mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
yk, now that i think about it, it’s pretty telling that the post-zodd conversation that leads to guts feeling emotionally secure and like he’s found his place in the world takes place on a staircase, with guts and griffith on the same level
compared to promrose hall, also taking place on a staircase, but griffith is at the top and guts is at the bottom
woah woah woah
“They obtain the power of gods!”
that wasn’t in Griffith’s chapter 8 monologue.
like is this one of those things that Miura had changed between magazine publication and volume publication because it was too on the nose? and if so did he forget by this chapter? shit should i assume griffith said it or not?
if i assume he said it there are three possibilities:
1. griffith is speaking metaphorically, ie people who have the power to change the world may as well be gods.
2. griffith is speaking literally and somehow only he knows that sometimes people become gods. (the “fortune teller” that sold him the behelit maybe? does that make griffith the kind of weirdo who genuinely believes wild shit salesmen tell him?)
3. it’s generally accepted knowledge/myth/belief in berserk’s universe that sometimes people become gods and griffith is referencing that belief system.
like i’m obviously going for option #1 here since it’s the most reasonable, but still lol. and tbf griffith believes strongly in fate and clearly wants to believe in higher powers, so it’s not beyond the realm of plausibility that he’s speaking literally.
a-girl-named-chester
replied to your post “Guts echoes NeoGriffith’s “nothing has changed. This is the man I am.”…”
Could it be him maybe accepting that for NGriff, his old dream is taking priority over his previous love for guts, which guts was eventually aware of?
Not necessarily buying into NGriff’s hype himself, but not wanting to overcomplicate Griffith to his friends? His friends who didn’t even know he knew Griffith?
Yeah I definitely don’t think he’d start getting into all the complicated stuff wrt that relationship with his friends, but the line “he hasn’t changed” is just guts’ thoughts, not something he said outloud, suggesting Guts believes it:
and that’s a hell of a loaded statement for guts to be thinking to himself especially with the immediate visual reference to NeoGriffith’s look back at him as he says “nothing has changed.”
It could be that he’s just referring purely to what his dream entails, ie a kingdom, but then again, even then, human Griffith only said he wanted a kingdom, he didn’t say anything about taking over the world or building an empire, which is what they’re talking about now.
that and the fact that he sold his body so less of his men (or children ..) would have to die, and then comforted casca when she was trying to comfort him
those are the two things that stand out in my mind and cement his personality as very giving, though it may not seem like it to some because he tries to cover it up with varying levels of success
“a dream is something a man must achieve for no one else’s sake but his own” or w/e
five chapters later: “if there’s something i can do for their sake, for the sake of the dead, that thing is to win.”
he so does try to cover it up lol, i was just writing about this earlier too (because I actually didn’t even think to address Griffith’s dream speech in my meta about Griffith’s dream… and had to go back and add it in. yeah)
but yeah I mean like NGriff becoming “the desired,” the achiever of humanity’s dream is such a good encapsulation of his human life. (also the fact that he became a monster first is a gr8 encapsulation of griffith’s distorted by self-loathing perception of his life.)
just-a-daft-punk
replied to your post “You bled so much for me. These are wounds from the hundred man…”
What’s interesting to me is that all the members of the god hand probably have a wounded core which is protected by their armor/transformation into a god hand
totally. Same with Apostles from everything we’ve seen, and Guts too – like it’s particularly fitting that his Beast of Darkness, which essentially is self-protection born out of trauma and betrayal, both in childhood and then the Eclipse, p much lives in a magic suit of armour now.
お前は 知っていたはずだ
オレが そうする 男だと
お前だけはYou should have known.
This is the man I am.
You, of all people.“you, of all people” is a really powerful translation imo but the literal translation would be “just you” which i think ………….. is noteworthy
yesss like this line absolutely refers back to the fact that griffith let guts (and only guts) in to see the darker sides of his rise to the throne, and specifically tombstone of flame, and guts telling him his cruelty is a part of the path to his dream, and what griffith believed guts’ reason for leaving was etc, and it’s nice when learning more about the literal dialogue only solidifies my interpretation
this being in reference to whether griffith sent an assassin after rickert is extra interesting.
rickert: griffith wouldn’t have me assassinated… but griffith isn’t even human anymore… and even back when he was he did some shady shit… and he sacrificed the rest of the band… but still…
just the fact that that the narrative is reminding us thru rickert’s musing that griffith did indeed care about the band a whole lot when the subject is neogriffith and his feelings towards rickert now is good shit
like clearly rickert here is erring on the side of ‘yeah he probably did send raksas after me’ so there’s no reason for him to maintain that little bit of doubt at the end unless it’s relevant. and it’s not relevant to rickert’s decision making or actions soooo
idk this is just a long way of saying ambiguity is only worthwhile if the truth is (at least somewhat) unexpected.
these two pages are the most strongly visually conveyed theory -> rebuttal i’ve ever seen
like i’m sorry i can worry all i want over ominous fetus-y portents and casca’s narrative, and i am, but i just can’t believe the same guy who wrote this scene is going to skimp on the emotional resolution to guts and griffith’s relationship
he went to see guts to test if anything would shake his heart! and then failed that test! while watching a fight extremely reminiscent of his very first sight of guts! this is just so good
You should have known. This is the man I am. You of all people.
I think you’ve got it backwards – Eggman with the brand on his tongue swallowed the fetus which became Griffith’s new corporeal body.
Since Eggman sacrificed the world to become an apostle, I think the brand appears on him because he’s the vehicle that creates the new world (Griffith), and he’s destroyed in the process – in a way he sacrificed himself.
But the brand isn’t on Griffith, I don’t think, unless Eggman also became a part of him. But I think he’s just the egg that hatched him, lol. Idk it’s weird so this is just my educated guess, I don’t really get what even happened haha.
okay further on this point which is also in the blurb on the back of this volume, “brought to his knees by his first defeat” isn’t saying he’s so wounded that guts physically won their duel– I give griffith more credit for knowing guts strength– the defeat is guts leaving and griffith being unable to stop that/not having planned for it at all
right like this is one line out of like 20 of casca and others saying griffith was fucked up because guts left – this just underscores that Guts leaving was a defeat. Yk, like he’s defeated emotionally by this turn of events, not that he’s devasted just because he lost a duel lol. Guts leaving happens along with his first ‘defeat in battle’ to emphasize the emotional significance of Guts leaving and how unprecedented Griffith’s feelings here are, it doesn’t contradict the million other times ppl described him as totally gone to pieces because Guts abandoned him
but berserk fans always take this one line out of context and ignore everything else 😡
anime dub adventures continued
“Stay away from me… if you touch me now… if you so much as touch my shoulder… I’ll never be able to… you and I will never be…”
you know how much i love that the moment of despair that opens the behelit is the moment guts touches him but man, preceeding it with “you and I will never be…” is one hell of a choice
like the manga translation of “I’ll never… I’ll never…!” is functionally meaningless as far as I can tell. Maybe I’ll never forgive you? But it’s not the point, the point is Guts’ touch sending Griffith into despair. Griffith’s words just draw attention to it. Despair + touch.
“You and I will never be…” on the other hand, like, that’s nothing but a statement on Griffith’s abject horror of being touched in that moment by a man he can’t have, right? How else can I interpret that? Add “I’ll never be able to” and all I’m getting is something along the lines of, “I’ll never be able to let you go but I’ll never have you either.”
anyway how do ppl interpret Griffith’s horror at being touched by Guts and subsequent despair, regardless of specifics of translation? I’ve always kind of wondered but I don’t think I’ve seen any meta or interpretations or anything about it at all.
I didn’t know the manga version was so different, that’s interesting. Maybe the reason the dub extrapolated to “I’ll never be able to…” is close to what the manga intended. “I’ll never be able to… have you again,” maybe?
I think you’re bang on with never be able to let you go/have you either, because that’s pretty clearly what happens. all of griffith’s despair is essentially that at that point, he can never keep guts and he wants to get away from everything he’s ruined but at the same time he’s clearly still got the same old horror of guts leaving/not being able to hold/own him anymore
I guess it also has a question of how much he instinctively knew what the behelit would do or not?
@chaoticgaygriffith said:
i can’t remember the original japanese phrasing so just based on the
manga translation i interpreted it as “i’ll never get over you” though
fully knowing that i’ll probably NEVER get to find out what he actually
meant. i mean, we can intuit the basic meaning, but still. god damn it
miura
Yeah regardless of how the sentence might’ve technically ended, I think the meaning of “I’ll never be able to get over you/let you go/that kinda sentiment” makes the most sense and is definitely my favourite interpretation lol.
And yeah since in that moment he believed Guts wanted to leave again, honestly I feel like a visceral emotional understanding of Griffith’s despair at being touched by him (which tbh is rare for me in fiction lol). Like as a response to these circumstances – he’s so consumed by love for this dude that he spent a year thinking about him while being tortured to stay sane, but he thinks this dude is going to leave him, and then Guts’ physical touch as like the final proof of how vulnerable Griffith is to this love and how he can be destroyed by it – the behelit screaming representing Griffith’s despair as Guts touches him just feels so damn right.
Also I tend to think Griffith doesn’t know anything about how the behelit functions, but imo it still works super well narratively with Griffith’s resulting decision to basically cut that love out of him by sacrificing Guts.
lol sorry I’m just so into this scene rn I had to go on another spiel about it.
consider: Berserk Armour vs Femto designs
versus
I just rly like how Femto’s exoskeleton can be drawn to either emphasize
Griffith’s face underneath the helmet or obscure it. It’s such a
good way to either depict Femto as a godlike otherworldly demon or a
petty asshole who can taunt Guts but can’t bring himself to kill him – or
like the bottom pic where after several epic godlike shots from
Ganeshka’s awed point of view, we see his face when he’s doing something
much more Griffith-esque: predicting what Skull Knight will do based on
logic and tactics rather than magic knowledge of fate.
Guts’
armour is more literal – when his face is hidden beneath the helmet,
he’s lost himself to his darkness. Femto’s is symbolic as his helmet
doesn’t change, only the angle we see him from changes, but imo it’s
really well-utilized to emphasize or de-emphasize whatever remains of
Griffith. And I think it’s definitely a trend – not 100% the case in
every panel, but overall when we see Femto’s whole face, it tends to be
in moments of weakness or pettiness, in moments where he’s demonstrating human feelings, however twisted they’ve become, and when either his eyes or his
mouth or both are obscured, it tends to emphasize his distance from
Guts, his godliness, his monstrosity.
Also, and tbf this I’m
less sure about bc I can’t remember every moment where Guts thinks about
Femto, but in general I think it holds true: Guts tends to picture
Femto with face partially or entirely obscured when he’s feeling the distance/difference between them and/or murderous rage
and face very visible in moments that emphasize Guts’ similarity to him, and danger of becoming him
idk i just think it’s neat
lol i didn’t notice before how griffith immediately leaves to check “losses” (ie did guts survive) surprising casca and the dude he’s talking to with his abruptness. i love the little details that really show how unprecedented guts is and how quickly he effects griffith.
also i love how in the arrangement of this page femto is to griffith what griffith/femto is to guts
it’s not like it’s news that guts’ dark side is made up of rage and revenge and feelings of betrayal with a solid dose of longing but it’s a nice illustration of it
i love these moments because they all seem inspiring and badass but they all have those ominous undertones – guts’ rage stemming from fear that he is just like the ghosts who want revenge, the shot of the behelit, guts’ inability to let go of the prospect of revenge, and the way his “war declaration” puts him a step closer to being griffith’s equal.
it’s guts repeatedly refusing to acknowledge how very thin the line that divides him from ghosts and monsters and evil gods is imo
so this is p much guts being terrified that he’s going to die because his ambition of getting revenge is too great, but i kind of also want to choose to read it as a behelit/griffith reference, calling the sacrifice a form of self destruction too. he did pick up the behelit before this and knowing his other major frame of reference for great ambition I feel like it works as at least an accidental reference to the Eclipse.
anyway speaking of moments where Griffith desperately needs someone to reassure him.
also now i’m doubling down on my theory that Griffith’s scratch marks here came shortly after “do you think I’m cruel?” rather than the day of Guts’ departure.
I spend months talking about this damn manga and Griffith and his need for validation and self loathing etc etc and I only just fucking noticed that Casca doesn’t actually say no here. She starts to say “no” automatically, then cuts herself off and asks what he was doing with Gennon. Like damn that’s actually a pretty clear “yes.”
Not that I think Casca meant it that way ofc, her heart’s in the right place and she’s a kid who’s totally out of her depth, but still, ouch. That’s like, “no! wait were you sleeping with him? bc actually my answer is dependant on your answer to that question.”
Like add this to the list of reasons Griffith sucks at opening up to people.
I think on a character level it was wishful thinking on Griffith’s part. He saw that Charlotte was still enamoured of him when she took that poison dart for him, and he seized on that fact p desperately, but deep down he knew his plan to be king was fucked and he probably wasn’t going to see her again. It’s perfectly consistent with Griffith’s characterization, he fuckin loves his denial.
Plus it tells us that he hasn’t given up. He’s still him. That moment comes right before he saves them all from an explosion by pointing out the thin wall to Pippin, and it works with that to show us that Griffith is still tenacious, still smart and ambitious and sane, and he still wants to be king even if it’s an impossible dream now. And it also sets us up for his later desperation and despair after Wyald makes his helplessness impossible to deny.
On a narrative level it’s v useful foreshadowing.
In no way does it make sense that he was planning the Hawk’s sacrifice lol, he didn’t even have the behelit at that point, even if some people for some reason believe that he knew how it worked and intended to use it.
Like… I’ve seen people take a lot of little character moments like that and twist them into “proof” that Griffith is diabolically planning to make the sacrifice, and none of them ever make sense because the idea that Griffith has been planning to sacrifice them at any point before he says “I sacrifice” undermines the entire emotional thrust of the story.
Plus it contradicts many, many stated facts, like eg you can only sacrifice people you love so much it’s like they’re a part of you, the Godhand’s explanation to Griffith, Griffith prioritizing Guts over his dream several times, Griffith’s confusion when he starts seeing demons and Eclipse references, the fact that the behelit only opens in a moment of pure despair (why would he feel despair if he knew he was about to become a God), the fact that he tried to kill himself immediately prior to the Eclipse, Griffith desperately trying to catch Guts as he falls from the big hand, and Griffith’s clearly explained motivation for making the sacrifice – like the entire sequence leading up to the sacrifice where the Godhand are talking to bb Griffith in his head makes no sense if he’s been planning it all along. How do people manage to ignore that????
Anyway tl;dr that theory’s dumb, hope this helped lol.
u should learn to trust ur instincts guts, you literally figured this out the night after you left:
goddamn it dude
i’m js that griffith is ‘the desired’ of humanity, and guts is our protagonist and representative of humanity, which makes berserk gay af right down to its core themes, and this sequence of pages sure doesn’t hide that fact
Something to think about:
While Griffith is human, Guts is an ordinary dude doing his best.
While Griffith is Femto, Guts is the Black Swordsman, traumatized, lashing out, driven by the rage inside of him.
While Griffith is NeoGriffith, Guts shifts away from rage and revenge towards personal growth.
Plus, each of Guts’ character shifts is a direct result of Griffith. Becoming Griffith’s soldier helps Guts come out of his shell, helps him grow as a person and accept the friendships of those around him, helps him be a responsible leader and dedicated comrade, and inspires him.
Guts becomes the Black Swordsman because of Femto’s actions, because of his desire for revenge and need to exorcise the rage and hurt inside him.
And Guts decides to take Casca to Elfhelm, gaining friends and chilling out along the way because NeoGriffith “abandoned” him.
I don’t have a real conclusion to draw but I’m throwing this out there anyway. Parallels, reflections, etc.
also guts thinking griffith is so godly and high above him is such a good self fulfilling prophecy
i’m not over how ridiculously hot griffith is in this love triangle dynamic establishing scene
like he’s so obviously the point the other two are competing for i can’t handle it
i mean the page right after just says in words what the art says in art:
like
the point of chapter 1 is to establish where the characters are at 3 years later and the important things we see are:
also look at griffith’s expressions here
he’s so damn fond and in love omg
i’m still not over skull knight calling griffith half of guts
first and last glimpse
guts and griff tiny on the side pursuing their dreams while dwarfed by their other half and their feelings for him. and these monologues in general are pretty comparable so i feel like this is purposeful.
also like – while griffith has come to the realization that his dream is nothing compared to guts, guts gets it into his head to pursue a dream because of his feelings for griffith (not just love but respect and admiration etc), and wanting griffith to return them. they’re kind of evolving in opposite directions here, but both motivated by the other.
Guts thinking about the Band, remembering them and recognizing that their memories are part of what drives and inspires him and keeps him going now. His bros and comrades get one page, and Casca and Griffith get the next two and like, goddamn that image. (And this isn’t even about how his platonic Hawk bros get their moment and then his objects of sexual affection get theirs js.)
Like yeah I wrote a long post about how Guts and Casca’s relationship is all about Griffith from start to end but yk I could’ve just posted this page because it says the exact same thing in a lot fewer words.
I mean look at it. Guts and Casca having sex. Casca is facing towards us/Guts, Griffith is, once again, facing away. But they’re wrapped in his cape. They are connecting to each other in Griffith’s absence – Griffith is unavailable, emotionally and literally, but Casca is there and ready to be connected to. And his presence literally surrounds them as they fuck out their feelings about him thru each other.
And it’s two pages before Guts’ revelation that leaving her behind was just like abandoning Griffith which makes him vow to find her and make up for it. Liiiiiiike these parallels aren’t subtle.
more on this page bc i’m not over it yet
speaking of comparing griffith watching guts fight zodd with his heart beating to the moment griffith first sees guts facing off against bazuso
(incidentally the same page guts asks whether griffith is gay)
more half faces, sultry eyes, talk of risking death, and guts’ lookin sweaty
like I don’t rly think this is a purposeful callback to these moments lol, but i sure have fun drawing the comparison, and that sexy half face is pretty consistent.
then from griffith’s perspective you have guts looking, imho, hotter than he usually looks. the half-face cuts off his missing eye, he’s sweaty and panting with exertion, the lighting highlights the planes of his face very well, hair catching the light, intense expression but not heightened or exaggerated – just makes him look angry in a manly way lbr.
like ok i’m not going thru 250 chapters looking for images of guts from the perspectives of other ppl with crushes on him like farnese, bc i didn’t keep track of that on my readthru so i have no idea where they might be, so i have no comparisons here when it comes to guts’ image. but yk, basically i just think this page feels charged af and i love it.
you're the only one 