I think that’s a reasonable way of reading their relationship.
The Beast of Darkness is definitely pretty overt about suggesting that Griffith is Guts’ first choice, calling him his “true light” while Casca gets grouped in with the RPG group as “warm lights,” as well as suggesting that Griffith is more “precious” to him than Casca.
And ofc I definitely agree that Griffith is Guts’ number one choice. Casca I’m less sure about, I think she was more torn between them and maybe ended up prioritizing Guts by the end, when she told him to leave to pursue his dream. But that’s p ambiguous.
My own opinion on Guts and Casca’s feelings for each other is that they’re… complicated lol, but imo genuine romantic love doesn’t really enter into it. I don’t enjoy their relationship so I’m biased ofc, but I do think Miura was like, conscientious about portraying their relationship as a more low-key realistic hookup between friends, rather than burgeoning true love, and motivated by a number of complex feelings and factors other than straightforward romance.
Like both rebounding from Griffith, “licking wounds” and comforting each other after experiencing some extreme self-destructive feelings, genuinely liking each other as friends by now, the fact that Guts saved Casca and Casca feels like she owes him the same way she wanted to be Griffith’s sword after he saved her (Casca pointing out Guts’ scars from the 100 man fight when he saved her then, and asking for a wound in return), Judeau’s heavy-handed manipulations pushing them together, Guts inviting Casca along for sex while prioritizing his dream (”I don’t know whether you’ll get in the way of what I want to do or the opposite”), Guts letting Casca comfort him the way Griffith didn’t, etc.
Additionally I think that their hookup serves as a distraction for Guts, a way to continue repressing the realization that he fucked up when he left for as long as possible because accepting that he ruined everything because he was wrong about Griffith’s feelings is… not easy lol, and this is shown in how he invites her along and still intends to leave the Hawks again, rather than rethinking things based on new information and deciding to stay this time. It takes him like four days to finally accept that he shouldn’t’ve left.
And post-Eclipse I think Guts sticks with Casca in part because of what the Beast of Darkness suggests, that she’s a reminder of the pain Griffith caused, and in part because he wants to try to move on from Griffith now that NGriff has soundly rejected him, and in part because he’s longing for a piece of his happy past and that’s what Casca represents, and in part to atone for abandoning Griffith the first time, and in part because she’s his friend and comrade and he wants to help her.
So like, basically tl;dr I think they care about each other, but the romance aspect did end up being forced and I would’ve liked their relationship a lot more if they’d stayed platonic friends, and it probably would’ve been better for them too.
Also I headcanon them both as gay and repressed lol, and I think the story makes that fairly easy to do, which is nice.
i linked a few related posts under the cut if you happen to be interested
Judeau’s clear agenda in the back half of the Golden Age is hilarious to me because it’s like Miura couldn’t get Guts and Casca to fuck naturally, so he had to make it a side character’s sole mission in life to arrange their hook up.
But actually to be less cynical, I think it works very well with the overall tone and thematic takeaway from the Golden Age. Why was Judeau meddling? Well, it’s strongly suggested that it’s because he was in love with Casca himself, but didn’t consider himself worthy of her. He thought Guts would be better for her, and that Casca would be better off traveling with Guts than leading the remnants of the Hawks, so he shoved Guts at her until they boned.
And look how that turned out.
Moral of the Golden Age: tell people how you feel instead of just assuming you’re not good enough for them.
And like, something I really love about Judeau’s character is that he seems to fill that character trope of friend who gives good advice and lays out some of the story’s themes and nudges the protagonist in the right direction for the plot. But like everyone else in Berserk he’s more layered than that – he has his own reasons for saying the things he does and directing Guts the way he does, and those reasons are kind of based in low self esteem. He’s another factor that helps bring everyone to the Eclipse.
Sometimes he does give good advice, but sometimes he gives genuinely bad advice, because he’s biased.
And I think there’s a potential parallel between Judeau trying to set Guts and Casca up, and Guts trying to set Casca and Griffith up before he leaves. Guts feels unworthy of Griffith because he doesn’t have a dream, but Casca does, so he shoves her at Griffith to get her to take his place as his sword, but yk with added romance because heteronormativity.
It’s not unbiased-dude-trying-to-be-a-good-bro-for-his-friends advice, Judeau’s own issues are a factor in him trying to get Guts and Casca together.
Judeau feels unworthy of Casca because idk he’s insecure about being a jack of all trades, master of none lol, so he considers Guts, who is the best at least next to Griffith, more worthy of Casca and tries to get them together.
And in his dying moments, he knows he fucked up. That he should’ve just said something.
And yk what, he may think Guts is more worthy of Casca because he’s the best at something, but Guts was up on top of a giant hand trying to save Griffith long after that stopped making sense as a course of action while Judeau was down here trying to survive with Casca, and I think we all know who Casca appreciated more in this moment.
There’s something to be said for just being there with someone instead of leaving them in the snow/trying to convince a dude to sling her over his shoulder and run lol. Same with how Judeau was with Casca throughout the year of hiding and trying to survive while Guts was fucking off on his eat pray love vacation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we’re meant to see Judeau/Casca as a tragic missed connection and the better alternative to Guts and Casca getting together.
(On a personal note I don’t actually like the idea of Judeau/Casca both bc it’s het lol but also since it’s just, yk, dude pines, wants the girl but meddles in her life for her own good, Casca’s feelings towards Judeau aren’t explored at all, etc. But the way Miura portrayed Judeau’s regret and his presence vs Guts’ absence makes me think that the takeaway is that in the best version of events Judeau would’ve told Casca how he felt and they would’ve got together. And thematically that fits imo.)
Also while I’m on this topic, I want to take yet another opportunity to point this great moment out:
hmmmmmmmmmmm
Judeau then immediately segues the conversation to the whole “Casca’s life sucks right now, you need to save her from it, etc” bit.
But I fucking love this moment specifically because it’s telling us that not only is Judeau overtly meddling to get Casca and Guts to hook up, but Judeau believes that Guts knowing how Griffith really feels about him will impede his plans.
And I mean it’s true, he wants Guts to leave with Casca and when Guts realizes how hard he fucked up and how much Griffith desperately needs him and always did he wants to stay. But it’s just such a nice touch to tell us that Guts and Casca… only work in the absence of Griffith. Guts gets with Casca when he falsely believes Griffith looks down on him. Guts chooses to stay with Griffith when he’s convinced he was wrong about that.
(And post-Eclipse, Guts abandons Casca for his revenge campaign, and chooses to stay with her when NeoGriffith says unequivocally that he’s over him now lol.)
It adds to the sense that Guts and Casca are both rebounding from Griffith, and they only work together as long as they both want to distance themselves from him. When he’s back in their life they get weird and jealous immediately, and then they both independently choose not to leave the Hawks together (Guts telling Judeau he wants to stay, followed by Casca telling Guts she can’t leave with him) and Casca tries to break up with him lol.
Thanks for responding! I appreciate it. Love this stuff. And yeah I agree that Griffith definitely cares for Casca, and that’s part of what makes this scene so tragic. Manipulating Casca’s sympathy in order to make her stay, in order to make Guts stay, doesn’t lessen the fact that Griffith cares for her. But Casca isn’t Guts, and that distinction seems to be highlighted here. Griffith seems to be responding to a) Guts possibly leaving again and b) the relationship with Casca that he no longer—
has, now that Casca
and Guts have grown closer. He’s probably trying to be that person Casca
knew him as, as you pointed out, and doing it from the point in his
life furthest from that past glory. The tragedy is layered here, and I
personally enjoy the idea of Griffith using someone he genuinely cares
for (Casca) in order to reach for Guts, who always seems out of reach. I
also agree that it foreshadows the eclipse and demonstrates the
consistency of Griffith’s character when he makes the
sacrifice before the Godhand. Thanks for listening to me go on, hah.
thank you for responding too, this is a fun topic to talk about!
yeah I basically agree with everything you said here I think. Honestly the lead-up to the Eclipse was so good at making everything as depressing and painful as possible for everyone involved, and everything you’ve described is a huge part of it.
“Casca isn’t Guts, and that distinction seems to be highlighted here“
Yeah v true, and I think it also effectively parallels Griffith and Casca’s feelings for Guts, the way Casca and Guts’ feelings for Griffith have been paralleled at times (eg during the cave conversation where they both see Griffith as out of reach, and potentially even believing that he desires the other, considering Guts tries to set them up afterwards. Or during the rescue mission where Guts thinks that he has to accept Casca’s lingering feelings for Griffith because he’s not over him/hasn’t unbound himself either). Like Griffith isn’t Casca’s first choice either now, she feels obligated to stay with him, and in the dream sequence Guts’ absence seems to diminish them both.
And ia that the like… tension between genuinely caring for someone but using them (and later, sacrificing them) despite that is great, like the sacrifice wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting if Griffith didn’t actually gaf about the Hawks. And we see that attitude in his general existence as a mercenary leader too – like when he says to Guts “I will decide the place where you die,” or positions the Hawks with their backs to the river during the Doldrey battle so they have no choice but to give it their all bc they can’t retreat. Like his life is also on the line, so it’s not exactly cruel or unfair, but it is ruthless and it’s great fuel for the guilt issues he denies.
But I’m hugely into the contrast between like, Griffith’s feelings and his almost desperate need to deny them/bury them lol.
I should mention: even
though our interpretations differ in some ways, I don’t mean to argue!
I’m interested in your take and enjoy the other metas you’ve posted. I
agree that Casca really isn’t done justice in Berserk at all, and I
honestly hate that so much story has been devoted to “saving” her
post-eclipse instead of focusing on what made her badass and
sympathetic. That said, I can see why she’s used the way she is plotwise
with respect to Guts and Griffith; it’s part of the tragedy for me.
(I just wish Casca’s suffering didn’t
center so often on the fact that she’s a woman. Leaves a bad taste in my
mouth, like womanhood is the only source of suffering for someone like
her.)
Same same. Like I have strong opinions and I definitely don’t shy away from sharing them lol but I’m happy to have people disagree with me and get the opportunity to discuss them and get new ideas to consider etc, it’s all part of the fun of being in fandom as long as everyone’s fairly chill. I’m interested in your takes too, whether you agree or disagree 🙂
And yeah cosigned wrt Casca. It’s such a shame to me because I feel like she had so much potential and some great scenes as an awesome character, but she gets hamstrung by the writing so much, her role stuck between Guts and Griffith, and how every aspect of her character revolves around being a woman, cumulating in the Eclipse and the destruction of her character, and like… damn, yk? It’s a bit hard to take lol.
Nice analysis. I agree with you for the most part, and have something to add that seems complementary to what you’ve already mentioned: Griffith is showing Casca exactly how pathetic he is in order to manipulate her into staying, and thereby get Guts to stay as well. But Casca spoils this plan when she reminds Guts that if he is Griffith’s friend and equal, then he must leave. This is the moment that Griffith realizes that he is responsible for Gut’s departure that day in the snow. It’s tragic.
(Cont.) Low as he was,
Griffith seems to still be trying to manipulate the situation to get
what he wants (Guts to stay), even going so far as to weaponize his
broken body. But this, like you said, is total desperation, and when it
doesn’t work Griffith has nothing else to try. It really cements the
idea that Casca was, is, and always will be just a means to an end for
Griffith, which is heartbreaking for Casca but one of my favorite parts
of the series.
Thank you!
yeah i definitely agree that Casca is a means to an end to Griffith here – he certainly isn’t asking her to stay because he wants her in his life in particular, and ia that he’s most likely hoping Guts will stay too if Casca stays, since he now has an idea that they’re together. I don’t think that’s all she is to him – he genuinely cares for her, or else he wouldn’t be able to sacrifice her lol, and wouldn’t try opening up to her in the river after Gennon, wouldn’t try to save her when Wyald grabs her despite being unable to do a thing, etc. But their feelings for each other definitely aren’t equal and it does make me feel for Casca.
(and on a related subject I have a lot of feelings about how Casca is constantly used by both Griffith and Guts as an emotional and physical like, bridge between them, from Casca warming Guts all the way back in the beginning, to Guts assaulting her to “get closer and closer to Griffith,” to just about everything in between. Her role in the story is very depressing to me bc I really love her and she has some amazing moments and scenes, but overall Berserk absolutely doesn’t do her justice.)
Tho idk I wouldn’t really consider Griffith to be deliberately manipulating Casca here or “weaponizing” his body. His sexualized offer is pretty straightforward, and I don’t think he intended to come across as pathetic as he does – Casca comforting him with a hand on his shoulder is, imo, the opposite of what he wanted. He wanted to be the comforter, but he can’t fill that role anymore.
But this is a v ambiguous scene so it’s not like there’s not plenty of room for different interpretations.
i’m not over how ridiculously hot griffith is in this love triangle dynamic establishing scene
like he’s so obviously the point the other two are competing for i can’t handle it
i mean the page right after just says in words what the art says in art:
like
the point of chapter 1 is to establish where the characters are at 3 years later and the important things we see are:
hawks kicking ass and rising up during the 100 years war
casca and guts both fixated on an extremely desirable griffith, griffith’s clear preference, casca’s resentment
Sorry if this is a disappointing answer, but not in the slightest.
Griffith/Charlotte is a complete sham from Griffith’s side, he’s just using her to become king. His seduction of her was completely calculated, except when he was distraught after Guts left, and the way his dream and Charlotte are conjoined and presented in opposition to his feelings for Guts makes his relationship with Charlotte read as a very strong symbol of unhealthy emotional repression imo.
Also Charlotte’s obsession is so intense it seems very unhealthy, like, embroidering Griffith’s face over and over for two years is a little much lol. We don’t get much of Charlotte’s side of it but what we do get is basically a naive girl totally taken in by Griffith’s fake seduction, and it’s kind of sad to me.
As for Guts and Casca, to me their relationship reads 100% as both of them redirecting their feelings for Griffith to each other. There are very strong parallels to both their relationships with him during the scene where they hook up, they both acknowledge that they’re not over Griffith afterwards, and after the Eclipse Casca basically functions as an outlet for Guts’ feelings about Griffith.
Casca’s issues with her lack of independent identity – becoming Griffith’s sword after Griffith saves her, then becoming Guts’ sword after she sleeps with him – are not a good start to any relationship, and the licking wounds description seems very apt. It was never a grand, epic romance, but it’s not even a particularly happy or healthy hook up. They fuck right after Guts lets Casca stab him while thinking about how abandoning Griffith was maybe a bad idea, and right after Casca tries to kill herself. Then Guts has a flashback and strangles her during, and Casca is just happy to finally have someone receptive to her attempts to comfort and support them.
Afterwards Guts invites her along in as non-committal a way as possible, like ‘idk maybe you coming with me will suck and you’ll throw off my groove and i’ll end up ditching you anyway, but i want more sex so let’s give it a shot.’ Which I honestly find hilarious in how unromantic it is.
And even as a low-key licking wounds hook-up it feels very narratively forced to me (which makes sense since Miura said he had them get together just to make the Eclipse more dramatic).
Like Judeau has to practically shove Guts at Casca for him to even consider it lol.
Then of course after the Eclipse you have Guts abandoning her in a cave for two years, assaulting her twice, and redirecting his feelings for Griffith to her again – not even just in the hound scenes but also when he decides to save her directly because he compares abandoning her in a cave to abandoning Griffith in the snow, and when he decides to stick with her only after Griffith abandoned him lol.
Plus Casca is terrified of him for good reason, and the idea of their relationship turning romantic again after Casca gets her mind back is something I find fairly horrifying after how he treated her.
She’s been reduced to nothing more than a symbol of Guts trying to keep his hold on humanity, she’s suffered for it, and if she gets her mind back and gets back together with Guts as a narrative “reward” to him for suffering through a shitty life, like I think a lot of Berserk fans want, I would be extremely disappointed.
(I have a very, very long post that goes into detail on Guts and Casca’s relationship and how it largely revolves around Griffith here, if you’re interested, but I’d only recommend reading it if you’re not a fan of their romance. it’s also about griffguts and gay subtext but so is most of my blog content lol)
Guts thinking about the Band, remembering them and recognizing that their memories are part of what drives and inspires him and keeps him going now. His bros and comrades get one page, and Casca and Griffith get the next two and like, goddamn that image. (And this isn’t even about how his platonic Hawk bros get their moment and then his objects of sexual affection get theirs js.)
Like yeah I wrote a long post about how Guts and Casca’s relationship is all about Griffith from start to end but yk I could’ve just posted this page because it says the exact same thing in a lot fewer words.
I mean look at it. Guts and Casca having sex. Casca is facing towards us/Guts, Griffith is, once again, facing away. But they’re wrapped in his cape. They are connecting to each other in Griffith’s absence – Griffith is unavailable, emotionally and literally, but Casca is there and ready to be connected to. And his presence literally surrounds them as they fuck out their feelings about him thru each other.
And it’s two pages before Guts’ revelation that leaving her behind was just like abandoning Griffith which makes him vow to find her and make up for it. Liiiiiiike these parallels aren’t subtle.
like lbr here the reason guts and casca hated each other for 3 years is they were fighting for griffith’s attention
they finally warm up to each other only when guts figures he lost and decides to leave, so he’s able to be magnanimous and throw casca at him
like casca is so obviously a substitution for himself while guts is doing his weird matchmaker thing. hey casca you have a dream, you’re worthy of griffith, so you should ask him to dance.
guts may not have consciously realized it like casca did, but they were such romantic rivals, that’s their dynamic
hell they hook up after casca goes over point by point the ways griffith isn’t available: first guts, but then princess charlotte, then in a dungeon, now may not even be alive. and as soon as griffith becomes maybe possibly available after all, the jealous rivalry starts mounting again.
like i’ve talked about how casca telling guts to leave in requiem of the wind is bc she’s prioritizing his dream now and telling him to fulfill it, and i think that’s still the case buuuuuuut i can definitely see an interpretation where she tells guts to leave because now charlotte’s out of the picture, now griffith is dependant, now she can give back to griffith and comfort him the way she always wanted to and never could, and she doesn’t want guts to get in the way.
that’s kind of what the scene between her and griffith in the wagon is about rly, come to think of it. afterwards she cries about how weak he is and how there’s no way she can leave him like that, and before she muses about how his strong hands used to comfort her but they’re so small in actuality. whatever griffith’s motivations for literally flinging himself at her, it’s casca’s reaction that’s most important, casca putting her hand on his shoulder and realizing he needs her.
say she tells herself and guts that he needs to leave because his
dream is just So Important but deep down it’s bc she knows they’re still
rivals, the three of them together would get fucked up and destructive real quick, and if she can’t leave griffith and try to move on with guts then she wants to be the one to stay with him.
like it’s not a flattering interpretation for casca but i don’t want flattering interpretations for casca, i like flaws and selfishness etc in my female characters, especially as opposed to casca being a stupid selfless martyr for guts’ dream bc she slept with him so now that’s what she cares about.
In this post I’m going to discuss how Casca’s narrative role as a love interest overlaps with her narrative role as a substitute for Griffith, how those roles ultimately serve the main story that is the love/hate relationship between Guts and Griffith, and how Miura utilizes her as an emotional/sexual conduit between the two while also conveniently no-homoing them. Plus some additional straightforward stuff on Guts and his crush on Griffith here and there.
Advance warning: this is long. Looooooong. Also be warned that I do touch on the hound and the Eclipse, but only in one section of this post.
I also want to make clear upfront that I love Casca but I dislike the Guts/Casca romance subplot, for many reasons including my general dislike of most het, Guts’ awful treatment of her, and the sense I get that she’s been inserted as a buffer between Guts and Griffith, but mostly because I think the romance was added almost entirely to set up the destruction of Casca as a character for the sake of Guts’ manpain.
So yeah going in you should be aware that this is Guts/Casca negative. I don’t consider their romantic feelings for each other a valuable part of Berserk, and I spend a lot of time calling the legitimacy of those feelings into question. If that sounds like it’ll piss you off but you still want more Guts/Griffith content, you can totally just skip to part 4 without missing any necessary information for that part.
Ok that said, let’s get into it.
We’ll go back to the Golden Age eventually but I’m going to jump ahead first and start at chapter 130, during Guts’ night of self-reflection after he returns to Godo’s cave and finds Casca missing.
Guts is basically having an internal debate about whether or not his revenge rampage was worth abandoning Casca. He eventually emphatically concludes that it was in fact not worth it and he fucked right up when he draws this connection:
Again again again again. I’m starting here because it’s one of the most clear and straightforward examples of Guts viewing Casca as a replacement for Griffith. The connection is drawn explicitly – he considers abandoning Casca to be the equivalent of abandoning Griffith and drawing that parallel is what motivates him to save her.
But despite wanting to start atoning for past mistakes, he still intends to abandon her in a cave again after he gets her back.
“Actually, I only half mean it.”
Cue this #iconic page:
Now I talk about this page all the damn time because of how off the charts gay it is, but more importantly right now is that it draws a strong contrast between Casca and Griffith. It begins with “Just as I got her back… no, in the middle of swinging my sword to get her back…”
In the middle of getting her back… he… saw him. By framing Griffith’s appearance as an interruption that rips his attention away from rescuing Casca, Guts expresses the feeling that he’s torn between them. And of course he is, we see this throughout the rest of the manga, in his internal struggle not to toss Casca aside (or worse) and run after Griffith to, “give him… a heap of raw iron.”
We also see this inner conflict during NeoGriffith’s appearance when this happens:
But as of right now, Griffith has won the fight for Guts’ attention.
Guts’ half truth, as far as I can tell, is that he’s going to help make the damn cave a little homier and then take off again after Griffith.
As we saw in chapter 130 he decided to dedicate himself to getting Casca back, and we can assume that he fully intended to give up his revenge quest at that point. Godo tore him a new one over abandoning her to fight monsters, Guts realized he’s been being a dick, and he’s figured that maybe staying and helping take care of Casca is a better way of dealing with his issues than going back on a rampage, especially since last time he saw Femto he couldn’t even come close to touching him.
But then Skull Knight tells him the Godhand are going to be around, there’s going to be another version of the Eclipse, and we see Guts conflicted again:
Anyway Isidro ultimately saves Casca, she and Guts are reunited, and Griffith appears. Maybe Guts’ original plan was to stay with Casca and forget revenge, but now Griffith is reachable, he’s on the same plane of existence, and to top it all off, he’s hot again!
And no I’m not joking, I absolutely think that Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith is, for the first time since Promrose Hall, being clearly visually conveyed again. I already posted that iconic page in which Guts pictures Griffith’s ass and gets distracted from revenge, but there’s more where that came from.
Griffith’s sexiness is genuinely an important plot and thematic point lol, but it’s Guts eyes we’re shown that through, and holy shit does his gaze get a lot of attention in this scene. And why? Because Griffith’s reachable again. When he’s monstrous and demonic he’s out of reach on a whole nother plane of existence and shown as distant and untouchable:
When he’s incarnated as a physical being again he’s said to be “the desired,” he’s so beautiful no one can shut up about it, and imo Guts’ temptation to pursue him now that he’s “where [his] sword can reach,” is tied to the sexual temptation on display here.
Basically, while he’s certainly not intending to pursue Griffith so he can literally fuck him, there are blatant sexual undertones to his desire for revenge that ramp up hard and fast real soon, and they start with Griffith’s sexy as fuck rebirth.
And to elaborate on how the depiction of Griffith is a huge contrast here to the depiction of Casca:
Casca is shown at her least sexualized. She’s wrapped in a shapeless cloak and mirroring Erika, depicted as utterly childlike.
And this is Griffith:
Griffith is the temptation, he’s the one Guts wants to pursue, and Casca is the responsibility, and this is shown loud and clear through Griffith’s intense desirability and Guts’ enthrallment at the sight of him vs Casca’s desexualized childishness.
As for the Hill of Swords reunion
“More like someone out of a fairytale.”
Not overly relevant but it’s a fun detail that “He was so pretty” is on Guts’ face while “someone out of a fairytale” is on Griffith’s image.
That sound – like Griffith’s apparent acknowledgement, at long last, is a physical blow. Love it.
But of course then Griffith’s like, I came to see you to test my capacity for emotion, and it looks like this whole emotionless demon thing was a success. And this is Guts’ reaction – not rage, or at least, not solely rage, but so much hurt too:
Look at those sad eyebrows man. This scene thoroughly shows us how emotionally conflicted and confused Guts is. He’s angry, he’s hurt, he’s full of longing both for revenge and for “the way he he used to be,” and after everything he still wants acknowledgement, he still wants Griffith to look at him.
“I’ll not betray my dream. That is all.”
And it’s now that Guts finally attacks. So far he’s let Rickert hold him back, then shoved him away only to scream “you don’t feel anything?!” instead of rushing him. But when NeoGriff tells Guts in no uncertain terms that his dream is not only more important, but his sole priority, Guts snaps.
I do think it’s really easy to read this scene as Guts looking for a hint that Griffith still cares about him, along with the hope that he feels regret for what he’s done. Guts had a lot of misconceptions about Griffith’s feelings, but by the time of the Eclipse he’d realized that Griffith loved him – he’d left to seek something (love and respect and affection, friendship and equality) he already had and, in leaving, lost it.
Scroll back up to that first picture I posted, he says it right there: “Did I lose something before I even noticed it again?! Without even realizing I’d thrown it from the palm of my hand!” There’s a small part of him that was still hoping, now that Griffith is un-demonized, that his heart and his love had returned with his human body, that it’s not lost forever. But in declaring that he’s free, NeoGriffith shoots that hope down.
Anyway big fight, cave collapses, Griffith’s heart starts doing shit unbeknownst to Guts, he mysteriously saves Casca and takes off, and Guts
says he won’t abandon Casca again and decides to escort her to Elfhelm, with his dickish reluctance handily pointed out by Decent Person Puck lol.
Now look at this shit:
“Weren’t those Godo’s parting words?” Says Guts to Rickert to convince him to stay with Erika.
“You should have known. This is the man I am.”
Don’t abandon what you can’t replace. He finally learned that lesson when he compared abandoning Casca to abandoning Griffith. He frames his choice to stay with Casca as making up for it. Guts once deserted Griffith, now Griffith has deserted him, so he’s promising not to desert Casca. Given that Guts’ mind is solely on deserting and being deserted by Griffith, as opposed to that time when he left Casca in a cave for two years and she wandered off, “I won’t desert you anymore. This time… I won’t lose you,” is given a double meaning of applying to Casca while also referencing losing Griffith.
But what’s with that interlude up there of Guts remembering Griffith saving Casca? The man Guts “knows” NeoGriffith is, the man who dgaf about anything except his dream, isn’t the man who would randomly decide to save Casca from falling rocks. Guts is shown thinking about that apparent contradiction immediately before “I won’t leave you behind. I won’t… desert you anymore.”
Taken all together, to me this scene comes across as so utterly Griffith centric that it makes Casca feel like an afterthought, conveniently there so Guts can take some form of action in response to his extremely Griffith-centred emotions.
Guts charlie brown walks away because Griffith “deserted” him. Guts draws a comparison between abandoning Griffith and abandoning Casca, and being abandoned by NeoGriffith and refusing to abandon Casca. Guts remembers NeoGriffith saying he knows what kind of man he is right before recalling him saving Casca.
Then he declares he won’t desert her again – and I have to wonder if part of what gives him the willpower to take a break from his revenge quest despite NeoGriffith residing so temptingly in his plane of existence now is the ambiguity of NeoGriffith’s actions here, casting “the kind of man” he is now into doubt and deflating Guts’ rage boner the same way he says seeing NeoGriffith looking “so human… the way he used to be” makes him forget his “urge to kill.” It hardly seems like a stretch given how much of Guts’ decision here is explicitly shown to be about Griffith.
So far, post-Eclipse, Casca’s been treated as a prop for Guts’ internal conflict between revenge and not being a dick – a symbol of his lingering humanity. She exists to be put into peril so Guts can decide to save her and then waver between her and Griffith. She’s the poster girl for failing to pass the sexy lamp test. It’s real depressing, and it’s about to get worse.
Enter Beast of Darkness.
Now we’re at the really bad shit, but also the actual most explicit verbal suggestion of Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith, so it’s impossible to skip in a post on the topic. Plus there’s no point pretending that Casca isn’t done incredibly dirty by both the narrative and Guts.
It’s important to understand that the Hound is Guts. It’s not an evil malicious spirit trying to manipulate and possess Guts (which I have seen suggested before), it’s simply Guts’ dark emotions given substance. Just on the off chance this statement requires support for you, here’s a post on the subject. This scene is pretty much Guts arguing with his id.
And the way it’s framed with “dreams of him?” “let’s go to him” coming first on the image of an eager, excited puppy, followed by the teeth and “heap of raw iron” feels so deliberate to me. Guts wants violent revenge but it’s a feeling complicated by the fact that he loved Griffith, that he once strove to be his equal, to be considered his friend, and now he strives to kill him.
Like Guts facing Femto in the Black Swordsman arc, like Guts pleading for a shred of regret from NeoGriffith, there’s still an element of Guts wanting Griffith’s acknowledgement here.
More direct comparisons between Casca and Griffith and how Guts feels about them. Who’s more precious, your love interest or your arch nemesis?
And I’m not here to say that Guts doesn’t care for Casca and only cares about Griffith. As this scene shows, he’s torn between them, but he’s chosen Casca now, and he’s trying to get his doubts and his rage and his suppressed attraction to Griffith that’s now coming to the surface, coloured by hate, to shut the fuck up. But these are his own doubts.
“The wound Griffith left, because you want to keep feeling the pain he caused you?” Okay, certainly an eyebrow raising description here but all right, this is about Guts’ motivation to kill Griffith. The Hound is suggesting he values Casca only as fuel for his rage. Which certainly seems like a relevant suggestion after Guts’ “I’d forgotten my urge to kill. And that… can’t be.” His rage needs fuel. So while that’s surely not all there is to his feelings for Casca, the Hound isn’t making shit up. Again, this is essentially Guts internally debating what his true motivations are.
Longing. Hell of a word choice. Granted I can’t double check the translation with others because I’m incapable of tracking down old raws (tho I did a cursory search on skullknight.net to see if anyone had criticized the translation of this scene and didn’t find anything) but this is such a boldly romanticized choice of phrasing that I feel it’s safe to assume the undertones are there in the original Japanese. You don’t accidentally describe someone’s urge to kill a dude as “longing” for him. That’s a blatantly deliberate double entendre.
And on top of that it fits right in with the Hound’s first eager, excited words to Guts in this scene. Again, it’s an illustration that Guts’ vengeful feelings are complex, and intertwined with his original feelings for Griffith.
And then the Hound tells Guts to rape Casca so he can get closer to Griffith and I throw up my hands.
There’s so much innuendo and homoeroticism in the lead up to this (including earlier, w/ Griffith’s sexy rebirth scene and the reunion on the Hill of Swords, ft Guts thinking about Griffith’s ass), and then this scene just doubles down as hard as possible. “Let’s give him… a heap of raw iron,” “because you want to keep feeling the pain he caused you,” “she’s a sacrifice so you can continue longing for Griffith,” “you’ll get closer and closer to Griffith.”
The innuendo in this scene makes it one of the most homoerotic scenes in the manga.
Like, tl;dr Guts’ vengeful pursuit of Griffith is tied so thoroughly to sex in this
nightmare that tbh I have a hard time calling this subtext.
And while it is absolutely homophobic for one of the gayest scenes in the manga to basically tie Guts’ desire for Griffith to his desire for revenge and a suggestion to rape and kill Casca, it’s also worth noting that this isn’t exactly Guts’ desire for revenge being given a dark sexual element.
This is the Beast of Darkness using Guts’ pre-existing desire for Griffith to try to tempt him into sticking a sword in him. Still fucked up, obviously, but it’s at least deeper and more interesting than the alternative.
The earlier parallels I described, Guts comparing leaving Griffith and leaving Casca, etc, draw an emotional connection between Guts and Griffith through Casca as, essentially, a bridge. Guts is assuaging his desire to go back and fix his mistakes by replacing Griffith with Casca and refusing to leave her. Casca has become an outlet for Guts’ feelings about missed opportunities with Griffith.
This chapter draws a very direct sexual connection between Guts and Griffith through Casca as a bridge. By raping the woman Femto raped, Guts can get closer to him.
And it is, of course, not the first time the manga has done this. Femto’s unwavering stare into Guts’ eye(s) during the Eclipse rape scene isn’t subtle, though I don’t intend to go into it in detail as this is about Guts’ sexual desire, not Griffith/Femto’s. I feel like the stare (the fucking stare omg) speaks for itself.
I mention this only to make the point that there’s an established precedent for Casca bearing the brunt of these dudes’ repressed feelings for each other, whether it’s genuinely intended to be interpreted as repressed sexual desire or whether it’s meant to be platonic spite/longing to get closer and closer to Griffith no homo. It’s not fair, it’s bad writing on several levels, it’s both misogynist and homophobic, but there you go.
Ultimately my main takeaway here is that Berserk would be about 500x less fucked up and offensive if Guts and Griffith just cut out the middlewoman and fucked each other.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s go back to the Golden Age.
So far I’ve done my best to show that, post-Eclipse, Guts’ relationship with Casca largely revolves around his feelings for Griffith, both regretful and vengeful, and the fucked-up sexual component of his relationship with her also relates to the sexual component of his relationship with Griffith. So what about pre-Eclipse? Does the same principle hold true then, back when Casca was an actual character and not just a plot device and projection screen for Guts?
And I would argue that it does. It’s less in-your-face about it, but tbh not by a whole lot.
Casca and Guts start off as romantic rivals for Griffith’s affection. Only Casca is aware of this, since Guts’ attraction to Griffith is subconscious and repressed imo, but that’s their early dynamic. Their first emotionally intimate scene together, when they finally stop hating each other and start to bond as friends, is when Casca tells Guts her backstory, which happens to be almost entirely about Griffith.
The Casca chapters end with Casca crying about Griffith having fallen in love with Guts and not her (”Why… why did it have to be you?”), but all Guts manages to get out of Casca’s story is that she’s into Griffith, so after he decides to leave he starts trying to be a good bro and set them up. Finally, right before Guts leaves, Judeau introduces him to the concept of hooking up with Casca.
During the course of this conversation Guts does a kind of 180:
to
“The one who has her eye… is Griffith. That’s why… right now… I’m no good for her… like this.”
This is presented like part of Guts’ motivation for becoming Griffith’s equal is to be worthy of Casca, but we’ve seen his thought process for wanting to be Griffith’s equal, and Casca has never figured into it. He’d completely written her off before this chat with Judeau, as we see at the start, and he certainly never seemed to be consciously aware of the possibility of getting with her.
He’s been trying to set her up with Griffith for several chapters – pushing her into his arms, mentioning her dress to him, suggesting she ask him to dance, carrying her down to see him after Doldrey, saying “good luck with Griffith,” to her as he heads out, and now telling Judeau he expects them to get together.
There are three possible explanations for this behaviour:
1. Guts just wants to be a good bro and help his friends be happy together. 2. Guts is sublimating his unconscious desire for Casca into trying to hook her up with Griffith. 3. Guts is sublimating his unconscious desire for Griffith into trying to hook him up with Casca.
I think maybe Miura wants us to think it’s #2. Hence Guts’ awkward sweatdrop when Judeau brings her up, hence Guts complimenting her dress before mentioning it to Griffith, hence Guts carrying her down to him bridal style after Doldrey, hence Guts swiveling from “Less a woman I see her as… a comrade,” to “That’s why… right now… I’m no good for her… like this,” within seconds.
Yk, he’s subconsciously attracted to her now and acts on that attraction by trying to hook her up with Griffith to make her happy, but once Judeau tells him that’s not an option, he can admit that he’s attracted to her.
(And, just to throw something out there, once we establish that Berserk has subtextual, repressed sexual desire in this love triangle it only adds more validation to the other combinations. Even if we are genuinely meant to read Guts as unknowingly attracted to Casca, it puts unknowing attraction on the table. Who else might he be unknowingly attracted to? Casca also apparently took some time to recognize her feelings for Griffith as potentially romantic. Lots of subconscious desire wrapped up in this love triangle, I’m js. But lol I digress.)
That said, I’m here to argue that, whatever Miura’s intentions may be (and hell they may be exactly this), it comes across as option #3.
I’ve already gone through the first part of the Golden Age to highlight how Guts looks at him and how visuals suggest attraction. After Promrose, that fades away because Guts no longer views Griffith as reachable, rather, he puts him on a pedestal. Enter Casca, right at the point where Guts is deciding what to do with the “fact” that Griffith doesn’t give a fuck about him.
Suddenly he gets invested in setting Griffith up with Casca, who he views as more worthy of Griffith because she has a dream (be Griffith’s sword) and he doesn’t.
This is when Guts starts pushing them together. He’s encouraging Casca to take his place at Griffith’s side, whether he realizes the implications of that or not – at the very least he knows that Casca believes Griffith feels things for him she wishes he felt for her, even if Guts doesn’t believe that Griffith truly values him.
“Until that day. The day you showed up…”
What’s interesting to me is that Guts recognizes that Casca wants to fuck Griffith lmao. He’s hooking them up romantically, even though Casca never directly says she’s in love with Griffith, and only alludes to her feelings in terms of being pissed off at Guts for stealing Griffith away from her side.
Guts doesn’t believe he himself is close to Griffith after overhearing the Promrose speech, but he seems to realize that Casca is jealous of him, manages to interpret that (correctly) as Casca wanting to bone Griffith, and yet still doesn’t realize that Griffith’s feelings for him may be a lot more significant than he thinks. Feels like repression at work to me.
Guts wants Casca to take his perceived place at Griffith’s side, except Casca’s theoretically able to do so romantically bc she’s a woman, so there’s plenty of heteronormativity at work too, though whether that’s coming from Miura or Guts I can’t say.
So yeah after Judeau explains the plot of Berserk to him and keeps nudging him towards Casca, Guts agrees that maybe he could hook up with her… but only if he becomes Griffith’s equal first.
So the other way of looking at this is that, rather than suddenly changing Guts’ entire motivation out of nowhere from “become Griffith’s equal to be his friend” to “become Griffith’s equal to get with Casca,” and generally being bizarrely terrible writing, this instead neatly situates a future relationship with Casca, in which she sees him as just as good for her as Griffith, as proof that he’s on the road to achieving his goal of becoming Griffith’s equal.
Which holds true later on – Guts and Casca’s relationship is not an endgame for Guts, it’s not his goal, it’s another step. He still intends to go back out and keep pursuing his own dream. He’s still motivated by wanting to be Griffith’s equal.
So yeah, Judeau’s like, whatever, I tried, Guts ducks out, and shit proceeds to go down.
Fast forward a year.
Guts comes back. Casca, interestingly, has taken over Griffith’s most notable narrative role as leader of the Hawks. Everyone sits down around the campfire.
Rickert tries to explain things to Guts:
Look what Judeau does! He’s telling Rickert to shut up.
Judeau is… weirdly invested in Guts and Casca getting together. Setting them up is largely his motivation in the latter half of the Golden Age, as far as I can tell.
After this moment he changes the subject to:
Subtle, Judeau.
I think it’s telling that Guts never comes up with the idea of hooking up with Casca on his own. He’s led to it by resident shipper on board Judeau, every time. The same dude trying to avoid any mention of Griffith’s feelings for Guts now. Why? Because he wants Guts and Casca to leave together after they rescue Griffith, and he has a feeling Guts won’t want to if he figures out how Griffith actually feels about him.
Hey here’s something interesting about this scene:
This is when Guts first starts trying to fix his mistakes by substituting Casca for Griffith, imo.
Casca attacks him while screaming that he ruined Griffith by leaving. As the point finally hits home, so does the point of Casca’s sword as Guts, shocked, lets her stab him.
Before Guts can really draw a useful conclusion from Casca’s diatribe, she offers a distraction from the subject at hand by trying to kill herself while bequeathing Griffith to him.
“I couldn’t be a woman. Or something invaluable. To keep on protecting the almost broken dream of someone who might not even be alive…“
Guts didn’t save the last Hawk leader who had a self destructive breakdown after dueling him.
Presented with another person who seems to need him, who is desperate and lost and needs comfort, this time he does something.
And what really makes me believe this is actually, for real the correct reading of this scene – that, to Guts, Casca is a substitution for Griffith here – is that Casca is doing the exact. Same. Thing.
Griffith is (seemingly) unreachable, (seemingly) emotionally and romantically unavailable, but Guts and Casca aren’t.
And they kiss for the first time right after Casca tells Guts how Griffith felt about him, right after Guts lets Casca stab him because of it, right after the memory of Griffith kneeling in the snow, and the beginnings of
the realization that by leaving he lost what he set out to earn, hit him, right after Casca tells him that Griffith is his responsibility now. It’s hard not to take that as Guts using Casca as a substitution for Griffith, giving her what he’s now very slowly beginning to realize he should’ve given Griffith.
Guts and Casca getting together here is two people obsessed with the same person trying to offer the other what they couldn’t offer him: comfort. And sex.
Once again a scene that looks like it’s going to be about Casca and
Guts, that should be if this was a typical romance, turns out to revolve
around Griffith.
And on the subject of Guts leaving Griffith in the snow instead of
kneeling down and kissing him the way he responds to Casca much later, how about Griffith going out and getting
self-destructively laid while thinking about Guts after the duel?
Thematically there’s a very well-defined empty space where Griffith and
Guts connecting romantically would’ve fit, is what I’m saying, but they
didn’t. They both sought out other sexual connections to compensate for the
loss of each other.
Finally, here’s the straightforward account of how Guts and Casca are feeling three days later with Griffith’s imminent return to their lives. Casca confesses to Guts that she’s still jealous of Charlotte, Guts gets pissy, but then thinks:
I hate that you’re still hung up on Griffith but I’d be a huge hypocrite if I got mad because I’m even more hung up on Griffith.
Which pretty much sums it up.
And I think I can stop there. There’s a lot more to say in the lead-in to the Eclipse about Guts’ intense feelings for Griffith, but when it comes to sexual attraction specifically, and how Casca figures into it, I think I’ll call it a day.
I hope I’ve made a decent case for Guts’ feelings for Casca, both positive and hugely fucked up, being largely built out of redirected feelings for Griffith. Whatever the reasons for this – actual authorial intent, intended redirection of Guts’s platonic bro feelings but adding sex bc Casca’s a woman so it’s obligatory without realizing how gay that looks, me totally reading into a half-assed het subplot created for the sake of more Eclipse drama, whatever – this is earnestly how Guts’ relationship with Casca reads to me.
In the final part I’m going to conclude this epic adventure in homoeroticism with what is essentially a “why I ship them,” going into why I think it makes perfect sense, from both a character and a thematic perspective, for Guts to be sexually attracted to Griffith. Stay tuned.
shout out to @mastermistressofdesire bc we’ve had a few conversations about this subject and some of your ideas really helped me coalesce these thoughts. Ty!
I mentioned a while ago that the first time I feel we got a real visual* glimpse of Guts’ hound-esque inner darkness chronologically was during the rescue mission.
The way he cuts out the torturer’s tongue is very reminiscent of his tendency to torture apostles before killing them imo (which probably has its origins in the way he killed Donovan), and then he just rampages through the castle like a demonic one-man army, very black swordsman ish.
Look at this imagery like:
(i love Casca’s ‘holy shit dude’ expression)
Plus you got Charlotte saying he scares her, and the Wyald fight is when everyone starts comparing Guts to a monster and saying he’s inhuman.
So I was thinking – why? Why would we get this before the Eclipse, before he starts killing ghosts and infusing his sword with Essence of Darkness, before the brand + killing monsters make him literally superhuman? Why do we get our first look at monster slaying, revenge-obsessed, black swordsman Guts a day and only a day before the main event, the point of which is to make him revenge-obsessed, even takes place?
And I want to suggest that it’s because this is it – this is Guts’ revenge spree. It’s not one revenge spree that ends, followed immediately by another unrelated revenge spree. It’s the same rage. He killed the torturer like he kills apostles, then he fought an actual apostle to defend Griffith, then the Eclipse happened and he declared war.
It’s all intimately connected in Guts’ mind and emotions:
He started off on a vengeful rampage for Griffith in part as a way of externalizing his own feelings of guilt, and he continued on a vengeful rampage against Femto/NeoGriffith, also in part as a way of externalizing his own feelings of guilt.
We know this because as he’s running towards Griffith in the torture chamber Guts thinks about how it’s his fault that Griffith is there without actually coming to a proper conclusion (if that’s the case… then I –) – and he reaches that conclusion (was I the one who brought all this upon you?) right as he’s running towards Griffith at the site of the Eclipse. Guts’ guilt is strongly associated with his rage this way. Guilt followed by external target followed by lashing out.
Idk, there’s just such a through line to me from Casca telling him it’s his fault to the Eclipse. The most significant moments of Guts’ internal thoughts are given to him processing this information and finally concluding that he fucked up right before the Eclipse begins. The Eclipse didn’t then erase his feelings of guilt, it just let him continue to repress those feelings and gave him acceptable targets to lash out at instead of dealing with his feelings.
Now this is a bold statement, but I think that in a way, rampage part 1, kill half the soldiers of Midland, and rampage part 2, kill demons, are both about Guts avenging Griffith – the latter only in part ofc, because the rest of the Hawks need to be avenged too now.
Because the thing is, I think he still sees Griffith as a victim. After finally acknowledging that Griffith did sacrifice everyone, he still looks back at him wistfully. He thinks of Griffith while flashing back to the lost Hawks after the Eclipse. He tells Rickert that NeoGriffith isn’t the Griffith he knows (incidentally something Rickert repeats to NeoGriffith later, which NGriff acknowledges). He flashes back to Griffith in the snow a lot. To Guts, Griffith isn’t his friend who turned out to be a dick, Griffith is his friend who basically committed fantasy murder/suicide after being tortured for a year because Guts broke him by leaving.
His feelings towards Femto/NeoGriff are complicated and fucked up as all hell, but while his feelings for Griffith feed into his complicated feelings for Femto/NeoGriff, his hatred for F/NG doesn’t retroactively affect his feelings towards human Griffith. They’ve remained pretty solidly longing, guilt, love, regret. He’s not thinking of Griffith kneeling in the snow and feeling rage at what he would go on to do a year later, he’s thinking of Griffith kneeling in the snow and trying to find a way to atone for it. Griffith is still explicitly part of the “campfire from those days still [burning in his] chest.”
Idk basically I just wanted to say that a part of Guts’ fuel for his revenge rampage was feeling responsible for Griffith’s pain and not being able to save Griffith from it, both the first time against Midland and the second time against the Godhand, and I chose a very long drawn-out way to do that.
* I specify visual glimpse bc i think there’s a solid argument that it’s there when he kills Donovan, based on the way he taunts him and tortures him briefly first, but we don’t have any of the ragey demonic imagery associated with Guts’ darkness there – he just looks like a kid. So I feel like it works as a point of origin for a lot of Guts’ dark vengeful urges (Donovan is the first monster he killed), but he wasn’t anywhere close to losing himself to darkness then.
Honestly I don’t think there’s anything I have to add here which you haven’t already said. But I’ll just leave this here,
From Schierke’s trip into Guts Mindscape, where at the pit of the fire which drives Guts forward, There is a chant of Griffith’s name and a confused roil of affection and rage which comes with it. And though Friend and enemy overlap, they haven’t quite superimposed yet, they are still distinct entities.
And really you’ve said this before but I definitely agree that a part of his current motivation to fix things comes from his guilt of being unable to ‘fix’ what he had with Griffith. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have done it for Casca on her own too, but that Guttural fear, the panicked “Did I Do it AGAIN?!” that comes from a place of Guilt. A place quite firmly occupied by Griffith.
The “This time, I was the one left behind.” goes to show that Guts now wholeheartedly sees himself leaving the first time around as an act of abandonment, there’s no allusion to leaving to pursue his own dream because really even back then- :”Now I realise, this was what I’d been seeking this whole time.”
What I also like about this is that Guts seems to treat it as Griffith sort of “Paying him back’ for that offense. So he’s kind of subconsciously seeing Neo-Griffith as a very human, emotionally motivated figure with remnants of the ‘original’ Griffith’s emotional experiences and for once Guts might just really be on to something.
Also Interestingly, as mentioned before i guess, ever since the Eclipse all of Gut’s memories of Griffith have morphed into images of him standing with his back towards Guts or at a distance and the imagery is really interesting to me here. Because it could signify so much.
We know that the image of Griffith’s back, kneeling in the snow has sort of become a haunting image for Guts. What if the turned back everywhere else is an extension of this, the fact that all his memories are tinged with the same regret or guilt.
Secondly it could be simply a perceived distance and further unreachability, because the past is literally an unachievable objective. And specifically that shot he has of the entire original band during the ‘companions’ speech. Griffith is walking away in the background there, it’s almost as if Guts realises that even during what he considered his happiest memories he was already losing Griffith.
Oh and the “Campfire from those days still burns in my heart” spread?
First of all. Ahhem.
Second of all once again you compare in importance a woman you literally have an appendage of yours inside in that particular shot with this other guy who actually looms much larger. An more encompassing. With his presence literally symbolically wrapped around you for emotional warmth.
Also Under his cover but behind his back and I really wonder if that has significance too.
And then again maybe simply because he doesn’t know what face to give him. Is it the face of a friend, an enemy, something else all together? Guts doesn’t really know yet.
lol i was almost going to make my original post like twice as long by going on to guts’ decision to stick with casca this time and how it’s framed as him trying to make up for abandoning griffith etc. but then i was like, this is already rly long.
also good point about Guts interpreting Griffith rejection as payback – ia, i don’t think Guts is exactly wrong about that lol.
I’ve been reading Guts’ memories of Griffith’s back (bc yeah I noticed that too, he’s always facing away) as, I guess, recognition that that relationship has been destroyed. Whenever Guts remembers leaving Griffith he’s looking back at him kneeling in the snow, which tbh strikes me as symbolic rather than literal because Guts never looked back. It’s a visual representation of Guts’ acknowledgement that he left Griffith behind. And I think Guts’ other memories of Griffith with his back to him are similar – an acknowlegement that Guts ruined everything and now he’s back to chasing Griffith. I might say more on that in a separate post actually.
and lol the campfire from those days spread is so damn blatant in its acknowledgement of the fact that guts and casca hooked up not only while they were both in love with griffith but, tbh, because of it. at least that’s what i get when i look at a picture of 2 ppl fucking while wrapped in the symbolic flowing cape of the dude they were both acknowledgedly obsessed with plus like you said, it’s with griffith facing away. Which, to me, adds the sense of them trying to fill a hole left by his loss.
Which is why it makes perfect sense to show us this image at this point in the narrative while Guts is contemplating revenge and rescuing Casca because he’s shifting from trying to fill that hole by chasing Griffith/Femto down and “[giving] him a heap of raw iron” to trying to fill it with Casca again (tho he doesn’t actually solidify that choice until NeoGriffith ditches him).
And I think it’s going to be a mistake – we see that Guts leaving revenge behind is good, but his desperation to get Casca back is not so good and will probably have consequences. And I think we’re supposed to understand that he’s doing it for the wrong reasons – if he wanted Casca sane again for her sake he’d be giving her time and a safe place to recover, or just to live. He wants Casca sane again for his own sake bc a) he can’t let go of the past and she represents the Hawks, b) he’s trying to make up for leaving Griffith and c) he’s still trying to fill the Griffith-shaped hole in his heart.
And then again maybe simply because he doesn’t know what face to give
him. Is it the face of a friend, an enemy, something else all together?
Guts doesn’t really know yet.
you're the only one 