I think the point of gut’s changing his ideals and stating them against Mozgus is to show that he is on the path of becoming a less damaged human being. Even comparing his goals in the conviction arc to the blackswordsman arc, he started changing especially when he realized he wanted to regain casca as opposed to him wanting to hunt down neo griffith. I don’t think it’s inconsistent writing on mirua’s behalf but i think its supposed to show the beginning of gut’s growth.
Sorry, I think I wasn’t super clear because that post was kind of rambly and off-the-cuff lol, but my point is actually that it isn’t a change for Guts at all, it’s the exact same attitude – it’s just the narrative framing of that attitude has changed.
Guts saying the dude and his daughter were too weak to survive so they don’t matter is no different than Guts saying that the ten thousand refugees about to die deserve it because they’d rather bow down to a god than fight to survive or w/e
It’s just that now that’s shown to be badass rather than a fairly pathetic denial of guilt.
Consider:
vs
It’s like the Conviction arc takes these super cynical lines from Guts which, in the Black Swordsman arc, are clearly meant to show how fucked up he is and not something we’re meant to agree with, and pretties them up or makes them sound badass and legitimizes them.
I mean it’s even the same essential circumstances: Guts’ brand calls up spirits that kill innocent people. In the Black Swordsman arc Guts feels immense guilt and covers it up with cynical bravado. In the Conviction arc, Guts and Luca both blame the dead for failing to survive.
And idk if that’s a sign if we’re maybe supposed to take the themes of the Conviction arc with a grain of salt, or if Miura’s opinions just 180ed somewhere along the way.
Like do
people deserve to die for not being strong or resourceful enough to survive
against a force stronger than them or not, Miura?
In fairness this could very well be purposeful – showing like, both the negative side and the more palatable side of Guts’ survival of the fittest thing. Similar to how we get the positive side of Griffith’s utopia where the weak are protected from harm and exploitation (which come to think of it is also partly shown to us by Luca, hmm) and the negative side (it may be great but it’s the only peaceful place to live).
But also incidentally, if you’re on Guts’ side of this whole thing, yk you gotta be strong to survive and if you’re not it’s your own problem – you can’t really have an issue with Griffith filling the world with monsters lol. The world outside of Falconia right now pretty much illustrates Guts’ philosophy to a tee.
I could see this coming up again along those lines actually. Doesn’t someone actually say that now everyone has to deal with what Guts deals with, directly comparing brand-life to Fantasia? So there you go, you got Griffith’s world (Falconia) and you got Guts’ world (Fantasia), pick one.
I genuinely think the authorially intended reading of Guts’ decision is that it’s complicated and there are multiple reasons Guts is choosing to take Casca to Elfhelm over revenge right now. It’s not a simple matter of Casca straightforwardly being more important to him or just choosing Casca over Griffith.
Hopefully this is the kind of answer you’re looking for, idk the subject is a little broad. I’ve kind of said this in some other posts too but I think it’d be handy to have a nice and orderly list to link to so I’m just throwing it all out in response to you.
So here are the various complicated reasons I think Guts has for going on his take Casca to Elfhelm quest:
1. He gives a fuck about Casca. He gave a fuck about her and saved her life even back when he hated her, because she was his comrade, and I’d certainly hope he cares about her now.
2. Elf cave is gone, and he’s not so shitty a person that he’s just going to abandon her in a field for ghosts to eat.
3. He is aware that revenging made him a worse person and he wants to be better. Guts at his best is someone who does not abandon his friends and family but rather stands by them in their hours of need, and he wants to be that person again.
Good Guts:
Bad Guts:
Good Guts:
Bad Guts:
Like, yk, abandoning people or staying with them is kind of Guts’ major thing throughout the story.
4. He is longing for a piece of his lost past, and Casca represents the Hawks.
Additionally suggested by how every time he pictures her from the past, after that last pic, it’s as a Hawk commander.
And statements like this:
And the general fact that he’s trying to “force” her sanity back despite forboding warnings and actually contemplating on page how awful it might be for Casca, suggesting that it’s less for Casca’s own sake and more Guts’ selfish need to regain some of his happy past.
5. Griffith looking human and sexy makes him forget his urge to kill, lessening the temptation of revenge and probably making Guts doubt his ability to follow through.
nuff said
6. Guts’ whole revenge campaign was less about revenge and more about making himself feel better and getting Griffith’s attention. Last time he saw Griffith the dude declared that he was completely free of his feelings for him and then “deserted” him in the snow lol. This has also lessened the temptation of revenge – now pursuing Griffith feels extra fruitless, because Griffith (claims he) doesn’t give a fuck.
7. He feels guilty for abandoning Griffith back in the Golden Age and refusing to abandon Casca (this time) is a way to make up for that mistake.
8. Like the Beast of Darkness says, Casca reminds him of “the wound Griffith left” because he wants to keep feeling the pain he caused him. Both because it helps simplify his conflicting and confusing feelings into rage, and because, harkening back to point 6, imho it’s a masochistic reminder that he meant enough to Griffith for him to be worth lashing out at.
I mean consider the context of some discussions of wounds in berserk. “I too want a wound… that I can say you gave me.”
Or Griffith tracing his shoulder where Guts’ sword failed to touch him, maybe:
Anyway regardless of how suggestively that statement can be taken in the greater context of Berserk and wounds, there’s definitely some truth to it because it’s what Miura gave as the reason he didn’t kill Casca:
9. He’s still planning to return his focus to Griffith eventually. He hasn’t so much given up his revenge quest as put it on hold. It’s probably easier to say “not now” to himself than to say “never.”
10. Narrative convenience keeps him on the straight and narrow. eg:
cue Guts literally passing right out ten seconds later. it’s pretty easy to decide to get on a boat instead of get revenge when you can barely stand and going for revenge would be literal suicide. and even then Guts needed Serpico to step in and tell him not to be a dumbass.
Soooo yeah I think that about covers the various reasons Guts has for putting aside his revenge quest to take Casca to Elfhelm, which add up to smthn a lot more complicated than choosing Casca over revenge. I contemplated adding another section that’s like… a giant list of Guts utterly failing to prioritize Casca or demonstrate that she’s “more precious than Griffith” lol, but I might just do that in a separate post next time I’m feeling salty.
I think they don’t understand Griffith at all and probably willfully ignore a huge amount of his story.
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.
I mean I’ve talked about my take on Griffith enough that I could collect it all into a book at this point lmao, but in essence no he is full of self loathing and guilt and exists by living in denial and trying to bury it.
He portrays an image of utter confidence and security, maintains it well enough that he buys his own con to an extent, but even that confident self-assured image isn’t god-complexy. His assessment of his own abilities is realistic. He knows he’s good, he has confidence in his abilities, but he also knows when he’s outclassed.
He doesn’t think by default he’s one of the people he believes are fated to change the world, he just hopes he is. He wants to see how far he can go, and not for the sake of being important, but in service to a greater goal which is fueled by disgust at the state of the world and his own sense of guilt.
He doesn’t have a falsely inflated perception of himself, if anything his self-image is much more negative than it should be.
You see any other mercenaries in Berserk who feel guilty for the enemy soldiers their underlings kill?
And like, eg, Griffith feels ashamed about assassinating people while Guts thinks he should be telling the rest of the Hawks all about it and has absolutely zero problem with burning a room full of nobles and royalty alive.
And as Casca lays out here
his confidence isn’t an ingrained personality trait, it’s something he manufactured and wears like armour, which is why sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite – the guilt, the self-loathing, the insecurity – underneath.
Idk it seems like the same type of Berserk fan who calls Griffith a sociopath or a narcissist or a control freak or whatever. Like… no. That’s a wild misreading of his character, and honestly the story isn’t exactly subtle about his giant heap of issues that drive him so idk why so many people refuse to see it.
Like, re-read chapter 17 and this time look at the pictures of him self-harming too, bc that adds a little necessary context to statements like:
Like, this is so far from subtle that people just choose not to understand it lol.
(This isn’t directed at you anon, just yk, the fans you’re talking about.)
How do you interpret the scene where Griffith reaches for Guts’ throat?
I’ve read a lot of different takes and enjoy them all quite a bit. Personally I feel that Griffith almost wants to strangle Guts after finally seeing him after almost a year of constantly obsessing over Guts leaving him while he is physically tortured, like he blames Guts for his psychological torture (and is in more pain from that, and not the physical). Guts feels it and doesn’t care and possibly believes he deserves..
Deserves Griffith’s
hatred. The one other comrade (omg I forgot his name???) sees this
exchange and is actually taken aback by them both.
Despite his rage and ill feelings towards Guts, however, Griffith can’t
even make himself act out in strangling (also because he’s weak af but I
mean emotionally) because deep down he is, surprised to admit to
himself, elated to see Guts again and to be held by him. This is just
my current favorite take but I won’t argue its accuracy!
oh i pretty much agree. i think griffith definitely wanted to kill him there. not “wanted” as in so direct that if he, say, had a gun he would’ve shot him, but more “wanted” the way casca wanted to murder guts when he came back so spent a while swinging a sword with intent to kill but then kind of freaked out when she actually stabbed him.
if he had the physical ability to kill him there i don’t think he would’ve been able to go through with it, but yk, he would’ve probably strangled him for a few seconds before letting go
though i don’t think guts really noticed imo, because if he did i feel like… idk his interactions with griffith up til the eclipse would be different. guts would be more hesitant maybe, if griffith tried to physically lash out bc he blames him for his torture/emotional vulnerability that led to a year of torture, and guts realized that. He’s good at burying his feelings of guilt, but idk if he’s that good.
But ia that if he did notice then his reaction wouldn’t be like, outrage or anything, it would def be guilt.
Sorry I ran out of characters in the last post so I’ll continue from
here: And in the dream sequence where Griffith imagined Casca was his
wife and Guts was there child? Did you think that what happened in the
wagon was Griffith attempting to rape Casca and was the dream sequence
suppose to reveal ANY sort of feeling he had for her? What do you think
is the case and why?
I definitely don’t think the wagon scene or the dream sequence (I call
it a nightmare lol) suggest that Griffith has feelings for Casca. And I
don’t think the scene in the wagon was a rape attempt, because I mean
for one Griffith stopped when Casca told him to stop, so yk, qed lol,
but also because I think it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse
rape, rather than like, a sneak preview. It’s an offer, the only way he can make that offer without the ability to speak.
Griffith is at his absolute lowest point here. He’s lost everything that he perceives gives him worth, and Wyald’s just literally and metaphorically stripped away his last lingering ability to deny this. He overheard Casca tell Guts she wants to be held right before the wagon scene, and as Casca is bandaging his hand she reflects on how Griffith could always comfort her with just a hand on her shoulder – but now it’s her turn to do that.
So imo Griffith is offering himself to Casca for two reasons:
1. He desperately wants to be this person again:
She’s shaking, she wants comfort, and Griffith wants to be the strong leader who can ease her trembling.
It’s a way he’s denied his vulnerability in the past:
But he’s simply no longer able to be this person.
It’s a humiliating, and depressing reversal of their roles, emphasizing how far Griffith’s fallen.
2. It’s sexual for one or both of these reasons:
Guts and Casca just had comfort sex. As a failed attempt at initiating comfort sex, the contrast highlights Griffith’s removal from their new dynamic. Also, since Griffith knows they’ve hooked up, this could be an attempt to insert himself into that dynamic and redress the balance because he’s afraid of being left behind.
What may be a harder sell depending on your reading of Griffith but makes the most sense to me is that frankly, Griffith is desperate. Wyald just gave the Hawks a run-down of how fucked he is for life – he can no longer be the Hawks’ hope for the future, and he can’t even live on his own. He’s been hiding behind that hawk mask, clinging to the last vestiges of his image (like when he asked Guts for his armour), and now that’s gone. If someone doesn’t take care of him, he’s dead. Griffith is someone who judges his worth by what he can be to other people, and now in his eyes he’s nothing but a burden with tens of thousands of corpses worth of guilt hanging over him.
And kind of hammering this point home for the reader, outside the wagon Judeau is backing up Griffith’s own depressing image of himself too – he’s telling Guts to take Casca and run because otherwise she’ll basically end up stuck taking care of Griffith, while he himself offers to take Griffith with him because he feels like he owes Griffith. And after this scene, Casca cries because she feels like she can’t leave Griffith behind, even though she wants to leave with Guts.
Ironically, considering what Griffith overhears right after, Guts is the only person who actually wants to stay with Griffith now, as he keeps trying to tell the people who keep telling him to leave lol:
So, imo Griffith’s offering sex to Casca mostly because it’s something he can offer that still
potentially has worth – it’s something he can give in exchange for being
taken care of.
Casca was in love with him, and lbr Griffith knows that, so this is theoretically something she might want.
And Griffith like, sees sex as transactional. It’s something he can trade to those with more power than him, who can give him something he needs. Money, with Gennon. A kingdom, with Charlotte. And here it’s Casca, for security – plus maybe Guts. So imo trading sexual favours absolutely seems like something Griffith would fall back on if he’s desperate.
And this leads right to Griffith’s hallucinatory nightmare after he overhears Casca telling Guts to leave – he’s envisioning the life he just asked for, believing Guts intends to leave, and it’s fucking horrific.
Griffith is living in what seems like a state of permanent dissociation. Guts is out there, still pursuing his own dream, totally out of their lives.
You mentioned the child being Guts, as in a surreal nightmare, but I think he’s just intended to be named after him. The “he” swinging his sword out there somewhere who Casca mentions would be the actual Guts, and this – blondish – kid is presumably Griffith and Cacsa’s.
imo a p disturbing way of underscoring that Guts is gone but far from forgotten.
Anyway yeah to me this whole sequence reads like Griffith grasping at the last straws available to him.
So to basically just sum up My Take on all this:
Griffith offers himself to Casca in the wagon both to try to reclaim a piece of his past self, and in an attempt to secure his future by offering Casca something she wants. And imagining that future, sans Guts, drives him to suicide.
So like, I don’t think it’s indicative of Griffith having any romantic feelings for Casca. It’s more a painful illustration of Griffith’s current powerlessness and desperation.
In case you want to read more lol, I talk about these scenes more thoroughly and with more context and build up in like the first half of the fourth part of this Griffith analysis.
Like, Guts feeling possessive of
Griffith as a response to Casca telling him that Griffith was
emotionally dependent on him? yk the knowledge that Griffith ended up
in a torture chamber because of him, whether he’s ready to acknowledge
that or not, basically making him feel like he’s allowed to express that
possessiveness bc Griffith has ott feelings for him back? Because if so I could def see that.
We see Guts musing on this fact in the tunnels on the way to Griffith too. I definitely think it’s informing a lot of his behaviour here, and in the lead-up to the Eclipse, maybe not consciously since he keeps trying to bury that realization (because guilt), but definitely subconsciously.
I also think it’s the main source of the rage that fuels his rampage through Midland, killing hundreds of soldiers and a monster. It’s a way of ignoring his guilt by turning the feeling outward onto acceptable targets. You could maybe also add that it’s why he snaps at Casca – he already has the urge to lash out at something, and a minute later the torturer shows up and then he’s able to fully express his feelings lol.
Also plz feel free to explain further if I missed something, I want to know your thoughts and idk if I interpreted what you mean right.
Oh actually I do have one thing I can add about NeoGriffith, that I’ve been kind of thinking for a while but haven’t posted because it’s potentially controversial lol
But I think you could make an argument that NeoGriffith is… Griffith. As though transforming from Femto back into a flesh and blood body returned his whole range of emotions as well, basically if NGriff has the same emotional and psychological make-up of human Griffith.
Like, imo he is exactly what Griffith would be if:
he talked to god and god told him he’s not responsible for anything and everything he chooses to do is the correct fate-sanctioned thing to happen and he’s basically just a pawn
he spent a few years as a demonic embodiment of the dark side of himself and humanity, with the rest of his humanity stripped away
while he was that demon, he committed an unforgiveable and unjustifiable act of evil for no reason but spite
he is removed from the rest of humanity because he has another level of awareness/partially exists on another metaphysical plane
he made the choice to sacrifice everyone he loves both to achieve his dream and to cut out his heart because his feelings for guts ruined his life and sent him into suicidal despair
Like, basically NeoGriffith as Griffith in deep, deep, deep denial lmao, and finding it really easy to stay in denial because god gave him a thumbs up and he’s extra detached from his human emotions due to being a godlike entity with intimate knowledge of fate/the astral plane/his place in the world/etc.
I say this as someone who genuinely believes that human Griffith was more or less a good person. But I still think it would absolutely be in character for a Griffith who remembers being Femto to tell Guts he regrets nothing and then leave to do his thing.
So in this way you could say that NeoGriffith is the extreme fantasy story version of a dude who deliberately detaches himself from his own emotions for the sake of achieving a goal.
But to be clear I don’t think this is actually the case in canon.
I think NGriff probably actually has magically dampened emotions due to the sacrifice, and due to having magically transformed a few times most of human Griffith is genuinely lost, like we see him losing pieces of himself, and I don’t think he got those pieces back.
But like, I think NGriff kind of works on another level as not just the embodiment of the image Griffith portrayed, but how he maintained it, ie, by denying all his feelings. And I find the idea of NGriff as Griffith-in-extreme-denial really like… interesting and fun lol, in a headcanon way.
said:
What are your thoughts about the current Griffith? In my eyes he has
become like the Snow Queen – Beautiful, yet cold and empty. Practically
unable to experience emotion and lacking in any humanity. A pretty
doll. A shell. A walking facade. What do you think?
My answer to this ties into the other thing you asked me to expand on, re: Griffith and contrasts, so I guess I’m just kind of doing both answers at once.
Basically I agree, but I think there’s more to NeoGriffith (ie post Femto, resurrected, godlike Griffith) than that.
Griffith as a human is so interesting to me in part because he’s full of contrasts, which is one of those hooks that really get me interested in a character. And those contrasts mostly stem from this attitude right here:
He hides away all of his weaknesses, his negative thoughts, the truth of what actually drives him on (guilt), his self-loathing, even from himself. He smiles and portrays an image of perfection so well that he essentially believes it himself most of the time.
So you have things like the Promrose Hall speech, where he’s fully embodying that image of himself:
vs Casca’s flashback, which is a glimpse of his darker, much more fucked up self underneath, and directly contradicts the above:
So you have the contrast between the perfect leader, the guy who can take down an army of 30,000 with 5,000, the guy who waxes poetic about how great dreams are, the guy who is this fucking cool while burning a queen alive:
And the guy who self-harms after prostituting himself to a pedophile to prevent as many deaths of his followers as possible despite claiming he doesn’t feel responsible for them, the guy who falls to pieces and destroys his own life when Guts leaves, the guy who hates himself and desperately wants to be told he’s not a monster:
And both are Griffith. Griffith isn’t just faking his confidence, he genuinely is that confident. He genuinely believes that his dream is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself, and he can’t call any of his followers friends because they’re clinging to his dream rather than finding their own dreams.
He’s portrayed that image so fully that it’s a real part of him. But at the same time, sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite underneath: the self loathing, the fear, the fact that he’s in love with Guts and has nearly lost his dream because of that love multiple times (ie nearly dying while trying to save him from Zodd, burning his own life down after Guts leaves, even going back and rescuing him personally that first week).
And that brings me to NeoGriffith, because what NeoGriffith is, is that image, and only that image, with none of the very human weaknesses behind it.
He’s described as a painting, as untouchable, etc, like fifty million times.
He’s basically become the impression he used to leave people with.
If Griffith contradicted himself – confidence vs insecurity, conviction vs self loathing, unwaveringly pursuing his dream vs Guts making him forget his dream, etc – then NeoGriffith is one side minus the other. Confidence, no insecurity, conviction, no self-loathing, the dream, no Guts.
And it’s uncanny too. He’s pursuing the dream, but he’s no longer motivated by his very human feelings of guilt (and also fear/insecurity, which we’re shown here:
I got this whole argument about dreams in Berserk being essentially shitty coping mechanisms lol, which I won’t get into now but is worth mentioning as another aspect of human Griffith that NeoGriffith lacks)
He’s lost his human flaws, and that makes him kind of disturbing imo, because those human flaws drove him, and now he’s driven by nothing, he just is.
And, just as a side note, it’s also worth noting that Femto is the other side imo – the self-loathing, the insecurity – in the sense that Femto is the embodiment of the monster Griffith believed himself to be deep down, the monster he believed Guts saw him as too, after this exchange (and then Guts leaving):
I mean it’s ultimately the final puzzle piece that makes him agree to the sacrifice:
And I 100% believe that NeoGriffith is referencing that here with his “you, of all people”:
So like, tl;dr Griffith is a land of contradictions, and that’s embodied in 2 magical fantasy transformations that make those disparate elements of him literal personifications.
NeoGriffith is the side of himself that he showed the world as a human, stripped of his humanity, and Femto is basically a personification of his own self-loathing, in which he became everything he feared himself to be, everything Guts failed to tell him he wasn’t.
But this is just like, the thematic take lol. This is what I think NeoGriffith essentially represents. But it’s also more complicated than that, because
But when it comes to like, NeoGriffith as a character, rather than a construct, who potentially still has emotions and ties to his previous life, I guess I’ll leave you with links because I don’t really have much new to say:
Basically I think there’s plenty of indication that Griffith failed to entirely purge himself of emotion and isn’t quite the serene image of perfection he seems.
i’d like your thoughts on this please! i’d forgotten about this singular instance of guts clawing at his skin in the black swordsman arc. i have my own ideas, but i don’t have time to thoroughly analyze them right now with all the packing and moving—but basically—(and tumblr somehow didn’t save my previous wall of text about this) i’m assuming, that this is guts either/or/a bit of both;
1. guts dealing with his internalized grieving and rage, coupled with sleep deprivation, and even more sleep deprivation and rage driven by survivors guilt. not to mention all the tough guy posturing and denial of his true nature, he needs to stay angry. he wants to keep that anger burning at 1000% because anything less, i don’t think he’d be able to justify. his guilt is overwhelming. griffith does this for much the same reasons imo (compounded by his other awful reasons of course) … guilt over the fallen, while he/they remain/s “clean”/alive. lots of other parallels and reasons i’m sure too. maybe the physical pain feels better than the mental anguish, which guts clearly isn’t able to parse yet.
2. is it this particular scar though? the ellipses are definitely suggesting that looking at that scar triggers something within him. does anyone know what scar this is from, in particular? or could it just be a memory of seeing griffith’s own self-harm scars, giving him this idea even? miura might not have even written griffith’s self mutilation into the story yet though, who knows. maybe this is his way of showing characters dealing with trauma and ptsd in terrible ways.
if i weren’t in the middle of moving i’d look into it myself, but alas, i’m out of time. this scene is very intriguing, though. and please take my half baked analyses with a grain of salt, i often miss very basic stuff because i tend to hyper-focus on details rather than broad ideas … but i didn’t want to forget this.
Totally agree with #1. I think it’s partly guilt over the Eclipse (or whatever Miura was imagining this far back, but as early as Guts blatantly comparing himself to Vargas we know he lost loved ones), but also guilt over the people he gets killed just existing around them while ghosts show up to fuck with him every night lol, which we see in the 2nd chapter when he tells himself he doesn’t care what happens to the people he travels with, then they die and he’s sad.
Yk, he tells himself other people don’t matter because they’re weak (”If someone can’t live their life the way they please… they might as well die.”) but the self-harm is a v quick way of showing the audience that Guts doesn’t actually believe that, and he kinda hates himself for trying to convince himself of it.
Just like Griffith saying “I don’t feel responsible for my comrades who’ve lost their lives under my command. I guess… because they chose to fight. It’s just the way I am.” while he’s simultaneously tearing his arms open lol.
I think #2 is really interesting and something I never noticed actually. ihni where Guts got that scar, and since Miura never drew Griffith with si scars on his arm I doubt it’s actually a memory of Griffith, tho that concept is amazing and I’m about to just adopt it as headcanon regardless.
One thing that just occurred to me wrt that scar is that Guts looking at it before self harming over it ties Guts’ self harm to, yk, swinging his sword at giant monsters and groups of a hundred men. Miura maybe suggesting it’s all variations of self-harm? And foreshadowing Guts’ particular style of fighting, ie leap into danger, get his ass kicked, and maneuver himself close enough to exploit a big monster’s weakness.
tbh yeah I think that’s basically his driving philosophy when it comes to his dream. A lot of people get weird about it and think that means he was born as like a cutthroat ruthless evil kid who’d do anything to get what he wants lmao, but yeah I mean his motivations are complex and interesting but you can boil his attitude down to the end justifies the means.
He does commit acts he believes are wrong in the course of achieving his dream, because he considers the goal to be worth it.
There’s also a side of his belief in fate at play, where he thinks if he achieves his dream then that’s a sign from a higher power/arbiter of these things that he was meant to do all the wrong things he does along the way to achieve it.
But it does all come back to guilt. If he achieves his dream then the deaths of all the people who died for it will be meaningful and justified. They died for his dream, therefore he must achieve it.
Also it’s worth noting that the things Griffith considers to be wrong, that make him feel guilty, are mostly things Guts brushes off and doesn’t even give a second thought to. Kill hired goons and keep the money we were supposed to pay them? Yeah that sounds fine. Fight a war, leading many people to their deaths and killing many enemy soldiers? Duh that’s just life. Assassinate people? Yeah why not they’re dicks and I like killing people. Griffith’s mountain of guilt corpses include enemy soldiers, people his Hawks killed, etc. It all fucks him up.
So yk in that sense “the end justifies the means” comes down to what the person in question considers wrong. And Guts also shares this philosophy when his ends (eg become Griffith’s equal, kill monsters) justify his means (abandoning all his friends, torturing apostles for information or fun, using kids as bait/hostages, etc). Guts just has a different standard of immoral, and he crosses it a lot too.
And I tend to think that a major aspect of Berserk is showing how this philosophy can corrupt you, until your means get worse and worse (eg Griffith making the sacrifice) because committing a constant stream of acts you yourself find morally reprehensible kind of numbs you to it and makes it easier to do worse.
Guts leading his Raiders and killing thousands of people in his life would never lead to Guts making a sacrifice, because Guts doesn’t care about the faceless soldiers he kills, he doesn’t feel guilty about being a mercenary, and he differentiates between his friends and everyone else. His friends are important, everyone else isn’t.
Griffith doesn’t differentiate. All those deaths hit him, he deliberately refuses to see the Hawks as his friends because he’s well aware that they can and probably will die for his dream, what with being soldiers, and so eventually sacrificing the Hawks starts looking like adding one more generic scoop of bodies to a mountain.
Sooo idk basically I think you’re v right, his guilt plays a major part and most people would say “Griffith thinks the end justifies the means” and use that as a reason he’s an evil conniving sociopath, but yeah imo while it’s true that Griffith thinks that way, it’s a lot more complicated than “and that proves he’s evil” lol.
mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least
oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.
Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:
I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.
But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.
imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol
And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.
Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.
Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.
(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)
lol i’m actually writing a thing right now that gets into that a little, tho it’ll be a while b4 i can post it
but yeah like femto specifically I would argue is essentially griffith’s guilt and self-loathing personified, just as the beast of darkness is guts’, and those feelings relate back to trauma for both of them.
For Guts it’s Gambino selling him and later telling him he’s cursed and evil and deserved it + the guilt of killing Gambino. This is v strongly visually suggested during his sewer nightmare right before he overhears Griffith’s promrose hall speech. Watches a monster kill gambino, then child!guts, then turns out the monster is himself. Voila. (also the trauma of the eclipse, buried guilt + self loathing wrt abandoning griffith leading to the eclipse, and his black swordsman sadism, traumatizing and killing children, etc, all makes the beast of darkness grow)
For Griffith it’s the guilt of the deaths of everyone who follows him and tbqh the deaths of people he kills too, and his self-loathing wrt “dirtying” himself in pursuit of his dream, so yk there’s trauma there too with Gennon. Also I think there’s a case to be made that the year of torture had a significant contribution to Femto’s existence, even if the psychological trauma of it isn’t rly discussed like the physical trauma is – I mean the mask he was forced to wear is incorporated into Femto’s design, that’s a big sign at least, plus the talk of darkness and feeling numb at the start of his torture chamber monologue which is echoed during his transformation into Femto.
idk basically strong yes imo, and i’m probably gonna come back and revisit this topic in greater detail eventually
like i think the reason i love griffith so much is that he’s made up entirely of huge contrasts lol, because his whole thing is denying his weaknesses and pretending to be perfect so hard that he basically convinces himself, except in occasional moments where all his insecurity and guilt and self loathing comes seeping out.
“It’s not that he’s strong. Griffitih had to make himself strong.” Like this line is in reference to this
and it’s such a perfect summarization of Griffith’s character.
So idk like when it comes to pondering Griffith’s characterization in AUs and stuff, or even not in AUs, just in general, I basically think that like 90% of what we see is essentially a facade… but complicated by the fact that it’s a facade Griffith himself buys into most of the time.
So idk it’s a weird line because you can’t say he isn’t, eg, confident, because he walks the walk as well as talking the talk – this is a dude who defeated an army of 30,000 with 5000, who went from street kid to nearly becoming the next king of Midland through sheer force of will – but it’s like, manufactured confidence that can be shattered, yk? That occasionally cracks and reveals the exact opposite underneath.
i like my femto as a manifestation of griffith’s self loathing hot take more the more i think about it, bc like, it’s a gr8 way of exemplifying berserk’s “people’s actions/choices/etc shape them” “he who fights monsters” etc theme.
which yk is everywhere from the concept of the sacrifice (choosing to sacrifice your loved ones makes you evil), to guts’ sword gaining more essence-of-darkness power the more ghosts and monsters he kills with it, to regular old non-metaphorical character progression like the black swordsman arc.
but the self loathing specifically is a great touch because what it means, which holds true in berserk, is that it’s not doing generic bad things that slowly fucks you up, but specifically doing things that you yourself find abhorrent. it’s pushing past your own limits.
eg tombstone of flame was a dark moment for griffith, because he felt guilty about the assassinations.
for guts? didn’t make an iota of difference because he didn’t care.
for griffith every battle feeds his dark side because every life lost on the road to his dream makes him feel guilty, and pushing away that guilt and doing it anyway is what shapes him and makes him capable of doing more and more, until sacrificing the hawks (guts excluded) can be framed as just another round of casualties, another scoop of bodies on the mountain.
for guts, the things that feed his dark side tend to be more along the lines of going above and beyond and torturing apostles and killing children or using them as hostages lol. or mistreating his friends eg abandoning and attacking casca. he has a very strong dividing line between people he cares about and canon fodder.
griffith didn’t have that dividing line, he cared about every death he caused, ally and enemy alike, which ironically made him more susceptible to corruption, in that it basically gave him practice burying his heart lol, until by the eclipse he was like, fuck it i’m a monster anyway, might as well make it official.
i don’t think this is the be all end all, i think there’s also a strong ‘one’s environment shapes you’ theme that intersects w/ this, particularly wrt trauma feeding ppl’s dark sides as well. plus this is only part of griffith’s reasoning for making the sacrifice lol.
but yk, it’s a good + interesting element of the story.
hooo boy ok long story short, it’s a coping mechanism. I personally think it’s likely it started out as childish whimsy, and when people started dying to achieve it (he became a mercenary leader when he was still a kid) it became an absolutely necessary goal because those deaths would only be justified if he achieved it.
I also think it’s possible that it just straight up started out as a coping mechanism, a dream of a paradise where he has the power to make whatever changes he wants to the world, to fix whatever plagued him as a child – poverty, nobles abusing their power, lives being bought and sold, whatever. Either way, the guilt as motivation came afterwards, and then consumed him.
It’s all there in his monologue to Casca in the river. I think Miura actually did a great job of fleshing his dream out, but it is largely between the lines, rarely outright stated.
like here we learn that people dying for money, on the whims of those more powerful than them, bothers him:
Here we find out that he has let himself be bought and sold for the sake of saving as many lives as he could, showing us that he has a personal stake in why people’s lives being treated as commodities and subject to the whims of nobility bothers him:
Here we find out that he feels like he has to achieve his dream for the sake of the dead:
Here we see the kingdom directly depicted as an escape from the darkness of the real world:
Here we find out that he wanted to do something, change something, with the power of the throne (the monster is war):
And knowing what we know about Griffith’s feelings of guilt, his disgust at nobility, and what Falconia ends up looking like, it’s reasonable to conclude that he wanted to have the power to carve out a place where people aren’t exploited by those more powerful than them.
And, as an aside, it’s largely talked about in a selfish and dark way because Griffith himself denies this deeper meaning. It’s personal, it’s vulnerable, it doesn’t fit the image of the perfect leader of the Hawks, and therefore we only see glimpses of how he really feels in his more vulnerable moments. He frames it to himself as just something he wants just for the sake of wanting something, because it’s noble to have a goal, but we’re shown enough glimpses through that misleading and shallow explanation to figure out the truth – that it’s a coping mechanism born out of guilt with a side of a deep-seated desire for a safe place where people are treated equally.
If you want the long version, I wrote this a little while ago:
shit you know what else would’ve been a really good moral grey moment if it was focused on? griffith having the bandits he hired to kidnap foss’ daughter killed.
like, he had to do that because they would’ve been a risky loose end otherwise, it genuinely was part of the path to his dream, and he left their money on their corpses out of guilt, but that is like, a perfect symbol of treating lives as commodities.
but it wasn’t even the focus of griffith asking guts if he’s cruel! the focus was on getting guts to help him kill people, not essentially hiring people to die for him, which we know is the source of like all his guilt. miura even mitigated that for some reason by having the bandits go ‘ho ho ho we’re shitty people who will totally blackmail griffith at some point’ before guts kills them lol.
but yk even griffith just being a mercenary leader is an interesting moral grey. the path to his dream, paved with corpses of people he hired to fight and die for him.
god it’s so good! he wants to have his own kingdom to change the inherently predatory social order that he himself uses as a tool to get his kingdom.
1. This is another one of my favourite expresions in Berserk tbh
2. I’m not saying this is deliberate, I’m not sure it would even be in character, but I can’t help but imagine this as Guts taunting Femto/Griffith about the fact that he was in love with him, his life was destroyed because of him, Guts drove him to make the sacrifice by leaving him, and Guts knows it.
Like yeah logically it’s just Guts being pissed off over the fact that Griffith sacrificed him to become a demon, especially with the follow up “thanks to me who’s fighting an army of the dead because of you,” but man, I’m js that knowing how the Golden Age goes gives this line potential Layers. You’re where you are now because this petty existence had all that power over you.
On the other hand this whole scene exists to set up Griffith making the sacrifice to bury his fragile heart bc of whatever went down w/ Guts, so like, it could be that deep?
Plus Femto’s response:
Just gonna reiterate that you mean absolutely nothing to me.
Whether that’s what Guts meant to say or not, I’m pretty sure he’s well aware of the irony of Femto emphasising his insignificance now, considering everything that went down between them. He might even stubbornly refuse to go back to post-Speech-to-Charlotte Guts, clinging to the fact that, no, I meant something to you and you meant something to me, and we both know that.
But then he would also have to know that it’s his fault that Griffith went this far. Which we know that he does, but idk, whenever I re-read the manga I feel like we should get to see more guilt from him.
Anyway, I don’t think Miura was fully taking all this into consideration while writing these first few chapters, but in retrospect you have to think about all the layers of meaning behind nearly every word Femto & Guts exchange. Like, this is off topic, but it’s in these chapters that Guts first finds out what sacrificing someone really means, and he doesn’t really react in any significant way, when realistically he should.
To be fair he’s unconscious when the Godhand actually explain the sacrifice and tell the Count that a sacrifice has to be someone you love so much it’s like they’re part of you. Which imo is kind of a hmmmm in and of itself, like there’s no reason Guts had to be unconscious at any point at all since he could barely move anyway, except to miss the explanation of who can be sacrificed. When he does wake up he just lies there and listens to the Count’s backstory before finally telling Puck to heal him. So I feel like it kind of suggests that Guts knowing that info might affect some things.
But otherwise yeah ia. I’m actually kind of rly into the idea of Guts stubbornly clinging to the knowledge that he was important to Griffith, hard earned as it was, now that you mention that. At least between the Eclipse and Griffith’s rebirth.
It’s like… idk I think there’s an argument that he left the Hawks because he knew he did mean something to Griffith, and that gave him the confidence to believe he could truly become his bff4ever if he changed his whole life lol. Whereas if he thought Griffith genuinely couldn’t give a shit about him he wouldn’t even try.
And then I think a similar way of thinking could be informing his behaviour during the Black Swordsman stuff. Like, I know I meant something to you, deny it all you want, I’m going to find you and force you to acknowledge me.
But after NGriff ditches him I think he kind of gives that up? Which is why he’s able to put his revenge thing on hold – it starts to feel futile when he genuinely believes NGriff feels nothing at all towards him. (Which is why that beating heart is a game changer in waiting js.)
idk lol I’m just thinking outloud.
And yeah like, it’s textual that he feels guilty for Griffith’s breakdown, from letting Casca stab him to:
But I do wish we saw more of that post-Eclipse other than the recurring moments when he thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow and mopes lol. It kind of makes sense to me that we don’t see Guts feeling guilty after the Eclipse because I feel like the point of the Eclipse rape was to piss Guts off enough that he’d basically channel his guilt into rage, but I feel like we should still see more inner conflict. Not that we don’t see any, but yk, I always want more.
Ohhh, man, I remembered he got knocked out but I thought we didn’t get to see the exact moment when he came to … so I thought, you know, we don’t know exactly how much he’s heard?
But I went to check and this is him twitching awake after all the juicy details have been laid out:
Which is honestly even better than him hearing all that and not reacting.
He does get to hear these parts though:
I honestly like to interpret his expression here as loathing directed specifically @ the God Hand sans Griffith/Femto, for waltzing in and ruining everything lol.
And I agree with everything else you brought up! Like, Guts can actually be pretty confident and even cocky, so it’s not like he’s constantly putting himself down. He’s just a little naive, bless his heart.
I can’t WAIT for Neo-Griff to finally snap lol
It’s gotta happen. Even if Guts’ storyline is wall-to-wall disappointment I know in my soul NGriff’s is going somewhere good.
And yeah I’m sure the parallels aren’t lost on Guts lol, but i guess it’s not quite as direct as essentially saying ‘being able to sacrifice someone is proof that you love them.’ Also yeah I’m into that interpretation of his anger there, like imo he hates Femto on a personal level for being an evil version of the dude he loves, but he def hates the rest of the Godhand for facilitating it. His reaction when seeing Slan in the troll cave was even more overwhelmingly rage-y than when he saw NGriff on the Hill of Swords, eg.
That’s like a highly ideal ending honestly, the Griffith kills Guts and then it ends on him having a Real Emotion and it’s all terrible
yeah i feel like it’d be the perfect blend of tragic yet satisfying for me. even moreso if Guts does that thing he does where he lets himself be stabbed because he’s full of guilt and mixed feelings. like say, if he finds out ngriff hasn’t completely lost his human emotions beforehand and actually failed his emotion test on the hill of swords…
ngl while my “official” take is that the dream started out as a stupid kid’s fantasy and snowballed horrifically and gained deeper significance as a coping mechanism/escape after the kid’s death and gennon (i’m pretty sure we’ve had some conversations about this ages ago lol), every time I read the scene where he saves Casca I’m like, nope there’s gotta be something else going on there.
He just lays everything out so plainly (”does being born of the nobility mean you’ve been chosen by god?” “if you have something to protect, take up that sword,” “you know how to fight already, don’t you?” “you might die you know,”) that it’s like, there’s no way the kid’s death and gennon was his wake-up call to how shitty the world is, everything’s already in place right here.
Like I guess it can’t be more than headcanon because if there was more to his story I’m sure Ubik would’ve said something while he was fucking with him to make the sacrifice, but chapter 16 like, establishes all of Griffith’s motivations/attitude towards nobility/making sure everyone follows him of their own choice/etc, which really seems to indicate that the kid’s death and gennon wasn’t the beginning of his bitterness re: people’s lives being bought and sold by nobles and his guilt re: ppl dying for his dream. It’s just like, an example.
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.
This started as an attempt to explain my take on why Griffith is so utterly dedicated to his dream, and then it evolved into a monster when I decided to apply that reading to the rest of Griffith’s narrative. This is basically an examination of the dream, and how Griffith’s relationship with Guts comes to not only take precedence over it, but functionally replace it.
Now, while this is essentially a Griffith character study, I’m coming at him from a very specific angle so this is by no means definitive or all-encompassing. There’s so much to say about Griffith, his role in the story, his characterization and motivation etc that I just can’t fit into the purview of this meta – like, hell, I don’t even talk about class issues lol – but hopefully this serves as a thorough exploration of the aspects I did choose to focus on.
And, of course, it goes without saying that this is just my own interpretation. I’ll make the best case I can, but at the end of the day so much of Griffith’s story is left in subtext that there’s plenty of room for other interpretations.
Also, I want to lead off with a warning/advertisement:
I fucking love Griffith. I think he’s a fantastic character with a ton of depth and humanity who gets reduced to a two dimensional caricature in fandom way too often, I’m sympathetic towards him, and I take it as read that he’s blatantly in love with Guts, and indeed, that his narrative is almost entirely about being in love with Guts. I’m also writing this for a presumed audience of people who don’t need to be convinced first that Griffith is more complex than “conniving sociopath,” but if that’s your starting point you’re more than welcome to read anyway and see if anything I have to say resonates despite that.
Basically, if you’re into really really long, really gay character analyses, enjoy!
This is divided into four parts:
Part One is an analysis of what I feel are the relevant aspects of Griffith’s dream and why he’s so dedicated to it.
Part Two explores the way Guts immediately takes precedence over the dream.
Part Three explores how Griffith comes to rely on Guts more than the dream.
And Part Four explores why Griffith ultimately chooses to sacrifice Guts for the dream.
And lastly, I’m using the word “explores” deliberately because this isn’t really an argument. I don’t have to argue that Guts takes precedence over the dream, or that Griffith becomes emotionally reliant on Guts, etc, because this is all pretty clearly stated in the text. Rather, I want to use the tension between Guts and the dream as a jumping off point to dig into Griffith’s character arc. I’m not just saying that Griffith’s dream pales in importance compared to Guts, I’m trying to explainwhy,how Miura shows us, and what it tells us about Griffith’s character and narrative.
Ok that’s it for the preamble, let’s dive the fuck in.
I’m going to start us off by examining two sequences which, together, tell us pretty much everything we need to know to understand Griffith and his relationship to his dream, at least as far as this meta is concerned.
The first is his very first scene in the manga, all the way back in chapter eight, during the Black Swordsman arc. This is our introduction to pre-demon Griffith.
Martyrdom for a merciless god. What a waste. On the battlefield, the life of a common soldier isn’t even worth a single piece of silver. In today’s world, most people’s lives are subject to the whims of a handful of nobility and royalty. Of course, even a king himself can’t live exactly as he pleases. We are all at the mercy of a great tide… fate, or whatever you wish to call it… And we all disappear in the end… our lives spent… never even knowing who we were.
In life, unrelated to one’s social standing or class as determined by man, there are some people who, by nature, are keys that set the world in motion. They are the true elite, as dictated by the golden rule of the universe. That’s what I want to know! What is my place in the world? Who am I? What am I capable of? What am I destined for?
This tells us Griffith’s driving philosophy. It tells us that he believes in fate, that he wants to push himself as far as he can and attain the most he can in the hopes that he is fated to be one of the few significant people who can change the world.
And it tells us that Guts is special to him. Griffith’s monologue here builds up to “You’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this.” We learn significant information about Griffith’s philosophy – along with some fun dramatic irony because, as we already learned by seeing Femto, Griffith is one of those keys – but the true point of this brief flashback is this moment of connection with Guts, with Griffith freely opening up to someone for the first time.
The second sequence is, of course, Casca’s flashback. From the kid’s death to Casca expressing her jealousy of Guts, these chapters are the real key to understanding Griffith’s character. That first scene is like the surface look with hints of depth, but Casca’s flashback recontextualizes everything that came before and informs everything that comes after. Like, I can’t stress enough how important this flashback is to understanding Griffith lol, it’s the axis around which his character revolves.
Miura even points out through Casca that learning what we learn about him should make us take another look at Griffith and further our understanding of what we’ve already seen, and what we’re going to see.
So I’m going to go through it and explain exactly what this flashback tells us about him.
We learn that the deaths of those who follow him weigh extremely heavily on him and fill him with guilt. Given the way the boy returns during the Eclipse this was likely a wake-up call, maybe the first instance of a death in the line of duty hitting him this hard. However, whether it’s the first time he’s been fucked up by one of his Hawks dying or whether he makes a habit of brooding over them doesn’t matter – this is the example we’re given to tell the reader how Griffith feels about the deaths of those fighting for him.
We learn that Griffith deals with this guilt through a pretty fucked up combination of self harm, rationalization, and denial. “I don’t feel at all responsible for my comrades who have lost their lives under my command,” he says, and then tears the shit out of his arms until Casca’s crying and begging him to stop. And I mean, if this scene isn’t clear enough, Miura uses self harm as an illustration of immense guilt despite denial a lot.
And not to belabor the point, but the dead kid’s relevance is demonstrated by the simple fact that Miura decided it was narratively important to include him, Griffith’s reaction to his death, and Casca making the connection and looking blatantly skeptical when he denies that the boy had anything to do with his decision to have sex with Gennon. We are absolutely supposed to understand that Griffith is lying when he says he doesn’t feel responsible, both to Casca and himself.
We learn that his dream is intrinsically tied to emotional repression. Griffith making himself strong means Griffith denying his emotional weaknesses, burying his heart, and putting on a mask of perfection at all times so he can embody the correct image for the Hawks and be what they need from him. It’s not that he can easily bear the burden of his dream and what he does for it, it’s that he forces himself to do so by repressing the emotional toll it takes on him.
By putting on this mask he is able to repress his feelings – or by repressing his feelings he is able to put on the mask. Either way, the knight in shining armour image he projects and his refusal to acknowledge his feelings of guilt and self loathing are intrinsically tied together and referred to by Casca as a sign of strength.
We also learn why Griffith is devoted to his dream.
We began with the assumption that his reasons are philosophical, theoretical, and self-serving. He wants to be special. Hell, if you really boil down the keys that set the world in motion speech, it means he wants proof that he’s special, and if he achieves his dream then it’s a sign from God or the universe or fate or whatever force beyond human knowledge that it was meant to be – that he was truly destined for great things all along.
But when we learn how driven by guilt he is, that motivation is transformed and complicated. He wants to be special, he wants fate to prove that he’s special, because that means he’s been doing the right thing all along. It means the deaths on his head were necessary. And if he achieves his dream he proves that it was worth it, that the dead didn’t die for nothing – that they were right to follow him even though it lead to their deaths, because he made the thing they gave their lives for a reality.
It makes it worth it to “dirty” himself too. If he achieves his dream then sex with Gennon was worth it, the assassinations were worth it, that hidden underbelly of his rise to power that he feels ashamed of was worthwhile after all.
If he achieves his dream, then he has no reason to feel guilty. If he achieves his dream, then he has no reason to hate himself. It was all just part of the wheel of fate.
I truly believe that this is what motivates Griffith more than anything else, and why his dream is paramount to him. And I think that when he gave the keys speech to Guts (among other instances of Griffith talking about the dream) it was also a form of rationalization and denial – a half-truth that obscures his real motivation, even to himself.
Finally, as Casca’s story concludes with Guts’ arrival in their lives, we finish with Casca coming as close as possible to saying that Griffith is in love with Guts without actually saying it. Griffith relies on Guts. Guts changed Griffith. Guts makes Griffith irrational. Griffith has never said anything like, “I want you,” to anyone else, ever. Presumably Griffith has never actually wanted anything or anyone but his dream before. In risking his life for him, Griffith also risks his all-important dream, and Casca won’t let Guts take Griffith’s dream down with him. It’s as if… as if…
So, let’s summarize what we know about Griffith now.
He needs to achieve his dream for the sake of the dead. In doing so, he can prove to himself that he has no reason to feel guilty, or dirty, or ashamed, because it was all meant to be. And he himself has no real understanding of this – he denies and rationalizes it. He would never think of himself as someone consumed by guilt or self-loathing, he’d just let a child predator fuck him so he can feel like he’s sacrificing something of himself too, then justify it with cool logic while calling himself unclean and tearing his arms up the next morning, and then bury all of that under that mask of perfection so no one else ever knows and he can even deny it to himself.
And we know Guts has changed him, to the point where Casca sees Guts as a direct threat to Griffith’s dream.
This is who Griffith is. He exists and functions in this state of guilt and self-loathing, and he is constantly repressing it for the sake of the image of a perfect leader he shows the Hawks, except in the few self-destructive moments when it seeps out. His dream is a self-perpetuating coping mechanism. He manages to live with himself through the belief that if he achieves it, it means fate is putting a seal of approval on everything he’s done on the road to achieving it, but in the meantime the bodies and the dirty deeds pile up and the emotional toll on Griffith continues to rise.
But Guts makes him forget that dream.
So let’s see what happens when Guts is introduced into his life.
Yeah I think it’s possible, but it would depend on like… what NGriff’s emotions even are I guess. If like you suggest he has residual feelings for Guts because they were so life-alteringly strong when he was a human and Guts survived the sacrifice, then his capacity to care enough about anyone else to feel remorse is probably long gone. similarly if it’s just the fetus fucking with him then guilt and remorse is probably totally out of the picture.
I’m really into the idea of NGriff having a full range of unfrozen emotions and just completely repressing them tho. like, if human griffith justified his dirty/cruel actions to himself by telling himself that it would be worth it and he’ll be validated by fate when he achieves his goal (which i think he did but i’m not going to get into it rn bc that’s an upcoming post), then neogriffith can double down on that because he has achieved his goal now and has basically had his entire life and all his actions validated directly by god lol
so even if part of himself has woken up or w/e and is there with his beating heart feeling actual emotions and being horrified at what he’s become, it’d be really easy for him to deny/ignore those feelings because he has divine right, his life was/is dictated by fate and god itself told him everything he does is exactly what’s meant to happen, and therefore he has no reason to feel guilty for anything ever
which has the potential to be a really interesting internal struggle in theory. in practice the fact that the guilt-worthy subject is rape really like, sours it for me lbr, i can only cringe at the prospect of Miura addressing it in the future, but welcome to berserk i guess.
Also if I was going to make a guess about what’s most likely to happen in actual canon, I’d say that NGriff is probably never going to express actual remorse for anything though there may be subtle hints of inner conflict. give or take how much or how little of his feelings end up genuinely being attributed to the patron saint of lazy writing, the fetus.
i love these kinds of questions! but please prepare yourself because this is going to be long and incoherent
so, to be perfectly honest, i know this is a cop out but all griffith scenes are my favourite scenes?
if i had to pick a few that stand out the most, however, i love griffith & guts’ first and last duels so much
these panels especially, but also:
i also LOVE:
this whole entire thing. all of it, every panel, every word, i love it.
then there’s the entire sequence starting with him overhearing casca telling guts to leave again and ending with him sacrificing everyone. love all of that, especially: his suicide attempt which breaks my heart whenever i re-read it, the moment when guts is approaching him and he’s thinking “stay away!!!” and his thoughts leading up to the sacrifice, about how guts outshone his dream.
this obvious parallel
also, needless to say, i have a complicated relationship with his nightmare wherein he is in a lifesucking heterosexual marriage with casca .. lol.
another big scene for me is, obviously, the bthump scene. i love it so much. i love how he came to guts to check if he still had feelings. very subtle. and then he was like “ok sweet i don’t have feelings bye” and then he had a feeling. I LOVE IT.
OH and allllllll of those femto + black swordsman interactions from the nonnumerical chapters. kisses fingers like a chef.
those are the first few scenes that come to mind, honestly. but there’s a lot of other gems too, like his and guts’ very first meeting when he tells guts that he wants him, that moment when he shows guts the behelit smiling like a little kid, that time he was talking to guts about their duel and how fun it was and just looked really fond, every time he risked his life for guts and every time he lied about his reasons, that time he gave julius a dangerous smile (and every time he talked shit about the nobles), when he asked guts to do him the favour of killing julius, these two scenes god
the scene with casca in the lake, that moment when guts’ sword broke in the middle of their important fight and he looked like … idk what that emotion even was, probably fear? that moment he told gennon he meant nothing to him, god that scene when he sets the room with the queen inside on fire and takes off the ribbon tying his hair …… all of his little smiles and glances @ guts. all of his little 😮 moments.
i’m not fond of the fuck scene with charlotte for obvious reasons, but i do like how he was thinking about guts and also afterwards when he just … curls in on himself and starts crying. that destroyed me.
this isn’t a scene people talk about a lot but i love when he tells charlotte’s gross father off? he just knows … exactly which buttons to push. and we didn’t even know he had all this dirt on the king until that scene, i just love it so much
i love that moment when they find him in the torture chamber and he wakes up and sees guts. puts his hand on his neck, but then guts starts crying, and his hand slides down to guts’ instead. fuck me.
AND ok you already know about this ‘cause we’ve talked about it but:
this moment of clear, undeniable jealousy. love.
obviously i love his little private moment with guts in the carriage. i love neo-griffith’s mind-numbingly boring tea parties, and his talk with rickert. … like i said, i love pretty much any scene where griffith showed up in the manga lol.
if you ask me why … i apologise ’cause this isn’t going to be anything profound, really, but i just love him as a character, literally everything about him. looking at this array, i seem to prefer scenes where he loses control and shows some kind of intense emotion, generally directed towards guts. but i also love the scenes of clear emotional repression, be it him telling guts he doesn’t really have a reason for risking his life to save him, or him telling himself and everyone else that he doesn’t feel guilty for all the lives that were lost for his cause. i love his messy emotions, whether he tries to hide them or they take over him completely and cause him to make his disastrous decisions. i love his impulsivity, i love his jealousy, i love his guilt. i just love him so much.
i feel like i already know a few of your favourite scenes but still wbu? feel free to ramble @ me like i just did @ you
Yesss, ngl I asked because I’ve been craving some pure certified organic griffith positivity and I read this post with just a big grin on my face lol. so ty for the long and awesome answer ❤
Like, other than going ^^^^all of the above^^^^ I guess right now I really want to ramble about like… the genuinely good stuff. I never shut up about Griffith’s flaws, his self loathing, his guilt, his emotional repression, the way he lashes out in interesting yet horrifying ways when he can’t just repress his feelings, the sacrifice, etc…
But yk what despite how fucked up he is as a person he has a lot of good aspects that always get downplayed for the sake of villainizing him, and I want to talk about those.
Like dude wanted to create a socialist, non-discriminatory paradise in the middle ages? His goal was literally to become king so he would have the power to carve out a place where people’s bodies and lives wouldn’t be bought and sold. I’d side-eye the shit out of Miura for making that the antagonist’s motivation if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s consistently portrayed as a good thing. Still keeping my side-eye on hold tho for when we find out exactly where Miura’s going with Falconia.
And he walked the walk in addition to talking the talk. His second in command was the only woman we ever see fighting in an army in Berserk, and she joined him because he saved her from a noble who bought her. Then he got her, and a bunch of other former peasants, knighted. If Griffith had become king the normal way rather than taking the magical god route, the… idk military command. Head General? Whatever, the commander of his armies would’ve been Casca.
Like yeah there’s some ye olde sexism in the mix but that comes from every dude we see, including beloved ones like Guts and Judeau (especially Guts, yeesh).
He was a beloved commander for a reason. His strategies aren’t just brilliant, they’re a way of minimizing casualties as much as possible. Despite always having to project an image of perfection, he was able to be personable too, making the Hawks feel valued. He partied with them after victories, all he said to Casca when she was full of guilt for going into battle with debilitating cramps was “welcome back,” he got Casca to rescue Corkus from Guts and then came over and rescued Casca when that wasn’t enough, he had a personal recollection of the kid who died in the flashback who Casca didn’t know anything about, remembering the way the kid looked at him.
He hides the dark underside of his rise to power not just because he doesn’t want anyone (except Guts) to see it and judge him for it, but also because he doesn’t want the Hawks to have to worry about it.
Guts thinks it’s cruel to not let them in on the plan, but Griffith thinks it’d be cruel to burden them with the knowledge of some of the fucked up things getting them those knighthoods.
The way he says, “But for hundreds, thousands of lives to hang in the balance and myself alone not to be unclean…” which completely fails to acknowledge that his life is on the line exactly the same as everyone else’s since he leads his army at the front, but he thinks that doesn’t count, he has to do something extra basically as penance.
And like, sorry but that extra thing is literally selling himself to a child rapist, as a child, to prevent as many soldiers from dying in battle as possible. I’m like, so done with watching fandom downplay that at every turn. Also while I’m listing good deeds, personally murdering that dude.
How being in love with Guts makes him automatically do things from little stuff like asking Guts to assassinate Julius instead of ordering him to, to huge things like basically straight up dying for him w/ Zodd. I mean, Zodd won, if it wasn’t for fate Griffith would’ve died right there while running to Guts to grab his hand.
And this is after ordering the rest of the Hawks to retreat and running in alone to try to rescue Guts.
Also not just doing good things, how about being awesome? Like taking five thousand people and winning a battle against thirty thousand. Like the way it’s set up with Casca thinking that Griffith might be being reckless by volunteering because his rapist is head of that army, but it turns out that he knew he could win entirely because of his history with Gennon, basically using his predatory lust against him. Like burning a bunch of murder-plotting conservative nobles alive while doing this:
Like going through at least two days of torture without making a sound. And coming out the other side after a full year still sane because his feelings for Guts kept him going. And then saving everyone during the escape attempt despite being helpless and voiceless. Wanting desperately to be able to grab a sword and help Guts fight a giant terrifying monster.
I just love him so much and I talk about his stupidity and self loathing and emotional fucked up ness and how he succumbs to his flaws all the time and have been especially focusing on it recently due to this thing i’m procrastinating on still writing, but he has a lot of genuine virtues too and sometimes u just wanna sit back and be a Griffith apologist.
u burn those nobles babe, you earned it
“You bled so much for me. These are wounds from the hundred man battle, right? Even the wound I gave you…”
“I too want a wound… that I can say you gave me.”
When it comes to Guts’ guilt issues surrounding Griffith’s tragic narrative, and the highly sexually charged nature of the scene where the Beast of Darkness suggests this, and the fact that the Guts and Casca sex scene is already chock full of references and parallels to Griffith, I’m feeling like this is a legit comparison, at least from Guts’ guilt-ridden and Griffith-obsessed point of view.
(brought to my attention by therainykitty here, ty! also s/o to this post)
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.
i feel like the double standard stems partially from the fact that guts “feels bad” about what he did to casca
but griffith would fucking feel bad too if he had the ability to feel anything lol. he is literally the king of feeling bad about fucked up shit he’s done, please
griffith:
berserk fans: i am shocked, shocked and absolutely appalled that neogriffith said he has no regrets
griffith:
those same berserk fans: griffith has clearly been an evil unfeeling sociopathic monster from the beginning
fa and i were talking the other day about certain people who (imo) misinterpret griffith’s character to be all about power & control … i think that’s a very stupid but also very interesting character analysis and i think i understand where it comes from lol
what baffles me is how people miss all the not so subtle hints that griffith actually cares. but i guess when you’ve already adopted a point of view, your brain shifts reality to fit it. no one’s exempt from that, really
so griffith is the commander (? idk these titles, sorry if i got it wrong, i’m gay) of the band of the hawk, clearly likes being in control, i won’t deny that. ‘claimed’ guts at least partially due to his strength and fighting ability, schemed behind the scenes a lot, eventually when guts tried to leave he wouldn’t let him, all true. but did he break because he wasn’t in control anymore? well, in a way, i guess, i say with my voice going really high. the real conflict of his character was the contest between his dream, motivated by childish desires and guilt, and guts, the only man who made him forget all about it. guts made him lose his reason, lose control, and he fell apart completely. his raw feelings for guts made him feel so weak and vulnerable it was unbearable.
but even so, what griffith really wanted was guts. the problem was it was already too late. too many people had died. too much time had been wasted. on top of that, guts was no longer a certain and stable presence in his life. he could leave at any moment, again, and griffith wouldn’t be able to stop him, and would have to go through another emotional breakdown.
i don’t know, like. if what you get from that is “griffith is a control freak who throws a fit when he can’t puppet master everyone around him” then i applaud you because that’s an
inconceivable
perspective for me. to me, griffith’s character is about guilt, repression, and an unspeakable love, so strong it made him lose sight of everything else, so intense it shattered him into a million pieces. griffith claims he does things for Logical Reasons, but do you really buy that? when he sold his body to a paedophile, do you really think it was because he just wanted more money? when he decided to throw away his humanity, to bury his fragile heart, do you really think he was doing it strategically? i don’t know, must be nice to not care about anything that truly makes griffith compelling as a character, i bet reading berserk is way less painful then
also a couple of points:
as someone has pointed out already, griffith didn’t force guts to join the band of the hawk. he invited him, guts refused, griffith was surprised but didn’t really say anything. and then guts was like, we’ll duel for it, and griffith saw his opportunity and accepted
this one’s important: griffith ….. didn’t want to become a king so he could have power and money lol. he wanted to create his own society, where things like class, race, and gender wouldn’t matter, just like they didn’t to the hawks. and that’s clearly the type of kingdom falconia is now.
SAME I feel like the aspect of control and whether Griffith has it or not is completely incidental to his character. I don’t think having control is a priority for him, I don’t think it’s a source of anything or a motivation, I think at most it’s a side effect of the enormity of his dream and the fact that to achieve it he has to be a leader.
Like, he is a leader, he sends people to his death and he owns that fact (partially in a denial of his guilt over that fact imho), he wants to be king, and he has a breakdown when Guts leaves that involves claiming ownership of him, but none of those stem from a place of control-freakiness.
When it comes to Guts Casca gets angry because Griffith doesn’t control him as much as he should as a leader and lets him basically do whatever the hell he wants and plans around it. Griffith is the one who tries to ask Guts to help him as a friend by killing a guy rather than ordering him as a soldier, and Guts is the one who wants it to be an order. Griffith makes a point of letting his Hawks choose to follow him because it’s another way he can deny his guilt for their deaths. (”I guess it’s because… they themselves chose to fight.”) Casca follows him after Griffith tells her “do what you wish” (do whatever tf you want is practically a griffith motto, he says it to corkus in the beginning, p much says it to guts wrt battle tactics, etc.)
Idk I don’t get any sense of needing to be in control from Griffith’s personality, I almost see the opposite in the way he denies responsibility for the Hawks’ deaths, his calm interest when discussing the fact that monsters exist even though Zodd almost killed them, his belief in – and more than that, his strong desire to believe in – fate, etc. “We are all at the mercy of a great tide, fate or whatever you want to call it.”
Refusing to let Guts leave came from emotional desperation and falling back on a previously established dynamic that Guts himself suggested and reinforced because he couldn’t communicate his feelings any other way. Imo.
Oh and also like +1 I think Guts fucked him up partially bc to achieve his dream he has to remain in control of himself and when Guts is involved he totally loses it, but I don’t think he really allowed himself to accept the fact that Guts makes him irrational until the torture chamber. I could see an argument that his emotional repression/denial is a way to remain in control of his feelings, but again I don’t think he lives in denial and repression because he’s a control freak, I think it’s because his dream necessitates it.
“Griffith had to make himself strong.” He doesn’t intrinsically desire to be in control of himself or others, he forces himself to be to achieve his dream, which itself is motivated by guilt.
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.
anyway speaking of moments where Griffith desperately needs someone to reassure him.
also now i’m doubling down on my theory that Griffith’s scratch marks here came shortly after “do you think I’m cruel?” rather than the day of Guts’ departure.
you're the only one 