what do you think of the new band of the hawk? also what do you think is going to happen with charlotte?

I like them a lot.

Also I think we’re meant to like them which I find v interesting and hopeful lol. Like from Raksas who is a huge dick but also very entertaining and fun to Grunbeld who has a whole backstory novel in which he’s 100% sympathetic protagonist from everything I’ve heard about it, they’re made to be likeable characters. Which is great because it makes it less likely we’re headed for some kind of boring Guts’ side vs Griffith’s side, Good vs Evil story lol.

Not that I’m too worried about any conflict between them being framed as simplistically as good vs evil, but still.

My ideal plotline is probably Guts’ side and Griffith’s side teaming up against a greater antagonist, like those few chapters where Guts rode Zodd into battle against Ganeshka writ large, and the fact that Griffith’s side of the story isn’t framed as evil or even antagonistic but as protagonists of their own narrative makes that seem more possible.

Failing that, just like I love Guts getting monstrous without literally becoming a monster I love seeing apostles that are sympathetic and humane. Moreso than say, Rosine who is sympathetic but also yk, pretty damn fucked up regardless, apostles like eg Locus are just chill. Locus is like a famous knight who apparently exorcised his apostle bloodlusty urges by competing in tournaments before he joined Griffith, and since joining Griffith has been pretty dedicated to fostering peace between humans and between humans and apostles. Give or take possibly sending Raksas after Rickert (or possibly not, we don’t know yet) he hasn’t done a single negative thing that we know of. Same with Irvine, who seems to hunt animals, rather than people, and Grunbeld who has the aforementioned novel where he’s p much portrayed as heroic as far as I can tell, and Zodd who is compared to Guts the most when it comes to the whole man vs monster thing.

So yk even if they do ultimately end up fighting Guts, I feel like it’s not going to be a simple conflict where we’re meant to root for one side or the other. Tonally the fact that there’s a conflict at all would probably be depicted as negative.

as an aside, imo the biggest argument against that hope tbh is the new fast travel system which feels like nothing but set up for an eventual attack on Elfhelm, but yk what, I’ve also been arguing that Eflhelm is going to end up being manipulative assholes, so maybe it’ll all work out in my favour anyway. Like maybe they’ll show up just as the readers suddenly realize we want someone to kick Elfhelm’s ass.

Like Miura has talked about writing Griffith as a protagonist of his own story, and you don’t spend a hundred chapters on a narrative that follows those protagonist/heroic story beats just to suddenly make them evil no good antagonists again lol.

I feel like Guts and Griffith’s stories are going to end up being basically morally equivalent from different angles. Man vs inner monster; monster vs inner man lol. Human volition, monstrous strength, yadda yadda yadda.

Like this is one of the strongest themes of the story lol, one brief scene where they team up cannot be the sole payoff, come on. Especially when it’s Guts and Griffith in conflict, rather than Guts and Zodd who don’t have that whole history of being ridiculously in love with each other.

Anyway like, the two sides don’t necessarily need to team up again, but conflict between Guts and Griffith’s narratives falls soundly on the monster side and it’s gonna be depicted as such, and therefore negative. like guts will be consumed by the armour when that happens and he’ll probably have killed or will kill one or more of his friends as well, that kind of negative.

When it comes to Charlotte though, I really have no idea lol. If I have any guess at all, it’s that she’s probably not going to do anything particularly significant. Like, thematically she’s got nothing going on that I can think of, she’s just kind of there being in love with Griffith and enabling his power grab, so I can’t really theorize about how she’ll fit into any future conflict.

I know a lot of people want her to learn about Femto/the Eclipse in the hopes that the rose coloured glasses break, because in a way i think she’s kind of representative of buying Griffith’s perfect image, but I doubt it. Even if she does like, see him transform into Femto or something lol, even if all of Falconia sees it, I don’t think it’ll change anything. They’ve seen him lead an army of monsters and speculated about whether he’s even human already, showing off a black outfit and bat wings is probably not going to make or break anything for him relationship or publicity-wise at this point.

I guess my biggest hope wrt Charlotte is just that she’ll get some screen time acting in some capacity as a leader. She’s got some inner strength at least, as we saw like, during the Griffith rescue mission a million years ago, let’s see her use it in some way as queen.

Hi! What about apostles. If their inner world much affecting their “human” appearance and apostle form does this mean that such apostles as Grunbeld, Irwine and mostly Locus are too good to have more animalistic attributes? Locus only have inhuman eyes… He’s like Neogriffith.

Yeah I don’t think there’s any actual canon on apostles and how monstrous they look or don’t look, but it’s something I’ve wondered about. This is kind of what I theorize, that if they’ve succumbed more to their “monstrousness” they probably always look a little off, but if they’re one of the more chill, “human” seeming apostles their appearance could reflect that.

Like… since apostles transform from human to monster, and they have a scale of in between forms (like Rosine looking more human with Jill, looking more buggy by default, and going full moth fighter jet while fighting Guts), I do wonder if the extent of their transformation relies on their emotions and how much they allow their negative emotions (like bloodlust) to run rampant. Like w/ Guts succumbing to the armour, same kinda deal. And maybe it’s harder for them to look fully human, like they have to have a greater emotional control/tie to their humanity.

But, when Golden Age ended, Griffith’s character became too prominent
and I wanted him to fight with Guts in his usual form.
Storytelling-wise, if he was in his normal, unchanged form, and then
changed into his powered-up form, the opposition would be easier to
understand. Also, setting-wise, as Femto, the dimension on which he
operates becomes more distant.

ok so I hate this, I’ve argued against reading the appearance of Femto at the end of the Millenium Falcon arc as an actual transformation a few times because I think it just straight up sounds stupid

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I’m willing to admit that despite framing Femto as a ~final form~ being silly to me, it actually works better for my purposes if it is a literal transformation. because it’s more easily comparable to the Beast of Darkness.

Like reading the appearance of Femto as just the way ascended Ganeshka sees him seems more natural and cool imo, but it also equates NeoGriffith and Femto in a way I’m meh about, and that was always the downside. If it’s a transformation, then Femto is like NGriff’s Beast of Darkness – a personified inner darkness made into a weapon that he can call up and use. Making Femto and NGriff kind of distinct, and backing up my idea that NeoGriffith is more like human Griffith rather than just Femto in a nicer outfit lol.

lmao fuck I really do vastly prefer this idea when you downplay the whole powered up form aspect and emphasize the comparison to Guts’ armour. Like, the Beast of Darkness is Guts’ Femto, that’s not subtle. If Guts loses himself to the armour, there’s gonna be more comparisons, and this could be a great part of that.

I mean lbr the only difference is that the armour doesn’t require a sacrifice to use and also it’s probs not as powerful as yk being a demon demi god. But it’s essentially a magical artifact created so that someone can use the power of their own dark side, the way apostles and the godhand in a more epic way can, without having to trade away a loved one first (/be ordained by causality). And the story has been very very clear about Guts’ dark side being v comparable to Griffith’s lol.

Like… the more I think about it the more I’m actually into this concept. Depending on how it plays out. I mean it still could just be as shallow and stupid as an upgrade for a fight. But yk, it has potential as part of a pattern of man vs inner monster, human volition vs bestial rage, etc, that we’ve been seeing a lot with Guts and various apostles, as well as hitting that equals theme.

Still can’t think of much worse than a drawn-out fight scene tho lol. I want to have faith in Miura’s ability to make things much better than they sound on paper, but there isn’t enough faith in the world for that.

flooracle
replied to your post “flooracle
replied to your post “Why do you feel Grunbeld would turn…”

100% agreed on the new hawks! Tbh I like their parts of the arc most.. ch194 where Mule is introduced to most of em and Grunbeld saves the kids from being eaten, 250 when Sonia and Irvine talk, 277 where Grunbeld & Locus go for a walk and wish luck to Zodd before he goes to battle AND Sonia gives advice and calls him Mr Black Lion, details like Mule squiring for Locus later etc.. lov that they develop their relationships, just wish there were more bits like these :’)
The part abt Ganishka
and Gennon is brilliant tbh!! First thing I thought after is how they
both see Griffith as much more important than he sees them.. like for
ex. When it happens, Griffith & Ganishka don’t meet as emperor vs
emperor but as godhand and apostle… Their own parallels are rly
interesting, so I like all the au variants a lot, thank you!!

Also I have some summaries for the Grunbeld novel that tell the basic
plot & stuff. I hope it gets an English ver soon

yeah I love all those moments. plus the way the apostles are given so much relatable humanity gives me a lot of hope for where the narrative is going, both because it def makes it less likely we’re headed for a plain old guts + co vs griffith + co, and because giving Griffith’s monster side of the narrative all the humanity makes me hope we’re going to get some more monstrousness out of Guts’ human side of the narrative to balance it out.

ty! and yeah that’s a good point – both G+G are obsessed with Griffith, but to Griffith they’re obstacles. I mean I think Gennon did have a huge affect on him, but he had his (really satisfying) moment of triumph when he looked down on him and told him he didn’t matter. Then with Ganeshka he follows that through, because he’s an untouchable god compared to him, but also reverses it, because at the end right before Griffith destroys him, they have a moment of connection.

btw would you happen to have a link to the Grunbeld novel summaries?

griff-guts
replied to your post

“I mean I genuinely do think (human, obviously) Griffith is by far a…”

lmao i think about this all the time. also audience leniency and sympathy towards guts moral failings is amplified due to him being the narrative point of view and protagonist for the majority of chapters, and in comparison to starkly standard evil characters like apostles, femto, etc he SEEMS to be a good guy, even though realistically he isn’t. the grey morality of berserk extends to literally everyone even guts. it’s like really no coincidence that miura draws guts visually similar to
femto and the apostles
often lol. i mean i can’t insert examples or whatever bc this is just a
rambling reply but i’m sure you’ve seen the comparison posts of guts in
berserker armour or just in battle to femto. it’s like….. so not subtle
that he’s an asshole and not presented as a shining example of perfect
morality yet bc the fandom can’t read and he’s their macho straight guy
testosterone hero he gets a pass for doing bad stuff lol

yeah absolutely lol, like most of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he gets pretty damn indistinguishable from demons/monsters even without a magical transformation. Like yeah definitely visually, but tbh it’s also directly stated a lot lol. Like ngl this is actually one of my fave (well, non griffguts) lines:

And then once we’re in NeoGriffith’s narrative and meeting the cool apostles, a lot of them seem way better than Guts by any moral standard lol. Grunebeld, Zodd, Irvine.

Like the dock fight really directly compares Guts and Zodd and both of them balancing humanity/reason and bloodlust.

Idk I love this aspect of Berserk basically lol, I’m all about dark monstery protags. And it’s dumb that so many people want to see Guts as an admirable beacon of virtue because that’s like the opposite of the point.

I allude to how the monsters Guts fights are reminiscent of his childhood trauma a lot, so I decided to finally illustrate it.

under a cut for length and for images implying sexual assault/csa

glowing/monstrous eye(s) in a dark background, reaching hands:

and Gambino gets similar visual treatment after telling Guts he sold him, neatly showing how Gambino’s betrayal compounds Guts’ trauma:

glowing/monstrous eyes and reaching hands in nightmare form:

in flashback form:

and in monster form:

this could be an interesting early version from his nightmare in chapter 2:

Skull Knight also gets this imagery:

and i’m ngl his consistently glowing eyes as a design choice make me highly suspicious lol:

here’s Guts’ vision in the sewer before promrose, the imagery depressingly contextualizing the self-loathing he feels:

more giant hands emphasizing helplessness:

And Guts himself gets a lot of this imagery ofc:

plus you can argue the design of the beast of darkness incorporates the bright eyes on a dark background motif:

Also it’s worth noting that while this imagery comes from Guts’ trauma, Miura uses it to illustrate fear in general from other characters’ points of view too:

and I’d argue this is the point of the stylization of Ganeshka’s backstory of extreme paranoia:

Berserk is Guts’ story after all and it makes sense to expand his own motifs to illustrate fear as a concept in general imo.

oddly Femto does not get this imagery very often at all. In fact this is the only instance I can think of that comes close:

Usually he’s stylized as monstrous by totally removing his face and just portraying the mask, or his face is shown in full. Now I could see an argument that his design automatically incorporates bright eyes in a dark background due to the black helmet:

But it’s really not emphasized, like even when we get five thousand closeups of his staring eyes during the rape scene, they don’t pop against a dark background, they’re not the brightest things in the panel like other monsters’ eyes:

So idk. Maybe the stylization of the mask, the way his face can disappear within it like so

is meant to be reminiscent of the more mundane and natural way Miura has of making someone/thing look intimidating, ie shadowing their eyes. Or maybe it was more important to him to be able to draw Femto as either monstrous (no face) or unnervingly human (fully visible human face) with little in between.

Anyway that’s just an aside, the only point of this post is to illustrate some recurring concepts and show how the imagery ties Guts’ urge to fight monsters back to his childhood trauma.

I mean it’s not exactly a hard sell lol, but I’m just like a big fan of
the recurring stylized imagery and I think it’s a great touch.

don’t you think it’s interesting that the godhand said they promised the count they would make him a “supernatural being who would never know sorrow or despair” yet we see many apostles (including the count) feel despair at some points?

Yep.

Like I think it’s a little ridiculous that the Count got a chance to make two sacrifices, and it’s probably a case of early installment weirdness bc I don’t think that actually makes sense wrt what we know about how sacrifices work (like what was going to happen if the Count did sacrifice Theresia? He’s already one of the more powerful apostles we’ve seen)

But I do think it’s definitely meaningful that the Count falls into despair, and not just an accidental contradiction lol. The further on we go the more depth apostles get, from pure evil snakeman to three dimensional count who still has loved ones to sympathetic rosine to zodd and irvine getting the same thematic inner beast vs man stuff guts gets.

Not to mention Femto letting Guts escape, and lbr I know we’re all hoping this is going to come full circle wrt NeoGriffith.

I always questioned the belief that (apostle = no emotion) cause of the numerous instances with the slug baron, Zodd etc. hell even slan right after griffith is told he’ll never cry again we see her crying. I think its just as you said how he’s become his mask, he’s the ideal version of himself with no struggles but it was when he was struggling that the victories meant something

Yeah totally, even all the way back in the Black Swordsman arc Puck gets his great moment where he calls the Count out on still having human feelings. And oh shit lol you’re right, that never occured to me but Slan wiping away tears like a couple chapters after Griffith is told “this is the crystalization of your last tear shed,” is more than a little suspect. I guess God telling Griffith he’ll never cry again could be less literal and more, you’ll never feel that despair that brought you to this point again, but still, like, the Godhand def have feelings, they’re just very dark/negative ones from what we see.

So idk, maybe we’re supposed to think that by incarnating himself as a flesh and blood person Femto/NeoGriff should’ve lost even those negative emotions for some magical reason, but something went wrong?

Or maybe Femto just believed he was emotionless despite that clearly not being the case, hoped he’d remain “emotionless” even after incarnating himself as a flesh and blood person, predictably turned out to be wrong, and decided to lay all the blame on the fetus so he could ignore his feelings.

tbh I could go for either explanation.

AND YEAH there seemed to be a lot of focus on how easy everything was for NeoGriffith – he barely had to lift a finger to defeat Ganeshka, transform the world, and become an emperor lol, it’s such a strong contrast to human Griffith having to work for his victories and face the possibility of defeat in tense moments, like the Battle of Doldrey was very suspenseful because of that, whereas the war with Ganeshka never had a single moment of suspense, NGriff was never not in control. I def wonder if that theme is going to go somewhere, especially with Guts, whose nickname is “struggler,” in contrast.

Do you think the Heaven exists in Berserk universe? I know behelit sacrifices go to Hell for sure, but iirc (and correct if I’m wrong) Vargas from the Black Swordsman arc wasn’t a sacrifice but still went to Hell when he died.

I definitely do. While liveblogging it a while ago I kind of landed on this theory of Berserk’s afterlife which I got into here.

Basically if I was going to guess I’d say that since ethereal bodies gravitate towards other ethereal bodies of the same nature, hell is other people applies here. Hell is hell because you’re stuck in a swirly whirlpool becoming one with a bunch of horrible people like yourself. And heaven would be heaven because you’re in a nice swirly whirlpool becoming one with a bunch of nice people.

I also think it’s likely that Guts, other sacrifices, and even apostles aren’t by default automatically going to hell, despite what’s implied in the Black Swordsman arc. Going to hell just because you “got caught up with demonkind” meaning you hung out with a demon or were killed by or sacrificed by a demon seems stupid to me, and doesn’t make sense with things Flora says later on about Ods and stuff (she also says caring for Casca might be his protection from hellfire iirc). It’s absolutely suggested when Puck is all concerned that Guts being branded means he’s going to go to Hell, and Guts himself is clearly worried about that inevitability, but imo it makes more sense for “got caught up with demonkind” to be “acted like a demon/succumbed to one’s dark side” lol. ie Guts on his revenge rampage, Vargas consumed by revenge himself, etc.

It would be kind of a twist, in a way? Guts thinks he’s inevitably going to hell because he’s been sacrificed, but it’s actually because due to the sacrifice he’s consumed by revenge and being an asshole.

(This could also be Miura evolving the idea as he goes. Guts being inevitably bound for hell works in the whole early super grimdark Black Swordsman setting, but if he wants something less than a crushingly depressing ending that’s not gonna fly now.)

Oh also I think Femto mentions the vibrations of the Count’s soul carrying him closer to hell, implying he could also vibrate away from hell, even despite being an apostle. I’m too lazy to find the page and check the wording though.

tl;dr yeah I think there’s a heaven and I think anyone could theoretically go there.

you think the torturers being outcasts collected by and devoted to mozgus is supposed to be a preview of neogriff’s apostles/war demons

tbh actually it makes sense bc it’s easy to view mozgus and neogriff as foils. like they both got that sinister angelic thing going on but their differences are more light-shedding than any similarities – the whole conviction rebirth arc was largely about outcasts and creating enemies out of other groups to strengthen your group (ie religion) while the point of falconia is to unite humanity with literal fantasy monsters as the enemy. mozgus’ outcasts tortured people, griffith’s save people. mozgus condemned most people, griffith accepts everyone. mozgus upheld the status quo and the way of the world (those with power trample those without) while griffith creates a world with a new status quo

and this is humanity’s deepest desire so it’s basically a direct response to mozgus and people like him dividing and conquering and demonizing outsiders and upholding nobility while making the lower classes suffer etc.

there’s a whole false god vs true saviour w/ divine right vibe i get from this comparison. and i mean the true saviour is still a largely cynical depiction since berserk is in part a criticism of religion, “god” included, but neogriff’s utopia is a lot less easy to denounce as fucked up and evil than mozgus’ inquisition thing.