I’d say that argument is directly and unambiguously contradicted over and over again in the story, including by Griffith himself.
And like, literally the last thing Griffith thinks before sacrificing Guts is that Guts is more important than his dream. That’s why he’s sacrificing him. “You’re the only one who made me forget my dream.”
The main point of the Golden Age is to hammer home the concept that Guts is more important to Griffith than the dream, and it does it over and over and over lol. Everything revolves around that fact. And the sacrifice is a really clever (imo) culmination of that theme, not a weird last-minute contradiction of it.
Also I might try to add a quick explanation of my reading of the dream, ie it’s a defense mechanism/way for Griffith to escape his feelings, both guilt and the feelings for Guts that make him vulnerable and essentially destroyed his life, “the life of the person you loved the most and hated the most! you gave it to us so that you could bury your fragile human heart!” all that jazz. Which explains why Griffith chooses his dream over Guts even though he cares about Guts more (because he cares about him more). But idk if I could manage that without writing an essay, or more likely, linking one I’ve already written lol.
Wrt the second bit, idk what the fact that he had to sacrifice the other Hawks too has to do with it, it’s pretty clear to me that Godhand sacrifices are bigger and more epic than apostle sacrifices, but Guts still gets the spotlight even though there’s 30-40 others in the group. He’s the one Griffith’s last thoughts are directed to, he’s the one Slan singles out as a particularly excellent sacrifice, he’s the one Zodd directed his “prophecy” to and even makes sure to save so he can be sacrificed later (when he threw him a sword during the battle of Doldrey), while Rosine and the Count and Wyald killed a bunch of Hawks before the Eclipse without causing any issues. He’s the one Skull Knight singles out to give a warning to.
I like that the rest of the Hawks are included because it proves that Griffith does in fact care very much about all of them. I mean Casca’s flashback already proved that, but yk, it never hurts to underline Griffith’s capacity for caring about others, because Griffith himself downplays it as much as possible lol, to say nothing about the fandom. But I don’t think it detracts from Guts as the most important sacrifice either. He’s still above and beyond. He’s the one who caused Griffith’s behelit-opening despair, and he’s the one Griffith sacrifices to escape that despair.
Idk man, the sacrifice is like half the reason I ship griffguts, so I definitely don’t think it downplays or diminishes Griffith’s feelings for Guts in any way, imo it emphasizes how they’re front and centre as Griffith’s number one priority and central motivation in an immensely satisfying way.
Yup! Guts is so important mainly because he is the one person that was able to get behind Griffith´s defense mechanisms…
I think that Guts own fragility also plays a role in it…Guts doesn´t approach anybody…but soon he found himself being drawn to Griffith, but he also fought that urge…making him appear in Griffith´s eyes as somebody special…somebody who fought not just against the “perfect image” of Griffith, but also wished to be near the person…They were comrades at the beginning…before Promerose…
Then he succumbed to the image of Griffith…but for Griffith himself…nothing had changed…
On the other hand…Guts did perceive Griffith as a person of higher standing, that is clear when he says to Griffith, he should just order him to go and
kill that person when Griffith wished to ask him on a more personal
level…, simply due to his abilities…Griffith was oblivious to his own feelings for Guts (romantically or not…Guts was important for him)
The relationship is so fascinating because it is neither entirely fire nor water, but both…just at different times.
Yeah totally! It’s one of those relationships that could’ve been perfect for them, but they didn’t quite manage to set aside their false perceptions of themselves and each other in time, and that’s what ruined everything. I like how you put it, both fire and water but at different times. They’re fundamentally compatible but they miss out on that ultimate connection because they each prioritize the wrong thing at the wrong moments.
Like I maintain that if Guts had never heard the Promrose Hall speech, Tombstone of Flame would’ve been the scene that sealed the deal. Guts seeing Griffith’s vulnerabilities and being put in a position where his reassurance is what Griffith needs, demonstrating how human Griffith really is and how necessary Guts is to him. And Guts being able to be there for him and provide that reassurance.
But yk Guts overheard the stupid Promrose Hall speech, took it to heart, and prioritized dreams instead of human connection.
@freewilllife I’m c/ping this bc that post is really long to reblog imo lol
I half-wonder if this is an issue with Miura writing some of Berserk
while depressed lol, considering how utterly cynical the Conviction arc
is.
I think this is the case.Depending on the real life issues of the author…and yes I think it somehow is fitting…
Because
sometimes a relationship even an unequal one is better than being
alone, however it can turn out worse if the dependent state doesn´t
develop…
Somehow I think ( I know what a thought…most
Griffith/Guts fans do know that I suppose) that Griffith and Guts had a
dependency on each other that could have turned into a nice
relationship, but fate and their own insufficient communication skills
prevented it.
Guts wished to be the equal of Griffith…he
wished to acquire it…The way he chose was…It would have not been bad if
he had somehow come to another realisation than committing murder is his
“dream” ( That is just my priority maybe?).
Casca on the other
hand wished to maintain an unequal relationship at all cost…she wished
to be near Griffith, later Guts. It is depicted as if Casca only wished
to be Griffith´s sword since she wished to stay in his shadow…Whereas
Guts wished to obtain an own dream in order to be his equal…
Yeah there’s something to be said for Guts and Casca’s (and Charlotte’s) respective reactions to hearing Griffith’s dream speech. Even if it was a stupid speech and Guts’ decision was misguided, he’s still the only one who was like, well I’d better go out and achieve something so I can be his bff.
And it’s also very telling that Guts invited Casca along on his dream adventure – it shows that Guts is not thinking of her as an equal, he’s thinking of her as support for him, the way she was support for Griffith, rather than someone who could achieve her own dream and become an equal w/ him and Griffith.
(This probably says more about how Miura sees romantic (het) relationships as opposed to All-Important Bonds Between Men, but yk.)
Like imo the whole notion of dreams + equals is stupid as fuck, but it’s what Guts is basing his life around at that point and Casca just doesn’t figure in as a potential equal as far as he’s concerned.
Also of course I completely agree that Guts and Griffith’s relationship could’ve been exactly what they both needed, and could’ve been (and was for a time) a hugely positive influence on both of them, but fate and their own issues interfered and ruined it. Like I don’t think they were ever not equals – regardless of their stupid arbitrary standards, their feelings for each other made them equals, and I s2g the water fight is symbolic of that fact.
Like, not literally but symbolically, Griffith won the first fight, Guts won the second – the waterfight. So when Guts won a third – the second duel – it fucked up the balance and resulted in Griffith losing everything, and demonstrated that Guts was leaving based on a false premise.
(also lmao yeah the dream Guts landed on is kind of hilarious in how terrible it is. i love that you describe it as ‘committing murder’ bc it’s not exactly far off)
this isn’t a complete thought here but i wonder/hope that there’s some narrative irony happening or going to happen if anything? idk like of course the ceremony and events leading up to griffiths reincarnation as a perfect image of his dream and ideal self would try to hammer home cynicism of not needing others enough. guts kind of well with the campiness of the arc too ig. i hope this makes a little sense i haven’t read conviction in a long time.
Yeah no I get what you mean, ngl I was kind of thinking something similar while re-reading those chapters, like, everything Egg says about relationships sounds like it could come straight from a Griffith who has been burned lol. And it is the lead-up to the creation of Griffith’s perfect world, which Egg is advocating for here. So in that way it does maybe make sense to be extra cynical, reflecting back on Golden Age stuff through a whatever the opposite of rose coloured lens is.
like, maybe that’s Femto’s perception of that relationship lol.
I mean honestly this is exactly how I think Griffith thought of himself after the second duel/even tombstone of flame, word for word. And again, that’s something that could’ve changed so easily if Guts had just told him how he actually felt.
So I can’t accept it as an objective statement, but a subjective statement filtered thru bitterness + self-loathing? Kinda works.
Also yeah the extremely campy tone of this arc does kind of lend itself to more meta (in the self-referential sense, not the fandom essays sense) stuff like this imo.
My misgiving is that this seems like more thought than Miura put into it lol. But idk I should probably re-read the whole arc before I say something like that, like maybe there are indications that we’re not meant to take some of the Conviction arc themes as objective truth, and I just don’t remember/never noticed them.
every time i re-read a bit of the conviction arc i want to say something about its depiction of relationships, whether that gels with the rest of the story, etc, but it’s always so hugely daunting
in part because it seems to contradict everything i get out of the golden age lmao
like according to conviction arc themes, the fatal flaw in griffith and guts’ relationship was that it was too intense and they needed each other too much
like, according to the conviction arc
the problem here isn’t that Guts failed to understand his own importance to Griffith and therefore left, the problem was that he was important to Griffith at all. Griffith should have been able to rely on himself and no one else.
look at this:
transcription bc the writing is hard to read:
But those threatened by the dark… can by no means ever let go of a torch. All they can do is stare in blank surprise at their illuminated, disgustingly cruel selves… and continue to suffer it… And to protect their stunted self-esteem they depend on it… all the while hating it. Cravenly… deceitfully…
(They’re even both on the giant hands, and Luca and Guts both let go self-sacrificially. It’s a very direct parallel.)
Of course, this statement is extremely cynical and delivered by an antagonist. But the narrative seems to fully support it regardless:
According to the Conviction arc, Griffith was right when he said this:
And Guts was right to leave. Guts and Griffith’s problem was that they were never equals, and they admired and resented and clung to each other in turn.
I absolutely cannot reconcile the themes of the Conviction arc with the Golden Age, because that is clearly not the point of the Golden Age.
Oh but bthump, you might say, the point is that Guts and Griffith were too obsessed wtih each other while not being equals and that was a bad thing, while Guts and Casca have an equal relationship and therefore they are an example of a good relationship, just like Nina and her shitty boyfriend up there.
Well, sorry to say, the Conviction arc is also gtsca negative, here’s Casca stating the theme right before saying it also applies to her:
Stop relying on other people, Casca.
There’s also “a person hurts someone just because they’re strong” as a prelude to Guts assaulting Casca. Like, they’re not a happy healthy equal relationship either lol, either pre or post Eclipse.
Of course, it’s worth noting that the Conviction arc is very Black Swordsman-y, and therefore its “most relationships are bad, actually” message may not be wholly sincere, but may be more a reflection of Guts’ current stupidity.
eg
Will you? Because to me it looks like you got caught up in trying to kill incorporeal images of the Godhand and trying to find Griffith and completely forgot about her, only remembering the whole “save Casca” plan once you realized you couldn’t kill the images you were swinging at.
Yeah Guts, at a time like this you’re.
Someone else’s strength, Isidro’s, saved her.
And of course, Guts’ “I can do everything myself” stupidity continues until he sexually assaults Casca and finally realizes maybe he needs some people to rely on. It’s all bookended by the Beast of Darkness, and it’s later contradicted by Guts’ rpg group. I mean, he gains them because they’re all fucking clinging to him and considering him better than them lol. Farnese calls him her saint, Isidro idol worships him, there are parallels drawn between Guts and the group and Griffith and his followers a lot.
But again, by Conviction arc logic, the rpg group is bad. Following Guts is bad. But that’s obviously not the case.
But like, man, the Conviction arc just hammers in this shit about unequal relationships and clinging to others, resenting the torches in the darkness, etc etc etc, over and over and over. Even the religious stuff feels like a statement on unequal relationships – people clinging to a God like Nina clung to Luca like Casca clings to Griffith then Guts, like Griffith and Guts clung to each other. Like it’s hard to dismiss it all as bullshit. But it’s so fucking awful lol, I absolutely loathe it.
And it is directly contradicted by stuff like the fact that this is portrayed as good:
I half-wonder if this is an issue with Miura writing some of Berserk while depressed lol, considering how utterly cynical the Conviction arc is. Or maybe this is all going to come back front and centre and we’ll find out the rpg group is also fucked up and about to tear itself apart. I mean if a person hates someone because they’re weak and hurts someone because they’re strong, everyone in the rpg group should be full of resentment towards Guts. Come to think of it, the Hawks should’ve all hated Griffith. Falconia should hate Griffith. It should be another Tower of Conviction, by this logic, full of resentful baby-eating heretics lmao.
OR – is that a statement on the world Griffith overturns? Silat saying tyranny will always exist, that’s the reason of man, and Jarif responding with, yeah well Griffith’s world lies outside of your idea of reason. Like, Egg’s wish, and therefore humanity’s collective wish, was for an ideal world where that shit he says about relationships doesn’t apply, right?
I just don’t fucking know what the point is man. Some relationships are good, some relationships are bad, and there’s no rhyme or reason to which we’re saying are good and which we’re saying are bad, or why.
I will tell you one thing tho: according to Conviction arc logic, Guts and Griffith are each others’ gods. So that’s fun.
Also… because Guts and Griffith’s power dynamics shift over the course of the Golden Age, my conclusion that their issue isn’t that they’re unequal but that they’re idiots who don’t recognize until it’s too late that their feelings for each other make them equals, isn’t necessarily contradicted by any of this.
This is a pretty strong conclusive statement to be casually contradicted by a parallel to Nina and Luca an arc later.
Like Nina and Luca may be a bad match because Nina cares more for Luca than vice versa – Luca tends to see her as a responsibility lol. But that’s clearly not the case with Guts and Griffith.
But did Miura think about that, one wonders, because the parallels are very direct. Idk idk idk. Fuck authorial intent, whatever the hell Miura was going for, my reading still makes the most sense, contains the fewest contradictions, and is the least fucked up message.
ty! God I really, really want Guts to be shown as Griffith’s equal at some point. I feel like it’s the only way to satisfactorily conclude their whole… thing. Guts letting go of the desire to be Griffith’s equal just isn’t satisfying to me.
But that said I don’t think becoming an apostle is the way to do it. For that literal equality Guts would have to become a Godhand, and unless there’s a 200+ year timeskip after Elfhelm that’s not possible according to the rules of the world. An apostle is a follower of NeoGriff so becoming one wouldn’t make him Griffith’s equal, it would put him back in that position of looking up at him/feeling looked down on.
Ofc one could say that those technical details don’t really matter, what matters is that Griffith succumbed to his superpowered dark side so if Guts does then that’s still equality in a sense, even if he’s a “lesser” monster. But then, he has the armour to represent his dark side, which makes the behelit kind of superfluous now, and it’s been foreshadowed a lot that he’s going to lose himself to the armour at some point.
And since it’s suggested that Skull Knight became a walking skeleton because he succumbed to the amour himself, I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll get more Skull Knight comparisons and there will at least be a danger of Guts becoming like him – powerful but… lacking humanity I guess, if he doesn’t overcome the armour. And that could potentially lead to ~the beast of darkness~ and ~the hawk of light~ regarding each other as equals in a confrontation.
BUT! What I want more than that is acknowledgement that all these standards of literal equality are essentially a smokescreen obscuring what actually made them equal from the beginning, which is the fact that they both loved each other and they were both emotionally vulnerable w/ the other. So honestly acknowledgement that they’re still hung up on each other despite everything is what would work best here imho.
Guts learns that NGriff failed his test on the Hill of Swords and started getting emotional about Guts again, and NGriff learns that in addition to hate Guts still feels residual love, and guilt and regret etc. Followed by an emotionally charged third duel, their strengths (magic superpower, inner darknesses, fate vs not being beholden to fate, whatever) and weaknesses (emotions, love and regret) equally matched.
ohhh man re-reading those chapters in particular and like
there’s such a clear little mini-arc. This isn’t brand new information at all, but I love seeing it laid out like this so I’m going to talk about it.
Chapter 6 starts with Guts trying to visit Griffith while brooding about Casca’s “it’s your fault!”
He’s prevented by social status.
Casca punches him out and Guts leaves and sulks, and the rest of the Hawks have this exchange:
So we start with the statement that everyone’s feeling a little distanced from Griffith thanks to his promotions, and this is very much affecting Guts too, which is why he threw a couple guards down the stairs and made an ass of himself while trying to visit him.
Then we go straight to Guts angrily swinging his sword on the staircase.
He’s pissed off about Casca making him feel like an outsider. This is a dude who has clearly defined issues when it comes to being blamed for bad shit happening. See, eg, Gambino blaming him for the death of Shizu, calling him “cursed,” along with the rest of his first mercenary band.
Three years with the Hawks, and Guts is mostly content and happy, but there’s still this doubt, still this sense that he’s a little on the outside looking in, a little distanced, and Griffith more recently drifting away from everyone puts that background feeling into sharp relief. This is why we begin our narrative, after the three year gap, when Griffith gets promoted into the nobility.
Guts angrily swinging his sword, alone, probably brooding over Casca accusing him of not caring about his comrades since this scene is placed right after that confrontation, while Griffith gets promoted, rising away from him.
Chapter six returns us to Guts swinging his sword angrily and alone while brooding over his feelings of being an outsider. His place is with the Hawks, but is it really? When it’s “his fault” Griffith nearly died, when he’s accused of not caring about anyone but himself?
And then Griffith seeks him out, joining Guts at the midpoint of a staircase, for that extra bit of symbolism.
He talks about how much he hates the other nobles, talks about how nightmarish their encounter with Zodd was, but how it was also interesting theologically lol. A bit of philosophy, a bit of personal connection and emotional opening up. Guts asks the question.
And the turn of this little mini-arc is, of course, this:
The end of chapter six.
It’s Griffith completely assuaging those fears of being an outsider, of losing him to the nobles, of being looked-down on. It’s Griffith negating his deep-seated belief that his only worth is as an asset.
Three years ago Guts began this sentence:
And now, in chapter seven, he’s finally reached a place where he can finish it.
Idk basically this is the pinnacle of Guts’ search for belonging, and I love how well it’s built up to by emphasizing Guts’ outsider status first, through Casca’s angry tirades and through Griffith’s promotions.
Which ofc also provides a solid foundation for the dissolving of Guts’ feeling of personal fulfillment in another few chapters. Honestly it provides a solid foundation for literally everything that comes after. This is the skeletal structure of Berserk – Guts’ longing for love and acceptance vs Guts never quite feeling like he has it. Except right here and right now.
“Even so, incidentally, I found someone I really wanted… to have look at me.”
That feeling goes as easily as it came, with a few words, but it’s what motivates Guts at least until chapter 130 (potentially til chapter 182), after which trying to forget that feeling and focus on what he does have is what motivates him (”I came this far by letting go of my obsession…”) And we’ll see how that goes.
vs
of only 10 chapters previous
I think it’s really cool that Berserk is basically taking this theme of darkness/light, isolation/connection, and portraying it on both an interpersonal scale and a like, grandiose cosmic scale.
With Ganeshka and Griffith the darkness is the isolation of being singular, unknowable even to oneself, and the light is another being existing on the same plane as you, seeing the world the same way as you, seeing you as you truly are. This sense of cosmic understanding.
With Guts and Griffith there’s nothing objectively grandiose or cosmic about it, it’s just a relationship between two dudes that fell apart and still haunts both of them. But their connection is meaningful enough to them that existing without the other is comparable to being a solitary eldrich abomination who can barely even perceive others.
Griffith’s existence as a monster “beyond the reach of man” is basically a symbol of choosing to isolate yourself rather than surrendering to the vulnerability of loving and being loved, and that’s underscored at the climax of the Millenium Falcon arc just as he achieves his dream (both through that moment of connection up there and through Ganeshka’s backstory of paranoia feeding into isolation which is placed right before that moment).
Like for real, all this untouchable, unknowable, eldrich abomination jesus figure stuff is essentially a metaphor for Guts and Griffith breaking up.
And like, I always get a huge kick out of this concept of playing with scales when it comes to interpersonal connection. This isn’t a groundbreaking thing, this is a relatively common fantasy friendship/romance trope – yk the world only gets saved after the couple confesses their feelings, love is the key to achieving X goal, a single person can’t do the magic thing but when their friends join/support them they can do it, Spock running away from his feelings for Kirk is a parallel to a godlike machine’s inability to understand emotion, etc etc etc.
And Griffith and Guts’ moments of connection are like finding the one being you can see and understand in a world of isolation, and losing that is like becoming a monster in a sea of darkness. See also: the Black Swordsman arc and the Berserk armour for a slightly more down-to-earth fantasy metaphor.
i still can’t figure this shit out
you got luca’s statement on guts and casca, followed by, on the same page
nina being a helpless baby
then followed by nina meeting joachim again and doing a 180 which it seems we’re supposed to consider a good thing, and deciding to take off with him instead.
this is interspersed with farnese deciding to follow guts and calling him her saint and prophet.
like, is this going somewhere? unequal relationships, guts and casca, guts and farnese, farnese and casca… anything?
we’ve got guts paralleling griffith in a bunch of different ways, from gaining followers by telling them “do what you want,” to wills being admiringly compared to fire, to being compared to a hero out of a fantasy, to even very recently
but it seems like none of this is… depicted as negative really. is following guts good because he struggles to live and miura thinks that’s cool while following griffith was/is bad because ??? is it just a double standard at work?
or is some payoff coming?
I wanna improve my skills more and challenge myself by crossin’ swords with stronger and stronger enemies… If I stay there may be no lack of battles… but I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough of the battles I want. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll never entrust my sword to another again. I’ll never hang from someone else’s dream.
(for clarity’s sake this is an illustration of Guts’ dream of becoming Griffith’s equal, not a ship thing lol)
oh and like, the second duel is less guts winning his freedom/equality and more guts demolishing griffith and costing him his freedom, both literally and figuratively
like we knew that already – guts left to establish their equality but it was wrongheaded and when he returned griffith had been tortured for a year was totally dependent and had just had a monologue reflecting on guts’ hold on him – but yk the waterfight is a little extra point now.
it only just occurred to me that guts doesn’t necessarily mean ‘now this waterfight is a draw’ but it’s more likely that he means ‘now you won a fight and i won a fight.’
which makes this waterfight and “now we’re even” even more meaningful than i’ve been saying lol. it’s like a negation of the first duel, meaning that guts is symbolically only bound to the hawks by his affection for everyone – which works perfectly with the scene right after this one where guts deliberately chooses to stay after rickert congratulates him and he thinks, “for now.”
also newsflash assholes you’ve been equal the entire goddamn time
Yeah he rly is drawn in a v extra overly beautiful way. Though I think this is more Miura’s art style changing, rather than an in-universe change, mostly because of this:
I think NGriff is probably more perfect looking than human Griff, like if you took human Griffith on the best looking day of his life and gave him that perfection all the time, but I don’t think any of his features or anything have changed, even if Miura draws them slightly different – like curlier hair eg.
ok lemme just hijack this post real quick cause the way i always read griff getting ‘more beautiful post eclipse’ was to show us that distance, to make him just that much more unavailable, i.e. he’s looking the way he did through the eyes of his followers when placed on that pedestal of absolute leader/the man who’s gonna bring them all glory, and later how he looks to guts himself (beautiful as always but very much more distant) once he started to feel like they were not equals after the fountain speech etc. etc.
because to me golden age griff as seen through guts’ eyes was always muuuch more human looking, less composed in his expressions, more open because he felt he could show that side to guts because ‘i’ve never talked to anyone like this before’ and ‘…only you’ and so on. He looks this ethereal now because it makes him unavailable visually, (e.g. wow that dude’s so perfect a lowly peasant such as i could NEVER–) and since we see him through guts’ eyes during a couple of the most powerful post eclipse scenes (honestly hill of swords is like the only one im talking about here but let’s pretend i care as much about other scenes too lmao) that unreal, unattainable beautiful look is the look that sticks, because griffith looks just as gorg. through others eyes, (like charlotte, or rickerts when they meet again) but it’s only when guts looks at him that the difference is so jarring, because TLDR; when guts looked at him before we saw a man, and now we see a god.
(or… like.. none of this and miura just evolved and his new skillz finally enable him to draw griff the way he always wanted to. (BUT I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THERE COULD BE A STYLISTIC CHANGE THIS OBVIOUS THAT DOES NOT HAVE SOME DEEP GRIFFGUTS ROOTS SOMEWHERE IN THERE.)
✌
ia with all of this!
and like, even if ngriff isn’t meant to be overtly physically different looking from regular griffith in any concrete way, he’s still always described as like a painting, like someone out of a fairytale, “more griffith,” etc.
I’ve framed it before as NeoGriffith becoming like the embodiment of the impression human Griffith used to leave people with, and the way you put that through Guts’ eyes specifically really makes a lot of sense to me.
NeoGriffith is totally like, an encapsulation of what Guts saw when he was looking up at him on the stairs to Promrose Hall, when he stopped seeing Griffith as just a man and he became this distant figure. And that just makes it extra depressing.
Yeah I think this is a pretty common conception of Griffith tbh. I’m not sure exactly why you feel this way, but I’ve seen lots of people taking it as read that he’s like, power-obsessed, or a control freak, and that impacts how they see his character.
But I don’t see that at all tbh. I’m going to like, rly briefly summarize how I feel, bc I have a lot of long versions that expand on these points (eg here and here and ofc here if you want the nearly thesis length take lol) if you want more explanation.
Basically Griffith wants power for a reason. He doesn’t want power for the sake of power, he wants power to achieve a goal, a goal that he feels he needs to achieve because of guilt.
A significant aspect of Griffith’s narrative is about how being a leader, being responsible for lives, being distant from everyone who follows him so he can maintain an image, etc, is a burden that takes a huge emotional toll on him.
Griffith is kind of trapped in this paradigm of control and being controlled. He has to be in control for the sake of his dream, in control of himself, in control of others as a leader, but again like, a big point of his narrative is that it’s a burden on him, and at least subconsciously, he wants out. Being a leader who always has to portray the correct image isolates him, being responsible for lives lost fills him with guilt, and he’s stuck because his entire sense of worth revolves around achieving his dream.
And by being controlled I’m referring to the way fate absolves him of guilt, and how he learns it was his destiny and everything he’s ever done was puppeteered by God and he’s nothing more than a pawn, etc. This holds true even as Femto and NeoGriffith, kind of ironically – at his most powerful he is aware that he has no control at all. Like, most of NeoGriffith’s apparent powers seem to be just this intrinsic knowledge that whatever he wants to do is what he’s destined to do, and therefore he can’t be harmed or stopped or prevented from doing what he wants.
(There’s probably also something to be said about Griffith’s powerlessness post-torture, but idk that basically boils down to Griffith still being responsible for that mountain of corpses, but not having the power to follow through and justify it. control vs no power, vs say ngriff’s power but no control. idk this is too long already lol, vague musing on that is enough for now.)
Umm okay to get back to my point, basically imo Griffith is kind of pushed and pulled between the burden of having too much control and the paradoxical freedom of having no control, and his desire for an equal seems to me to be like, an escape from these two extremes. Someone whose life he doesn’t control, who pursues their own reason for being, who Griffith can’t order to their death, who Griffith doesn’t have to wear a mask for – and someone who would fight him if their dreams ever clashed. Valuable as a friend and as an enemy as someone independent of him, who he has no power over and who has no power over him – or who they each have an equal amount of emotional power over.
Lol okay this was all very theme-y rather than based on characterization. So as for like, actual depictions of Griffith wanting Guts as an equal, you have moments like asking him to kill Julius rather than ordering him, the water fight, “it’s funny… you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this” after explaining his thoughts on fate and wanting to know what he’s destined for, “do you think that I’m cruel?”, refusing to rein him in during battle to Casca’s consternation, reminiscing fondly on the duel he almost lost, risking his life and dream for Guts, basically his emotional dependence on him in general.
And wrt his tantrum when Guts leaves, often cited as Griffith’s control-freakiness at work lol, it’s actually another instance of Griffith wanting Guts as an equal, but compilcated by knowing that the reality of their relationship is that Griffith is Guts’ boss, and moreover, he won his loyalty in a fight. He has a breakdown because he sees Guts leaving as a rejection and a statement on their entire relationship – he thinks Guts only stayed with him because Griffith won that duel, and it horrifies him and affirms his belief that he’s cruel, but also narrows his options down to “let him go or win him in another duel” lol, when what he actually wants is for Guts to choose to stay because he wants to stay. (Again, I’ve written about this at great length here if you want more evidence for this reading.)
so that wasn’t as short as I was hoping it would be lmao. But yeah basically the way I see Griffith is that being in control is a burden to him, and he wants an equal/friend because he wants someone whose life he doesn’t control to know him and freely choose him, not as a figurehead but as a person. And he wanted that someone to be Guts.
I’ve probably touched on it before but hell if I can remember where or
how much lol, and I like talking about this so I’ll totally share my
thoughts here.
I think the main reason, which I generally come back to, is because Guts doesn’t treat Griffith with the same awe and reverence the rest of the Hawks tend to treat him with.
Their relationship is very wrapped up in power dynamics – Guts joining the Hawks after losing a duel to him, Guts feeling inadequate after Promrose, Griffith stuck on a pedestal wanting someone to share in the aspects of his rise to power that he feels he has to keep hidden from the rest of the Hawks, Griffith proclaiming none of the Hawks are his friends because they aren’t his equals, “how long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand… instead gain such a strong hold on me?”, Guts internally waxing poetic about how untouchable and perfect Griffith is until remembering moments where Griffith was extremely vulnerable w/ him, etc etc.
This is a moment when they both felt like they were equals. “Now we’re even.” Just two kids having a water fight.
Griffith distances himself shortly after this with his speech about his dream, but I feel like it kind of encapsulates them. There are all these artificial power dynamics standing in their way – leader/soldier, dude with a dream/dude without a dream, griffith trying to maintain an image/guts buying into that image after overhearing the Promrose speech – but at their core they’re just two people who have a strong connection.
This shows through when Guts treats Griffith’s orders as suggestions and gets chewed out by Casca, when Griffith asks him to assassinate Julius like a favour rather than an order, when Griffith risks his life and dream for Guts, when Griffith asks if Guts thinks he’s cruel, when Guts says Griffith can take off the mask since it’s just the two of them, etc. All these little glimpses of equality that can never last – and every time they fall by the wayside in favour of reinforcing the power dynamics, it leads to tragedy.
Like
But someone has to win the duel they insist on fighting.
lol I think I kinda veered off topic. But basically Guts is the one person who comes closest to treating Griffith as a person rather than a figurehead, and this marks their relationship as different, and brings them closer than Griffith is with anyone else. It’s why Guts is the person Griffith chooses to help assassinate people. You can even see this in Guts’ decision to leave – Casca hears the speech too and pretty much resigns herself to playing second fiddle, but Guts decides to do whatever it takes to become Griffith’s equal, misguided as his reasoning was.
Yk, rather than upholding the artificial dream criteria of equality, ignore it and recognize that it’s just getting in the way of actual equality.
Buuuut that explains like, why Griffith came to rely so heavily on Guts, and let him be the only person to see underneath the mask of perfection. It doesn’t explain why he was so drawn to Guts in the first place, or why he risked his life to save him the very first time, after only knowing him like a week.
Honestly idk lol. I think this was partially meant to be a little ironic, coming right after the Black Swordsman arc – showing that what fascinates Griffith about Guts is exactly those qualities Guts embodies to an extreme extent as the Black Swordsman, and which Femto claimed to have no interest in.
Overall I think it’s definitely the case that Griffith is enamoured of these traits of Guts’ – his stubbornness, his willingness to do anything to win, the way he faces danger head on, etc. I’m not entirely sure what that says about Griffith though, or even if it’s intended to reflect on Griffith’s character beyond that irony of how Guts is at his most “interesting” by this criteria when he’s Griffith’s enemy.
Though…
I wonder if it still kind of comes back to that equality.
The fight Griffith reminisces fondly about is the one where he got punched in the face and nearly lost because the other dude bit his fucking sword and pushed him off a hill lol.
Like it kind of comes down to Griffith being knocked off his pedestal, and Guts having the ability to do that?
Ooooh and that makes the second duel really interesting. Guts is the only person Griffith has lost a fight to, and that maybe straight up symbolizes his love. Like Guts walked away after demonstrating exactly what Griffith loves most about him.
Idk lol this has kind of devolved into me just like musing outloud, sorry.
And actually I do know I talked about the whole equality thing more here (this is the 2nd part of a very long analysis lol) if you feel like reading more of my thoughts on that lol. I kind of want to sit down and think about how the duels and Guts’ “struggler” thing fit in more now lol.
Anyway ty for the question and comments, and I hope you had a lovely day when you sent this lol, and are having another lovely day now!
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.
though idt he really promised a happy ending so much as a not completely bleak and depressing ending, so it’s not as ominous as it could be
like it sucks for me because my ideal ending is basically guts once again succumbing to his obsession with griffith, meeting with him again in a climactic manner, realizing griffith is actually still stupid in love, some kind of visual suggestion of equality or guts looking down at him bc their persistant feelings equalize them despite everything, and then guts finding some kind of emotional catharsis in that, hopefully while one or both of them is dying
but the story ending with guts still obsessed with griffith would probably be a negative ending according to like, the themes of berserk lol
i think there are ways it could be swung in a more positive direction. eg remove casca from the possibility of a romantic happily ever after with guts, lean on threatening the possibility of guts ending up like skull knight, eg stripped of humanity and lost to the armour and immortal and doomed to seek revenge forever or w/e, and put guts’ genuinely conflicting, based in love, human feelings for griffith opposite that. in this way immortality would be associated with monstrousness and death with humanity, and guts and griffith dying together, or just guts dying, or w/e would be extra perfect, particularly if one or both fail to go through with killing the other at the last minute
(the whole sacrifices doomed to hell thing kinda fucks with that but it fucks with any possible non-depressing ending no matter what lol, so miura is either going to have to go dark with guts’ ending or do what i suggest and make him not actually irrevocably destined for hell after all)
like idk i know what i want and i think there’s enough groundwork laid for it to be possible, but there’s also groundwork laid for like, worst case scenarios too. everything’s up in the air
like man i can’t help but fear the possibility that guts is going to succumb to the beast of darkness, be pulled back yet again by his friends, and then ~overcome~ his desire for revenge/to be griffith’s equal while getting with casca. and then they idk team up with elfhelm to defeat griffith/the godhand. like i believe miura is better than that but it’s only belief, not fact
true answer: miura is a misogynist hack who doesn’t really gaf about casca, and needed to get rid of her for a while because he hadn’t invented her yet while writing the black swordsman arc, and is less than concerned about whether guts even comes across as someone who genuinely cares for her.
meta answer:
whyever Miura decided to go that route, Guts’ actions after the Eclipse seem like a pretty strong indication that he wasn’t as angry on behalf of Casca as he was about Griffith transforming into a monster and destroying everything he values. Casca became a symbol of everything he lost – the good old days with the Hawks and Griffith – rather than seeing her as a person in her own right.
And to take that a step further, remember, Guts’ pre-Eclipse revelation was that he broke Griffith’s heart when he left, and therefore he already had what he tried attaining by leaving. The Eclipse wipes that away. Whatever Griffith has become does not (apparently) love or value Guts, and is not Guts’ equal or friend.
and this fucks Guts up
Femto raping Casca was proof that he has fundamentally changed into a monster who looks down on Guts, and Guts does drastic things when someone he loves looks down on him, thanks to his giant collection of daddy issues. Like leaving the woman he supposedly cares for in a cave and going on a self-destructive monster hunting spree.
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
I think that, from the very start, Griffith’s feelings for Guts are at least as strong as his feelings for his dream. I say this because Griffith doesn’t have a pattern of desiring things or people and doing what he can to have them. Til now he’s had one thing he wants and that’s a kingdom, and now after meeting Guts he has one more thing he wants, and as soon as he’s given an opening he pursues him with equal fervour.
And from the very start, his feelings for Guts have a tendency to make Griffith forget about his dream.
“I don’t feel at all responsible for my comrades who have lost their lives under my command. I guess… it’s because they themselves chose to fight.”
This is what Griffith says when he begins self-harming in the river. This is the number one way he rationalizes away and buries his guilt. He repeats it to the Godhand later too – “I never forced anyone to come along.”
Remember how he recruited Casca? “Whether you come along or not is your decision.” The fact that his Hawks freely choose to follow him is extremely important to him.
Now, he didn’t press-gang or kidnap Guts lol. He didn’t even suggest dueling for his loyalty – Guts himself suggested it, and I can only assume that if he hadn’t, Griffith would’ve let him walk away. But when Guts did suggest a way to win his loyalty, Griffith seized on it hard, instead of allowing Guts the same perfectly free choice to follow him the rest of the Hawks had.
Guts is explicitly the first and only person who Griffith has expressed desire for, Guts is therefore presumably the first and only person Griffith tried to sweet-talk into joining him, and it seems safe to assume that Guts is probably the only person he’d so eagerly agree to fight a duel for. His rationale of giving his followers a free choice, which is necessary to allieviate his guilt, is forgotten here – therefore his guilt is forgotten.
This is the beginning of a war between Guts and the dream in Griffith’s subconscious, that we see again and again throughout his narrative.
A week after Guts joins the Hawks, Griffith risks his life for him for the first time. The reaction to his actions here handily tells us how unprecedented this is.
Griffith ditching this dude in the hat – quite likely the guy who hired them – mid-sentence to immediately check on losses, ie whether Guts made it, to vocal surprise from both hat man and Casca.
Then he leads a back-up team to rush to Guts’ defense. And it’s geuinely risky – they escape death here by like an inch while Guts frets about the two of them weighing down the horse.
And of course Guts questions him directly while Griffith avoids answering:
And we get more helpful commentary on how surprising Griffith’s actions here are from the peanut gallery:
The next morning Guts broaches the topic again, after accepting Griffith’s initial brush-off.
This scene starts with Guts and Griffith’s first real bonding experience, and it ends with Griffith’s grandiose and iconic “I will get my own kingdom. You will fight for my cause, because you belong to me.”
The first time we read this it comes across as a kind of really off-putting and over the top statement of ownership. Guts is dazzled by it, because he’s dazzled by everything Griffith does, but it’s not surprising that so many Berserk fans see this moment as sinister and threatening to an extent. Frankly, it’s a fucking weird thing to say lmao. As Eclipse foreshadowing it’s great, but as a character moment it raises a lot of questions.
But here’s the thing: Casca’s flashback tells us exactly why he says it.
Two things happen right before this moment. First Griffith and Guts have a naked water fight and bond. Then, after an exchange about the behelit, Guts asks Griffith that question once again.
This time Griffith has an answer.
Now remember, Guts thinks this is bullshit. He directly says so three years later when he has to ask the same question yet again. This line Griffith gives him is a lie – a lie that Griffith himself may very well believe, and tbh I personally think he does, but it’s not the reason Griffith saved him.
And this fun naked bonding experience?
It’s a subtle parallel to the scene with Casca. The tone and circumstances are obviously very different, but the point of this comparison is the emotional intimacy. Both Casca and Guts are shown glimpses of the real Griffith underneath the armour, underneath the veneer of perfection he puts on. It’s not a coincidence that he’s naked in both either.
Casca’s glimpse is dark and depressing while Guts’ is just light and human – a glimpse of the child Griffith still is, entirely Guts’ equal in every relevant way. Same age, same vulnerability to buckets of water, and in the end, Guts dumps a bucket on his head and says they’re equal even. Then he asks why Griffith saved him.
After each scene, Griffith shuts them both out – he clams up and puts the mask back on when Casca tries to comfort him, and with Guts, he does this:
This happens on the very same page that Griffith makes his “excellent soldier” excuse. He segues immediately from that into his elegant statement about his dream and how Guts is totally going to die for it – when he chooses.***
What I’m saying is that it’s a distancing tactic. Somewhere deep down Griffith knows his answer to Guts’ question is bullshit. He knows he’s already prioritizing Guts over his dream, and he knows how utterly dangerous that is to his entire life plan. He represses that fact and reminds himself here that his dream is all-important and he’s probably going to send Guts to his death for it someday, and he saved Guts’ life simply because it’s his perogative to decide when, and he decided that last night wasn’t the time.
Because let’s be real here, for a mercenary leader, “I will choose the place where you die,” is a factual statement. It’s more than likely that he’ll send Guts to his death someday simply by ordering him into the battle that eventually kills him. And as we learn in the later flashback, it’s a fact of his life that takes a serious emotional toll on him. He viciously self harms while monologuing about people dying for his dream.
Like, again, it’s an incredibly weird thing to say outloud to someone, but no less true for that, and knowing what we learn about Griffith, him saying it in these specific circumstances – after bonding with Guts, after being treated like an ordinary kid rather than the symbol of success he makes himself out to be, after being questioned about something irrational and dangerous he’d just done to save Guts’ life – strongly suggests to me that he’s using the dream as a way of repressing and denying his feelings for Guts, feelings that have already taken precedence over his dream once, after only knowing him for a week.
But while he was able to keep Casca at an emotional distance, he fails entirely where Guts is involved.
Three years later the first notable plot event we see after one chapter of establishing off-screen character development and where-are-they-now-ing is Griffith risking his life for Guts again, to an even greater, more irrational extent this time.
Like, this is what defines their relationship. It begins with Griffith putting his life and dream on the line for Guts despite consciously telling Guts and himself that Guts is expendable, and three years later we pick the story back up when Griffith does it again.
And this time it’s not Griffith and Guts escaping an opposing force by the skin of their teeth together – this time Griffith and Guts lose. Guts is up against a monster, Griffith sees this, he tells the rest of the Band to run when he realizes that a volley of arrows does nothing, and he stays behind himself to try to rescue Guts. He doesn’t even order someone else to run in and grab him, he just automatically, instinctively runs to him while telling the rest of the Band to escape to safety.
There’s a reason this is the moment he recalls when thinking about how he loses his composure around Guts.
Like okay, we all know that Griffith is in love with Guts, I figure I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but it’s important to understand how huge this is. Fate ensures that they survive the encounter – Zodd sees the behelit, lols, and leaves – but Griffith didn’t know that would happen. For all intents and purposes, he’s dead here. And he’s not just laying down his life for Guts, he’s laying down his dream. Casca even makes the distinction when she yells at Guts for it in the cave later – he can go die himself on some battlefield, but she won’t let him take Griffith’s dream down with him.
When they talk about it on the staircase afterwards their relationship takes a huge turn. Guts asks again why Griffith risked his life for him, and like the previous instance three years ago, this is also the second time he questioned Griffith after failing to get an answer.
Here’s the final time Guts asks the question:
And here’s Griffith’s new answer, now that Guts has called him out on making shit up:
This time Griffith’s got absolutely nothing. He doesn’t fall back on a convenient rationalization because it simply wasn’t a rational decision, and this is the closest he can get to admitting that.
He doesn’t admit the truth either – that he risked his life and dream for Guts because he loves him and prioritizes him above the dream – probably because he himself still doesn’t realize, because he’s so disconnected from his feelings after spending most of his life burying them that he can’t recognize and identify them. But imo this is still the closest to self-aware Griffith gets before the torture chamber, so like, give him a pat on the back.
Now, I see a strong through line from this moment to another scene: the night he asks Guts to kill a man for him.
The way he asks is unusual enough for Guts to comment on it. He explains the risks, explains why he suspects Julius, and asks Guts to help him.
I’m gonna throw something out there that people joke about but is actually totally relevant:
It’s dirty work. Failure isn’t permissible at all, nor is your face being seen. It’s for those reasons… that I’m asking you to do this.
The assassin can’t be recognized and can’t fuck it up, so Griffith specifically asks a huge dude with a huge sword who’s never stealthily killed anyone in his life and who immediately fucks it up to do it. Like, I’m thinking Judeau might’ve been a more solid choice for this particular mission, yk?
But those aren’t the reasons he picked Guts. The reason he picked Guts is the very first sentence: “It’s dirty work.”
This is the first time we see Griffith toss around the word “dirty” but it sure as hell isn’t the last. This is Griffith revealing a side of himself that he hasn’t revealed to anyone before, except Casca, accidentally – a side of himself that he’s ashamed of. And Guts is who he wants to reveal it to.
And this is Guts’ response.
Griffith is treating Guts like an equal in this scene, not like a soldier. In a way it’s a reversal of the waterfight scene: Guts treated Griffith like an equal and friend, and Griffith reminded himself that he’s Guts’ commander. Here Griffith is treating Guts like an equal and friend, and it’s Guts who reminds them that Griffith is the boss and he’s the subordinate.
I don’t think Guts intended to distance himself – it reads like a tension-breaking joke to me, but it’s a joke based on truth. They are a commander and subordinate, and this is a gentle rebuff and reminder of that fact to Griffith because, after risking his life for Guts and finally admitting it made no sense to do so, their actual unequal relationship has slipped from the forefront of his mind.
It’s a minor misunderstanding, and imo it wouldn’t be very important in the grand scheme of things, if it wasn’t for the next time Guts sees Griffith:
“They are… excellent troops. Together we have faced death so many times. They are my valuable comrades, devoting themselves to the dream I envision… But… to me, a friend is… something else. Someone who would never depend upon another’s dream… someone who wouldn’t be compelled by anyone, but would determine and pursue his own reason to live… And should anyone trample that dream he would oppose him body and soul… even if that threat were me myself… What I think a friend is… is one… who is my equal.”
Guts has just reminded him that while Griffith may want Guts to be his friend and equal, whether consciously or not, and may even be already subconsciously thinking of him that way, it’s not the nature of their relationship. Griffith is still his commander. He’s still the one who orders him into battle, and Guts could still die in service to his dream.
And like the waterfight to speech sequence three years ago, this is another instance of Griffith pulling back and trying to re-prioritize his dream over Guts, pushing down and repressing his actual feelings for Guts to focus on dreams.
Personally I don’t think Griffith is at all consciously aware of what he’s doing lol. I don’t think he planned to treat Guts like a friend and equal while asking him to assassinate someone, and I don’t think he actually thought to himself, “oh right, I’m his commander, not his friend.” I think it just came naturally for him to ask Guts instead of ordering him, and I think it came naturally to pontificate about how he doesn’t have friends while talking to Charlotte, and Guts reminding him that he’s his boss is at least partly why, even if Griffith himself doesn’t make that connection.
There’s a war raging between Guts and the dream in Griffith’s subconscious, and in light of being reminded that Guts views him as a superior and takes orders from him, the dream is rallying, basically.
During this whole speech Griffith is building the dream up, making it seem significant just for existing. What it does is show us how he sees himself – or, maybe more accurately, how he wants to see himself. He wants to believe that his dream is inherently noble, he needs to believe that it’s a worthy pursuit. Griffith isn’t lying to Charlotte here, so much as he’s lying to himself.
For no other’s sake vs for their sakes.
It’s easy to take the speech at face value at first, but it’s impossible when you learn more about Griffith.
The speech is about an abstract ideal, the same way his monologue about destiny was in his first scene, and it’s transformed when we learn more about him in five chapters, and are shown that the reality beneath it is much more complex. Dreams devouring dreams like storms, a life spent as a martyr to the god named Dream, Griffith finding the idea of being born and living just to live abhorrent – these are all framed as pretentious philosophical ideals. But looking back after Casca’s flashback once again gives this speech depth.
It’s his way of insisting to himself that he is what everyone believes him to be – an idealistic philosopher king waiting for his throne, justified in everything he does because it’s his perogative as a person to pursue a dream and achieving it is its own validation and proof that it was a worthy venture, rather than a monster walking a path of corpses.
I’d go so far as to argue that this is the point of Griffith’s wonderfully sinister smile when he finds out Guts killed Adonis too.
Again, it’s only five chapters before we learn that he has serious dead-child-related guilt issues, so what’s the deal? Well, the deal is that Griffith is even better at denial than he is at waging war. It’s the polar opposite of his reaction to First Kid’s death entirely for the sake of highlighting that difference.
The only two conclusions you can draw are that either Griffith has completely changed since the events Casca relates and no longer feels any guilt, or that he’s so thoroughly buried his guilt in this moment – this moment where he’s pontificating about his dream to Charlotte and building it up to her and himself – that his reaction is pleased. It’s similar to “I will decide the place where you die,” in the sense that it’s Griffith repressing his feelings by owning the inevitable cruelties of his dream.
And we know it’s not the first option, because first of all it would make that entire flashback comedically pointless, and because we see his guilt and self loathing surface again in significant moments, such as when he asks Guts, “do you think I’m cruel?”
Put another way: The dream signifies burying his heart and accepting that he’s cruel, while Guts signifies opening his heart and desperately not wanting to be a monster.
And again, we know that there’s more to this speech than what Griffith is actually saying, because we learn Griffith’s actual motivation soon after, and the entire point of Casca’s Griffith history lesson is to add those layers of guilt and self loathing and repression and let them colour everything we thought we knew about Griffith.
So now, to get back to his feelings about Guts, I want to examine Griffith’s definition of a friend in light of those guilt issues we learn about in the flashback.
To Griffith a friend is, ”someone who would never depend upon another’s dream… someone who wouldn’t be compelled by anyone, but would determine and pursue his own reason to live…”
To Griffith a friend is someone who would never depend on his dream, would never cling to his dream, would never die for his dream.
A friend is someone he cannot order into battle to die for him.
Furthermore, I want to suggest that Griffith’s, “he would oppose him body and soul, even if that threat were me myself,” clause adds another aspect to his criteria for friendship: a friend is someone who would never force Griffith to choose between him and his dream. A friend is someone who prioritizes his own dream, who understands that dreams come first and friendships come second, who can expect to be opposed if he stands in the way of Griffith’s dream, and vice versa.
Look at it this way: Guts has already forced Griffith to choose between him and his dream by nearly getting killed twice, and Guts won resoundingly both times. Because of this Guts represents an enormous threat to Griffith’s dream, because Griffith is willing to risk it for him. Three years ago Griffith said, “I will choose the place where you die,” to try to distance himself from Guts, but after Zodd he doesn’t even try to distance himself. He just tells Guts that he has no reason to put his own life on the line for Guts’ but that’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s gonna be.
Because Guts isn’t his “friend” by these standards, he’s at risk of dying for his dream. Because Griffith loves him, his dream is at risk of getting trampled for Guts.
The characters, of course, aren’t framing their decisions this way, but essentially, Guts’ answer to this conundrum is to leave to figure out a dream and become Griffith’s equal. He chooses to follow Griffith’s weird friendship criteria to the letter. But Griffith’s answer is to start replacing the dream with Guts.
lol sorry anon this got kind of long and meandering, hopefully it answers your questions though.
I guess I think that Guts isn’t really fully self-aware about the fact that he’s still trying to be Griffith’s equal. It’s not like a real goal for him the way it was when he left the Hawks, it’s just that he can’t help but crave Griffith’s attention. He needs Griffith to see and acknowledge him as someone who matters to him.
It’s why Femto’s dismissal back in the Black Swordsman arc was what spurred him to finally stand and walk up to him despite like a million broken bones, it’s why he refused to heed much sounder advice like stay and take care of the Hawks that are left, and insisted on his attention-getting revenge campaign instead, and it’s why NeoGriffith ditching him makes him do this:
Because becoming Griffith’s “equal” was only a means to an end in the first place – what Guts really wanted was to be Griffith’s friend, or, put in Guts’ own terms:
He wants to be Griffith’s number one priority. At the most genuine point of their relationship, when Griffith admitted he had no rational reason for risking his life for Guts, Guts like basically found personal fulfillment. That scene on the rooftop where Guts contemplates it and decides that this means his home (at least for now bc Guts sucks at committment) is with the Hawks, is probably the happiest moment of Guts’ life.
And when Griffith became an evil demon this core desire of Guts’ didn’t go away, I guess, Guts just started expressing it through attention-getting monster killing and wanting to personally murder Femto, to force him to look at him and value him, if not as a loved one then as an enemy.
Also, to address that last bit, I think it’s very telling that Guts doesn’t hate Griffith. It wasn’t sacrificing all his friends that made Guts’ love turn to rage and hate, it was Femto spitefully raping Casca, which is something Guts knows his Griffith wouldn’t’ve done. While Femto was born out of the darkness of Griffith, something Guts probably at least has some understanding of, he’s not the same as Griffith. He tells that to Rickert too on the Hill of Swords “That’s not the Griffith you know anymore.”
And I think a huge part of the reason he doesn’t hate or blame Griffith for making the sacrifice is because he blames himself for breaking Griffith’s heart and ruining his life.
Like Guts’ narrative from coming back after a year to this moment revolves around his slow realization that leaving was a huge fucking mistake lol. And he finally figured it out right before the Eclipse, so when he thinks of Griffith afterwards he’s associated with guilt and sadness and regret and love, rather than bitterness or hate or resentment.
Like I guess Guts’ feelings are kind of contradictory but in a way that makes sense to me. The situation is complicated af and while Guts is consumed by hate, that doesn’t conveniently erase his love. Separating Femto from Griffith is probably part of how he reconciles that, which is also why when NeoGriffith shows up looking like the old Griffith it was particularly confusing and painful for Guts to handle, and why he “forgot” he wanted to kill him lol.
And both Guts’ hate and his love lead to wanting Femto/Griffith’s attention, it just changes how he goes about trying to accomplish that.
anyway everything from dreams to ascending to godhood are smokescreens
love is the true equalizer between them
and that’s why despite the fact that the odds of guts becoming femto/neogriffith’s literal equal as in ascending to another plane of existence and being as powerful as him are approximately -10000, i still have hope that the whole equals thing is gonna come full circle in a satisfying way
ok so i went looking for those pages and when the beast of darkness bites casca’s neck while telling him to r*pe her to get closer to griffith
it says something which the official translation team translated as “you desire this”
but the old fan translation says:
it’d be interesting to see if the original japanese wording here is the same as the “what you wish for may not be what she wishes for” or w/e line
ooooh ngl it would be a p interesting twist if ‘your wishes may not be her wishes’ is ominious not necessarily because casca’s wishes are going to fuck shit up but because skull knight is referring to the fact that guts still wishes to be griffith’s friend/equal, and it’s guts who’s going to cut and run or go beast of darkness or w/e
like i’d still vastly prefer for casca to do something epic but i wouldn’t say no to guts leaving casca behind again and going griffith hunting. like honestly anything that separates guts and casca and gives them different or even clashing goals/motivations/narratives/etc is all right in my book
I think there’s a strong argument to be made that, rather than being
depicted as burgeoning true love ruined by the Eclipse for the
sake of extra tragedy, Guts and Casca getting together is depicted as a mistake from the start.
Let’s look at Guts’ conversation with Judeau, where he seems to consider the possibility of Casca as a romantic interest for the first time.
“The one who has her eye… is Griffith. That’s why… right now… I’m no good for her… like this.”
I see two possible ways of interpreting this statement. Either the narrative and Guts just reframed Guts entire raison d’etre, his whole motivation for leaving and the reason he wants to be Griffith’s equal, thanks to a few leading statements from Judeau, or Guts is framing a potential relationship with Casca as another step on the journey of becoming Griffith’s equal.
The former defies belief. We just spent 22 chapters knowing exactly why Guts wants to leave and become Griffith’s equal. There’s no mystery there, there’s no detail left to be uncovered. Suddenly doing a 180 and saying actually, he wants to leave so he can be worthy of Casca, even though he never considered Casca a romantic possibility until approximately 30 seconds earlier, would just be impossibly bad writing from an otherwise extremely solid story.
But the latter, well, that fits right in.
After they have sex, Casca symbolically becomes Guts’ sword instead of Griffith’s:
To Casca, Guts is a more open, emotionally available replacement for Griffith, as I’ve discussed in detail in this post. Guts is in fact coming closer to his goal of becoming Griffith’s equal by sleeping with Casca, because after this Casca begins to transfer her obsession with Griffith and his dream to him.
And Casca isn’t an endgame for Guts. She’s not the goal, she’s not the motivation – she’s an addition to his overarching desire to have Griffith see him as an equal. He still plans to leave to continue fighting stronger and stronger enemies after they hook up. He invites her along – just so long as she doesn’t get in the way of his more important dream:
Non-committally inviting her along mollifies her, but it doesn’t address her point lol – he’s still selfishly prioritizing his dream. She’s become support for that, just the way she supported Griffith’s dream as his “sword.” Eventually that is exactly what leads to everything crashing down around them – Casca telling Guts to leave, because his dream is all-important.
And while we then leave Guts and Casca on a sweet moment where they kiss, that very same page shifts to pure ominousness to end both the chapter and Guts and Casca’s newly changed relationship on:
Cue snake man walking around and the Behelit floating down a river on its way to a date with Griffith.
And then the next chapter returns us to Griffith, a year since the last time we saw him, and his monologue about how his feelings for Guts are so strong and bright they make even the dream fade into dullness.
Guts is trying to “unbind” himself from Griffith. In his dream speech to Casca he says he can’t stay with the Hawks because he refuses to ever swing his sword in service to another again. And Casca tells Guts that she can’t continue defending the almost broken dream of someone who may not even be alive. Both he and Casca are trying to move on from Griffith in their own ways, and they try to do this through a connection with each other.
But the thing is, if you’re writing the kind of relationship triangle where two people help each other get over a third, if you want it to really feel satisfying and right, wouldn’t you want to establish that they both should be getting over Griffith, and that a relationship with each other is a more positive step for them?
The problem is that Guts’ whole thing, his whole desire to leave to become Griffith’s equal, is motivated by wanting to be closer to Griffith lol. He wants to be someone Griffith can call a friend. And it’s based on a falsehood: he thinks Griffith looks down on him.
When this is how Griffith feels about him:
Guts trying to unbind himself from Griffith doesn’t feel satisfying when we’re immediately reminded through a passionate monologue that Griffith is just as bound to Guts as Guts is to him, and that Guts only wants to become independent of Griffith because he doesn’t know that.
As for Casca, her obsession with Griffith came at the expense of
herself. Spending a year fighting for Griffith’s dream
and leading the Hawks while he was in a dungeon drove her to the point
of suicide.
But her encounter here with Guts doesn’t solve any of
that, she just transfers her obsession and her dedication to someone
else’s dream to Guts, as we see clearly through that sword metaphor,
through the parallels I linked to earlier, and through Casca telling
Guts he has to leave because his dream is the most important thing.
Casca trying to get over Griffith and move on doesn’t feel satisfying when she immediately falls into the same self-destructive patterns with a new person at the centre of her obsession.
Guts and Casca’s romance has
its postive aspects – Guts opens up to her about his childhood trauma,
eg, and is comforted. But there’s
dissonance beneath the surface. They have sex right after Guts let Casca
stab him because a part of him realized she was right about Griffith needing him. Casca had just tried to kill herself after telling Guts that Griffith doesn’t need her, as though she can only live in relation to someone else. In
deciding to leave the Hawks together, Guts continues suppressing his
eventual revelation that leaving in the first place was a mistake.
And
Guts recalls
Gambino giving him medicine – the one act of kindness from him which
Guts latches onto to help him deny the rest of Gambino’s abuse – while Casca is compared to a sword, which to me seems like a strong, not all that positive statement on their relationship: it doesn’t fix their underlying issues, it doesn’t change anything, it just helps them live in denial of those issues – Casca’s lack of independence, Guts’ dream being a mistake*** – for a while longer.
Basically, rather than moving forward and truly healing with each other, they’re revisiting the past, repeating negative patterns, maintaining denial, and essentially, well, licking wounds.
And by trying to move on from
Griffith by taking solace in each other, they only add to Guts’ original
mistake, which is failing to realize that there was no reason for him to move on in the first
place. Guts couldn’t stand the thought of Griffith looking down on him,
but this is who he is to Griffith, as we are told immediately before and
after he has sex with Casca:
And this is when Guts finally acknowledges his mistake, about 10 seconds after Griffith overheard Casca telling him to leave:
We know that Miura didn’t
intend Guts and Casca to get together from the start, let alone for it
to be a grand true love style romance. He’s said that he hooked them up
for the sake of more Eclipse drama. And I think that the way he framed
their relationship, from its placement in the narrative to the details of the scene itself to the way it goes hand in hand with Guts’ dream, makes it feel like it’s contributing to the series of unfortunate fuck ups that lead to the Eclipse, rather than just being an incidental casualty of it.
It’s a mistake the
way Miura writes mistakes – not obviously so, with no ill intent or
obviously misguided motives behind it. Their relationship isn’t meant to
be unpleasant, it’s shown as sweet and maybe not epic, maybe not
lasting, but overall more positive than negative for them. But so was
Guts’ year long sabbatical, and we’ve seen how much he regrets that:
In Berserk characters can make the wrong decisions despite having the best of intentions, despite some good coming out of those decisions, despite doing the best they can based on what they know. And I think Guts and Casca’s relationship is shown to be one of them.
*** I think both Casca’s lack of independence and Guts’ focus on his own dream of fighting stronger and stronger enemies are at least in part poor coping mechanisms for their respective childhood traumas, which makes the sword and medicine metaphors even more apt. But to get fully into that would take its own post, and it’s not necessary to my point here, so this is just a minor aside lol.
also will i ever get over this irony
guts: i threw away my relationship with griffith because i’m in love with him but i think he looks down on me for not pursuing a dream
griffith: i threw away my dream because i’m in love with guts but i think he looks down on me for the way i’ve pursued my dream
guts comes back: hey i have a dream now… oh. guess that doesn’t actually matter now.
griffith like, hey i’ve got nothing but you to live for now… oh you’re leaving for your dream.
and like the 2 monologues are perfect counterparts to each other this way. guts explaining how dazzling griffith is and how he needs to get himself a dream so griffith will see him the same way. griffith thinking about how bright and shining guts is and how unimportant his dream is next to him.
So I think that he is trying to push those two together because he is
projecting his feelings on Casca. He wants to get them together because
he can’t insert himself in that situation. Casca is possibly a stand-in
for himself without him realizing it. That’s why he wouldn’t feel
jealous too imo. What do you think and what’s your take?
My probably-gayer-than-Miura-intended take is basically the same as yours, with the addition of Guts thinking that Casca is worthier of Griffith than he is.
From his silent and sullen reaction shots to Casca talking about him in the cave that definitely strike me as identifying with Casca’s feelings
to Casca directly telling him she’s jealous of him
to Guts feeling like all he’s good for is swinging his sword while insisting Casca has to live for something more important
to
this all seems like set-up for Guts throwing Casca at Griffith. He starts doing it after he decides to leave like he’s setting Casca up to take the place she wants, his place, at Griffith’s side, but Casca gets the addition of romance that Guts can’t begin to envision for himself thanks to repression and heteronormativity.
Also, good point about the bit where they’re both looking at him from a distance and Guts decides to take Casca down to bridge that gap for her, while he plans to leave. ia that seems like another moment of identification.
Idk basically yeah I totally agree, I think Guts is hardcore projecting, and the fact that the way he sets Casca up to take his place as Griffith’s confidante and “sword” involves shoving her into his arms, telling her to ask him to dance, telling Griffith she’s quite a sight in her dress, etc, is pretty telling.
Idk if it’s purposeful on Miura’s part, but it’s a really solid reading imo.
Anyway this is Guts uncomfortably identifying with Casca’s worshipful admiration (which we are later told is a romantic crush) of Griffith. Like we get a …. shot of Guts looking broody every time Casca starts waxing poetic.
Uncomfortably because he wants to be Griffith’s equal and he feels like he’s looking up at him while Griffith is looking down.
And THIS is either Guts thinking Casca is wrong about how Griffith feels about him, or (more likely imo) being moody because he thinks Casca deserves her place at Griffith’s side more than he does, because she has a dream to live for.
It leads to the 100 man fight, which he spends thinking about how pointless it is because he’s swinging his sword for no other reason but to swing it, and gets Casca to escape because she has something more to live for than he does. Which then leads to campfire of dreams, where he concludes that everyone has a dream except for him, says compared to what Casca and Griffith have to live for nothing he does is important, so he’d better leave to find one so he can be worthy of standing beside Griffith.
Casca and Guts have been rivals for Griffith’s affections, that’s their main relationship up til now. But this is the point where Guts concludes that he’s lost the fight, and starts throwing them together while he prepares to bow out, at least til he can come back feeling worthy of Griffith.
2/2 So I’m a bit puzzled and I am wondering about your
interpretation, if you’ve already written a meta about that scene. What I
think is that Guts definitely sees Griffith romantically so he was
doubly heartbroken after hearing that he doesn’t see him as a friend or
equal, so he wanted to leave in order to make him care about him
seriously. But Griffith already loves Guts and respects him, so his
speech is a bit contradictory. Sorry for the long ask btw I love your
blog 🙂
Hi there 🙂 Yk, I don’t think I actually have really talked about this scene in much depth.
My general default reading of Guts and Griffith’s relationship is that they are both romantically in love with each other but neither of them actually realize that they are. (Well, I don’t think Guts has ever quite realized it, at least not consciously, but I do think that Griffith figured it out during his year of torture.)
So in my opinion, Griffith meant his friendship speech.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the conversation that comes right before the assassination attempt and then Griffith’s speech in the narrative included this exchange:
Griffith asking Guts to assassinate Julius was, in a way, a gesture of friendship. It was a request for Guts to do this for him, as a favour for a friend rather than an order from a superior, and Guts picked up on Griffith’s careful phrasing and accidentally rebuffed him. I think Guts meant this as a lighthearted joke, but while we don’t get to see Griffith’s reaction to it, I’m willing to bet he took it as a rejection.
Maybe not even a purposeful rejection – but certainly a sign that Guts doesn’t see him as a friend, but sees him as a superior first. I think this leads directly to Griffith’s speech to Charlotte where he proclaims that he has no equals. Like, it’s completely accurate, whether or not it’s arrogant as well – people either look up at him as a saviour or symbol of their ability to rise in the world, or look down on him as a symbol of corruption in the system.
I also think there’s another important aspect to his speech.
What he describes to Charlotte as a friend is someone who has his own dream, separate from Griffith’s, and would pursue it even if it meant clashing with him.
To Griffith, whose life revolves around his dream and who frames things like that because it’s how he sees the world, what this translates to is that a friend is someone who won’t die in service to his dream.
I think he tries to keep an emotional distance between himself and his Hawks because, frankly, they tend to die in battle, and it fucks him up (as we see in Casca’s flashback to the dead kid and the morning after Gennon.)
So he says the Hawks aren’t his friends because he can’t think of them that way. They see him as a perfect leader, he sees them as people who he will one day send to their deaths, simply by ordering them into whichever battle eventually kills them.
So when Guts re-establishes that he sees Griffith as a leader and tells him to order him to do things instead of requesting favours, it’s a reminder to Griffith to distance himself.
Of course, it doesn’t actually work. He can’t turn off his feelings for Guts even if he tries to ignore and downplay them (also see: I had no reason at all for risking my life for you. He can acknowledge that yeah, he did do that, but he can’t acknowledge why – because he loves him – not even to himself.) Guts is still the only person who Griffith allows to see and participate in the shady shit he does to rise to the top, the stuff that makes him feel dirty. He still risks his life for Guts. He still sends a search party after Guts and Casca despite going against the wishes of the nobles he’s supposed to be sucking up to, and then ditches an important meeting to see them in person. He still expresses concern for Guts’ safety before the Battle of Doldrey. And he crashes and burns harder than anyone has ever crashed and burned after Guts leaves lol.
(Now there is an obvious contradiction in that Griffith wants to be Guts friend and equal rather than the superior who will send him to his death eventually, but also won’t let him leave the Hawks, but that’s plain old fear of rejection imo, and not understanding Guts’ reasons for leaving, and an irrational emotional implosion lol.)
AND I think there’s a third aspect that ought to be explored: Griffith can only call an equal who would fight for his own dream a friend because this definition allows him to continue prioritizing his dream. To save Guts’ life at the risk to his own, rather than let Guts be killed for his dream, is, at its core, a betrayal of his dream, and the thousands of people who’ve died for it. But if his “friend” was an “equal” with his own obsessive dream, then in theory he’d never have to choose between his friend and his dream – it would be understood that their respective dreams would be prioritized. Another reason for the “and should anyone trample that dream he would oppose him body and soul… even if that threat were me myself” clause.
At the end of the day Griffith already loves and respects Guts, of course – he has from day one – but he can’t admit that yet, not even to himself, imo, because it’s a serious, serious threat to everything he’s built his life around.
Tbh I feel like there’s a lot more to say on this topic, especially how and why Griffith represses and denies his feelings for Guts, and what his dream means to him, etc, but I think I’m definitely going to end up writing a long ass analytical post about him soon because I’m really feeling all this nitty gritty Griffith stuff at the moment lol. But yeah when it comes to Promrose Hall I think this is pretty much my thoughts on what Griffith’s speech is about.
Anyway, thanks for the message, I love talking about this kinda stuff 🙂 And ty I’m glad you enjoy my blog.
I love love looooooove Griffith’s immediate reaction to finding out Guts intends to leave. At that point I don’t think he had forgotten about Guts boss-zoning him, and him wanting to just … leave without a goddamn word only rubbed salt into that wound. In my opinion, along with impulsive irrationality fueled by pure fear, this is one of the reasons he so quickly resorted to basically saying “You can’t leave because I own you.” It’s spiteful out of hurt–if you’re going to treat me like a stranger, then I’m going to treat you like one too.
Yessss ia! And I also think that along those lines, while Griffith might not have been like hugely devastated Guts’ apparent rejection of his attempt to lower that barrier of commander/soldier between them at the time (yk he might’ve taken it as the light joke it was meant to be as well as just an incidental reminder that that’s not their relationship), after he learned that Guts wanted to leave I’ll bet he replayed that moment in his head and it turned into Guts asking to be ordered because he wouldn’t do it as a friend.
Like a judgement – I won’t voluntarily do this abhorrent dirty work for you, but I’ll do it if you order me to because I’m a soldier.
Griffith asking him instead of ordering him imo had another level of wanting Guts’ acceptance of his “dirty side.” It was a show of trust.
So I could def see “wrest yourself away by your sword,” coming from a place of spite + desperation from that angle too. You’ll only stay by my side if I order you to? Then that’s what I’ll do.
2/2 So I’m a bit puzzled and I am wondering about your
interpretation, if you’ve already written a meta about that scene. What I
think is that Guts definitely sees Griffith romantically so he was
doubly heartbroken after hearing that he doesn’t see him as a friend or
equal, so he wanted to leave in order to make him care about him
seriously. But Griffith already loves Guts and respects him, so his
speech is a bit contradictory. Sorry for the long ask btw I love your
blog 🙂
Hi there 🙂 Yk, I don’t think I actually have really talked about this scene in much depth.
My general default reading of Guts and Griffith’s relationship is that they are both romantically in love with each other but neither of them actually realize that they are. (Well, I don’t think Guts has ever quite realized it, at least not consciously, but I do think that Griffith figured it out during his year of torture.)
So in my opinion, Griffith meant his friendship speech.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the conversation that comes right before the assassination attempt and then Griffith’s speech in the narrative included this exchange:
Griffith asking Guts to assassinate Julius was, in a way, a gesture of friendship. It was a request for Guts to do this for him, as a favour for a friend rather than an order from a superior, and Guts picked up on Griffith’s careful phrasing and accidentally rebuffed him. I think Guts meant this as a lighthearted joke, but while we don’t get to see Griffith’s reaction to it, I’m willing to bet he took it as a rejection.
Maybe not even a purposeful rejection – but certainly a sign that Guts doesn’t see him as a friend, but sees him as a superior first. I think this leads directly to Griffith’s speech to Charlotte where he proclaims that he has no equals. Like, it’s completely accurate, whether or not it’s arrogant as well – people either look up at him as a saviour or symbol of their ability to rise in the world, or look down on him as a symbol of corruption in the system.
I also think there’s another important aspect to his speech.
What he describes to Charlotte as a friend is someone who has his own dream, separate from Griffith’s, and would pursue it even if it meant clashing with him.
To Griffith, whose life revolves around his dream and who frames things like that because it’s how he sees the world, what this translates to is that a friend is someone who won’t die in service to his dream.
I think he tries to keep an emotional distance between himself and his Hawks because, frankly, they tend to die in battle, and it fucks him up (as we see in Casca’s flashback to the dead kid and the morning after Gennon.)
So he says the Hawks aren’t his friends because he can’t think of them that way. They see him as a perfect leader, he sees them as people who he will one day send to their deaths, simply by ordering them into whichever battle eventually kills them.
So when Guts re-establishes that he sees Griffith as a leader and tells him to order him to do things instead of requesting favours, it’s a reminder to Griffith to distance himself.
Of course, it doesn’t actually work. He can’t turn off his feelings for Guts even if he tries to ignore and downplay them (also see: I had no reason at all for risking my life for you. He can acknowledge that yeah, he did do that, but he can’t acknowledge why – because he loves him – not even to himself.) Guts is still the only person who Griffith allows to see and participate in the shady shit he does to rise to the top, the stuff that makes him feel dirty. He still risks his life for Guts. He still sends a search party after Guts and Casca despite going against the wishes of the nobles he’s supposed to be sucking up to, and then ditches an important meeting to see them in person. He still expresses concern for Guts’ safety before the Battle of Doldrey. And he crashes and burns harder than anyone has ever crashed and burned after Guts leaves lol.
(Now there is an obvious contradiction in that Griffith wants to be Guts friend and equal rather than the superior who will send him to his death eventually, but also won’t let him leave the Hawks, but that’s plain old fear of rejection imo, and not understanding Guts’ reasons for leaving, and an irrational emotional implosion lol.)
AND I think there’s a third aspect that ought to be explored: Griffith can only call an equal who would fight for his own dream a friend because this definition allows him to continue prioritizing his dream. To save Guts’ life at the risk to his own, rather than let Guts be killed for his dream, is, at its core, a betrayal of his dream, and the thousands of people who’ve died for it. But if his “friend” was an “equal” with his own obsessive dream, then in theory he’d never have to choose between his friend and his dream – it would be understood that their respective dreams would be prioritized. Another reason for the “and should anyone trample that dream he would oppose him body and soul… even if that threat were me myself” clause.
At the end of the day Griffith already loves and respects Guts, of course – he has from day one – but he can’t admit that yet, not even to himself, imo, because it’s a serious, serious threat to everything he’s built his life around.
Tbh I feel like there’s a lot more to say on this topic, especially how and why Griffith represses and denies his feelings for Guts, and what his dream means to him, etc, but I think I’m definitely going to end up writing a long ass analytical post about him soon because I’m really feeling all this nitty gritty Griffith stuff at the moment lol. But yeah when it comes to Promrose Hall I think this is pretty much my thoughts on what Griffith’s speech is about.
Anyway, thanks for the message, I love talking about this kinda stuff 🙂 And ty I’m glad you enjoy my blog.
also guts thinking griffith is so godly and high above him is such a good self fulfilling prophecy
today i was at work and thinkin bout how good the potential inherent in guts and neogriffith’s hero/villain relationship is tbh. like the tiny glimpses we’ve seen so far (ngriff’s heart beating, guts’ complicated feelings, eg) + the foundation of the golden age backstory = solid fucking gold in theory
complicated angsty hero/villain anger and rage + regret and desire and loneliness, and w/ neogriffith his godliness + potential latent humanity
like these are all things i adore to pieces. singular godlike figures brought down by human feelings (love lbr). vengeful rage complicated by love. destructive, life-destroying love and obsession. ppl incapable of understanding their extremely powerful feelings. regret for lost potential and the mistakes that led to ruin. prominent shifting power dynamics – the whole basis of their relationship being a desire to be equals, each feeling at points inferior to the other, then one of them becomes a literal demigod but the need for equality (and thus, friendship) is still there, like, fuck that’s good stuff.
one obsessed and one who cut out his obsession, sloooowly switching places as guts semi-successfully attempts to move on and griffith starts succumbing to his beating heart. ofc guts can’t truly move on or there’s no story, but the opposing character trajectories are perf.
ooh and then you got the whole thing where one has fully succumbed to his inner darkness and is essentially a monster, but with glimmers of humanity, and the other is a human being pulled under by his inner darkness and struggling with it. complete with fun shining beautiful saviour/near-monstrous warrior imagery.
and the fact that at first it was his feelings for guts that lead to griffith succumbing to the darkness, and guts’ feelings for griffith that uplifted him, in turn giving him a home and then spurring him on to better himself. and now it’s potentially his feelings for guts that lead to neogriffith evidencing signs of humanity, beating heart etc (”he was the reason i’ve been thrown into darkness, and now he’s the sole sustenance keeping me alive” anyone?), and guts’ feelings for griffith that pull him towards monstrosity.
like just imagine the two of them finally brought together again with all this build-up behind them, fueling their confrontation. imagine all these teasing glimpses of mutually complex, contradictory, intensely powerful feelings really coming to fruition.
the set-up is dead on for an absolutely ideal hero/villain dynamic, and you know miura theoretically has the character and storytelling skills to make it amazing bc we all read the golden age.
you're the only one 