Tag: replies

is2g visiting pro-griffith/griffguts blogs esp urs with ur meta and thoughts after ur average berserk fanspaces like reddit or skullknight is like a balm after having to endure the same idiotic donovan/eclipse/potato casca jokes, virulent griffith hatred, g*tsca love and the usual fuckery. i’m always amazed at the difference between the 2 sides of the fandom, it’s like we’re reading a different series except the other side got the dumbed down str8 version lol. anyways keep up the good work x

tyvm, I appreciate the message! honestly Berserk fans can get so vile with like, some of the shit you mention like rape jokes. not surprising considering the canon, but unfortunate, and I’m glad I can help provide an alternative.

also I’m tacking this on bc it’s a similar topic and I’m trying not to spam everyone’s dash lol:

xiyyh replied to your post  “madchen
replied to your post  “Do you have any thoughts about…”

all of this …. and it’s baffling to me how
many workarounds ppl come up with to argue the opposite                
 

god same, it’s to the point where people might as well have their fingers in their ears going ‘la la la.’

like
the sheer number of berserk fans who don’t acknowledge/actively deny
that, say, Griffith valued Guts more than his dream, or Guts left the
Hawks to become Griffith’s friend and not to like, escape his sinister thrall lol, is mind
boggling. these aren’t interpretations, these are cold hard facts
directly stated many times.

like eg because I read the tv tropes
page before re-reading the manga for the first time in years I went in
assuming most of what I love about it (ie Griffith and Guts’
overwhelming feelings for each other) was subtext and just one potential
interpretation of many, rather than like, the hammered home point of
the story lol.

It really does feel like there are two completely different stories out there. And some of it is probably bc of scanlations, and anime vs manga fans, etc, but still. the fundamentals of the story remain the same, but you wouldn’t know it looking at fandom.

cut for people who don’t want to see discussion of monster sex lol

@chaoticgaygriffith​ said:

#oh man come to think of it this is WHY his apostles didn’t get to have an orgy with him yet#this is so unfair to me specifically#i love griffith’s ‘sexualized untouchability’ ngl but then there’s something so alluring about#the idea of ngriff having sensual bonding sessions with his monsters yknow what i mean

i feel like there’s still room for this though! like this is one of those concepts i keep coming back to and i always envision it as neogriffith using sex as a way to keep the apostles in line and not preying on humanity, yk like, one taste of yr god and you realize that humans just aren’t worth risking getting kicked out of falconia for

except it’s actually completely unnecessary and more low-key a convoluted ott expression of his self-destructive streak while telling himself it’s just another rung on the ladder to his utopia dream, because griffith is a dramatic disaster in all incarnations

or you want it less fucked up and weirdly angsty then maybe it actually is just part of how he keeps them tame (a la Ganeshka’s “if he touches me I’ll sacrifice all -”) and he’s lowkey into it. or he lets his loyal generals gang bang him as a reward bc they’re apostles and apostles respond better to base lust than bags of gold, and in this scenario he’s getting fucked from a position of power as a show of generosity and knows he can’t be truly harmed bc fate, so it’s still a contrast to sex when he was human

madchen
replied to your post “Do you have any thoughts about griffith’s relationship with sex? Tbh…”

this is a given but all this really drives home that him and guts could’ve had it all including the first actual healthy and mutual romantic + sexual experience either of them would have

ikkkkkkkkkkkkkr

like i s2g griffguts is the keystone to berserk, it’s the missing piece, everything is built around it and everything falls apart literally because it’s a missed connection, i’ll argue that forever. and it always fits like no matter which angle you’re looking at the characters from

imaginaryapart
replied to your post “imaginaryapart
replied to your post “I don’t know if you went into…”

Thanks for responding! I appreciate it. Love this stuff. And yeah I agree that Griffith definitely cares for Casca, and that’s part of what makes this scene so tragic. Manipulating Casca’s sympathy in order to make her stay, in order to make Guts stay, doesn’t lessen the fact that Griffith cares for her. But Casca isn’t Guts, and that distinction seems to be highlighted here. Griffith seems to be responding to a) Guts possibly leaving again and b) the relationship with Casca that he no longer—
has, now that Casca
and Guts have grown closer. He’s probably trying to be that person Casca
knew him as, as you pointed out, and doing it from the point in his
life furthest from that past glory. The tragedy is layered here, and I
personally enjoy the idea of Griffith using someone he genuinely cares
for (Casca) in order to reach for Guts, who always seems out of reach. I
also agree that it foreshadows the eclipse and demonstrates the
consistency of Griffith’s character when he makes the

sacrifice before the Godhand. Thanks for listening to me go on, hah.

thank you for responding too, this is a fun topic to talk about!

yeah I basically agree with everything you said here I think. Honestly the lead-up to the Eclipse was so good at making everything as depressing and painful as possible for everyone involved, and everything you’ve described is a huge part of it.

“Casca isn’t Guts, and that distinction seems to be highlighted here“

Yeah v true, and I think it also effectively parallels Griffith and Casca’s feelings for Guts, the way Casca and Guts’ feelings for Griffith have been paralleled at times (eg during the cave conversation where they both see Griffith as out of reach, and potentially even believing that he desires the other, considering Guts tries to set them up afterwards. Or during the rescue mission where Guts thinks that he has to accept Casca’s lingering feelings for Griffith because he’s not over him/hasn’t unbound himself either). Like Griffith isn’t Casca’s first choice either now, she feels obligated to stay with him, and in the dream sequence Guts’ absence seems to diminish them both.

And ia that the like… tension between genuinely caring for someone but using them (and later, sacrificing them) despite that is great, like the sacrifice wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting if Griffith didn’t actually gaf about the Hawks. And we see that attitude in his general existence as a mercenary leader too – like when he says to Guts “I will decide the place where you die,” or positions the Hawks with their backs to the river during the Doldrey battle so they have no choice but to give it their all bc they can’t retreat. Like his life is also on the line, so it’s not exactly cruel or unfair, but it is ruthless and it’s great fuel for the guilt issues he denies.

But I’m hugely into the contrast between like, Griffith’s feelings and his almost desperate need to deny them/bury them lol.

I should mention: even
though our interpretations differ in some ways, I don’t mean to argue!
I’m interested in your take and enjoy the other metas you’ve posted. I
agree that Casca really isn’t done justice in Berserk at all, and I
honestly hate that so much story has been devoted to “saving” her
post-eclipse instead of focusing on what made her badass and
sympathetic. That said, I can see why she’s used the way she is plotwise
with respect to Guts and Griffith; it’s part of the tragedy for me.

(I just wish Casca’s suffering didn’t
center so often on the fact that she’s a woman. Leaves a bad taste in my
mouth, like womanhood is the only source of suffering for someone like
her.)

Same same. Like I have strong opinions and I definitely don’t shy away from sharing them lol but I’m happy to have people disagree with me and get the opportunity to discuss them and get new ideas to consider etc, it’s all part of the fun of being in fandom as long as everyone’s fairly chill. I’m interested in your takes too, whether you agree or disagree 🙂

And yeah cosigned wrt Casca. It’s such a shame to me because I feel like she had so much potential and some great scenes as an awesome character, but she gets hamstrung by the writing so much, her role stuck between Guts and Griffith, and how every aspect of her character revolves around being a woman, cumulating in the Eclipse and the destruction of her character, and like… damn, yk? It’s a bit hard to take lol.

imaginaryapart
replied to your post “I don’t know if you went into this before but if so let me know. When…”

Nice analysis. I agree with you for the most part, and have something to add that seems complementary to what you’ve already mentioned: Griffith is showing Casca exactly how pathetic he is in order to manipulate her into staying, and thereby get Guts to stay as well. But Casca spoils this plan when she reminds Guts that if he is Griffith’s friend and equal, then he must leave. This is the moment that Griffith realizes that he is responsible for Gut’s departure that day in the snow. It’s tragic.
(Cont.) Low as he was,
Griffith seems to still be trying to manipulate the situation to get
what he wants (Guts to stay), even going so far as to weaponize his
broken body. But this, like you said, is total desperation, and when it
doesn’t work Griffith has nothing else to try. It really cements the
idea that Casca was, is, and always will be just a means to an end for
Griffith, which is heartbreaking for Casca but one of my favorite parts
of the series.

Thank you!

yeah i definitely agree that Casca is a means to an end to Griffith here – he certainly isn’t asking her to stay because he wants her in his life in particular, and ia that he’s most likely hoping Guts will stay too if Casca stays, since he now has an idea that they’re together. I don’t think that’s all she is to him – he genuinely cares for her, or else he wouldn’t be able to sacrifice her lol, and wouldn’t try opening up to her in the river after Gennon, wouldn’t try to save her when Wyald grabs her despite being unable to do a thing, etc. But their feelings for each other definitely aren’t equal and it does make me feel for Casca.

(and on a related subject I have a lot of feelings about how Casca is constantly used by both Griffith and Guts as an emotional and physical like, bridge between them, from Casca warming Guts all the way back in the beginning, to Guts assaulting her to “get closer and closer to Griffith,” to just about everything in between. Her role in the story is very depressing to me bc I really love her and she has some amazing moments and scenes, but overall Berserk absolutely doesn’t do her justice.)

Tho idk I wouldn’t really consider Griffith to be deliberately manipulating Casca here or “weaponizing” his body. His sexualized offer is pretty straightforward, and I don’t think he intended to come across as pathetic as he does – Casca comforting him with a hand on his shoulder is, imo, the opposite of what he wanted. He wanted to be the comforter, but he can’t fill that role anymore.

But this is a v ambiguous scene so it’s not like there’s not plenty of room for different interpretations.

seisans
replied to your post “seisans
replied to your post “How do you think charlotte would react…”

yeah i feel like i can’t imagine him detailing it completely just because like. 1. he’s trying to maintain this perfect image but also 2. he seems to want to put this behind him and pretend like it doesn’t affect him … as part of pretending like guts is irrelevant to him now yk? but yea

Yeah I imagine the explanation is either a very large lie by omission (like, Rickert resents me because I led the Hawks into an unwinnable battle) or a little closer to the truth but without the gritty details (God took their lives to grant me a new beginning and the power to save the world, or smthn)

@chaoticgaygriffith said:
you dare diss the
films ….. when the anime series exist ……. both the old one and the new
one tbh 1997 has its moments but it mostly failed us when it comes to
character designs
the music and the scenery + some colour choices, goddd for all its flaws …. it’s an Experience


@phydia63​ said: same! i love the way the noses are drawn.

Yeah I love a lot about the old anime, including the style (like everything you said, + the 90s animation in general tbh, esp with the stills) but the ova character designs are my fave next to the late golden age manga style

hotaru-dream
replied to your post “sobadpink
replied to your post “sobadpink
replied to your post …”

In the official guidebook it is said that their estimed age are the same
(24 years old when published, but it’s quite “recent” so not sure about when they met)

YES!

that’s the official berserk guidebook that came out in like 2017? I’m assuming they’re not including elfhelm time dilation shennanigans or subtracting the 2-3 years Griffith spent as Femto on the astral plan or w/e in that, so it probably means they were both 15ish (since Guts was 15) when they met

seisans
replied to your post “How do you think charlotte would react to neo griffith if she saw what…”

i’d say it depends on how she finds out. does she see it with her own eyes? does someone tell her? does GRIFFITH tell her? makes a big difference imo

oh yeah v true. I’ve actually thought about Griffith telling her a watered down version of events after Rickert showed up. Or he might’ve already mentioned some stuff back when he first rescued her, assuming she had a question or two about why he’s hanging out with monsters and can now perform miracles lol.

@griff-guts said: same lol charlotte (and characters in general) as representative of themes is My Shit

lol yeah I love that, and Berserk is great for this tbh

griff-guts
replied to your post “How do you think charlotte would react to neo griffith if she saw what…”

charlotte was a convenient plot point that allowed Griffith a quick trip to the throne via marriage, which would allow him to cruise on into being king without disrupting the royal structure or starting a revolution. Imo she doesnt have a firm characterization bc 1) miura sucks at writing compelling women and 2) her wishy-washy-ness and the fake superficial nature of her relationship with griff is a stark contrast to guts and griffs relationship – which id like 2 think is purposeful but lmao
that was a stupid and long reply but
basically charlotte is a cloaking example of how ppl view the image
griffith projected, and now neogriffith – thru rose coloured glasses and
as an idea or concept rather than a real person. to charlotte he’s her
knight in shining armour, to the falconians he’s a saviour, to the old
band of the hawk he was a way to a better life etc etc
also charlotte has a
habit of ignoring or running away from the bad things in life. if she
were to find out about the truth with griffith, would she even care?
what’s her other option? locking herself up in a tower like she did with
her father? I doubt learning griff is a “monster” would change much
about him in her eyes, she already knows he kills ppl and when he talked
about it in his friendship speech she was basically like “oh griffith
that’s so disturbing” and then got over it lol

Yeah I agree w/ most of this (I mean tbf I find some of the women Miura writes compelling, despite giant writing flaws, but Charlotte is not one of them lol)

Charlotte really is like the ur-example of how other people see Griffith without really knowing him. I suppose that’s probably why people want to see the scales fall from her eyes lol. Even back during the Golden Age, he was assassinating her family left and right and she had no idea. Personally I’d find it much more potentially interesting for Charlotte to learn that he killed her uncle, cousin, and stepmother, but I think that ship’s kind of sailed.

And yeah by now like… she’s happily accepted that Griffith hangs out with an army of monsters. I’m pretty sure she could learn exactly what happened during the Eclipse, and if NGriff gave a fuck about keeping her on as an ally/queen at that point he could like, literally just straightforwardly tell her what happened and Charlotte would be like, oh okay. ie: yeah I sacrificed my friends and became an evil demon for a while but now I’m back to human, yk like how the apostles used to eat people but now they help humanity. You know how it is with personified inner darknesses.

lol I feel like I have more to say on this subject wrt Charlotte being the epitome of seeing the image but not the person beneath vs what happens if she finds out, yk like thematically, but I’m about to go to work so I’ll end this here and maybe write more about it later if I think of something worthwhile.

xiyyh
replied to your post “yk tho as much as i theorize and hope wildly for a lot of stuff, at…”

standing ovation i wholeheartedly agree … i’d love to see theresia come back and rain hellfire too … (tho as much as i’d love that i feel like her rage was more of a parallel plot device that guts could relate with perhaps? and cracked his emotions open enough for readers to see he’s at odds with himself?) but damn would i love to see it … the women of berserk need loads of vengeance

Ty! And yeah I could see Theresia never coming back bc her purpose was served as a (really awesome imo) parallel to Guts that put his bullshit into perspective lol. But I’d still love to see badass vengeful Theresia.

sobadpink
replied to your post “yk tho as much as i theorize and hope wildly for a lot of stuff, at…”

Okay but please consider this: Theresia comes back and ends up being a huge endgame villain to Guts AND Griffith. Because she promised.

i would love that so much ngl. at the very least i really want to see her get some kind of hard earned revenge, and with the potential elfhelm timeskip in the works it’s possible we’ll see her as a badass adult at some point. I’ve got my fingers crossed hard

xiyyh
replied to your post “hey if miura cut out the idea of evil chapter because it gave too much…”

ohhhhhhh … lovely, this is exciting …

i’m glad you think so lol

i’ve managed to convince myself that skull knight and danann are in shady cahoots and using guts and casca and now i jump on every possible piece of evidence for it tbh

i’ve got more theorizing along those lines here if you’re also into the idea, tho i keep waffling on a lot of the details lol

sobadpink
replied to your post “sobadpink
replied to your post “griffith and guts were like 17/16…”

All good points, I was really just trying to base off assuming Casca and Guts where around the same age (in order to guess Griffith’s age) but yeah, a 15 year old would probably not consider an 18yr old “the same age” since like you said, 3 years is a lot to a teenager. Unless even at 18, because of his very fair and slim build, an 18yr old Griffith appears to be around 15yrs old?
Though I DO like the idea of Guts being the youngest of the 3!

Yeah I mean you could make an argument for it. Until there’s hard and fast canon it all comes down to personal preference, or just going with the ova ppl’s guesses/decisions. I was just laying out my reasoning for assuming Griffith is close to the same age as Guts bc I see people say Griffith is 3 years older all the time thanks to the wiki taking the ova behind the scenes info as fact, but yk, it’s all headcanon in the end.

sobadpink
replied to your post “griffith and guts were like 17/16 ish when they met right? modern au…”

Considering casca is supposed to be the same age as Guts, and she met Griffith when she was still young, and Griffith was old enough to not look off in armour, I would say Griffith is at least 3 years older than both of them

all the straightforward info we have on anyone’s age other than Guts, as far as I know, comes from the movie guides, which I think do say Casca is Guts’ age and Griffith is 3 years older. But I don’t think (and please correct me if I’m wrong or forgetting something) that’s stated in the manga anywhere.

Could be Miura signed off on it or suggested it himself, or it’s in the guidebook too or something, but I personally still wouldn’t consider it technically canon if it’s not in the manga. I mean I’m biased because I like the idea of G+G being about the same age. But also I have a rly hard time seeing Griffith as 18 before the 3 year time skip:

image

Especially w/ Guts thinking of him as just a kid, and about his age, etc. Three years is a p noticable age gap when you’re teenagers.

and Casca could also be around the same age, rather than younger than either imo. she says she was 12 when Griffith saved her (to me she looks younger than that, but w/e, canon says 12), and I could easily buy Griffith as around 12-13 in that scene just going off looks. He acts older, bc at this point he’s got more life experience, but honestly they both look like babies to me

image

I mean maybe it’s a stretch to think of a 12 yr old leading a group of bandits soon to be mercenaries, but enh child soldiers abound in Berserk, Rickert was a unit captain at about that age lol, and the other Hawks are also relatively young according to Guts so I can suspend my disbelief and accept it.

ljlyall
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “I don’t know if you went into this…”

I always saw the kid as an allusion to the whole “Casca was pregnant before the eclipse and moon-child is actually Guts’”. Like it was a strange meta-hallucination without fully relying on any character knowledge. Not that I was thinking that deeply about it to begin with, that’s just kinda how my brain filled in the gaps

Hm, yeah that’s another interesting potential reading of the scene.

I just kind of shared my thoughts on it being Guts’ kid here so I’ll just link it to avoid repeating myself lol.

Tho wrt the idea that it’s a sort of meta hallucination, like a glimpse of a potential future informed by information Griffith himself doesn’t even have, idk it seems like a fair interpretation since there’s a lot of sinister magical things going on pre-eclipse. But idk if I’d consider it the most likely concept, so I wouldn’t default to that interpretation myself.

nico-jero
replied to your post “I don’t know if you went into this before but if so let me know. When…”

I had similar thoughts about that Griffith/Casca scene in the wagon. However, I remember reading the kid in the nightmare scene as Gut’s kid that he left with Casca.
Kind of like a hint to Casca’s pregnancy.

This also seems possible imo. Even if it’s just Griffith’s imagination he does know Guts and Casca have hooked up so he could also be just assuming her pregnancy in this imaginary scenario. Plus assuming the kid is Guts’ potentially highlights Guts’ absence even more.

But idk to me that scene has such a sort of… cloyingly domestic and kind of sinisterly sexual undertone to it, which seems especially significant after the scene in the wagon, that I lean towards the kid as another aspect of Griffith being trapped in this heterosexual nightmare. And I feel like Guts and Casca’s kid would have way darker hair.

But ultimately I could go either way. Both interpretations are depressing in their own ways lol.

seisans
replied to your post “do you think that the night after guys left was the first time…”

for some reason i totally thought we were supposed to assume it’s his first time lol ….. idk he’s just so gaycoded that it’s the only option for me

I’ll also add that I want to take the parallels to the g*tsca sex scene as another reason it’s his first time

guts and griffith both having het sex to try to avoid confronting their feelings for each other, and it destroys everyone’s lives and the golden age is a cautionary tale about heterosexuality

seisans said:
im losing my MINDDDDDD that people think
this is proof he liked her. it’s called being gay and repressed holy
shit i’ve never seen a more accurate depiction of how heteronormativity
messes with a gay person (in manga anyway) and people think it’s
attraction looooord help me

honestly it’s so real, like fucking everything about griffith’s story fits the repressed gay narrative. idk how miura did it if it was an accident lol.

but like, yeah i get being confused by those scenes, particularly the wagon one, but the one conclusion you definitely cannot draw from them is that griffith loves casca because he literally tries to kill himself right after imagining a quiet “content” domestic life with her lol. I’m almost morbidly curious about the arguments the person who sent me those asks saw.

madchen
replied to your post “I don’t know if you went into this before but if so let me know. When…”

realizing the kid in griffiths hesterosexual nightmare is his and cascas gave me hives
 cool how this whole situation is
realized in gruesome reverse, with griffith off “pursuing his dream” and
casca and guts “kid” being a literal part/reminder of griffiths absence

ooh good point. and also that is a reason i can get behind for guts being freaked out by the fetus in the black swordsman arc. obviously not authorially intended at that point and i don’t think it actually works wrt symbolism, but emotionally i dig it

also yeah lol that scene is like 3 pages of quiet domesticity and i think it disturbs me more than anything else in berserk

course a lot of that is what i bring to the table with my berserk is about heteronormativity and repression hot takes but yk, still

izonis
replied to your post “It’d actually be pretty cool if we got more moments between Guts and…”

I like this analysis. I agree that this potential is unfortunately most likely not going to get explored, at least not any time soon – especially the way the manga is heading right now. But who knows, I’ve been wrong about predictions before… guess we still have fanfiction though if anything.

thank you!

Yeah my hopes aren’t high but I think there’s a chance Miura might explore some aspects once we get back to Guts’ side of the narrative. After all we’re at the culmination of his journey of the last 150ish chapters, so it’s the perfect time to bring those themes home and make a statement about Guts’ relationships etc. Like, if things go wrong w/ Casca’s mind coming back (thinking of omnious foreshadowing featuring the berserk armour and behelit), will his new friendships help prevent the worst from happening? Or will Guts’ emotional distance from them have negative consequences? That kinda thing.

But yeah it could also be that we’re just supposed to take it at face value that they’re a happy found family and it won’t really be examined in more depth than that. But I have my fingers crossed at least.

madchen
replied to your post “since it’s been on topic a bit lately, ya got any possessive guts hcs…”

you mentioning guts wants to lay his claim on griffith got me thinking about how absolutely enthusiastic and proud he would be in modern au of griff when they get married. like look at my beautiful smart sweet perfect husband. he’s mine and we have matt hung rings and everything. my husband 🙂

this is so cute omg i can’t handle this

i love them

sobadpink
replied to your post “My favourite thing about Miura’s art style is just how much he can…”

It’s funny how weird and almost “bad” his anatomy is but how much better it’s gotten

yeah the Black Swordsman and v early Golden Age could get dodgy wrt anatomy imo but from Mid golden age on it seems pretty spot on to my untrained eye.

But even back then I still think his emotions were spot on – even if the expressions were a little less realistic/nuanced, he still conveyed all the right feelings imo.

Why should it be Casca? I don’t get it why people want her to do that.

really?? surely the reason you want Femto to suffer/be punished is because of the Eclipse rape… which Casca was the victim of. People want her to get revenge because she’s the one who was hurt the most. Meanwhile Guts cast her aside while using her suffering as an excuse to lash out, so I’d say he really doesn’t deserve to avenge anyone.

Whether Miura intended Guts’ actions to be fully interpreted that way idk, but we’re at least meant to condemn him for leaving Casca in a cave for 2 years while running around killing monsters.

Anyway my ideal ending is very far from yours, and I’m kind of surprised considering you introduced yourself to me as a huge Griffith/NeoGriffith fan. But yk, you do you, we clearly have very different priorities in what we want from the story.

My ideal ending is Femto dying in worst way possible or getting trapped in some endless loop of suffering and misery. “If Guts does happily kill NGriff without hesitation, that’ll be a v dark ending that indicates he’s lost his humanity, imo.” I like how some fans keep idealizing Guts like some sort of a righteous shounen hero… Dude is literally a savage. Look at how he treats his enemies or the apostles who have done way less shit in compare with Griffith.

I’m responding mainly to this part so I’m not c/ping the other messages (also i think your last message got cut off btw) but like, yeah Guts is a very dark character, but again that’s framed as a bad thing. We’re supposed to think he’s a huge dick during the Black Swordsman arc, eg. We’re meant to see his darkness as a sign that he’s close to becoming exactly the same as, or even worse than, the monsters he fights. He sexually assaulted Casca in part to feel “closer to” Griffith lol.

Like, my favourite Guts is when he’s at his most dark, but that would suck if the story was totally unselfaware and we were meant to cheer him on. In the first chapter when he tortures the snake dude, it’s a reversal of expectation, because we’re meant to find Guts frightening and to nearly pity the monster in that moment. Similarly when he tortures the Count in front of his daughter – except that is also much clearer in showing that Guts is pretty pathetic at that point, eg:

image

I think Miura kind of lost that sense of patheticness (another good example is the blatant comparisons to Vargas) after the Eclipse, which is a shame imo. But while his dark side gets a bit cooler (the Beast of Darkness, the armour), it’s still like… unambiguously negative. We’re not supposed to root for the part of him that wants to kill his friends.

Guts’ growth as a character is associated with making friends and not seeking revenge, Guts’ monstrousness is associated with going on a revenge rampage.

Anyway basically I think Berserk is more complex than a simple good vs evil revenge story. I think it’s very likely that Guts is going to backslide into revenge mode, losing himself to the armour and going after Griffith after some bad thing happens in Elfhelm, that’s like my major prediction for the future lol, but I don’t think it’s going to end with Guts self-assuredly “punishing” Griffith and living happily ever after.

Oh also there’s this:

image

Part of his decision to save Casca instead of keep seeking revenge is realizing he doesn’t really deserve revenge.

Like, I argue his whole Black Swordsman campaign was way less “righteously avenge the hawks and casca” and way more “I am upset so I am going to kill every monster I can find until I reach Griffith because swinging my sword makes me feel better.” And it’s an attitude he needs to grow out of.

Anyway aside from all that if anyone gets revenge and kills Griffith it should be Casca imo.

I was hoping you would make another post to respond to that ahaha.
Well what I actually meant is for Guts to kill Femto. Because Neo Griffith is apparently closer to a temporal illusionary image that appears in this world, just like.. Well, Neo. To actually kill him you should be able to go beyond the matrix, or as it was described in this case, go “outside” the story of the physical world. So even if NGriff is killed (which I doubt he would even mind) he would be still
existing as Femto in
the astral dimension. In order to bring the story to its ultimate
conclusion, Guts would prpbably need to face Femto in his true form. I
just can’t wait to see what happens from that point on… I hope Guts is
able to realize his revenge.

I think this makes sense as a theory but we don’t really have enough information right now about how the metaphysical world works in Berserk to confidently say what would happen if NeoGriffith was killed.

Like eg I’ve seen a lot of people who think that NGriff can change into Femto and that’s what he did when he killed Ganeshka, but imo we only saw him as Femto then because that’s how Ganeshka saw him, because he could see his “true” or “spiritual” or whatever form, because they were both ascended beings. But yk it’s all up in the air still.

I feel like Guts vs Femto on the astral plane would work in a different story with a greater focus on action, but Berserk is driven by complex emotions and relationships moreso than straightforward action so I feel v confident that the climax between them is going to have a strong emotional component. NeoGriffith has his inconveniently unfrozen heart, while Guts has his inconvenient mixed feelings, and I think both of those aspects are going to inform the climax.

I kinda figure that the big action sequence part of the climax is going to be Guts vs Zodd actually. I’d be surprised if we saw any actual physical fighting between Guts and Griffith/Femto/NeoGriffith, at least beyond a v emotionally-driven third duel kinda thing, along the lines of the second duel where the victor is decided by who’s less emotionally compromised.

Thank you for this post. (lol I meant to say “Why you SEE it in that way” sorry).
I always saw it in that was as if he didn’t want other people to view and be shocked at what was done to his face.
Either way current Guts wouldn’t hesitate to deform Griffith’s face in an even worse way… I’d fucking love to look at what he does with him when he has the power.

If that’s the impression you get from the manga then fair enough, but that reading never occurred to me until I watched the 3rd ova lol.

And tbh I definitely think Guts would hesitate

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Also letting Rickert hold him back on the Hill of Swords, deliberately trying to let go of his desire for revenge for the sake of the Elfhelm trip, and the way he really sucks at finishing this sentence:

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The way he separates Griffith from Femto, and usually pictures Femto as an empty faceless exoskeleton.

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And only ever expresses longing and regret towards original Griffith:

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And NeoGriffith looking “as if he’d been stolen from the past, the way he used to be” throws him completely off because it makes it harder to separate the different versions of him.

Basically imo his feelings towards NeoGriffith are far from simple, and I don’t think he’d find it emotionally easy to kill him.

And moreover his desire to kill is what gives the Beast of Darkness strength, so it’s framed as a negative thing in the story.

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If Guts does happily kill NGriff without hesitation, that’ll be a v dark ending that indicates he’s lost his humanity, imo.

I really loved this moment as well. I didnt feel like they ruined it in the adaptations though, why do you it is this way?

imo the manga reads like Guts basically snarling in a v near to snapping rage, irrationally yelling at Casca to back off as she approaches, in what feels almost like a reversal of this moment

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Guts isn’t blaming anyone (well other than himself), but essentially he’s angry about what’s happened to Griffith and lashes out for a moment indiscriminately in a possessive/protective way. I feel like he’d have the same reaction to anyone who took a step forward at that moment. And it fits neatly into the whole weird everyone’s jealous of everyone situation that’s been developing during the rescue mission too.

Idk about the original Japanese wording and delivery in the adaptions, but imo the anime dub sounds like Guts telling Casca to stay back because she needs to be protected from seeing Griffith’s scarred face, yk it sounds like he’s mainly concerned about Casca’s reaction. And the ova sub and dub give me the same vibe a little less overtly. “Just stay back” or something along those lines, + in the dub it’s delivered with concern moreso than seething anger.

Just doesn’t match this expression imo: