly make sense if you assume Guts and Griffith’s feelings for each other are 110% platonic, at least the plot does, but i def think the homoeroticsm adds more depth and richness, plus it’s a simple cohesive explanation for a lot of stuff that is otherwise pointless or weird, from Casca’s jealousy to a bunch of images of Griffith to their intensity-at-first-sight vibe to why Griffith didn’t answer when Guts asked if he was gay, etc etc, and it’s disingenuous to ignore it imo.

guts is sensitive be nice to him