what do you think of griffith smiling when he hears julius and adonis are dead? i see lots of ppl use it as proof that he was ~evil~ all along

Fucking love that moment lol.

glorious.

Like, this is a moment of Griffith’s inner darkness shining through. It’s perfect because it comes right after his long dream speech to Charlotte, as he’s learning that he’s achieved a particularly horrible step on the path to his dream. His dream just caused an innocent kid to be killed, and he’s smiling about it.

It’s a very strong way to equate dreams to darkness early on – and it’s great foreshadowing for Guts’ own descent too. This speech that ends with Griffith smiling over the death of a child – that causes that smile – is the very thing that inspires Guts to leave to pursue his own dream! Which ends up being the Black Swordsman arc.

Like compare Griffith’s evil smile to Black Swordsman Guts’ slasher smiles as he’s, yk, fighting “stronger and stronger opponents,” ie pursuing his own dream. Dreams are terrible all around for everyone and I love it.

This is also part of Griffith’s set up that’s very soon knocked down in a subversion of the reader’s expectations. Like I’ve talked about how Griffith’s narrative begins with an image and eventually peels that away to the truth – we start with Femto, then we get early larger-than-life knight in shining armour Griffith who would do anything for his dream, here w/ the assassination we get the darker aspects of that emphasized, and then only five chapters later we get our first full pull-back of the curtain style reveal of the real Griffith, in Casca’s flashback.

Compare Griffith smiling when a child dies on the path to his dream up there to:

and

It’s Griffith burying his guilt – getting much better at burying it through consistent practice lol – and demonstrating his willingness to do so in order to achieve his dream, which, ironically, he’s pursuing because of that guilt. It’s perfect.

I think I’ve phrased it before as like, after learning about Griffith’s dead child related guilt issues in Casca’s flashback shortly after, that smile when he finds out Adonis is dead can only mean one of two things:

either in the intervening years he’s changed so fundamentally that he no longer has those guilt issues, and therefore Casca’s flashback chapters are functionally meaningless and unnecessary to an almost comedic extent.

or it means he’s successfully buried his guilt so thoroughly in this moment as he’s pontificating to Charlotte about his dream that his reaction is pleased – he’s kind of like, becoming the mask, doing that good a job of convincing himself it’s all necessary for the sake of his dream.

And we see Griffith’s guilt issues crop up again in Tombstone of Flame
and again when Ubik’s convincing him to make the sacrifice, soooo we
know it’s not option one lol.

idk it’s a great example of the fucked up duality that comes from living in denial and eventually leads to choosing to become a monster because you already see yourself as one, basically, and it’s something I absolutely love about Griffith’s character.

tl;dr griffith isn’t evil, he’s interesting.

the end of this post also gets into my take on this scene, and it’s probably better said there lol.

also this post kind of illuminates more of my thinking wrt dark sides in berserk

Do you consider griffith a villain or just an antagonist/deuteragonist?

I really don’t think Miura is taking the straightforward villain route with Griffith. He hasn’t been so far, what with framing him as the protagonist of his own story. He’s an antagonist to Guts, but yeah I don’t think villain is the word for him.

I’d classify Femto as a villain, tbf, but then I’d also classify the Beast of Darkness as a villain. I think that’s kind of the point of Berserk, that everyone has that dark villainous side and everyone has a heroic side, and some are more one than the other, whether they’re monsters or regular humans. And the key isn’t even to overcome that dark side, but to find a balance.

p much I think the conflict of Berserk is going to come down to the light vs the dark within the individual characters and within humanity as a whole, and NGriff as an individual is probably literally representative of humanity as a whole.

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

I like them a lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what are your top 5 favorite guts centric scenes?

this is a really hard list to narrow down ngl

Can I just say all of chapter 2? I was tempted to go with the end of chapter one as a character establishing moment, yk Guts looking scarier than snake man as he gleefully tortures him, but honestly chapter 2 is where it’s at when it comes to Black Swordsman Guts.

Guts finally, somberly realizing he shouldn’t’ve left, telling Judeau and Casca he’ll stay with Griffith, both of them telling him to leave because he did such a thorough job of proclaiming he’s got a nobler goal and separating himself, just hammering home how it was a mistake.

This is a double feature because I couldn’t decide between these two scenes and they essentially say the same thing anyway:

and

Guts haunted by the fear and temptation of becoming a monster. I love the sewer nightmare, especially coming right before Promrose Hall. The way it conflates Zodd, Donovan, and Guts after he kills Adonis. Guts’ self-loathing here informing why he reacts so badly to the overheard speech too.

And then after Rosine and a fun child-killing spree, these ghosts voicing his inner thoughts. The self-loathing, muddied by the temptation of giving in and following in Griffith’s footsteps, ironically the same choice he made after Promrose Hall. Griffith’s dream made him a monster, and Guts’ dream is doing the same – and the Black Swordsman content is absolutely Guts pursuing his own dream, to fight stronger and stronger opponents.

Guts channeling all his painful feelings into rage here. I can’t really say the whole rampage through Midland lol, there are moments I like less, but definitely the start of it, the reunion in the depths, killing the torturer, one man army-ing up the stairs and out the door. It’s just so good. Exactly how Guts avoids dealing with his feelings, really awesome to watch, nice sense of protectiveness, and excellently illustrative of how devastated he is to find Griffith after a year of torture.

Guts finally, finally beginning to accept that he’s found a new home, the place where he belongs, here with the Hawks and Griffith, after Griffith risked his life to save him from a monster (in a particularly meaningful contrast to his childhood). Finally beginning to move on and heal a bit. This is the moment of greatest potential for Guts and p much the pinnacle of his life and it’s so effective at putting the reader and Guts at like, a height from which to fall.

Bonus 6:

This only gets a bonus spot bc I’ve mentioned it a few times before as one of my favourite Guts moments and I don’t want to be too predictable lol, but it’s so good. This whole scene. Guts ostensibly wanting to fight Femto but more than anything wanting his attention and only being spurred on to even stand up when Femto says that.

Oh Guts. ilu

I just finished rereading the golden age and man I still have trouble reconciling griffith with femto. Bc like yeah femto is obv not the same as griffith he’s griffith filled with evilness but he still displays human emotions. Like his obsession and anger towards guts his jealousy towards casca seemingly residual tender feelings for guts what with him not killing guts at the end of the eclipse and more. He’s like griffith’s dark side personified and I have a hard time believing that griffith 2/2

2/2 could harbor such cruelty inside. It makes me question my reading of his character sometimes tbh

lol finally got it, ty for trying again!

and yeah I think I get what you mean.

Partly what I do is just kind of like… take the rape as read? Like fine, Miura is of the belief that people’s inner darkness comes out through sexual violence 90% of the time. We see that in Griff, Guts, most apostles, Slan, and even Farnese. It’s something he wants to like… “explore” is a very generous word lol, but let’s go with that, explore as a more generalized statement on humanity, rather than as an individual judgement on any of these characters.

I don’t want to go through the scene and find the panel lol, but Slan even gets that line during the Eclipse rape, “this is what it means to be evil. This is what it means to be human.” Or something along those lines. Miura just like, chose rape as his central illustration of the worst aspects of humanity. So it’s not really the particular cruelty Griffith harbours in him, but rather the cruelty all of humanity does.

So I just kind of nod along lol, even while I think it’s gratuitous and poorly done most of the time. It’s sort of built into the fabric of the story unfortunately.

On a characterization level… enh.

I guess I can sort of reconcile it as long as I have that authorially-provided nudge of “evil = rape by default” lol. If I just accept that and go along with it, then yeah ok, Griffith turns into a demon filled with all of humanity’s evil, and expresses his negative emotions by spitefully raping Casca. Fine, whatever. That’s what humans in Miura’s Berserk do when they become monsters.

And I mean I do think that Griffith has some cruelty in him, so there may also be a difference in how we see his character too. It’s not really a big stretch for me to believe that an evil demon version of Griffith would want to spitefully lash out at Guts and even Casca, because human Griffith’s feelings towards them were pretty complicated – well complicated wrt Guts, we didn’t really get any insight into his feelings towards Casca other than a sense of fondness + protectiveness and some jealousy at the end, and maybe some resentment at the thought of her taking care of him.

Like, it’s enough for me to believe that the evil demon version would want them to suffer.

I could definitely see a part of Griffith enjoying the fuck out of being able to say this to Guts. The part that resented him for how much he loved him, that tried to strangle him in the torture chamber. Even just the part of him that frowned for a second when Guts asked why he risked his life to save him from Zodd. It’s just that as a human that part is swallowed up by overwhelming love and yk, generally being an actually good person who doesn’t want to hurt people, but ends up doing it a lot anyway and burying the guilt.

(And I will argue forever that human Griffith is pretty much the most morally upstanding character in Berserk by most standards lmao, which is part of what makes his narrative through “I sacrifice” so good.)

Anyway yeah, idk basically I think I get what you’re saying and I half agree but also I find it fairly easy to just kind of roll with it because Berserk’s gonna Berserk lol. Like, take Griffith, magically enhance this part of him:

remove/freeze this part:

and have him written by a dude who thinks rape is the best way to illustrate the darkness of humanity, and I can see how Griffith could become Femto. His lingering feelings for Guts could be enough to make him hesitate to kill him, but not so much that he doesn’t want him to suffer. Also I kind of assume that Femto retains some feelings for Guts because Guts survived the sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean he has lingering morals or anything like that. So I can kind of reconcile him wanting to hurt Guts in his Evil Demon In Berserk way, but also failing to follow through and kill him.

Like imo it’s Griffith’s Guts related irrationality coming back to fuck him up lol, rather than guilt or morality.

Idk does this make sense/address what you’re saying? I focused mainly on the eclipse rape because that’s what I jump to when talking about Griffith as a human vs Femto’s evil lol, hopefully that’s also what you meant.

Based on the different arcs in the manga, what’s your favorite Guts (like Black swordsman!Guts, Golden Age!Guts etc.)? Also do you prefer Femto or Neo Griffith?

Honestly, Black Swordsman Guts, especially in the Black Swordsman arc (tho he’s also p good in the Lost Children arc). The way he starts out as the epitome of the asshole antihero out for revenge and that image almost immediately starts crumbling until you’re shown that he’s terrified and pathetic and not a whole lot better than the monsters he’s fighting and really sad about a bad breakup.

The way he opens the story by banging an apostle on page one and eventually you realize that is one of a grand total of two occasions on which he’s had consensual sex. The way he ends the first arc crying after a kid swears vengeance against him. The end of the first chapter when he tortures the snake apostle and the art and tone shift to make Guts the villain and the monster the pitiable victim. Encouraging children to kill themselves because he’s upset. Refusing to admit how monstrous he’s getting when he gets temporarily possessed. Letting a zombie kid stab him.

The driving mystery of why Guts is so obsessed with revenge followed by the reveal that it’s because he had a relationship comparable to marriage with the dude he wants to kill and Griffith didn’t just betray him, they betrayed each other and like half of Guts’ motivation is guilt/distracting himself from guilt.

The way his current situation, haunted by monsters claiming ownership of him after being given to them by someone he loves reflects his childhood so effectively.

I mean yeah part of what makes Black Swordsman Guts great is what the Golden Age reveals about him too, but I’ll still take Black Swordsman over the happy Golden Age version.

For one thing, when Black Swordsman Guts is a dick, the narrative is very clear on that being a negative thing. While when Golden Age Guts is a dick (eg most of his scenes with Casca) it feels like we’re supposed to find that at least somewhat endearing. And also like… I just really, really love the way Miura starts Guts out as strong badass archetype and then immediately sets about complicating it by answering the question of: what would make a real human person this fucking over the top and ridiculous? What’s actually underneath the cool image?

Like Guts goes from badass mccool 80s action hero send up to being directly compared to Vargas in terms of how sad and pathetic he is within a couple chapters, and it’s So. Good.

Answer to your second question under the cut

This question… is actually a very tough call lol. Like yeah okay the smart money’s on the character whose introduction didn’t include a gratuitious rape scene, but I genuinely love Femto regardless? Mostly because I disregard that choice of intro since it was um Badly Written lol, and Femto had me at

And I just love dark inner monsters as a concept in general despite the author’s reliance on rape as his primary illustration of evil.

On potential alone I’d go with NeoGriffith, because boy he is full of potential to be amazing depending on where those hints about his feelings, isolation of being a singular god, etc go. But what we actually see from him is like… so bland 99% of the time. Like yeah that’s purposeful, that’s a big part of the point, but still. He does feel like a shell of the old Griffith, literally – the outside with v little of the depth (so far).

I can headcanon and theorize a bunch to make him interesting to me, and I do, but idk if that counts lol.

So as for what we’ve got on the page and how seeing him makes me feel, I’m actually going to pick Femto. Like, the same way I inwardly cheered when we saw Guts’ slasher smile at Godo’s after he killed the pig apostle, because it was such a “he’s baaaaaack” moment, I cheered when we saw Femto confront Ganeshka. I love his stupid offensive camp villain makeup, I love his stupid exoskeleton, I love what a petty asshole he is, I love how silent and scary he was when he first appeared and I love how awkward and pathetic he was when he lowered his hand and let Guts escape, I love that he expresses emotions, I love that Void had to basically tell him to shut up during his petty back and forth with Guts in his first scene, and I love him partially out of spite because Miura tried to make me hate him in the shittiest way possible.

Like yeah okay put your super gay character in vampy makeup and make him a rapist to piss off the manly protag while writing out the woman you have no idea what to do with, fuck you I love him anyway.

I have a tendency to love the characters the narrative goes above and beyond to try to get me to hate, because I don’t like being told what to do lol, and if I feel like the narrative is pushing me to feel something without properly selling it/while poorly and/or offensively illustrating it I get contrary. Like basically the Eclipse rape only made me feel hate for Miura. If I hated Femto for it, then I feel like I’d be validating Miura’s bad and offensive writing.

Which is not to say I don’t fully understand and respect people who do respond to the Eclipse by hating Femto. This is just how I personally respond to fiction lol.

Do you think that now that casca has regained her memories something tragic is finally going to happen again and shake the (frankly stagnant) current storyline? Honestly dennis reynolds voice somebody has to die. Preferably somebody from guts’ new party by guts’ own hand

The line between think and desperately, desperately hope is thin lol, but yes. Also completely agree that the best outcome would be Guts killing one or more of his friends himself in beast of darkness mode.

The theory I’ve been pushing and will continue to push until Miura proves me wrong is that Casca’s ptsd despair is going to open the behelit, she’ll choose to become an apostle, and consequently Guts will succumb to the armour in his grief and outrage. Also symbolically it’s nice because something has to cause Guts to lose himself to the armour, we know this because of fifty pieces of foreshadowing, and Casca becoming a monster would work great for that since she basically symbolizes his tie to his humanity right now.

But anyway, whatever ends up happening, I hope it really shakes things up, raises the stakes, and causes serious permanent consequences, because we need a dose of darkness soon imho, and Guts’ fix Casca quest ending in tragedy would just… work so perfectly for me. I want it so bad lol.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xiyyh
mentioned you on a post “i’d like your thoughts on this please! i’d forgotten about this…”

@bthump my sincere apologies for not seeing this earlier—that week was hectic af! but i love your thoughts here, thank you! very intriguing analysis as usual. i hadn’t thought of what you said about guts recklessness being a form of self harm but it very much is.

INTERESTINGLY though, as i’m rewatching some berserk ‘97 … it seems to be the place he got an arrow wound after julius’ assassination, just before hearing griffith’s speech that was the catalyst for everything falling apart ��

!!!

nice, might switch my headcanon to that. it works perfectly really, as the point where everything leading to the black swordsman arc began, not just because he overheard the speech but also because of the state of mind he was in when he overheard it having just killed a kid, ie

so yk, it ties the whole becoming the monstery asshole he was already afraid of being back then thing together. full circle. or something.

bscully:

Volume 16:

12 volumes later:

We yet have to see keeping his own promise to himself:

I think that is fulfilling his promise to himself. I always saw that statement of Guts’ as ominous, especially considering the pointed shot of the behelit in the full thing.

He is what he is, and what he is is a dude getting a little too monstrous for comfort. His inner beast is part of who he is, and Guts reasserting his revenge quest “I will make my way to him” strengthens it.

very similar to this from the black swordsman arc:

“You and I got nothin in common” is blatant denial, immediately undercut by Guts continuing on his monstrous revenge quest. He’ll do it with his own flesh and blood, but that doesn’t actually make him much different than the revenge-obsessed ghosts trying to possess him.

griff-guts
replied to your post

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean I genuinely do think (human, obviously) Griffith is by far a more “moral” person than Guts by most standards lol, which ironically is partly why he ended up succumbing to his inner darkness – pushing past your own moral limits is what makes it grow.

Guts doesn’t push past his own moral limits very often because his moral limits are fewer and far between than Griffith’s, while Griffith pushes past his moral limits p much every time he goes into battle.

It’s a really really fun irony to me.

do you think griffith have a ‘the ends justifies the means’ mentality? some people use it to describe him. but i think its just what he tells himself when he feels guilty. or people just take godhands the whole ‘you knew this would happen. you wanted this’ attitute too literal.

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.

i saw the argument that the hound being born from guts’ trauma. i know the stuations are kinda different but do you think the same thing can be said femto as a being? like their traumas showing itself through their dark sides.

ABSOLUTELY

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

i really love your theory about how the behelit Guts carries around might belong to Casca, but do you think it would be likely to see in future that Guts will become some sort of apostle and thus become Griffiths/Femtos “equal” (and thus carry on forth the theme of Guts striving for this equality)? Or might Guts become something Skull Knight is now? Im rambling but id love to hear your rambling/thoughts on this haha

ty! God I really, really want Guts to be shown as Griffith’s equal at some point. I feel like it’s the only way to satisfactorily conclude their whole… thing. Guts letting go of the desire to be Griffith’s equal just isn’t satisfying to me.

But that said I don’t think becoming an apostle is the way to do it. For that literal equality Guts would have to become a Godhand, and unless there’s a 200+ year timeskip after Elfhelm that’s not possible according to the rules of the world. An apostle is a follower of NeoGriff so becoming one wouldn’t make him Griffith’s equal, it would put him back in that position of looking up at him/feeling looked down on.

Ofc one could say that those technical details don’t really matter, what matters is that Griffith succumbed to his superpowered dark side so if Guts does then that’s still equality in a sense, even if he’s a “lesser” monster. But then, he has the armour to represent his dark side, which makes the behelit kind of superfluous now, and it’s been foreshadowed a lot that he’s going to lose himself to the armour at some point.

And since it’s suggested that Skull Knight became a walking skeleton because he succumbed to the amour himself, I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll get more Skull Knight comparisons and there will at least be a danger of Guts becoming like him – powerful but… lacking humanity I guess, if he doesn’t overcome the armour. And that could potentially lead to ~the beast of darkness~ and ~the hawk of light~ regarding each other as equals in a confrontation.

BUT! What I want more than that is acknowledgement that all these standards of literal equality are essentially a smokescreen obscuring what actually made them equal from the beginning, which is the fact that they both loved each other and they were both emotionally vulnerable w/ the other. So honestly acknowledgement that they’re still hung up on each other despite everything is what would work best here imho.

Guts learns that NGriff failed his test on the Hill of Swords and started getting emotional about Guts again, and NGriff learns that in addition to hate Guts still feels residual love, and guilt and regret etc. Followed by an emotionally charged third duel, their strengths (magic superpower, inner darknesses, fate vs not being beholden to fate, whatever) and weaknesses (emotions, love and regret) equally matched.

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.

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

Yep.

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

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

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

chaoticgaygriffith:

even guts knows better than his stans

lol and this was after he was briefly possessed and strangled her which is why Puck is so quick to absolve him

like even Guts knows that he was able to be possessed in that moment because his… hmm, because his dominant desires were aligned with the darkness of the spirits around him, I guess I’d put it? Because he’s tempted. Because part of him does want to kill Casca.

a la

Like the night scene where he strangles her and then feels like he can’t blame it on the spirits, at least not entirely, because “you desire this,” is there to set up the subsequent sexual assault and contrast it, since it takes place in broad daylight and is visually distinct from the possession in that Guts is not transformed at all, to show that Guts has the potential to be just as dark as the monsters and ghosts he fights (not exactly a subtle theme lol) when he loses control.

jyuanka
replied to your post “i want to like, write a longish meta about how guts’ “dream” ie his…”

also i think guts’s sword fixation has a lot to do with how much he humanizes the sword and dehumanizes himself. iirc miura makes a point about guts using the sword to protect others instead of fighting for its own sake, at which the sword is no longer a meaningful subject in itself but a means of protecting bonds he’s forged. the unhealthy part of it is, again, the way he objectifies himself through it (and one of berserk’s themes is human objectification)
it’s sort of a coping mechanism
backfiring on him. the sword is just an object; the unhealthy aspect of
it is that guts has been using it as a means of self-actualization for
his entire life. part of his development in the golden age is to derive
meaning and significance from his relationships with others, but he
never really addressed his issues so once the eclipse happens and
casca’s mental state is revealed he almost instantly reverts back to
that coping mechansim

Hmmm I think I pretty much agree with you. By objectifies himself through his sword do you mean like, when the Berserk armour takes over, when he becomes monstrous and consumed by rage even without it, etc? Because I definitely think there’s a strong theme of Guts becoming dehumanized through his sword, and the way you put it in contrast to Guts humanizing his sword (like considering it an extension of himself I assume?) is something I’ve never really thought of but it makes a lot of sense to me.

(lol I guess dehumanization is actually kind of a loaded term in Berserk where everything from monsters to gods are expressions of aspects of humanity, but ikwym and it’s definitely a theme regardless of semantics.)

bthump:

ALSO

like ok this visual reference doesn’t really bring anything new to the table since we already know that Casca’s heart is full of dark negativity but yk

i still like it

also i’m still on my casca using the behelit bullshit ftr

i don’t think there’s room for this in my griffith meta bc it doesn’t particularly pertain to the point, but i need to point something out:

Griffith notices this, and may even hear what Casca says since she’s shouting, and we get one of his patented jealous looks in reaction.

And the next thing we see him do right after this?

Futilely try to do anything to save Casca when Wyald immediately picks her up. Because his jealousy is a minor component of his entire being, and his love for his friends is by far a more powerful motivating factor.

Like shit like this is why I can’t deal with people who think Femto is just Griffith with power lol. He’s Griffith with the jealousy (among other negative emotions) magnified to an extreme degree and the compassion and love and empathy etc etc removed. Like that is explicitly stated but yk, these details help too.

just-a-daft-punk
replied to your post “You bled so much for me. These are wounds from the hundred man…”

What’s interesting to me is that all the members of the god hand probably have a wounded core which is protected by their armor/transformation into a god hand

totally. Same with Apostles from everything we’ve seen, and Guts too – like it’s particularly fitting that his Beast of Darkness, which essentially is self-protection born out of trauma and betrayal, both in childhood and then the Eclipse, p much lives in a magic suit of armour now.

hey just wanted to say, for me, it feels like Femto is obviously the epitome of evil but also Griffith’s bad side yk the ugly side we all have, but taken to the extreme? I feel like a lot of ppl who hate on Griffith, especially golden age Griffith for what happened at the eclipse don’t get it. Femto is not him, at least that’s the way I see it. idk if this make sense, what do you think? me thinks griffith would have taken Guts back bc he cant really stay mad but shit happened and now we all cry

Yeah, I’d say whether Femto is a different person from Griffith comes down to semantics and what someone considers personhood, but to me undergoing a magical transformation that augments the “evil” in your heart (which, in Berserk, exists in the hearts of all people) and removes the “goodness” or w/e, as visually depicted by literally losing fragments of himself:

makes you different enough that I have no problem mentally separating human Griffith and Femto, and definitely don’t hate Griffith for Femto’s actions, same way I don’t hate Guts for trying to murder his friends when the armour takes over.

If you (general you) wanna hate Griffith for agreeing to sacrifice his friends, or challenging Guts when he left, or w/e, I’ll disagree but I think that’s fair game. But hating him for Femto’s actions after we’re taken step by step through his magical transformation into an entity made out of evil really doesn’t make sense to me.

Also, do you mean Griffith would’ve taken Guts back if he’d returned, say, a year after the duel, like in canon, but Griffith hadn’t gotten caught fucking Charlotte and therefore hadn’t spent that year in a dungeon?

I think Griffith probably would take him back, because he’s desperate and needy and irrational and in love, but I could see an argument where the duel is a big wake-up call to how emotionally compromised he is by his love for Guts, which could make him view Guts as a huge threat lol, and he might refuse to let him return to try to protect himself from his own destructive, dream-endangering feelings.

Though I think it’s also likely that Griffith isn’t that self aware even after the duel, and would still manage to deny his feelings. Like Guts would come back and Griffith would somehow logic himself into returning to their close relationship without admitting to himself that he just really needs Guts in his life. Like, “it’s not because I desperately want him back at my side, it’s because he knows I assassinated the queen and co and therefore I need him as my ally and not my enemy.” Or something along those lines. Though of course his feelings would be that much harder to deny now, and eventually something would have to give.

Or he could be aware of his feelings now, but too far gone to refuse Guts, a la “if I can’t have him, I don’t care!” Like, “ok Guts’ existence could clearly ruin me, but fuck it, he came back and I’ll be damned if I’m letting him leave me again ever.” Which would open its own associated emotional can of worms lol.

lol sorry I love thinking about Griffith’s stupid feelings and how he deals or doesn’t deal with them.

(And now I’m wondering what if Guts turned around and walked back two minutes after leaving Griffith in the snow. I feel like if that was the case Griffith would be incapable of anything but genuine emotional expression, either in the form of being overwhelmed with relief that Guts came back and immediately taking him back, or rage followed by a sobbing breakdown or smthn.

This is a great topic to muse on lol)

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

kissing-monsters:

the thing with berserk is I’d love more fan content and there is stuff out there in the non-tumblr portion of the internet that’s mostly discussion, which would be great but I don’t think I could be more scared of cis-male opinions on berserk tbh

I’ve barely read any and but I feel like I can… picture it based on what little I’ve seen and I do not want. strongly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4JVtQwWHBk

this is the only thing that springs to mind as something from straight dude-centric berserk fandom that i mostly agreed with. it’s been a while since i watched it and i’m sure i’ve refined my own opinions since then so idk if i’d still be going ‘yeah you’re not wrong’ at most of his points, but it’s probably still worth a watch

but yeah in general i avoid everything outside my little tumblr circle, greater berserk fandom is the absolute worst

a) oh hell yeah, thank you! the title of that video is even interesting and it’s actually come up recommended on youtube for me a few times and is one of the ones I was scared to click on and

b)

#like from the looks of it he has a video dedicated to calling griffith’s feelings more profound/incomprehensible than romance and attraction #so yk it’s that kind of no homo vibe

that’s the kind of thing I want to avoid but at the same time if it’s a downplaying or an alternate explanation I can live with it– I think the only thing I’d come close to accepting is that there’s something more “profound” that motivates him, or well. no accepting, but I can fully understand why people would take that view while also completely disagreeing? there’s at least justification for that in some ways. (although I think that view in itself is as you said, no homo-ish, but also accepts something the narrative pretty explicitly explains is a Bad Idea: making griffith into something “more than”, or someone on a pedestal, who is incomprehensible in nature, is one of the deepest reasons for griffith doing what he does imo).

and c) I’ve now had like my first ever unexpected negative anon (a transphobic one to boot! wow amazing) from this fandom. oh. dear.

(also just watching now and “the less you look at griffith, the worse he seems” is a pretty observation though. yes good).

but also accepts something the narrative pretty explicitly explains is a
Bad Idea: making griffith into something “more than”, or someone on a
pedestal, who is incomprehensible in nature, is one of the deepest
reasons for griffith doing what he does imo

yk this is a great point actually. part of the point of griffith’s narrative is that he’s only human. like, i do think his feelings are incomprehensible to him, at least until he spends a year doing nothing but being tortured and examining those feelings, but they’re not particularly grandiose or more-than.

I actually really dig that as a thematic thing now that you’ve brought it up – Griffith’s feelings for Guts should be plain old ordinary human love and sexuality, because Griffith is an ordinary human who just like… sucks at recognizing/accepting that he is, and sucks at being recognized as an ordinary human.

and the same goes for femto/neogriff since despite being a demigod demon in berserk all these monsters and gods originate in recognizable ordinary human feelings.

like damn that just neatly tied one of my favourite berserk themes to griffith and guts’ love, that’s perfect.

(also tbf I may be misrepresenting what he says about griffguts since I don’t remember the one i linked very well and I haven’t actually watched his video about it, I’m just going off a few comments on it that I read while trying to figure out if it was worth watching lol)

ps lol i went for a good like 8 months without getting any anon hate
despite regularly posting controversial opinions, but now there’s one
anon blowing up my inbox, and it’s def the same person who sent you
those messages lol. sorry about that, she probably found you thru me.

consider: Berserk Armour vs Femto designs

versus

I just rly like how Femto’s exoskeleton can be drawn to either emphasize
Griffith’s face underneath the helmet or obscure it. It’s such a
good way to either depict Femto as a godlike otherworldly demon or a
petty asshole who can taunt Guts but can’t bring himself to kill him – or
like the bottom pic where after several epic godlike shots from
Ganeshka’s awed point of view, we see his face when he’s doing something
much more Griffith-esque: predicting what Skull Knight will do based on
logic and tactics rather than magic knowledge of fate.

Guts’
armour is more literal – when his face is hidden beneath the helmet,
he’s lost himself to his darkness. Femto’s is symbolic as his helmet
doesn’t change, only the angle we see him from changes, but imo it’s
really well-utilized to emphasize or de-emphasize whatever remains of
Griffith. And I think it’s definitely a trend – not 100% the case in
every panel, but overall when we see Femto’s whole face, it tends to be
in moments of weakness or pettiness, in moments where he’s demonstrating human feelings, however twisted they’ve become, and when either his eyes or his
mouth or both are obscured, it tends to emphasize his distance from
Guts, his godliness, his monstrosity.

Also, and tbf this I’m
less sure about bc I can’t remember every moment where Guts thinks about
Femto, but in general I think it holds true: Guts tends to picture
Femto with face partially or entirely obscured when he’s feeling the distance/difference between them and/or murderous rage

and face very visible in moments that emphasize Guts’ similarity to him, and danger of becoming him

idk i just think it’s neat

i love these moments because they all seem inspiring and badass but they all have those ominous undertones – guts’ rage stemming from fear that he is just like the ghosts who want revenge, the shot of the behelit, guts’ inability to let go of the prospect of revenge, and the way his “war declaration” puts him a step closer to being griffith’s equal.

it’s guts repeatedly refusing to acknowledge how very thin the line that divides him from ghosts and monsters and evil gods is imo

Guts is different from Griffith. Guts fights the beast in him every day and desperately tries to separate the beast from himself. Griffith, on the other hand, embraces femto and became one with him, even though Guts had harder life than Griffith. That’s why people respect Guts more.

tbh I agree that this is part of why people respond more positively to Guts and negatively to Griffith. Griffith’s narrative ended in succumbing to despair and becoming a monster, while Guts’ nickname is “struggler” lol. People absolutely respond more positively to a narrative about fighting and persisting against all odds than a narrative about losing everything and essentially selling your soul because you feel like you’re out of options.

However, that said, I think this misses a few important points.

Like for one, to describe Griffith as embracing Femto while Guts resists the Beast of Darkness is kind of, well, loaded and not entirely correct. Griffith didn’t embrace Femto, he embraced his dream and the guilt it caused and seized the one chance he had to make tens of thousands of deaths that weigh on him meaningful.

Like, one thing I love about Griffith’s narrative is that his motivation – to ensure that thousands of people didn’t die for nothing – is heroic. In most stories that would be considered noble. Berserk twists that, because Miura likes to play with morality this way. Griffith’s noble, quite respectable goal, and his relatable and sympathetic emotional motivation (guilt) are what lead him to darkness.

Miura isn’t showing us a character who cheerfully embraces his own inner darkness, he’s showing us a character who becomes a demon ironically because of his desire to be a good person. What ultimately convinces him to make the sacrifice isn’t the promise of power, or rejuvination – it’s to ensure that so many people didn’t die for no reason.

Griffith and Guts’ narratives are different. They exist to pose different questions about what it means to be evil/human/good. But they aren’t comparable on a characterization level.

Guts hasn’t had a moment of pure despair where he’s given a choice to live out his life wholly dependant on others, mute and helpless, wracked with irreconcilable guilt and about to lose the last thing that matters to him, or sacrifice people for the sake of a goal they, among thousands of others, chose to die for, to make those deaths meaningful.

Instead, Guts has a sinister jiminy cricket telling him to murder and rape people. And Griffith doesn’t have a particularly vocal and belligerent hawk taunting him, he has a moment of despair, ordained by causality, orchestrated by the Idea of Evil for the sole purpose of having him choose to make the sacrifice.

Guts and Griffith are different people, but Guts is not inherently better or more moral than Griffith. Griffith frets about killing people for his dream, Guts tells him murder is nbd. Griffith prioritizes Guts over his dream several times before that final moment of pure despair during the Eclipse, and Guts prioritizes revenge over Casca several times before finally giving up on revenge after NeoGriffith blows him off. Griffith prostitutes himself to a pedophile at a young age to prevent as many deaths in the line of duty as he can, while Guts doesn’t really give a fuck about people dying unless he personally knows and cares about them (or if they’re children). Guts describes his dream to Casca as “I just did my own thing,” while Griffith describes his dream to Casca as, “for the sake of the dead… if there’s something I can do… that thing is to win.”

Ultimately, Griffith’s narrative illustrates a man succumbing to evil in the pursuit of good, while Guts’ narrative illustrates a man struggling to balance the good and evil within himself. The only relevant personality difference between them is that Griffith is driven towards a goal by guilt, essentially living for the dead, and Guts is living for himself and the people he personally cares about.

And to address another of your points, Guts has not had a harder life than Griffith. Maybe he’s had a harder childhood – we don’t see much of Griffith’s but it’s a fairly safe assumption – but after killing Gambino?

The narrative takes the position that during the Golden Age, Guts actually had it fairly easy compared to Griffith. Guts’ years with the Hawks are his happy place. Griffith on the other hand had a huge emotional burden on his shoulders, his guilt caused him to self harm, he had the aforementioned encounter with a pedophile bc he was driven by guilt, he had to hone himself to his limits to achieve his goal. Constantly dealing with nobles, constantly fighting at the head of his army, figuring out battle plans, carrying out assassinations that added to his guilt, maintaining an immaculate image of himself, and emotionally closed to everyone except, rarely, Guts. I mean like, the stakes of the climactic battle of the Golden Age is the risk of Griffith being captured as a sex slave lol, and he not only knows it, he incorporates it into his battle plan, like, dude is under a lot of pressure.

And of course, that’s nothing compared to a year of constant torture. Even after the Eclipse, Guts has never experienced anything on that level. Griffith was only barely sane at the end of it, totally physically helpless, mute, he’d lost everything he valued including, he thought at the end, Guts. He tried to kill himself right before the behelit opened.

Like, sorry, Guts has had a hard life, but it doesn’t compare to Griffith’s year of hell. Especially considering that, post-Eclipse, Guts had the option to bow out any time and live in relative peace and comfort with Rickert and Erika (which everyone and their dog points out to him), and now has the option to hang out in peace and comfort in Elfhelm that he probably also won’t take.

Idk basically this is a long way of saying that yeah, thanks to the thematic purposes of their narratives Griffith’s is about succumbing to evil in pursuit of good and Guts’ is about trying to find a balance between good and evil, and at a shallow glance that makes Guts look more respectable than Griffith, but that doesn’t actually reflect on their personalities, their morals, or their personal struggles.

It really bums me that people are hung up on all bad things Griffith and don’t extend the same courtesy to Guts, like your fave is trash as well. I just don’t really get it? Are they mad because they expected better from Griffith and his actions disappointed them or smth but Guts was supposed to be edgy since we saw him do those things in Black Swordsman arc?

I wrote what basically amounts to a response to this a little while ago (focused on why ppl hate Griffith more than Guts), so rather than just re-writing that I’ll link it. (tw for discussion of rape)

But like, in addition to that, ikr?

I mean one of the central premises of Berserk is that everyone is capable of great evil and humanity is kind of a hot mess, and that’s exemplified in both Guts and Griffith. Like just like Griffith always had the potential for Femto in him, Guts has the Beast of Darkness, and both manifest in violence and rape. Guts is absolutely no better than Griffith, and I’d personally say he’s worse considering that he assaults his traumatized, infantalized, sort-of-girlfriend twice without transforming into an embodiment of evil first.

like look at this

In Berserk the behelit helps certain chosen ones gain power, but you don’t exactly need it to be evil, and part of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he’s getting pretty close to indistinguishable from a monster, behelit or no, magic armour or no.

But he’s the protag, fans identify with him, and while Griffith’s fucked up acts lead up to a magical transformation into a monster, Guts’ fucked up acts seem likely to be leading to redemption and growth. There’s nothing intrinsic in Guts and Griffith’s characters that leads one to monsterism and one to self improvement, it’s not like one has more good qualities and the other has more evil qualities – it’s literally just circumstance and the fact that Berserk’s God chose Griffith as his jesus figure, not Guts. But it affects how readers see them and respond to them.

I mean ffs we see Guts do worse things than several apostles. Right now, based on what we see them do in the manga, fuckin Zodd is a “purer” character than Guts lmao. The idea of mixing fandom purity politics and Berserk of all things, which at the end of the day amounts to getting judgy based on which sexually abusive character someone likes more, is incredible to me.

today i was at work and thinkin bout how good the potential inherent in guts and neogriffith’s hero/villain relationship is tbh. like the tiny glimpses we’ve seen so far (ngriff’s heart beating, guts’ complicated feelings, eg) + the foundation of the golden age backstory = solid fucking gold in theory

complicated angsty hero/villain anger and rage + regret and desire and loneliness, and w/ neogriffith his godliness + potential latent humanity

like these are all things i adore to pieces. singular godlike figures brought down by human feelings (love lbr). vengeful rage complicated by love. destructive, life-destroying love and obsession. ppl incapable of understanding their extremely powerful feelings. regret for lost potential and the mistakes that led to ruin. prominent shifting power dynamics – the whole basis of their relationship being a desire to be equals, each feeling at points inferior to the other, then one of them becomes a literal demigod but the need for equality (and thus, friendship) is still there, like, fuck that’s good stuff.

one obsessed and one who cut out his obsession, sloooowly switching places as guts semi-successfully attempts to move on and griffith starts succumbing to his beating heart. ofc guts can’t truly move on or there’s no story, but the opposing character trajectories are perf.

ooh and then you got the whole thing where one has fully succumbed to his inner darkness and is essentially a monster, but with glimmers of humanity, and the other is a human being pulled under by his inner darkness and struggling with it. complete with fun shining beautiful saviour/near-monstrous warrior imagery.

and the fact that at first it was his feelings for guts that lead to griffith succumbing to the darkness, and guts’ feelings for griffith that uplifted him, in turn giving him a home and then spurring him on to better himself. and now it’s potentially his feelings for guts that lead to neogriffith evidencing signs of humanity, beating heart etc (”he was the reason i’ve been thrown into darkness, and now he’s the sole sustenance keeping me alive” anyone?), and guts’ feelings for griffith that pull him towards monstrosity.

like just imagine the two of them finally brought together again with all this build-up behind them, fueling their confrontation. imagine all these teasing glimpses of mutually complex, contradictory, intensely powerful feelings really coming to fruition.

the set-up is dead on for an absolutely ideal hero/villain dynamic, and you know miura theoretically has the character and storytelling skills to make it amazing bc we all read the golden age.