cutting this for kind of graphic descriptions of sexual assault
I’d argue he didn’t even black out, he was clearly aware when he forcibly kissed her after pointedly noticing she’d been assaulted (we get a closeup from Guts’ perspective of blood dripping from her vag, ffs), we get like literally five whole pages of sexual assault depicted completely without any kind of possession or beast-y imagery, and the subsequent beast of darkness imagery in Guts’ mind that we see after that isn’t indicative of “possession,” it’s an illustration of what’s going on in his subconscious – his own inner darkness gaining strength.
Like it happens in broad daylight for a reason, in contrast to the chapter earlier when he strangled her while actually briefly possessed during a night-time ghost fight, and that reason is so that the readers can’t absolve Guts of blame. There’s nothing but Guts in this scene.
And anyway, at the end of the day the whole point of the Beast of Darkness is to show that Guts’ inner darkness is no better than Griffith’s. According to Berserk practically every dude has an evil rapist lurking in their subconscious, it’s not a great nuanced examination of male entitlement or anything lol, it’s just using rape as a lazy shorthand for inner darkness.
Like imo the only valid reaction to have to this dumb story is to recognize the misogyny on the part of the author, and honestly both excusing Guts and reacting with ott hatred towards Griffith is the exact opposite of that. Like I can’t blame anyone for hating Griffith, everyone’s entitled to their emotional reactions to a rape scene, especially one as offensively depicted as the Eclipse rape, but when that’s your reaction instead of recognizing the author’s horrendous writing, or while praising the author’s writing because he made you feel that angry, that’s an issue, yk?
And people blaming Griffith/Femto for Casca’s character being destroyed, for Casca’s gratuitious and sexualized victimization, etc, lets Miura off the hook. Like, Femto is ink on paper, Miura is the one with actual agency who chose to write Casca out of the story in the most misogynist way possible for the sake of making his protagonist feel bad.
tl;dr berserk is an offensive story about two dudes who both have rapist alter-egos, we all gotta acknowledge that.
yk what as much as i absolutely adore guts’ total lack of rage here, i feel like this is a huge writing mistake.
and not only because miura basically used guts’ resignation upon being sacrificed to try to narratively justify the eclipse rape as a way of actually pissing him off, but also because, frankly,griffith sacrificing him should send guts into a giant tailspin of rage and hurt.
it’s a very clear replay of his childhood trauma.
like while i think it’s not necessarily ooc for guts to feel sad and wistful after griffith makes the sacrifice, rather than heartbroken and rageful, I think a) it would be just as in character for the sacrifice itself to send Guts into Black Swordsman mode, esp with watching all his friends die horribly and b) it would be thematically tighter and fit with what we see of the Black Swordsman arc better if that had been the case.
As of like, chapter 12, we know everything we need to know to understand Guts during the Black Swordsman arc. He’s a walking bundle of trauma because someone he loved essentially handed him over to a hoard of monsters and ghosts, and that reminds Guts of Gambino both calling him a cursed child who should’ve died and selling him to Donovan.
And having Guts be not really all that upset over the sacrifice, but more upset over Femto’s petty demonstration of evil afterwards completely shifts the focus from Guts’ personal trauma and feelings of betrayal to manpain over his girlfriend’s trauma.
like this?
Is extremely good shit, especially after we see his childhood later.
Guts’ frantic denial after Griffith does make the sacrifice, as he’s trying to “save” him, is also perfect set up for this in the way it echoes Guts denying Donovan’s assertion that Gambino sold him. But then instead of giving way to rage and betrayal, Guts just… resigns himself.
The rage and betrayal could’ve even be put on hold until Femto appears. All we’d need to see to justify Guts shifting from regret and dull sadness to pure unadultrated rage and pain would be something akin to what we saw in the Black Swordsman arc – Femto coldly telling Guts he should be dead/he’s nothing but a sacrifice/he belongs to the apostles/something along those lines. Ie an echo of Gambino telling Guts he sold him before trying to kill him.
(and we could have femto sic the apostles on guts + guts survive just long enough for skull knight to show up. we don’t even have to lose femto failing to kill him as he escapes.)
Imo the sense that Guts is personally very fucked up by the fact that he’s once again been traded away by someone he loves, respects, and admires is lost after the Golden Age in favour of the sense that Guts is fucked up by losing someone he loves and gaining an evil demon antagonist in his place, with a side of being mad about Casca.
On the plus side we get the sense that part of his rage comes from just missing Griffith, and I can’t deny that I absolutely enjoy the fact that Guts isn’t angry at human Griffith, but is only angry at demon Griffith. The way Guts separates the different versions of Griffith in his mind and still feels love and regret and guilt and fondness etc for human Griffith is good shit and it’s hard for me to say I’d give that up for anything lol.
But I think it would still be better writing if he was directly angry about the sacrifice, and if his feelings of love and regret and guilt were all mixed together with rage and betrayal and all aimed at all three versions of Griffith. And despite everything I would ultimately rather have that + no Eclipse rape than what we got.
though actually while i’m on this subject, I do kind of have a big issue with how this frames griffith.
cut bc this probably doesn’t really make sense lol, i’m rambling and i’m not entirely sure how to explain my thought process lol
like, if pre-eclipse griffith was a symbol of guts’ potential to have fulfilling relationships and find a place where he belongs, that guts then totally fucked up by “abandoning,” and post-eclipse neogriffith is a symbol of guts throwing away his potential to have fulfilling relationships by pursuing a stupid self-destructive dream, then there’s a bit of an awkward contradiction:
during the golden age, guts distancing himself from griffith was a bad thing that caused all his problems. after the eclipse, guts distancing himself from griffith is the narratively correct choice. this makes technical plot sense because in between griffith transformed into a demon lol, but thematically i think it’s unsatisfying.
griffith has essentially been replaced with guts’ protective relationship with casca. he fucked up and abandoned her, just like he fucked up and abandoned griffith, but now he’s making up for it by sticking around and protecting her – something he never got a chance to do w/ griffith. like, there was no magical cure to heal griffith, no long journey of personal growth, nada.
ignoring who could be
blamed for what if berserk happened in real life, bc this has nothing to do with morals or literal interpersonal responsibilities, from a fictional
storytelling perspective guts destroyed griffith when he made the wrong
choice by leaving. griffith’s year of torture and then eclipse causing
despair is the direct consequence of guts’ narrative mistake, and femto/ngriff
is an antagonist of guts’ own making.
so to then say that the right
thing for guts to do is to try to forget about him rubs me the wrong
way. it’d be one thing if griffith was dead and there was nothing guts
could do except try to avoid repeating his mistakes, but he’s alive and
currently acting on the world in a capacity that is, at least by some
standards, negative lol. the way stories work, that’s guts’ problem to
fix.
so if the thematic takeaway is that guts should just ignore
neogriffith and move on, and if he goes back to obsessing over him
that’s bad, then… i’m not satisfied with that lol.
also like, if the manga
decided to draw a very clear and explicit dividing line between human
griffith and neogriffith, essentially declaring everything human
griffith represented to guts as dead, that would also be one thing, but miura deliberately muddies the waters both by teasing the audience about
his beating heart and by guts’ emotional conflict a la “the instant I saw him I’d forgotten my
urge to kill,” and “longing,” and by continuing to utilize the light/dark imagery for their relationship, and having guts reminisce about original griffith after seeing him, etc.
so there’s this sense to me that neogriffith is simultaneously a symbol of guts’ self destructive dream (revenge, fighting stronger and stronger enemies, becoming griffith’s equal) and a symbol of guts’ mistake in pursuing that dream the first time – a symbol of what he threw away by leaving – and to me it feels unsatisfyingly contradictory.
and then on a purely emotional level lol it frustrates me that if the moral of the story really is that guts needs to move on and forget about the past and griffith and focus on the relationships he does have, then that means griffith was essentially a casualty of guts’ one step forward two steps back style character development. a character, from the perspective of his relationship to guts, who existed to be a consequence of guts’ mistake and teach guts a lesson through his destruction. and that just strikes me as unfair lol. idt guts should get to move on when griffith never had the opportunity – OR when griffith did take his opportunity ie the sacrifice, if we’re counting that, because then griffith moving on is evil but guts moving on is good.
and yeah maybe it’s a statement about moving on by suppressing your emotions vs moving on by forming new relationships, but griffith was railroaded by the narrative lol, he never got the chance to move on by forming new relationships, he was irreparably fucked the day after guts left. so if that’s the case then it’s weak.
but idk maybe i’m looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective. idk i’m just thinking outloud again rly. and until we find out what happens when casca has her mind back, it’s too early to draw any real conclusions anyway.
the end of the lost children arc fucks me up because i find rosine’s regret over sacrificing her parents and wanting to return home as she dies to be extremely sad and emotionally affecting, and very understandable and relatable as a character choice
but contrasting that to jill’s “i’m going to go home and just deal with my alcoholic physically abusive dad and his pedo friends :D” ending completely ruins it
like, if that’s presented as the alternative, yeah i give rosine a high five for sacrificing her parents and becoming a monster. good for her. fuck her parents, she should’ve been allowed to die with no regrets.
like it’s one thing for, eg, old man troll fight to talk about how dreams can be opportune escapes from reality when his reality was taking care of a sick parent and working for a living, but when your reality is an abusive family, yeah escaping from that is good, actually. and i feel like that nuance is unaccounted for in berserk lol. like you can say it’s bad to kidnap children and transform them into monsters and kill people etc without also saying it’s bad/weak/immature/whatever to want to escape from your abusive home.
and by having rosine regret the sacrifice and long for home as she dies, contrasted to jill grinning and bearing her abuse, the narrative is essentially placing the blame on rosine for not being able to cope with abuse rather than where it should be, ie, on her father for abusing his kid and orchestrating his own death.
like, the lost children arc should’ve been about condemning abusive parents but… it wasn’t, and it’s fucking bizarre really. the abusive parents are just like, generic 2 dimensional stand-ins for any kind of life struggle, and the kids get the burden of reacting to life struggles correctly. we’re not shown that the parents should’ve or even could’ve made different choices, the parents just exist as trials to test these children, essentially.
and ok fine if you want to focus on reactions to abuse, rather than the perpetuation of it, that’s fair enough, but to then condemn one kid for seizing on the only escape she had and give another kid a pat on the back for deciding not to escape but rather to just suck it up… like damn. this fucking arc lol.
@a-girl-named-chester I’m not reblogging that post to talk about it because I thoroughly disagree with the op and I don’t want to start shit lol
but basically I am constantly low-key irritated at people who conflate femininity (a set of traits that any given society encourages women to adopt and discourages men from adopting) with women and therefore call anyone exasperated with compulsory femininity and/or fictional portrayals of femininity (especially those written by men lbr) misogynist.
Casca isn’t a real person, she doesn’t have her own opinions on what she wants to wear, those are given to her by the man writing her character, and I personally hate how Miura goes to great lengths to feminize Casca once she becomes a viable romantic interest for Guts – by putting her in a dress and literally having her ask Guts to validate her attractiveness, but also by things like this:
and by depowering her through her period of all things so Guts can save her, and by having her try to kill herself because of unrequited love so Guts can save her again, and by having her feel fulfilled when she is able to take the role of nurturer and (sexually) comfort someone else, all culminating in turning her into a helpless long haired childlike waif in a dress after being raped to make Guts feel bad and give him someone to protect.
Like, Miura plays lipservice to Casca as a Strong Woman lol, but he never follows through. We hear that she can beat ten men, but we see her feverish and at the brink of exhaustion needing to be saved more often than we’ve ever seen that.
I don’t even necessarily mind moments like Casca feeling insecure about how she looks in a dress, like it’s fine as a character trait and I think it makes sense that Casca might be self-conscious, but it goes hand in hand with things like Casca “showing a soft side” to hamfistedly indicate her burgeoning feelings for Guts, so it’s impossible to separate moments like Casca asking Guts if she looks okay in a dress from Miura deliberately making Casca more feminine as she becomes a love interest.
And that sucks, and is itself deeply misogynist, so I can’t with anyone saying that people who are disappointed at seeing Casca put into a dress (as she herself protests) in the most recent chapter are misogynist lol.
Like we’re not even deriding a real woman putting on a dress, we’re deriding a male writer putting a female character in a dress explicitly to make a reunion feel more romantic. Because who cares that she’s a mercenary who doesn’t feel comfortable in dresses, as a love interest she needs to be appropriately feminine to complement Guts’ rugged masculinity. Gag.
I mean personally I’m actually reserving judgement on this scene in particular because I think(/hope/pray/oh my god do i pray) this is going to end up being sinister and not actually romantic lol. But god if it is played straight, fuckin yikes.
There’s nothing progressive or worth celebrating about a dude writing a romance between a man and a woman and consistently and overtly making sure the woman’s masculine traits are offset by heaping on more femininity.
When guts invites casca to go with him he doesnt have a dream yet at that point, he was just chillin at godo’s the whole year training, when he invites casca to go with him, he invites her to the journey of searching a purpose to live. They could search for that dream… together.. at least that’s what i think
yk that does sound pretty nice and a lot more inspiring and romantic, but guts invites casca after a long monologue explaining that he found his dream – fighting stronger and stronger enemies and becoming the best.
and moreover, this is how he invites her (after, i want to add, grabbing her tit while she’s yelling at him, but I don’t want to post an image of that bc it’s awful):
you should come with me as long as you don’t get in the way of what i want to do, because i want to have more sex.
It sucks that Casca is reduced to support for other people’s dreams at the same time Guts is absolutely determined to achieve a dream so he can be Griffith’s equal.
Like Guts inviting her along. It kind of randomly occurred to me that he would never have in a million years invited Griffith along on the road to his dream lol, because that would’ve defeated the entire purpose. Guts adopted Griffith’s view of equality as having an obsessive dream. Guts hugely respects Griffith’s dream and would never try to sway him or stand in his way. Guts wants to be like Griffith in that way and feel as though he has something as respectable to shoot for himself.
Casca? Guts never even begins to conceive of her as a potential equal.
Casca tries to kill herself because the strain of supporting the dream of someone who doesn’t love her and might not even be alive is too much, and instead of say, encouraging her to find a dream and live for herself, since it’s working so great for him and at this point Guts genuinely believes that having your own dream is the pinnacle of existence, Guts encourages her to come along on his journey and support his dream instead.
And while Berserk is overall kind of like, dream-negative lol, bc the whole achieving a dream to be Griffith’s equal thing was misguided from the start, Guts’ priorities are still all about Griffith – leaving to be his equal, or realizing that it was misguided and choosing to stay, both for Griffith.
And I mean, I like that Berserk blatantly devalues het romance compared to homoerotic + thematically resonant relationships between dudes, obviously lol, but it pisses me off that Casca’s character gets fucked over and over and over again because of it, because her character revolves around that devalued romance.
Like, basically the concept of pursuing a dream to feel like your bff’s equal is depicted as negative, but Guts inviting Casca along on his dream journey is never questioned by the narrative – it’s just assumed that Casca, as the romantic object of affection, defaults to playing support while the men are obsessed with the idea of equality and power dynamics. I’d like to believe this is also intentionally shown to be negative, but like, I don’t really think it is, I don’t think Miura really questioned this.
This is about Falconia, bodies and lives being bought and sold, the natural order of the world, etc.
tw for csa (no graphic panels but still disturbing enough for a cut imo)
The Conviction Arc shows us in broadstrokes the world humanity’s collective unconscious wants to overturn through starving crowds, dungeons filled with tortured ‘heretics,’ rampant plague and the desire for a saviour, and nobles terrorizing peasants using god as an excuse, but this is the up close and personal version. Lives and bodies as commodities, weak trampled by the strong, poor ruled by the rich, and everyone accepting it as the way things are.
Our three main protagonists during the Golden Age all have very personal formative trauma that revolves around being bought and sold as a matter of course.
And Griffith’s dream, as someone wracked with guilt for lives lost in his battles, someone who has sold himself to a rich and powerful predator to save some of those lives, is to overturn this natural order of things.
And he does. Falconia is a place where children aren’t sold as sex slaves, where the powerful do not oppress the weak, where the rich don’t exploit the poor, where everyone is treated equally and with dignity, where Guts, Griffith, and Casca could’ve all had happy childhoods.
One of the important aspects of this theme re: societal power dynamics and exploitation is that these evil actions
are excused away. This is true of like, just about every abuser of power and
rapist in Berserk. Some think it’s okay because someone more powerful than
them told them they’re allowed (torturer, Wyald/probably the rest of
the apostles, Mozgus’ torturers, Mozgus and the inquisition in general
passing the buck onto God, Donovan because Gambino allowed it, etc),
some think it’s okay because that’s just the way things are (Donovan
again, Adon, Rosine’s got some of this, etc), some think it’s okay because
they’re powerful enough to do anything they want (implied with Gennon,
Ganeshka,
the Godhand, a lot of apostles, Casca’s attempted rapist nobleman), and finally some think it’s okay because the world wronged them (Gambino, apostles like Rosine again and Eggman, Jill’s dad, the baby eating heretics lmao, one could argue the King, Mozgus’ torturers again, etc).
Again, it all comes back to the “reason of the world,” the natural order of things that NeoGriff overturns. In the ordinary world these people with power can do whatever they want and justify it to themselves. In NeoGriffith’s world, they don’t. Apostles, our prime example of powerful preying on weak because they’re allowed to, no longer prey on humans, simply because of NeoGriffith’s existence.
It seems safe to assume nobles no longer exploit people either, if nobility is even still a thing in Falconia. Like granted, I’m taking some of this as read based on what we’re told Falconia is, but I feel like the apostles (and the explicit focus on equality) are a good representative example of the point of Falconia, which is to essentially fix everything we see wrong with the world in the Conviction arc and, like I laid out above, in our protagonists’ lives.
The fact is that Falconia isn’t just a utopia on a distant macro level, where the readers can look at it and go, hm seems nice I guess but w/e. On a micro level it’s a place where these horrible things that happened to the characters we personally love and care about wouldn’t’ve happened. I, at least, am emotionally invested in that utopia because of this, yk?
But here’s where I get critical of the portrayal:
Femto and the Eclipse rape is the epitome of the harmful power structure. Like, Femto hits every branch on his way down this tree lol. During his transformation he met God, God absolved him of his guilt and responsibility by telling him he can do whatever the fuck he wants and it’ll be the right thing. He’s taking the place of the nobleman he saved Casca from and exemplifying existing power structures of strong preying on weak, and it’s petty revenge.
One can easily argue that the Eclipse rape is a distillation of every abusive power structure in Berserk.
So okay, you have Falconia, a utopia that exists to eschew these power structures and create a place of equality where no one is exploited, created by a dude whose defining act is the epitome of these abusive power structures.
And frankly it’s fucking pointless. This feels like the shallowest of shallow hot takes lol. Like, oooh what if this wonderful place where all the horrible things that traumatized our favourite characters are no longer an accepted given was created by an evil demon rapist???
Like… okay? And then what? The Eclipse rape has nothing to do with the social structure of Falconia, NGriff seems to have completely delivered on his/humanity’s dream regardless, he is now the higher power making the calls and he hasn’t told everyone to do whatever they want no matter who it hurts. From what we’ve seen he’s done the exact opposite, existing as a tempering influence on the apostles who no longer prey on those weaker than them, ending the Holy See’s reign of terror, ending wars in general, and uniting people in their differences.
So it’s just like, an arbitrary evil act which creates an artificial sense of moral greyness. It has no deep meaning. I mean I suppose Miura could address it in the future – I’ve mentioned that I think it could theoretically be really interesting for Casca to visit Falconia and see the dream she devoted her life to having come to fruition because of her rapist. But even so, that doesn’t have any like… deeper intrigue. That’s interesting for Casca’s character, not as an examination of moral relativity or w/e.
Similarly, if NeoGriffith turns out to be more human than he looks he could reflect on this contradiction in a potentially interesting way.
But I can’t think of a way to make it an interesting examination of morality. It’s boring at its core imo. I mean you could argue that it’s still worthwhile on that personal character level, but let’s be real here – no amount of potentially interesting character stuff in Casca’s future is worth removing her from the story for 20 years, and anything w/ NeoGriffith would be a retread of human Griffith’s guilt issues and frankly I don’t see it happening anyway lol.
So yeah ultimately this whole egalitarian utopia created by a rapist demon thing just does not work for me at all. There’s no reason the creator of this paradise /had/ to be a symbol of this abusive power structure it exists to destroy, again, that’s just an arbitrary happenstance, not a pre-requisite to utopia building, so it doesn’t say anything about the nature of Falconia. It doesn’t say anything about utopias in general, it doesn’t say anything about those power structures that we don’t already know (ie they bad, equality good).
It’s like, fake deep tbqh.
The actual interesting and morally grey aspect of Falconia is the way world peace was achieved by setting a bunch of fantasy monsters loose on humanity, and that has nothing to do with the Eclipse rape. Like, that’s literally all you need for the moral complexity. We have world peace and a growing utopia that everyone is welcome to join, but the price is monsters everywhere, and this could not have happened without those monsters to unite humanity in fear. Is the world better or worse than it used to be?
And NGriff being a rapist, or his demon alter ego being a rapist, or whatever the deal is there, adds nothing to that question, rather, it distracts from it and devalues the actual moral ambiguity.
In fact, it makes me wonder whether Miura regrets going with rape as his way of demonstrating Femto’s evil. Because it’s been such a non-issue to the whole theme of power structures, utopias, equality, etc, that it feels like Miura is sweeping it under the rug lol – it’s less of an attempt at dark irony and more the elephant in the room. I can’t even say with confidence that Femto was intended to be a symbol of exploitative power structures, despite how obvious it seems, because it just… hasn’t impacted the themes of the story at all.
these people just think that everything griffith is doing is all part of some evil master plan to end the world or ruin humanity or whatever even though hes never had any motivation of incentive to do such
that being said, it
definitely puts more of a stake in how they view guts fight lol? even if
they are ignoring literally everything else the story has told us and
rational common sense that a sudden reveal in the plot that griffith is
actually Evil (like. evil in the big bad villain way) would be
satisfying.
you mean wouldn’t be satisfying, right? bc yeah v true lol
it wouldn’t even be a reveal (we all saw the eclipse), it would just be a bizarre, tonally fucked up back and forth… weird thing. well, moreso than griffith’s narrative already is lol
like we get moments like this during the millenium falcon arc:
it’s just not framed as a tense bad vibey moment w/ an evil dude manipulating a bunch of poor innocent people so he can get a kingdom, it’s framed as ‘lol fuck you noble assholes, griffith’s back and this time he’s getting his utopia, high five’
like do other people basically read a scene like this with sinister horror movie music playing in the background?
i mean i completely get if (general) you can’t ignore the eclipse rape in your perception of the story, but i feel like if you can’t do that, then your berserk is fundamentally at odds with miura’s berserk, since he has diligently ignored it throughout the entirety of neogriffith’s narrative, without a single fuck given for the kind of awkward tonal pall it casts over everything.
under a cut because a) this is largely about the hot button issue of griffith + sexual assault and b) it’s pretty off the cuff rather than carefully thought out so i want to reserve control over it lol
i’m gonna be honest, my biggest issue with the theme of griffith + beauty + sexual victimization is that it’s both very loud and clear, like it’s absolutely an intrinsic part of griffith’s narrative, but for some unknown reason it’s also more subtle than every other instance of sexual victimization we see? and i have no idea why miura was so coy about it but it makes it difficult and a little awkward to just take it as read
like even at the start w/ gennon. guts’ csa trauma is unambiguous – it’s violent, guts struggles and fights, etc. casca’s is also unambiguous attempted rape. she tries to run, and then is able to kill her attacker. but griffith’s is “voluntary” enough that like a majority of berserk fans don’t even see it as rape, despite gennon literally being a pedophile with a harem of child sex slaves, and griffith being a child, “who could still be called a boy in his innocence,” according to casca. the next morning griffith himself frames it as seducing gennon. also, unlike the other two instances, we don’t see what happened. All we have is Casca’s glimpse of Gennon’s hand on his shoulder and Griffith’s explanation the next morning.
And I actually have no issue at all with how it’s portrayed in canon, like anyone who isn’t a rape apologist and has an iota of reading comprehension should be able to figure out that it is rape and griffith was traumatized by it. I definitely don’t think Miura thinks Griffith freely consented or intended it to be read as ambiguous either. Griffith saying he seduced Gennon says way more about Griffith than about what actually happened. But compared to our other two protagonists and their formative traumas, it’s not nearly as in your face.
Then you have Griffith and the torturer, which is all left in creepy innuendo. Like it’s blatant enough that it seems willfully blind to assume there was no sexual assault going on, but again, it’s not like Miura shies away from depicting rape everywhere else in Berserk, so why is it only left in innuendo?
And yk what I think there’s a throughline from those – Gennon and the torturer as sexual predators obsessing over Griffith’s beauty – and both Griffith offering himself to Casca in the wagon and then Griffith’s vision of his future with Casca, t b q h. In that nightmare he’s attractive again, he’s virtually immobile, and again there’s the implication that Casca is having sex with him.
like I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to take all this together and say Griffith has some serious issues with sex even if Miura doesn’t come right out and say it like he does for everyone else.
like terrible, terrible depiction aside, this is probably the best set up for the eclipse rape we have. sex to griffith being a show of power or lack of power, and with griffith it’s always been the lack of it. with gennon, and charlotte, and casca in the wagon it’s been a trade – griffith giving them the only thing he has to offer in exchange for something they, with their greater power can give him. money, a kingdom, and… idk my reading of the wagon scene changes with the winds, but in this context i suppose it would be security, possibly griffith thinking if casca stays then guts will stay too after seeing them together.
and then this vision depicting a life like that. like the wagon scene and this nightmare seem to exist mainly to set up why the dark negative evil side of griffith would take this out on casca specifically, because griffith had just been projecting these issues onto her and when he gains power and loses his “goodness” he spitefully reverses their perceived roles.
BUT AGAIN this is both unnecessarily subtle and also a huge fucking mess thanks to how terribly written and depicted the eclipse rape was (and also the depction of the charlotte scene doesn’t help lbr) so I feel like i’m making shit up to make griffith more sympathetic lol. even though i’m like 90% sure it’s purposeful and also it doesn’t rly make griffith more sympathetic because i wholeheartedly sympathize with him even without all this lol, and femto is a literal demon made of evil so it doesn’t make him more sympathetic either. it just kind of ties a lot of themes together.
i think if the latter is the case then perhaps there will be a more light-hearted ending but… my preferences aside, from BS arc this manga’s theme is the quest for revenge, fighting against all odds etc. so i think that if this scenario occured then the manga will have kind of deviated..? not that it couldn’t be (objectively) a development, but still the ending would be all over the place instead of tackling the core elements, ie their relationship
yeah I totally agree. While I think you could argue that Guts forming strong relationships as a way of moving on from traumatic shit is in keeping with earlier themes, applying that to moving on from Griffith completely ignores the complexities of Guts and Griffith’s relationship, which is straight up what Berserk is about. Like yeah I’m super biased but I still think it would objectively be more narratively fulfilling to see their mutual obsession take centre stage again – it’s the difference between their intense relationship getting a proper climax and emotional catharsis versus being reduced to basically a bad break up that one dude couldn’t move on from.
It’s also a deviation in another way that I was considering tacking onto that post but didn’t, but now I want to talk about it.
But like imo if it is the case that Berserk is about Guts overcoming his obsession and moving on, then functionally Berserk is basically two different kinds of stories.
Everything from chapter one to chapter 129 is the story of a kind of fucked up dude with a lot of issues muddling his way through a very dark grey narrative and trying to do his best.
Everything from chapter 130 on is the story of a dude consistently Making The Right Choice.
Like, I kind of feel that those two stories are incompatible. In a narrative about a dude struggling with himself and trying and usually failing to make the right choices in a complex world where right and wrong barely even exist, which tbh is My Berserk, then it simply doesn’t work for the main character to then make the correct choice, ie focusing on Casca, and stick to it for two hundred and twenty chapters plus afterwards. If he eventually does make a genuinely good and correct and narratively rewarded choice, that should only happen at the end and it should be cathartic.
There are stories about protagonists doing the right thing the whole time even though it’s a struggle at times, and those can be fine stories, but it’s a giant downgrade from a story about a dude making a bunch of mistakes in a morally grey world, and an absolutely enormous tonal and thematic shift. It just doesn’t work as a complete story to me if that’s the case.
that last ask took me a while to answer because i digressed into a rant about the depiction of the rape scene in the middle of it and then decided that an answer to an ask was not rly the place for that
but yk what it deserves to be ranted about so here’s a new place for it, tw graphic descriptions of rape
I re-read the Eclipse fairly recently without
skipping or skimming the rape scene for the first time in ages, and jesus everything about it makes me feel
like Miura drew it with one hand and very little intellectual effort or
subtlety, and it makes me very reluctant to give him credit for any
nuance of characterization there lol.
Like I am admittedly very biased
because the way he depicted it visually makes me want to throw up on
him, but like if he wanted me to give it as much analytical consideration as I
give most of the rest of Berserk he shouldn’t’ve drawn it like he was
tracing porn (some of the fucking angles holy shit), he shouldn’t’ve emphasized Casca’s physical arousal as much as, and
as graphically as, and as pornographically as possible for absolutely
no reason other than presumably to make Guts feel worse and to turn on
his readers/himself, since the emotional/psychological ramifications of a
victim becoming aroused during rape sure as fuck weren’t explored, thoughtfully or otherwise, and he shouldn’t’ve made it all about Guts’ feelings of rage and betrayal while
destroying Casca’s character for 20 real life years.
Literally her last
words from what, 1997ish til 2017 were to tell Guts not to watch her have an orgasm, and
it was all from Guts’ perspective and all about his feelings, not Casca’s feelings at all. Frankly every
reference to the rape and depiction of Casca’s trauma from now until
the end of Berserk could be careful and thoughtful and extremely
well-written and considerate and it wouldn’t even begin to make up for the actual scene itself.
Like I can’t read this digression into what frankly reads like cuckold fetish rape porn and treat it like it’s worthy of deep thought lol. If other people read it and have interesting takes and readings I’m all for it, but for myself I’m just incapable of seeing anything deeper than “this is what it means to be evil. This is what it means to be human,” which frankly isn’t that deep, Miura, and definitely wasn’t worth subjecting me to this shit.
oh same they feel posturing to me but who knows what miura meant
this is the problem with berserk there are so many thing that cpuld be interpreted as valid through through a certain critical lens but its absolutely up in the air or no way it was deliberate on his part. casca reliance on men for her sense of self and integrity as a woman is a good example, but miura probably hust doesnt know that women can exist outside of men. lol.
yeah exactly. idk berserk is such a weird combination of Actually That Deep and just Miura being a shitty dude that it can be rly hard to figure out where to draw the line
Like with Guts’ behaviour, it would make sense if it was supposed to be seen as negative because, like, part of the point of Berserk is establishing that Guts swinging his sword by himself instead of being with people affects him negatively, but that’s just not the vibe I get from those moments lol. Your Casca example is perfect too, like her narrative would make more sense and fit the whole vibe of the pre-Eclipse sequence if latching onto Guts in place of Griffith was meant to be seen as a mistake, but yeah I don’t think that’s purposeful.
I’d love to believe Miura’s just subtle and it’s all purposeful, but lol nothing about how he writes women and men and women interacting makes me want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
honestly if i trusted miura half an inch i would be so interested to see casca’s reaction to falconia and neogriffith having achieved the dream she wholeheartedly devoted her life to but only after betraying her, becoming one of the monsters who prey on the weak that she fought against, and traumatizing her into insanity
but alas i do not trust miura
I originally had this as a second part of my last response but tbh it’s not actually all that related and it seemed silly to reply with a giant wall of text explaining an opinion that the person never asked for lol. So I’m just throwing it out separately.
Like I complained that Casca’s reaction to the Eclipse trauma is unrealistic but that doesn’t actually have much of anything to do with why I hate it.
Bc the
thing is, even if I assume that it is totally possible for
someone to regress to a state of infanthood due to trauma, or if I just
assume that Casca’s mental state is a result of fantasy magic, the way
Miura portrays it is still uncomfortable and worth criticizing, imo,
and he certainly doesn’t seem to care about making it feel grounded in
reality or depicting her trauma with care and respect.
For
instance, the way we don’t get to experience Casca’s point of view ever
again (even now we see her mind through Schierke and Farnese’s points of
view), the babyish mentality combined with Miura’s art still
sexualizing her adult body a whole lot, the way her current mental state
(the result of horrific rape) is often used as comic relief (eg
grabbing Puck and sticking him in her mouth in the background), the way
it totally strips Casca of agency as a character and turns her into a
plot device, the way Miura has said that he had her survive the Eclipse only to keep her around as a reminder to Guts that he wants revenge, etc.
It
seems much, much less like a genuine and thoughtful exploration of
Casca as a traumatized individual and much more like a convenient way of
reducing her to an object for Guts to protect and project on.
Even
now that we’re in her mind doing some magical therapy it seems really
half assed to me. We see Schierke and Farnese fighting dick monsters in
her mind, they’re collecting shards of her and sticking them back
together… I mean, when you compare it to, say, the absolutely
heartwrenching portrayal of Guts’ ptsd flashback during sex and his
subsequent panicky breakdown, it just doesn’t seem like Miura really
cares about selling Casca’s trauma as realistic and making sure the
audience empathizes with her. It really seems like he just wanted to
make her a cute and helpless non-entity for the sake of furthering Guts’
narrative.
It’s such a shame to me because I really like
Casca as a character but she gets such a raw treatment
from the narrative pretty much consistently, and it sucks.
I mean, if you want my two cents on the regression, I don’t buy it? Like she would have been 100% entitled to lose her shit but I don’t think she would have I guess? I was talking to @berserkerlover221 and I was just thinking that if that was the response women had every time a man they trusted raped them there would be a hell of a lot more completely regressed people.
like i’m no psychiatrist but i’m pretty damn sure casca’s reaction is 100% unrealistic fictional bullshit miura threw in to remove her from the narrative. you could argue that no one irl has ever been gangraped by monsters and an immortal demon god with powers of evil so maybe it’s fantasy magic at work, but then again miura also did the exact same thing when guts’ mother had a miscarriage so…
idk how one dude can write some traumatized characters so well and others so badly lol. like there is such a world of difference between guts griffith casca farnese and serpico’s reactions to their childhood traumas, and current casca’s generically ~wacky and childish insanity that it floors me that one guy wrote it all. i mean casca is a funny cartoonish background event throughout most of the last couple arcs. it’s just incredible.
All of that being
said, that seems to be something that he’s returning to thematically so
it might not be 100% sexisim and not knowing what to do with her. Maybe
just 90%
yeah i’m hoping he plans to do something with her after she gets magical elfhelm therapy, and hopefully that something is awesome and epic and relevant enough to justify even a fraction of how she’s been reduced for 20 years. idk, cross my fingers I guess.
And not to mention those moments that were cut were supposed to humanize Griffith and make him more relatable and fun. Anime and films made him look just cruel and cunning.
yeahhhh
tbh i feel like there are a lot of rly minor, seemingly insignificant tweaks that end up making the story feel much flatter overall. In the anime I mean, the movies just full on cut most of Griffith’s character out lol.
But like, little things like how he looks angry rather than regretful when Guts is about to kill the hired goons in tombstone of flame, or how we don’t see his face on “do you think I’m cruel?” or losing the moment where Guts remembers him asking him not to tell the Hawks about the assassinations, etc, all add up to less depth and less understanding and sympathy.
Also Guts tends to look way more dour imo, like his default expression is much pissier in the anime than the manga, which makes him seem low-key resentful constantly and kills a lot of the chemistry between Griffith and Guts in significant scenes. Also a bunch of his super fond wistful thinking-about-Griffith smiles are gone lol. I’m sure that helps contribute to the idea that anything between them is one-sided.
And then there are the filler scenes added just so Guts can do something useful and Casca can act like a tsundere, playing up Guts and Casca in a rly cliched way.
Also no flashback to Guts during sex with Charlotte, and his scratch marks are interpreted as a giant scar which doesn’t make any sense – there’s no reason for him to be clutching a mysterious scar and crying, but we’ve seen him self harm before so like, whoever made that call fucked up.
Ooh the torture – the scene that happens after Griffith has spent about one day in the dungeon in the manga instead happens right before Guts returns which really makes his suffering in the anime seem diminished in comparison.
Also Guts’ sparks speech to Casca is turned into half an episode of him chilling with Godo, which means that his dream of fighting people and swinging his sword forever is treated as completely noble and manly by the narrative, because we don’t get Casca’s immediate “you sound like a fucking asshole” counterpoint. Casca’s angry reaction is instead solely a reaction to Guts saying he’s leaving again, not to his whole “dream,” which also makes her look worse.
Idk this turned into a list bc I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently lol. The anime does a lot of things rly well too, but idk I definitely feel like I interpret the story pretty differently to whoever made it.
god every damn time i think of that wyald scene i see red, ugh
like, guts pauses while fighting wyald to crack wise, sexualize casca and then yell at her to go away, and then afterwards when the fighting is over and done it’s casca getting teary over guts’ wounds, rather than guts showing any compassion or empathy at all.
like this is a narrative problem, casca doesn’t even get a reaction to her own assault there, and when judeau comforts her it’s while she’s crying over guts fighting wyald, not what happened to her, so it’s hard to hate guts for this when it’s more of a miura problem, but still. it’s so so so bad.
(funny enough the closest thing we get to acknowledgement of casca’s assault was griffith trying desperately to tear himself away from the men holding him to somehow help her as soon as wyald starts stripping her. so like, incidentally, there’s another point to throw out there when people start going off on their griffith is a sociopath arguments lol)
actually that post reminded me of a quick thing i was gonna write a while ago and forgot about
so i’ve mentioned before a few times that Guts and Judeau’s conversation here is kind of weird because Guts swivels from ‘what the hell are you talking about’ to ‘actually yeah I should totally fuck Casca, I just need to become Griffith’s equal first’ within about a minute
In other posts I suggested that this was an awkwardly written way of bringing a romance with Casca to the forefront. This seems to reframe Guts’ motivation for leaving as at least in part to become worthy of Casca, despite this never occuring to Guts before.
Now I’m thinking that this scene isn’t actually about complicating Guts’ motivation for leaving at the last minute – I’m thinking it’s set up for Guts’ motivation for romancing Casca.
Meaning, he doesn’t want to become Griffith’s equal so he can feel worthy of Casca’s love, he wants to win Casca to feel like Griffith’s equal.
And I’m js, that reading fits with the way the Guts/Casca “romance” is written throughout the rest of the story, ie, as secondary and serving the relationship between Guts and Griffith, and often falling by the wayside next to it, rather than vice versa.
Like when Guts says he can accept the fact that Casca is still obsessed with Griffith because he’s even more obsessed. Like how (as I thoroughly explained in the post linked above) their sex scene revolves around their relationships to Griffith. Like how Wyald almost raping Casca is treated as an opportunity not for compassion or comfort but for one-liners by Guts (his reaction is to tell her to go away because she’s distracting with ripped clothes !!! like !!! fucking hell). Like how Guts is focused solely on Griffith during the Eclipse, up to and including a moment where he looks down, sees the Band being eaten by monsters, and goes right back to trying to hack Griffith’s egg open, without even sparing a thought for Casca. Like how he abandons her in a cave for two years while hunting Femto down. Like how he only realizes that was a bad decision when he compares it to leaving Griffith kneeling in the snow. Like everything the Hound says. Like Miura’s direct statement that Casca only survived the Eclipse to keep Guts pissed off about it. etc etc etc
Basically I’m not saying it’s better writing this way, but it’s bad in a different way. It’s not clunky so much as plain old misogynistic, but hey p much everything regarding Guts and Casca’s relationship is misogynistic either way, so at least if the romance with Casca was never an end in itself but rather a means to the end of being Griffith’s equal, it’s consistent. At least it means we’re not supposed to read this bullshit and think “aw true love,” yk?
Sorry if this is a disappointing answer, but not in the slightest.
Griffith/Charlotte is a complete sham from Griffith’s side, he’s just using her to become king. His seduction of her was completely calculated, except when he was distraught after Guts left, and the way his dream and Charlotte are conjoined and presented in opposition to his feelings for Guts makes his relationship with Charlotte read as a very strong symbol of unhealthy emotional repression imo.
Also Charlotte’s obsession is so intense it seems very unhealthy, like, embroidering Griffith’s face over and over for two years is a little much lol. We don’t get much of Charlotte’s side of it but what we do get is basically a naive girl totally taken in by Griffith’s fake seduction, and it’s kind of sad to me.
As for Guts and Casca, to me their relationship reads 100% as both of them redirecting their feelings for Griffith to each other. There are very strong parallels to both their relationships with him during the scene where they hook up, they both acknowledge that they’re not over Griffith afterwards, and after the Eclipse Casca basically functions as an outlet for Guts’ feelings about Griffith.
Casca’s issues with her lack of independent identity – becoming Griffith’s sword after Griffith saves her, then becoming Guts’ sword after she sleeps with him – are not a good start to any relationship, and the licking wounds description seems very apt. It was never a grand, epic romance, but it’s not even a particularly happy or healthy hook up. They fuck right after Guts lets Casca stab him while thinking about how abandoning Griffith was maybe a bad idea, and right after Casca tries to kill herself. Then Guts has a flashback and strangles her during, and Casca is just happy to finally have someone receptive to her attempts to comfort and support them.
Afterwards Guts invites her along in as non-committal a way as possible, like ‘idk maybe you coming with me will suck and you’ll throw off my groove and i’ll end up ditching you anyway, but i want more sex so let’s give it a shot.’ Which I honestly find hilarious in how unromantic it is.
And even as a low-key licking wounds hook-up it feels very narratively forced to me (which makes sense since Miura said he had them get together just to make the Eclipse more dramatic).
Like Judeau has to practically shove Guts at Casca for him to even consider it lol.
Then of course after the Eclipse you have Guts abandoning her in a cave for two years, assaulting her twice, and redirecting his feelings for Griffith to her again – not even just in the hound scenes but also when he decides to save her directly because he compares abandoning her in a cave to abandoning Griffith in the snow, and when he decides to stick with her only after Griffith abandoned him lol.
Plus Casca is terrified of him for good reason, and the idea of their relationship turning romantic again after Casca gets her mind back is something I find fairly horrifying after how he treated her.
She’s been reduced to nothing more than a symbol of Guts trying to keep his hold on humanity, she’s suffered for it, and if she gets her mind back and gets back together with Guts as a narrative “reward” to him for suffering through a shitty life, like I think a lot of Berserk fans want, I would be extremely disappointed.
(I have a very, very long post that goes into detail on Guts and Casca’s relationship and how it largely revolves around Griffith here, if you’re interested, but I’d only recommend reading it if you’re not a fan of their romance. it’s also about griffguts and gay subtext but so is most of my blog content lol)
Under a cut because I don’t like to be rly critical of Berserk out in the open lol.
iirc the context of me using that specific phrase was both the Eclipse rape and Griffith’s night with Charlotte.
I think the Eclipse rape was absolutely terrible writing (well, storytelling, let’s say, because a lot of what’s bad about it is in the art) for several reasons:
1. destroys Casca as a character to make Guts feel bad and motivate him.
2. objectifies and eroticizes Casca during the rape (v sexualized angles, lots of t+a, overlong and overly graphic, etc), either to titilate the straight dude audience or bc Miura doesn’t know how else to depict the sexual assault of women.
3. totally overwrites Guts’ own childhood trauma – now his worst memories, the stuff that makes him feel the “worst he ever feels” is something that happened to someone else, who doesn’t even get a reaction to her own pain because her mind is basically wiped. I find this really unfortunate because I liked that Guts had actual personal trauma instead of the more typical for dude protagonists trauma-by-proxy. And it’s not realistic that he would get over it after one flashback and confession to Casca, but that is what we’re shown happened – because after that his childhood trauma is never referred to again, except in one flashback chapter featuring teenager Guts. It’s lazy writing imo, and it ruins an interesting and personal traumatic backstory that manly dude protagonists almost never get by replacing it with a dime-a-dozen misogynist fridged girlfriend backstory.
4. tbh it is really jarring and fucked up how you spend 2 emotional chapters with Casca, in her head from her point of view, as she fights and runs with Judeau, and then the 2nd chapter ends with a bunch of tentacles ripping her clothes off and suddenly you’re back with Guts and you never get Casca’s perspective again. tonally it’s a mess – heartfelt tragedy to pornographic objectification within a page – and it’s just so emblematic of how Miura treats Casca as a character. Her main function in the story is to be objectified and assaulted and saved by men, and when she gets good, relatable and empathetic character moments they’re short-lived before she becomes a damsel again.
4.5. and speaking of perspective, it’s fucked up that this horrible experience that breaks Casca’s mind is shown from Guts’ perspective. We’re meant to be relating to his horror at seeing his former best friend raping his girlfriend, we’re not meant to be relating to Casca in this moment. During her previous rape attempts we at least got her perspective on it, we were shown her fear, we heard her thoughts. But not here – here she’s just a violated body existing to traumatize Guts.
5. Based on Miura saying he had Guts and Casca get together just to make the Eclipse more dramatic it strongly suggests to me that not only was her rape solely there to make Guts feel bad and give Femto something to do to make everyone hate him, he wrote her out as a character afterwards because he didn’t know what to do with her – she wasn’t around during the Black Swordsman arc so he had to throw her away for a while, then turn her into nothing more than a symbol of Guts’ humanity, with no character of her own. (Actually tbh Miura didn’t even need to say he threw Guts and Casca together for drama, that comes across pretty clear to me in the writing lol. When I read that my reaction was pretty much just a sense of validation.)
6. Also regressing into a walking infant is not a realistic reaction to trauma, it’s just storytelling convenience, and Casca’s current character as basically a child with an often still sexualized adult body skeeves me out.
Okay that’s enough about the Eclipse rape. I really, really hate it tbh lol.
I also mentioned the scene where Griffith and Charlotte fuck, and more briefly I think that’s bad writing because Miura literally wrote a rape scene – Charlotte said “no” – and then he treated it as consensual sex narratively because Charlotte got into it partway through. Which is very typical male writer bad writing, it’s something you see a LOT – prim virgin has to protest to show that she’s pure and proper, but the dude is good at sex so she soon realizes how great it is and everything’s okay – and it’s really misogynist and fucked up. It’s offensive writing, and it’s just plain bad writing because what we see depicted (rape) isn’t what we’re told happened (consensual sex that Charlotte enjoyed and has no misgivings about and the negative part is that Griffith is a self-destructive idiot who seduced her too soon and ended up in a dungeon for it, not that she said no).
If there was even a hint that Miura recognizes it as rape, some context showing that Charlotte’s feelings about it are complicated, anything like that, I’d be more okay with it, but there’s really nothing. Charlotte adores him to pieces afterwards and the king is angry because he’s a rapist creep, not because he’s protective or anything. Tbh I wholeheartedly approved of the film version’s choice to give Charlotte more agency and have her ask Griffith to stay and move his hand to her chest herself. It seems more in keeping with the spirit of the scene and Charlotte’s feelings about it.
In a more general sense, basically I think Miura as a storyteller has a lot of strengths, but he also has a lot of flaws. Like overall I find Miura’s strengths as a writer are enough to keep me going through the bad stuff, but sometimes it’s a struggle lol and I like to complain about it occasionally. Not all his flaws revolve around rape or offensive writing choices (like eg I think he walks a fine line with tone and sometimes his lighthearted moments come across as jarring, interrupting the flow of action, or awkward), but those are the ones that really stand out and that I’m most likely to describe as shitty writing lol.
Yeah it’s really unfortunate bc he’s such an interesting complex character and I wish more people appreciated that. Tho I have a few ideas on why so many Berserk fans ignore most of the text and write Griffith off as evil from the start.
I mean obviously the biggest one is that Femto’s defining act of evil is rape. And tbh I put the blame pretty squrely on Miura for that one lol, like, I can’t actually blame anyone for being unable to feel sympathy for or enjoy the complexities of a character who later turns into a monster and rapes another major character.
Like the problem with using sexual assault as your major illustrative example of the ~darkness in the hearts of men~ or whatever is that it’s pretty damn common for people to have experienced it themselves, or know someone who has, and therefore reactions to a depiction of rape are inevitably a lot more visceral than reactions to say, murder or torture. Even if Griffith is depicted as a sympathetic, three dimensional, very interesting character throughout the Golden Age, I can’t blame anyone for not giving a fuck and just hating him anyway because his evil alter ego’s first act was rape. People ignoring your good writing is a price you pay as a creator for using rape as shock value and cheap drama.
(Plus when you add his badly written night with Charlotte to the mix, like, again, I can’t blame anyone for going “fuck this guy” and not caring about his depth of character. Like I don’t think the night with Charlotte is meant to be read as rape because there are zero indications that we’re supposed to think it’s skeevy or even potentially morally dubious once Charlotte gets into it – to me it reads like a badly written bodice-ripper type scene where the woman just has to get turned on and then she forgets propriety and enjoys herself – but again, that’s on Miura and his sometimes shitty writing.)
However, that said, from what I’ve seen the vast majority of Griffith haters still love Guts, who also sexually assaults the very same character (except Guts hadn’t even just been magically transformed first, and the first time he sexually assaulted her was long before the hound ever made an appearance), so like, when so many people condemn one character and excuse another for the same thing, there’s obviously something else at work.
So putting aside the rape, I think there are a lot of other factors as to why Griffith is so hated while very few of his haters extend that ire to Guts as well.
Like, for starters, Griffith is gay, or at the very least, gay coded and feminine in appearance and clearly in love with the protagonist, which definitely makes a lot of straight cis dude fans uncomfortable and a lot less likely to be able to empathize with him, judging by the offensive nicknames they tend to use for him.
But then there’s also just the way Griffith lies to himself, which, if you tend to take things at face value in a story, is going to give you a serious misunderstanding of his character. Eg, a lot of fans think that when he tells Casca he doesn’t feel guilty for the deaths of the people who follow him he’s being genuinely truthful and sociopathic lol, ignoring the fact that he’s self-harming grotesquely during that conversation, among other hints that he’s deluding himself. Lots of people take character dialogue as ultimate truth, missing other context clues that are often more revealing.
And then there’s the fact that he ends up betraying the protagonist and becoming an antagonist, and a lot of people just aren’t interested in moral grey stories so they project black and white values onto it. So since Griffith/Femto/NeoGriff is the antagonist, everything he’s done must have been evil and he must’ve been solely motivated by selfish desire for power, and they’ll twist the story to find support for that. Like I’ve seen people who take Griffith’s “I will choose the place that you die” as evidence that he’s been planning to sacrifice everyone for power from the very start lol, even though that makes zero sense, just because they need Griffith to have been villainous all along or the story doesn’t fit their moral framework.
Like, while Berserk takes a general moral stance that a person’s actions shape them, a lot of people believe that a person’s actions reveal their true, innate nature deep down. So, to them, Griffith sacrificing the Band isn’t an act that turns him into a monster, it’s an act that reveals he’s always been a monster and now the veneer of humanity has been removed. Yk, the kind of fans who say that if Griffith was a good person he wouldn’t’ve sacrificed his friends, because no good person would ever do that, as though Good and Evil are qualities a person is born with. Which I consider to be an extremely boring way of looking at fiction, and a troubling way of viewing morality, and totally at odds with what Miura’s attempting to say, but people will always bring their own philosophy to the table.
Similarly I think that, at least for some people, this is why Guts’ frankly evil actions get totally downplayed or written off – because he’s the protagonist so he has to be A Good Person. Therefore he had to have been possessed by an evil spirit when he assaulted Casca (despite the fact that the first time was in Godo’s spirit-repelling cave and most people forget that even happened, and the second time was in broad daylight without a ghost in sight or any visual indication that Guts was anything other than himself.) Or they say it’s okay because Guts stopped before actually penetrating her, and he’s had a hard life, and cut him a little slack and let him get back together with Casca bc he’s a good person and he deserves to be happy blah blah horrifying blah.
idk I’m definitely not accusing everyone who hates Griffith and flattens his character of being a hypocrite lol, like I said, there are plenty of possible reasons to view him as evil, and some are totally reasonable. But yk there is kind of a double standard at work when people love Guts and hate Griffith and I think it’s worth looking at why that might be.
moments like these are depressing bc if i wasn’t supposed to find them cutely shippy i’d love them
like imagine guts and casca’s relationship without the veneer of slapped on romance. guts comforts her non-sexually after casca tries to kill herself, they renew their tentative friendship that began a year ago, they begin working in sync as comrades.
moments like these are, rather than romantic, symbolic of guts’ place as a hawk and the fact that he’s at his best with his friends – casca and guts are both badass warriors and part of a larger family which guts once abandoned.
imo without the romance berserk would actually be tighter thematically. casca would just be the last remnant of the hawks, because she was their leader in place of griffith – the way judeau said as he tried to rescue her. the whole pseudo ex girlfriend thing only complicates it and dilutes the theme of the hawks as guts’ family, and saving casca = atoning for leaving them.
like how many times post-eclipse does guts think of her as the last remnant of the hawks, the last ‘feeble flame’ left to him off the hawks’ campfire, vows not to abandon her after remembering leaving griffith, yadda yadda yadda? his sexual relationship with her is vastly de-emphasized (except when the beast of darkness starts throwing his feelings for griffith into the mix, hmmmm) bc it’s just not important to the point of the story.
Guts’ reaction to Casca being threatened is usually: Don’t do it, She’ll fucking kill ya.
And Guts’ reaction to Griffith being threatened is: DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING TOUCH HIM .I WILL CLEAVE YOU IN HALF.
not that Guts’ wouldn’t step in on Casca’s behalf but whenever he does there’s always this “why am I doing this?” “Do I like her” “Don’t pop a boner on my head” “Griffith what are you doing?” it’s almost a part of a whole different train of thought?
It doesn’t seem to be the tunnel visioned desperation which comes when Griffith is concerned.
i feel like guts’s feelings for casca are really poorly written, as you kinda mention. when judeau asks him about his feelings for casca, he says he sees her as a comrade more than anything, which is appropriate – but then with further prompting, he’s like “no… i’m just no good for her… as i am now…” because she’s caught up on griffith still and all that. because miura hadnt originally planned it, having FEELINGs for casca is an afterthought on everyone’s part. it really (to me at least) comes across as a “wait, im a dude, im supposed to be into girls and this is the one girl around”. he assists her multiple times, not real sure why, so hey, guts thinks, romance?? perhaps?? basically guts doesnt know fuck shit about girls but maybe he has a concept of compulsory het. thinking on this reminds me of how griffith also had to chase het – as is characteristic for griffith, it was thought out ahead of time and part of his plan (even if it his plan kinda went to shit). guts, on the other hand, relies not on thought but rather just on acting, often really impulsively, and thats where gutsca came from. unfortunately for the girls, what it al really comes back to is each other. everybody knows griffith has like 0 sincere feelings for charlotte and is eternally hung up on guts, but gutss is a bit more vague. hes the same way tho- the girl in his life is means to an end. i posted a few panels just recently that make this evident – even post-eclipse, when guts finds out casca js missing, he swears to rescue her By Himself (that falls thru) but if he runs into griffith, “then [he’ll]…” implying he’ll redirect his attentions there. chance of another type of eclipse, AND casca’s gonna be there in need of rescuing? how convenient. there are a lot more caps that point towards this that i think bthump has either mentioned or posted, but im on mobile and cant dig em up atm.
I was just thinking about that bit when Guts is about to leave where Judeau’s like, hey Casca’s single wink wink nudge nudge and Guts is like, I see her more as a comrade than anything, and Judeau’s like, are u sure??? and Guts is like, well anyway she’s into Griffith so if I was gonna d8 her I’d have to fulfill my dream of being Griffith’s equal first either way so bye.
And it’s framed as like burgeoning romance, Guts seriously wanting to become the kind of man Casca likes, but god it comes across as such an afterthought lol. Like he already wants to be Griffith’s equal for Griffith, this Casca thing is just added on and changes absolutely nothing about his goals or motivation. It’s like, off Guts goes because he desperately wants to be Griffith’s bff, btw here’s some heterosexuality just in case you’re uncomfortable with that, heterosexual male reader.
And more re: mmod’s original post, it’s just inarguable facts that every time Guts’ feelings for Casca and Griffith are compared, Casca comes up short. He decides to leave and take her with him until it turns out Griffith needs him. He goes on an animalistic rampage while rescuing Griffith whereas Casca gets told to fuck off bc she’s too naked and distracting after her attempted rape (which I’m sure is meant as a funny manly het moment and GOD IT’S BAD). He leaves her in a cave for two years to pursue Griffith. Hell when he thinks about the last thing he saw with his missing eye it goes Casca’s assault -> naked Casca -> Femto staring at him as the very last thing given the most significance. He decides he has to rescue her in the conviction arc but still plans to ditch her again afterwards now that Griffith is human-looking and in reach of his sword. He finally decides to stay with her and take her to Elfhelm when a) Griffith tells him he gives zero fucks and ditches him and b) the cave caves in and he can’t leave her there anymore. And he still treats it as a temporary sidequest.
i feel like the fact that guts sees the band down there, including his pseudo girlfriend, dying horribly and turns away to continue trying to save griffith long after it’s too late should be a bigger thing, both in fandom and in canon
re-reading a few eclipse chapters and it feels so striking to me that casca is down there with judeau and the hawks facing an army of demons while guts is up there with griffith, neither sparing a thought for the other. it feels like a short, rougher and more intense version of casca leading the hawks as outlaws while griffith is being tortured and guts is off trying to become his equal.
except it comes after guts and casca have slept together and seem to be having a thing, which makes it very… stark in the way it completely doesn’t fit into a romantic narrative.
plus you’d think that while guts is bemoaning his own shittiness in abandoning casca for two years and comparing it to leaving griffith in the snow he could spare a thought for that time he left her to fight a hoarde of rapey monsters because he was wrapped up in futilely trying to help griffith.
I actually don’t know lol. It’s a tough question because I’m not sure how much Miura thinks we should condemn Guts for it – on one hand he’s getting consequences for his actions in the form of Casca hating him and I don’t think it’s likely that she’ll forgive and forget and everything will go swimmingly. On the other I think we’re supposed to feel like he should get a pat on the back for stopping, and we’re definitely not supposed to hate him for it, we’re probably more meant to empathize with him and his loss of control and his regret, and admire the steps he’s taken to protect her from himself by travelling with people, and his willpower in keeping the hound on a leash.
So I guess ideally I’d like their idealized and infatuated images of Guts to be shattered as they realize that he’s capable of some fucked up shit even without the armour. Farnese could get protective of Casca and take off with her and Serpico and whoever in the party wants to follow, quite possibly all of them, give or take Puck and Isidro. Because she’d definitely choose Casca over Guts and that would be nice to see.
But I think it’s more likely that some of them, like Farnese and Serpico, would maybe get a bit warier of him and he might lose some of his shine in Farnese’s eyes, but overall consider it a past mistake he’s overcome and atoned for, and just another signifier of how much of a struggle it is to be Guts akin to how they feel about how Guts + Berserker armour = trying to murder them all. Yk like it makes Serpico anxious but no one blames him for it even though it’s his own inability to control his rage that leads to the armour taking over without magical hand-holding to save everyone from him.
Idk that’s at my most cynical. Don’t get me wrong I love Guts and his narrative for the most part, I just think aspects of it and the magical fantasy metaphor of the Berserk armour, hound, etc aren’t handled as well as they could be lol.
Anyway it’d probably be something between those two extremes tbf.
i can’t handle this lmao, like the fact that guts is fucking pouting and charlie-brown-walking away because neogriffith didn’t give him the time of day, actually directly comparing it to when he walked out on Griffith and ruined his life, is incredible to me.
like what do redditbro types, the ones who see berserk as an uncomplicated tale of a dude who hates another dude who ruined his life and wants revenge against him, do with this bit?
But also while i’m on this, while I find it absolutely delightful if I don’t think too
hard about it, on another level this moment really pisses me off lol, because
it’s yet another instance of the narrative showing us how gay for Griffith
Guts is by throwing Casca under the bus. Guts just met the dude he wants
revenge against in part for raping Casca, and his reaction is 😦 i
feel abandoned 😦
And it’s great when I ignore the Eclipse as
I usually do, because it’s more fun to enjoy moments like this rather than seethe about them, but when I take it into account it’s like, fucking
seriously? we’re supposed to sympathize with this asshole who cares more
about his evil senpai noticing him than the fact that he’s an evil demon
who raped his friend/lover and just said ‘lol idgaf’ about it?
yk I’ve been thinking about it and tbh I find Casca a surprisingly compelling character, and I think it’s because there’s like this tension to me between character traits she has that I absolutely love, and a narrative that utterly fails to utilize them and diminishes her at every turn
it engages my inherent obstinancy that makes me want to argue with a story lol, and I get this with a lot of characters who I like, but I feel are treated unfairly by the narrative, which makes me want to like them even more.
In Casca’s case it’s not that I feel like the narrative/author wants me to dislike her, but that he wants me to like her for the wrong reasons. I liked her when he wanted her to be disliked, and I disliked how he tried to make her likeable, basically lol. So I get invested in what I liked (leadership, petty cruelty, fighting skills, overinvestment in something, practicality, occasional stubborn stupidity, etc) often despite how it was narratively presented, and I de-emphasize the “likeable” bullshit (hey if casca had matured a few more years she’d grow more comfortable with herself and not be self conscious about being unfeminine; she’d realize quickly that guts is not a solution to her core problem if she had the chance; w/e she can beat ten men at once apparently so fuck miura if he’s only shown her at a disadvantage, it’s still true; etc)
And Casca has enough character depth imo to support different, better
interpretations than what the narrative was pushing and make it
worthwhile to explore other options, like, eg, Casca moving from
Griffith to Guts being an understandable and sympathetic character flaw
she could’ve overcome rather than a step in the right direction that the narrative wanted me to see it as.
Basically I don’t mind reading against the text if it’s more fun that way. It’s not something I’d base srs analysis or w/e off of, it’s more of a thing u base fanfiction on lol, and I’m aware when I’m doing it, but it definitely affects how much I can like a character.
AU where Guts never overheard Griffith’s speech to Charlotte, nothing went wrong, Griffith eventually married Charlotte and became king, managed the whole famine and plague situation competently and is beloved, started hooking up with Guts on the side, Casca became the highest-ranked general in Midland, Gaston’s got his shop, everyone’s living their best lives
And then Ganeshka and his unstoppable demon army shows up, and regular old human king Griffith doesn’t have apostles on his side
So Griffith tries to stop Ganeshka but it’s unquestionably hopeless ofc
Anyway this is ultimately a What If Griffith became king and fulfilled his dream all according to plan but 3 years later had to flee his kingdom (or get knocked out and hauled away over Guts’ shoulder depending on how reluctant he is) as it’s about to be taken over by a demon emperor kinda thing. Or maybe he chooses to flee because Guts is determined to stay and die with him if he stays. Because I like the idea of Griffith being forced to pick Guts’ life over dying for his dream.
Either way bam suddenly he’s back to where he was when he was 12 with a group of rag tag friends roaming the countryside trying to survive and he’s gotta deal with that.
This is an excellent concept.
I really love this. Also seeing as Griffith’s and Guts relationship in this version has Been allowed to run it’s natural course and I’d really like to see how that would play out. I actually think, since Griffith and Guts hooked up, Griffith sometimes wishes he could just run away from the kingly stuff once in a while to be with Guts.
What if he isn’t actually averse to running away after the initial clashes against Vanishes prove that it’s futile. But I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t actually. Maybe because the guilt for his soldiers hasn’t quite gone yet and he rationalises that he can’t surrender something so much blood had once been spilled for, PLUS since Guts’ is known for his “finish what you started” attitude- Griffith feels that Guts will not respect him anymore if he runs away.
Guts for his part, thinks Griffiths decision is non negotiable, so he’s just determined to save him from as much damage as he can. Guts refuses to come in the way of what Griffith wants. And he reasons that’s well, it’s always been in his nature to fight rather than flee. And if he has to die, nothing better than now, when he’s found somebody who looks at him and CARES.
PLUS since Guts’ is known for his “finish what you started” attitude-
Griffith feels that Guts will not respect him anymore if he runs away.
oooh nice, gr8 point i didn’t consider at all.
also ironic if they both die bc they think that’s what the other wants lol, but that’s so them. maybe casca could intervene w/ some sense + save their asses as per usual.
Like with all the Casca thoughts which have been accumulating.
You Know this bit- “ Maybe Casca could intervene w/ some sense + save their asses as per usual.”
This is OUR version of Casca. This is our take on what she could have been if the narrative didn’t constantly screw up her characterisation. Because this action and characteristics makes sense to us, seems like a reasonable expectation and we or rather I (I’ll only speak for myself here for now) would like to believe it to be true- because I really want to like her.
And of course this is us talking about AUs anyway. So we will fill it with what seems reasonable.
But really I can’t help but think how cannon never explored this possibility. In canon Casca never saved their asses or talked sense into them. She made the connections. Yes. She had the information necessary to. Yes. She had the opportunity to. Also yes.
But canon didn’t care about making us like Casca as anything more than either a worthy (and projected as slightly annoying) rival or a love interest.
We’re never made to empathise with any particular or specific actions she takes or roles she plays. It seems like There’s no particularly thing Casca has done in the entire goddamn narrative which defines her. Like HER. Not someone else.
So when we say ‘as per usual’ we’re really just comparing with different versions we have been forced to create on our own.
There’s unfortunately no as per usual we can compare with in the source material.
Which is so frustrating.
Lol yeah this is true and I was kind of thinking when I wrote it that I should’ve said like she always tried to do, and might’ve done if anyone actually listened to her. (Like “just talk to each other!” can you imagine if judeau shut the hell up and they were like, actually yeah casca has a point let’s try words before swords). But I went with less accurate pithiness instead lol.
Also like… I do pretty much agree with you – the narrative is so bad about defining Casca in relation to the men in her life rather than as herself independently that I’ve come to hope it’s her central character flaw that will one day be explored as unlikely as that is lmao, but in fairness despite doing things for Griffith’s sake or for Guts’ sake, she does show a lot of character as she does them.
Taking command of the Hawks, leading the charge to infiltrate Doldrey, rallying the troops in dire situations, jealousy, pettiness, bravery, practicality (one moment I love for her, even if it is just to give Guts a moment of ‘wow she’s so cool’ (ugh), is when she tells the Hawks to stop freaking out at the start of the Eclipse because it’s not going to change the fact that shit just got really weird, so they might as well hold formation and stay calm), foolhardiness due to insecurity (going to battle on her period lol), perseverence even after almost giving up, loyalty ofc and her attempt to navigate between loyalty and what she feels is a betrayal of it albeit a timely and necessary one (even if the ‘betrayal’ is fucking guts, like, the feelings there are still complex despite the shitty plot imo), etc.
I hate almost all of Casca’s narrative and ofc it’s steeped in Miura’s misogyny, and she has a few character moments that are total offensive bs (acting cuter when she warms up to guts, maybe my place is at this man’s side, her non-reaction to Wyald’s attempted rape which just underscores that whole awful thing as pure shock value and titilation, etc) but there are also lots of moments she has that I think are revealing, endearing, and interesting. Like misogyny is one of Miura’s big flaws but shallow characterization sure isn’t and imo while his flaws are seriously on display in Casca’s character his strengths are still there.
So yeah like I don’t disagree with you bc her narrative absolutely sucks and I know that’s p much what you’re talking about, but your response did make me kind of want to talk up her likeability as a character a little lol. Like it’s not enough to make up for her awful narrative role, but it’s enough to make me want to explore her as a character and feel sympathy and empathy for her and relate to her in some ways, which is not a high bar but tbh it’s more than a lot of designated-love-interest-female-characters have.
Casca babe. I still don’t know why the fuck you would say that. It makes zero sense.
Tbh at this point I felt things were happening, only because they had to happen, even if it made no sense to anyone to act like this. Like Casca saying this, as if it still mattered what Griffith saw as a equal. Like Guts acting as if not realizing how severe Griffith’s injuries were and saying he will swing that sword again. Like the Band throwing a fucking tantrum how their future is ruined, while Griffith was 5 steps away and probably listening. Like even Guts and Casca having this talk there, as if he wasn’t sleeping nearby… the amount of moments, where everyone was being inconsiderate was so huge, that it felt kind of…. forced to me 😮 Either this or at this point they had all stopped seeing Griffith as a person already.
And tbh, there was no going back from there on in my opinion, even if he had never been offered to sacrifice them, even if he had accepted living in a broken body, he wouldn’t have accepted being their mascot.
Yeah, I completely agree actually.
Like of course at this point Miura was trying to take the plot to the eclipse so maybe everything doesn’t make sense from character consistency point of view.
But really if we leave that aside this arc really was evidence that both of what Wyald said and what we knew of Griffith’s apprehensions were almost completely justified.
Like it really just came across as if nobody actually gave a shit about griffith as a fucking human being. And it was upsetting because all this while, we were thinking how Griffith was wrong and being pessimistic and he should maybe stop distancing himself so much. But then griffith was absolutely right all along.
It really just seemed like everyone was waiting for griffith because of the usefulness he’d have to their lives. The moment it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to do that, they immediately ran to Guts to leave with him instead.
Like notice how no one else even tries to visit him after that, I mean yeah okay, you were throwing around words like love before, but okay.
yes , they most probably wouldn’t have abandoned him but that would most probably be because such a thing would be ‘distasteful’ rather than anything else. I mean you might be right about the fact that they’ve already stopped seeing him as a person at this point.
And honestly even with Casca, like this really rubbed me the wrong way- but she has this little bit of internal monologue where she says “Yes now it’s my turn to fulfill this duty. ” And that sense of duty is repeated when she tells Guts that she can’t leave with him. And wow. So it’s DUTY now ? Like a couple of chapters ago you were wondering why he’d chose Charlotte to bed instead of you and were being jealous of the fact. And now it’s only your sense of duty holding you back. Like honestly I thought you loved this person? Wow for consistency.
I mean I remember Griffith saying in the lake, while hurting himself that the only thing he can do for his men is to keep winning.
And really he was right.
That’s all they want from him and that’s all that he’s good for in their eyes.
tbh this never bothered me from a writing perspective because it felt very realistic to me
it’s not good and it doesn’t reflect well on the hawks, but it seems consistent because none of them ever gave a fuck about griffith as a person except guts and casca. judeau practically flat out said it during his first chat with guts, when he said everyone followed griffith for his charisma but he couldn’t really say what kind of a man he is.
and it’s partially griffith’s fault for distancing himself. you can’t expect people to care about you as a person if they only know you as a flawless leader. but it’s also definitely dickish of the hawks – but the kind of dickish that doesn’t seem out of place imo, especially in berserk’s shitty world where if you’re accepting that half the men casca runs into want to rape her, ableism doesn’t seem like a stretch.
also in fairness, only corkus made a scene when casca announced the news, and that’s pretty in character for him, and there was only like, maybe a couple hours between that and the eclipse, during most of which griffith was asleep, so there wasn’t much opportunity for people to visit him, or even sort out their feelings beyond abject disappointment that their hopes are dashed.
i actually love casca and judeau telling guts to leave while he’s trying to say he wants to stay, because they are treating griffith as an inevitable burden someone has to deal with, and guts is the only one who isn’t. judeau has his, i’ll take some hawks, start a thieves gang and take care of him, because it’s the least i could do for all he’s done for us. plus being ‘self sacrificing’ for casca’s sake lol.
casca’s feelings are more complex but they also work for me – because she wanted to leave with guts after rescuing griffith and try to move on from her feelings for griffith, and now he needs her, and she’s someone who wants to be needed, so it’s like just as she had hope that she could move on she’s back to square one. also tbh her attitude strikes me as more evidence that she never really loved Griffith, just admired him.
and they both expect guts to view him as a burden so they encourage him to leave – because according to those rules of the battlefield judeau likes to cite so much, he’s no longer a hawk so griffith isn’t his responsibility.
and guts partially wants to stay out of guilt probably, but based on his actions at the start of the eclipse it seems clear that he, more than anyone else in the hawks, still just genuinely likes griffith and wants to be with him in some capacity. he’s the one who speaks out when the godhand says griffith is one of them, he supports and holds him until they’re forcibly separated and then he climbs up to griffith to try to save him, and he refuses to believe griffith sacrificed everyone for quite a while.
idk basically it’s harsh and depressing but it works for me largely bc i never got the sense that anyone except guts genuinely liked griffith as a person, even casca. well charlotte i guess, but w/e. even she believed he’d recover when she wanted to stay with him.
Hmm yeah.
Of course it makes a lot of sense from the writing perspective. And from character perspectives. And everything makes sense with everything else because that’s just how Berserk is. It’s brilliant. And all that is precisely the reason I love it so much.
I don’t think my issue was with character consistency actually, like tbh I don’t have an issue at all, -that’s what makes for good story telling and that’s what I’m here for.
I have zero issues with the Hawks not giving a fuck about Griffith. Because it makes sense. And because realistically that’s how people are.
Same with Casca.
I think what I had a not very objective, reaction to^ up there was the fact that the fact that the Hawks or Casca may be didn’t give a fuck is very rarely recognised
Which makes for very one dimensional analysis. And THAT is frustrating.
The thing with Casca is I have very mixed feelings about her in general and that just spills onto every time I mention her so. Yeah.
And like hey I liked griffith so sometimes there’s an emotional ‘why you do this?’, but intellectually yes, makes sense, sign me the fuck up, sweet angst God yes.
Like the fact everyone is equal parts nice and low-key assholeish is amazing?
But sometimes people are not nice to someone you like (Even if that makes perfect sense to you )and you are like ‘hey!’
yeah i know what you mean. casca is such a difficult character in some ways for me bc i love her in theory but i feel like i’m constantly mentally compensating for the way miura writes her.
like eg i’d infinitely prefer if instead of casca switching gears bc now she loves guts instead of griffith, she was telling guts to leave because she believes she’s being self-sacrificing but deep down she wants griffith to herself and she still isn’t over her jealousy of guts. i don’t feel that’s the case, that’s not the vibe i get from this scene at all, but man i’d be into that, and i kind of headcanon it that way.
like i like petty jealous casca whose “love” for griffith is a flaw (and a defense mechanism she uses to avoid self-examination) she needs to overcome to come into her own as a person. i don’t like casca just switching from griffith to guts and this being treated by the narrative as a touching and significant development for her lol. same like, i like casca as a badass responsible and respected military leader, i don’t like casca as someone who “had to give up being a woman” (wtf does that even mean lol) and is conflicted about that, it sucks.
enjoying casca as a character to me is like navigating a minefield of miura’s shitty misogyny lol. there’s lots i love and it’s worth the effort of downplaying the shitty aspects of her writing imo, but man i wish i didn’t have to.
you're the only one 