i think it was probably meant as a shock value thing more than anything, like yes the idea was to feel the anger and betrayal guts was feeling, but imo it wasn’t meant to make us hate griffith the character as a whole from that point onward. because the way miura presents his story after the eclipse is very generous
like it was a shoking turning point that
was supposed to 1) give guts revenge motivation but also 2) really
drive home the ~morally ambiguous~ thing he’s trying to go with, which
might have been the worst fail ever because not only is rape generally
tied to pure evil villainy but also miura /kinda/ made that connection
too. i mean he was actually trying to make that “there’s evil in the
world bc everyone has a dark core” point
and also maybe
something about ultimate freedom (which is why it’s the apostles that
rape like almost every time) but he just failed so hard on that front bc
everyone saw the eclipse rape scene and was like, oh ok so we’re
supposed to hate griffith then. and instead of making their view of the
story more ambiguous and open, it made it completely black and white.
the literal opposite of what miura was imo going for
one thing that i think
the eclipse rape does do is drive home the hatred griffith felt for
guts when he was at his lowest, because those are the feelings that come
to surface when he’s stripped down to only his “evil core.” however the
counter-argument there is that it absolutely didn’t have to be rape,
like you mentioned in another post. it could have been torture or
whatever else. and i’m so pissed off that he went with rape in the end
bc it just cheapened everything
Hm yeah it’s meant to illustrate Femto as an entity made out of evil and Griffith’s inner darkness, make us hate him specifically and empathize with Guts’ desire for revenge. I def agree that it’s not meant to make us retroactively hate Griffith, it’s pretty clear that human Griffith is still meant to be very sympathetic and not Femto-lite or anything like that lmao, I mean look at how Guts remembers him.
NeoGriffith, idfk. It seems clear that we’re not meant to hate him, considering how he’s framed as the hero of his own story with his own loathsome antagonists and a cause we’re meant to generally consider good, and allies we’re meant to like, etc. But we’re probably still supposed to be wary of him, and uncertain about him? His whole thing is ambiguity. So idk, maybe Miura intended for it to be obvious that NGriff isn’t the exact same as Femto just like regular Griffith isn’t, so distancing the Eclipse rape from his narrative doesn’t feel awkward as fuck to him lol.
And yeah in addition to illustrating his evil it does illustrate his negative feelings towards Guts, also necessary, but yeah, choosing rape as that illustration was bad, and the particular way Miura went about it was even worse.
so ……… berserk is red pill vs blue pill
not sure if this is a matrix ref or a reddit ref lol. both kinda make sense…
i’m hoping miura
doesn’t rush this. bc it’s still not entirely clear what he’s really
going for, and i’d kind of like it to be, by the end
depends, if it’s gonna suck i just want the band aid ripped off, but if he’s going to surprise me and it’s gonna be good i want to savour it. and also yeah, understanding it would be nice too lmao, but I feel like that’ll be more clear after whatever happens w/ casca happens. that’s the make or break for me.
honestly the concept
of falconia is so sexy, starting with the ripped statues outside and
ending with its literally lusted after angelic beautiful leader like
come on. props to him, griffith haters need to give credit where credit
is due
when one of your literal superpowers is magic sex appeal you don’t have to go the extra mile, but he did. what an icon
I guess I’ve always assumed the Eclipse rape was there to give us a reason to hate Griffith. Like, in another setting committing murder would be “crossing the line” into villainy. In a story where all the dewy-eyed still-innocent major characters are also hired killers, escalation is bound to get awkward. Given how sympathetic Griffith’s storyline otherwise is, it feels like a effort to say “no really, this is supposed to be morally complicated, stop rooting for him.”
Yeah I don’t think you’re wrong about that. Though more than anything I think it’s meant to give Guts specifically a reason to hate him lol, because the way Miura wrote the sacrifice and Guts’ reaction to it
sacrificing him wasn’t nearly enough.
I mean personally I think the sacrifice could’ve still worked fine on its own if Guts had actually like, demonstrated some extreme feelings of betrayal, which I feel like he should’ve, because the sacrifice is meant to be an echo of his childhood trauma of being sold imo, and I feel like Miura kind of dropped that in favour of the more immediate shock value.
Like it wouldn’t’ve been enough to get me to hate him, but I’m kind of an exception lol, I feel like Guts expressing heartbreak and betrayal that echoes like, the scene where Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan, probably would’ve worked okay for most fans to make them at least very angry at Griffith/Femto.
Buuuuut you’re right that like, he is really sympathetic otherwise and Guts wanting to chase him down and kill him while he’s orchestrating world peace and ruling a utopia might make Guts seem less sympathetic without that visceral show of evil during the Eclipse to “justify” it. But then the Eclipse rape goes so far in the other direction that it completely fucks up the balance too. So idk.
I guess if I was writing it and I felt like the Eclipse needed something extra to prove that Femto is evil, which is fair since he’s supposed to be Griffith’s inner darkness with an additional boost of humanity’s evil in general, and you probably do want to demonstrate some of that, I’d opt for like, torture + maybe some magical mind torture or something if Casca needs to be driven insane, because that’s the kind of ott fantasy evil that none of the Berserk readership will have personally experienced. Rape as a gratuitous demonstration of evil has a whoooole lot of baggage that makes writing that character as a morally ambiguous antagonist later on extremely terrible imo.
tl;dr basically ia, I think the purpose was to immediately show how evil Femto is and make the readers and Guts hate him, and I mean it worked I guess lol, but I still think it was a bad decision and Miura should’ve done something else.
Consider:
vs
It’s like the Conviction arc takes these super cynical lines from Guts which, in the Black Swordsman arc, are clearly meant to show how fucked up he is and not something we’re meant to agree with, and pretties them up or makes them sound badass and legitimizes them.
I mean it’s even the same essential circumstances: Guts’ brand calls up spirits that kill innocent people. In the Black Swordsman arc Guts feels immense guilt and covers it up with cynical bravado. In the Conviction arc, Guts and Luca both blame the dead for failing to survive.
And idk if that’s a sign if we’re maybe supposed to take the themes of the Conviction arc with a grain of salt, or if Miura’s opinions just 180ed somewhere along the way.
Like do
people deserve to die for not being strong or resourceful enough to survive
against a force stronger than them or not, Miura?
In fairness this could very well be purposeful – showing like, both the negative side and the more palatable side of Guts’ survival of the fittest thing. Similar to how we get the positive side of Griffith’s utopia where the weak are protected from harm and exploitation (which come to think of it is also partly shown to us by Luca, hmm) and the negative side (it may be great but it’s the only peaceful place to live).
But also incidentally, if you’re on Guts’ side of this whole thing, yk you gotta be strong to survive and if you’re not it’s your own problem – you can’t really have an issue with Griffith filling the world with monsters lol. The world outside of Falconia right now pretty much illustrates Guts’ philosophy to a tee.
I could see this coming up again along those lines actually. Doesn’t someone actually say that now everyone has to deal with what Guts deals with, directly comparing brand-life to Fantasia? So there you go, you got Griffith’s world (Falconia) and you got Guts’ world (Fantasia), pick one.
I 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.
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.
ennnnnnnnnnnnh arguably like a city’s worth of people iirc lol. like, tens of thousands. of refugees.
it’s a bit of a stretch to say Guts sacrificed them, but essentially yeah if either he or Casca had died then all those tortured souls wouldn’t’ve been drawn out of the ether by their two brands, which is what destroyed everyone and allowed Griffith to resurrect himself into the world
Mozgus and the townspeople were trying to kill Guts and Casca during the climactic fight, not because they knew the ins and outs of how the brands worked but because they were like, blaming them for all the ghosty shit going on and trying to pacify god or whatever. Ironically they were completely on the right track, if for the wrong reasons, bc killing either of them would’ve saved everyone.
To be fair to Guts he didn’t know this. Puck kept this shit to himself.
On the other hand, his attitude when Mozgus is like, don’t you care that you’re trading thousands of lives for the life of one witch isn’t “I don’t believe you” but rather “i don’t give a shit, those people suck anyway” lmao
What’s kind of fucked up is that this is the narrative’s attitude too lol, like it 100% backs up Guts here. Luca even got her little statement at the end that
everyone who acted out of faith in a higher power died, while everyone who acted out of self-preservation managed to survive. Like the
narrative really did not give a shit about these people.
Forty Hawks? The most tragic of tragedies. Tens of thousands of refugees? Fuck em, they deserve it, they are the faceless violent masses. Nothin fucked up about that. (Even though both groups end up dying because they clung too hard to their faith in someone, so by Berserk’s own ridiculously cynical logic it serves everyone right.)
It is kind of weird tho, like I wouldn’t expect Guts to give a shit
about thousands of innocent people, but I would expect him to feel some
kind of way about his part in resurrecting Griffith. But the narrative
kind of just ignores that.
Also Skull Knight’s prophecy kind of muddies the waters a bit, because he says that man cannot divert the course of the festival or w/e, but like… if Guts had jumped off that tower and killed himself, festival over. If he was like, yeah good point, and broke Casca’s neck, festival over. Femto stuck in the astral plane. Thousands of people don’t die. So idk what that’s about. Maybe it’s meant to be ironic.
After all, the mock Eclipse is a reflection of the regular Eclipse. Guts and Casca both survived the regular Eclipse, and they’re meant to survive the mock Eclipse, because their presences there is what causes it. But Guts seems to believe that he’s defying fate by surviving, and it feels like the narrative is pushing that, even though logically it’s simply not the case.
Like, the mock Eclipse follows the actual Eclipse exactly even while we’re repeating the words “it doesn’t mean it will be exactly the same” and “maybe you’re like a fish breaching the water’s surface” over Isidro saving Casca and then Guts winning against Mozgus the first time (before he levels up with rocks). Guts is still on top of a giant hand focused on Griffith while someone else is saving Casca lmao. Guts and Casca both survive, just like they survived the first time. I have no idea what the story is going for here because everything played out perfectly to imitate the first Eclipse and resurrect Griffith.
So idk maybe the point is that Guts is a stubborn dumbass who is ironically playing into actual God’s (and Griffith’s) hands by defying Mozgus and maybe eventually we’ll revisit this?
Or maybe the conviction arc is so convoluted and weird that even Miura couldn’t keep track of what he was trying to say with it lol.
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.
Like
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.
My ideal ending is Femto dying in worst way possible or getting trapped in some endless loop of suffering and misery. “If Guts does happily kill NGriff without hesitation, that’ll be a v dark ending that indicates he’s lost his humanity, imo.” I like how some fans keep idealizing Guts like some sort of a righteous shounen hero… Dude is literally a savage. Look at how he treats his enemies or the apostles who have done way less shit in compare with Griffith.
I’m responding mainly to this part so I’m not c/ping the other messages (also i think your last message got cut off btw) but like, yeah Guts is a very dark character, but again that’s framed as a bad thing. We’re supposed to think he’s a huge dick during the Black Swordsman arc, eg. We’re meant to see his darkness as a sign that he’s close to becoming exactly the same as, or even worse than, the monsters he fights. He sexually assaulted Casca in part to feel “closer to” Griffith lol.
Like, my favourite Guts is when he’s at his most dark, but that would suck if the story was totally unselfaware and we were meant to cheer him on. In the first chapter when he tortures the snake dude, it’s a reversal of expectation, because we’re meant to find Guts frightening and to nearly pity the monster in that moment. Similarly when he tortures the Count in front of his daughter – except that is also much clearer in showing that Guts is pretty pathetic at that point, eg:
I think Miura kind of lost that sense of patheticness (another good example is the blatant comparisons to Vargas) after the Eclipse, which is a shame imo. But while his dark side gets a bit cooler (the Beast of Darkness, the armour), it’s still like… unambiguously negative. We’re not supposed to root for the part of him that wants to kill his friends.
Guts’ growth as a character is associated with making friends and not seeking revenge, Guts’ monstrousness is associated with going on a revenge rampage.
Anyway basically I think Berserk is more complex than a simple good vs evil revenge story. I think it’s very likely that Guts is going to backslide into revenge mode, losing himself to the armour and going after Griffith after some bad thing happens in Elfhelm, that’s like my major prediction for the future lol, but I don’t think it’s going to end with Guts self-assuredly “punishing” Griffith and living happily ever after.
Oh also there’s this:
Part of his decision to save Casca instead of keep seeking revenge is realizing he doesn’t really deserve revenge.
Like, I argue his whole Black Swordsman campaign was way less “righteously avenge the hawks and casca” and way more “I am upset so I am going to kill every monster I can find until I reach Griffith because swinging my sword makes me feel better.” And it’s an attitude he needs to grow out of.
Anyway aside from all that if anyone gets revenge and kills Griffith it should be Casca imo.
Thank you for this post. (lol I meant to say “Why you SEE it in that way” sorry).
I always saw it in that was as if he didn’t want other people to view and be shocked at what was done to his face.
Either way current Guts wouldn’t hesitate to deform Griffith’s face in an even worse way… I’d fucking love to look at what he does with him when he has the power.
If that’s the impression you get from the manga then fair enough, but that reading never occurred to me until I watched the 3rd ova lol.
And tbh I definitely think Guts would hesitate
Also letting Rickert hold him back on the Hill of Swords, deliberately trying to let go of his desire for revenge for the sake of the Elfhelm trip, and the way he really sucks at finishing this sentence:
The way he separates Griffith from Femto, and usually pictures Femto as an empty faceless exoskeleton.
And only ever expresses longing and regret towards original Griffith:
And NeoGriffith looking “as if he’d been stolen from the past, the way he used to be” throws him completely off because it makes it harder to separate the different versions of him.
Basically imo his feelings towards NeoGriffith are far from simple, and I don’t think he’d find it emotionally easy to kill him.
And moreover his desire to kill is what gives the Beast of Darkness strength, so it’s framed as a negative thing in the story.
If Guts does happily kill NGriff without hesitation, that’ll be a v dark ending that indicates he’s lost his humanity, imo.
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.
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 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.
@bthump i Guess that being founded by Griffith a man who betrayed his comrades, among other things shows that Falconia is based on a lie, and tragedy will come.
this response to you basically just became an excuse to disjointedly ramble about this subject more, sorry for how unnecessarily long it is lol
tbh the main point of that post was to demonstrate how personal the stakes are, and how falconia is essentially a response to the child abuse all three of our main characters have gone through, thematically. so if it does boil down to ‘welp the dude who enabled the existence of a utopia where lives aren’t bought and sold and more people aren’t traumatized the way our faves were is an asshole so throw out the whole thing’ i will find that very unsatisfying.
i think falconia poses a lot of interesting moral questions. is it worth griffith’s mountain of corpses? is granting humanity’s dream worth also granting their nightmares? was it worth the sacrifice? and those moral questions only work if falconia is portrayed as positive, which it has been so far (and as long as those negatives happened with the intention of creating the positive, hence why most of that post turned into complaining about the eclipse rape lol.)
i think miura could also go down a route where he portrays falconia more negatively in the sense that humanity shouldn’t wish for a saviour/escape, but should instead struggle through an uncaring universe. a la the lost children arc, essentially, which seems like a potentially very strong parallel.
though again, considering how personal the stakes are – always the child abuse, come on – i would find that message… sucky, to say the least. i mean honestly the message of the lost children arc basically boiled down to ‘child abuse happens, dwi kids bc running away is bad.’ i kind of hope that miura is either still going to complicate that at some point down the line (lol pipe dream) or at the very least that he does something different with falconia than he did with rosine’s land of the elves bc dear god i couldn’t stand a repeat of that shit lol.
I mean here’s one way of looking at it:
Guts, Griffith, and Casca all have experiences with csa. Guts’ way of coping is to lash out and kill everything that scares him. Casca’s way of coping is to latch onto a saviour. Griffith’s way of coping is to change the world.
Like, of the three, Griffith’s coping mechanism wins lol, and I’m not down with an overall message that says, you shouldn’t try to change things, you should just struggle your ass through life like Guts here, and fuck everyone else. I mean tbf I don’t think Guts’ method is shown in a great light, so it’s already a bit more complex than Griffith’s dream bad Guts’ dream good, but yk, I worry lol.
Again, like, the moral question shouldn’t be “is this place where people are free to live their lives without being exploited a good thing,” it should be “is this good thing worth all the bad things that led to its existence,” and I don’t want the story to answer that question for me, I want to be presented with the evidence and decide for myself. Do the ends justify the means narratives are only interesting as questions, not answers, imo.
so idk basically my response is yeah maybe some kind of tragedy will come to demonstrate that falconia was a doomed venture from the start, and/or that wanting to create a place without exploitation is an inherently flawed or immature desire, but if that happens i will be unimpressed lol. If falconia does end up being destroyed, ideally for me there would be negative consequences to that too, because there are no easy black and whites in Berserk (or there shouldn’t be.)
and like, the whole thematic connection to child abuse could be coincidental, but facts are that falconia is explicitly a place where the strong aren’t given free rein to exploit the weak, and our central and most emotionally resonant examples of strong given free rein to exploit the weak are the nobleman who bought casca, donovan, and gennon. Plus the apt Lost Children parallel. so if miura didn’t intend this he shouldn’t’ve filled berserk so full of thematically on the nose depressing backstories lol.
shit you know what else would’ve been a really good moral grey moment if it was focused on? griffith having the bandits he hired to kidnap foss’ daughter killed.
like, he had to do that because they would’ve been a risky loose end otherwise, it genuinely was part of the path to his dream, and he left their money on their corpses out of guilt, but that is like, a perfect symbol of treating lives as commodities.
but it wasn’t even the focus of griffith asking guts if he’s cruel! the focus was on getting guts to help him kill people, not essentially hiring people to die for him, which we know is the source of like all his guilt. miura even mitigated that for some reason by having the bandits go ‘ho ho ho we’re shitty people who will totally blackmail griffith at some point’ before guts kills them lol.
but yk even griffith just being a mercenary leader is an interesting moral grey. the path to his dream, paved with corpses of people he hired to fight and die for him.
god it’s so good! he wants to have his own kingdom to change the inherently predatory social order that he himself uses as a tool to get his kingdom.
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.
This is about Falconia, bodies and lives being bought and sold, the natural order of the world, etc.
tw for csa (no graphic panels but still disturbing enough for a cut imo)
The Conviction Arc shows us in broadstrokes the world humanity’s collective unconscious wants to overturn through starving crowds, dungeons filled with tortured ‘heretics,’ rampant plague and the desire for a saviour, and nobles terrorizing peasants using god as an excuse, but this is the up close and personal version. Lives and bodies as commodities, weak trampled by the strong, poor ruled by the rich, and everyone accepting it as the way things are.
Our three main protagonists during the Golden Age all have very personal formative trauma that revolves around being bought and sold as a matter of course.
And Griffith’s dream, as someone wracked with guilt for lives lost in his battles, someone who has sold himself to a rich and powerful predator to save some of those lives, is to overturn this natural order of things.
And he does. Falconia is a place where children aren’t sold as sex slaves, where the powerful do not oppress the weak, where the rich don’t exploit the poor, where everyone is treated equally and with dignity, where Guts, Griffith, and Casca could’ve all had happy childhoods.
One of the important aspects of this theme re: societal power dynamics and exploitation is that these evil actions
are excused away. This is true of like, just about every abuser of power and
rapist in Berserk. Some think it’s okay because someone more powerful than
them told them they’re allowed (torturer, Wyald/probably the rest of
the apostles, Mozgus’ torturers, Mozgus and the inquisition in general
passing the buck onto God, Donovan because Gambino allowed it, etc),
some think it’s okay because that’s just the way things are (Donovan
again, Adon, Rosine’s got some of this, etc), some think it’s okay because
they’re powerful enough to do anything they want (implied with Gennon,
Ganeshka,
the Godhand, a lot of apostles, Casca’s attempted rapist nobleman), and finally some think it’s okay because the world wronged them (Gambino, apostles like Rosine again and Eggman, Jill’s dad, the baby eating heretics lmao, one could argue the King, Mozgus’ torturers again, etc).
Again, it all comes back to the “reason of the world,” the natural order of things that NeoGriff overturns. In the ordinary world these people with power can do whatever they want and justify it to themselves. In NeoGriffith’s world, they don’t. Apostles, our prime example of powerful preying on weak because they’re allowed to, no longer prey on humans, simply because of NeoGriffith’s existence.
It seems safe to assume nobles no longer exploit people either, if nobility is even still a thing in Falconia. Like granted, I’m taking some of this as read based on what we’re told Falconia is, but I feel like the apostles (and the explicit focus on equality) are a good representative example of the point of Falconia, which is to essentially fix everything we see wrong with the world in the Conviction arc and, like I laid out above, in our protagonists’ lives.
The fact is that Falconia isn’t just a utopia on a distant macro level, where the readers can look at it and go, hm seems nice I guess but w/e. On a micro level it’s a place where these horrible things that happened to the characters we personally love and care about wouldn’t’ve happened. I, at least, am emotionally invested in that utopia because of this, yk?
But here’s where I get critical of the portrayal:
Femto and the Eclipse rape is the epitome of the harmful power structure. Like, Femto hits every branch on his way down this tree lol. During his transformation he met God, God absolved him of his guilt and responsibility by telling him he can do whatever the fuck he wants and it’ll be the right thing. He’s taking the place of the nobleman he saved Casca from and exemplifying existing power structures of strong preying on weak, and it’s petty revenge.
One can easily argue that the Eclipse rape is a distillation of every abusive power structure in Berserk.
So okay, you have Falconia, a utopia that exists to eschew these power structures and create a place of equality where no one is exploited, created by a dude whose defining act is the epitome of these abusive power structures.
And frankly it’s fucking pointless. This feels like the shallowest of shallow hot takes lol. Like, oooh what if this wonderful place where all the horrible things that traumatized our favourite characters are no longer an accepted given was created by an evil demon rapist???
Like… okay? And then what? The Eclipse rape has nothing to do with the social structure of Falconia, NGriff seems to have completely delivered on his/humanity’s dream regardless, he is now the higher power making the calls and he hasn’t told everyone to do whatever they want no matter who it hurts. From what we’ve seen he’s done the exact opposite, existing as a tempering influence on the apostles who no longer prey on those weaker than them, ending the Holy See’s reign of terror, ending wars in general, and uniting people in their differences.
So it’s just like, an arbitrary evil act which creates an artificial sense of moral greyness. It has no deep meaning. I mean I suppose Miura could address it in the future – I’ve mentioned that I think it could theoretically be really interesting for Casca to visit Falconia and see the dream she devoted her life to having come to fruition because of her rapist. But even so, that doesn’t have any like… deeper intrigue. That’s interesting for Casca’s character, not as an examination of moral relativity or w/e.
Similarly, if NeoGriffith turns out to be more human than he looks he could reflect on this contradiction in a potentially interesting way.
But I can’t think of a way to make it an interesting examination of morality. It’s boring at its core imo. I mean you could argue that it’s still worthwhile on that personal character level, but let’s be real here – no amount of potentially interesting character stuff in Casca’s future is worth removing her from the story for 20 years, and anything w/ NeoGriffith would be a retread of human Griffith’s guilt issues and frankly I don’t see it happening anyway lol.
So yeah ultimately this whole egalitarian utopia created by a rapist demon thing just does not work for me at all. There’s no reason the creator of this paradise /had/ to be a symbol of this abusive power structure it exists to destroy, again, that’s just an arbitrary happenstance, not a pre-requisite to utopia building, so it doesn’t say anything about the nature of Falconia. It doesn’t say anything about utopias in general, it doesn’t say anything about those power structures that we don’t already know (ie they bad, equality good).
It’s like, fake deep tbqh.
The actual interesting and morally grey aspect of Falconia is the way world peace was achieved by setting a bunch of fantasy monsters loose on humanity, and that has nothing to do with the Eclipse rape. Like, that’s literally all you need for the moral complexity. We have world peace and a growing utopia that everyone is welcome to join, but the price is monsters everywhere, and this could not have happened without those monsters to unite humanity in fear. Is the world better or worse than it used to be?
And NGriff being a rapist, or his demon alter ego being a rapist, or whatever the deal is there, adds nothing to that question, rather, it distracts from it and devalues the actual moral ambiguity.
In fact, it makes me wonder whether Miura regrets going with rape as his way of demonstrating Femto’s evil. Because it’s been such a non-issue to the whole theme of power structures, utopias, equality, etc, that it feels like Miura is sweeping it under the rug lol – it’s less of an attempt at dark irony and more the elephant in the room. I can’t even say with confidence that Femto was intended to be a symbol of exploitative power structures, despite how obvious it seems, because it just… hasn’t impacted the themes of the story at all.
i wonder what it’s like to read neogriffith’s narrative thru the lens of guts = good griffith = evil
bc one notable thing about how miura has been writing griffith’s side of the story since he was resurrected is that ngriff is treated as the protagonist – a distant, unemotional protagonist to be sure, we’re never in his head or anything, but still a protagonist
like that’s how the story is structured and beated. griffith’s allies are all interesting and sympathetic and three dimensional; griffith’s triumphs are treated as such, his enemy gets a chapter of sympathetic backstory but is undoubtedly the antagonist. griffith striding in and intimidating ganeshka into turning his army away is good, ganeshka leveling up and becoming an eldrich horror is bad, the human soldiers going “oh shit the war demons are all monsters what the fuck” is a tense moment and sonia telling them to stfu and just get along relieves that tension, etc.
like it’s no coincidence that we see flora’s assassination as part of guts’ side of the story, because it’s a darker moment and seeing it thru guts’ eyes allows miura to depict it as such. if we saw it thru griffith’s narrative it would’ve looked more akin to griffith and guts assassinating the queen back in the golden age.
and also it makes the second time their narratives intersect, on the docks when guts and zodd team up to fight ganeshka, very… interesting as a contrast to the fight outside flora’s house. enemies to reluctant allies.
anyway yeah basically i feel like ngriff’s millenium falcon narrative would read like, in a very bizarre way if you’re not going along with treating him as a protagonist during it. like, tonally it would be nonsensical and probably very frustrating.
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.
I definitely do. While liveblogging it a while ago I kind of landed on this theory of Berserk’s afterlife which I got into here.
Basically if I was going to guess I’d say that since ethereal bodies gravitate towards other ethereal bodies of the same nature, hell is other people applies here. Hell is hell because you’re stuck in a swirly whirlpool becoming one with a bunch of horrible people like yourself. And heaven would be heaven because you’re in a nice swirly whirlpool becoming one with a bunch of nice people.
I also think it’s likely that Guts, other sacrifices, and even apostles aren’t by default automatically going to hell, despite what’s implied in the Black Swordsman arc. Going to hell just because you “got caught up with demonkind” meaning you hung out with a demon or were killed by or sacrificed by a demon seems stupid to me, and doesn’t make sense with things Flora says later on about Ods and stuff (she also says caring for Casca might be his protection from hellfire iirc). It’s absolutely suggested when Puck is all concerned that Guts being branded means he’s going to go to Hell, and Guts himself is clearly worried about that inevitability, but imo it makes more sense for “got caught up with demonkind” to be “acted like a demon/succumbed to one’s dark side” lol. ie Guts on his revenge rampage, Vargas consumed by revenge himself, etc.
It would be kind of a twist, in a way? Guts thinks he’s inevitably going to hell because he’s been sacrificed, but it’s actually because due to the sacrifice he’s consumed by revenge and being an asshole.
(This could also be Miura evolving the idea as he goes. Guts being inevitably bound for hell works in the whole early super grimdark Black Swordsman setting, but if he wants something less than a crushingly depressing ending that’s not gonna fly now.)
Oh also I think Femto mentions the vibrations of the Count’s soul carrying him closer to hell, implying he could also vibrate away from hell, even despite being an apostle. I’m too lazy to find the page and check the wording though.
tl;dr yeah I think there’s a heaven and I think anyone could theoretically go there.
Yeah I pretty much agree with you. Whenever I see someone who’s like, “I would never ever sacrifice someone I cared about no matter what,” I’m like, well that seems like a v high and untested opinion of yourself.
Idk maybe they’re just a lot more idealistic than me and believe the majority of people wouldn’t choose to sacrifice someone in a moment of pure despair, or maybe they genuinely are that self-sacrificing lol, but I’m with you – I’d say most people would. Especially in the world of Berserk, where behelits generally end up with people who have extremely strong values/desires/drives that make them more likely to sacrifice one thing for the sake of another thing. Add the fact that every apostle we see (except Count Slug’s second attempt) sacrificed someone/thing they both loved and hated in that moment, and the fact that moments of despair are tailored by fate to each individual – to be their worst moment, playing on their specific fears and insecurities etc, and yeah, I’d say just about everyone would make the sacrifice under those conditions.
And tbh one thing I love about Griffith’s narrative is that I actually find it really relatable/understandable. I think Miura did an amazing job of showing us what Griffith values, what he prioritizes, what he believes, what he feels, and how his life has driven him to the point of the Eclipse. When he says, “I sacrifice,” it’s so good because it’s been completely built up to. We got to really see all the elements that come together at that moment to make him choose the sacrifice, and it’s absolutely a realistic decision for his particular character. And personally one of my favourite things about fiction is that feeling of understanding why someone does something terrible, or evil, or stupid, or self-destructive, etc etc. I find it very cathartic, and Berserk is perfect for that.
Like it’s fair if ppl find the same thing uncomfortable or off-putting. A story about relatable/realistic people making bad choices for understandable reasons is definitely not for everyone, but that’s absolutely what Berserk is, at least the Golden Age, and misreading it as the story of an evil dude doing evil things because he’s evil doesn’t change that.
Enh, to be fair some warlock dude in Elfhelm kinda suggested this.
Though I definitely think this is just, like, his opinion, man.
I think we’re getting two sides to this whole Falconia thing, and we’re meant to draw our own conclusions. Like, yeah Griffith’s country is the only chill place now, which is shitty, but on the other hand it’s also 50x better than the world was even before he flooded it with monsters, and it seems that his plan is to keep expanding it into an inclusive empire.
It’s not that NeoGriff is a con man or w/e, forcing people to buy his world peace, it’s that flooding the world with monsters is the only way to make people stop being shitty and work together in a nice utopia that values equality over social status, and it’s up to the reader whether the ends justify the means or not.
Plus it’s worth noting that this is what humanity wants. The Conviction arc was largely dedicated to showing us how shitty the world is. Nobles torture and torment peasants, outcasts are miserable, the holy see sucks, the heathens suck, plague everywhere, people starving, pretty much everyone except the richies is unhappy. Griffith’s new world order is essentially a response to all the bullshit we see up close and personal in the Conviction arc, a world where outcasts are welcomed, people are valued for what they can do rather than what family they were born to, apostles no longer eat people, no inquisitions, no discrimination that we see – like it’s fitting that the prostitutes from the Conviction arc return in Falconia as tour guides/organizers.
Griffith, as “the desired” of humanity, presumably fulfills humanity’s desires. Of his own free will and for his own maybe shifty reasons, but free will and fate are not mutually exclusive in Berserk – people’s choices always play into fate’s hands. The Idea of Evil told him he’d either save or doom humanity by doing whatever the hell he wants. I kind of assume this means less saving/dooming the world and more a metaphysical Jesus-y saving/dooming people’s souls – or quite possibly saving humanity from themselves or dooming them to more of their own subconsciousness dicking with them. You know, either getting rid of the Idea of Evil by shaping humanity’s point of view, or dooming them to continue having their mass subconscious manifest in a malicious entity who controls fate.
That’s just a theory tho, we don’t really know what the Idea of Evil means afaik, and even if I’m right I have no idea if what NeoGriffith is doing is more likely to save or doom humanity lol. Or hell maybe he’s on the road to “dooming” humanity but, similar to how letting Guts go kicked off the series of events leading to his rebirth as NeoGriffith, something in his faulty, Guts-obsessed demon soul is going to cause him to do something unexpected and better/freeing for humanity. /more theorizing
ANYWAY all that said I actually fully expect Miura to come down more on Guts’ side, since he is the protagonist and all. Personally I’m into Falconia, I like the whole ‘can’t make a utopia without breaking a few eggs’ thing, but since Guts, on a more philosophical level, represents free will and raging against fate and struggling against your situation while Griffith more represents being saved by someone who comes along and makes your life easier (i think), and Berserk is all about The Struggle, I think there’s an undertone of it being better to suffer in an uncaring world than to have a happy easy life in a utopia.
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.
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.
I think I pretty much agree – idk if I’ve really seen Griffith fans like this myself, but yk I’m sure they’re around.
tbh I feel like a lot of villain fans do this to avoid The Discourse about the ~evils of woobifying~ etc and I understand that. Fandom is fucking weird about moral purity rn and treating fictional characters as if they’re real people, and it’s hard in a lot of fandoms to talk about liking a villain without constantly putting a “BTW I’M NOT APOLOGIZING FOR THEM THEY’RE VERY EVIL AND BAD I JUST ENJOY VILLAINS” disclaimer up every time. So I sympathize w/ that urge. Fandom makes it hard to just enjoy characters without holding them up as either pure as the driven snow or irredeemably evil from birth.
But if they’re genuine about loving Griffith entirely because he’s oh so evil, then of all the antagonists to love Griffith makes v little sense to me bc before he becomes a demon he’s like… fine. He’s not a great person but he’s not a bad person, he has noble intentions, flaws and virtues, he’s a v good well-rounded character. I know a lot of people think Griffith was moustache-twirling evil all along but yk, they’re objectively wrong so lol.
Then after he becomes a demon he’s a petty evil dick for all of two appearances, one of which is a gratuitously depicted, grimdark-drama-for-the-sake-of-drama rape scene, and if that scene is what makes you love Griffith/Femto I’m definitely like gonna side-eye you. And I mean I don’t see anything wrong with liking Femto – I like Femto lol bc his pettiness mixed with inability to kill Guts is extremely amusing to me, plus his makeup is on point (and I love all gnc villains out of spite), but it’s very much despite the rape, not because of it.
And then as NeoGriff he comes back seemingly neutral, fulfilling the subconscious desires of humanity and committing no great acts of evil again. So yeah if you like super evil dark villains Griffith/Femto/NeoGriff is an odd choice to me.
Oh and as an aside I could kind of get liking him for his evil villainry if you liked him as Griffith and then felt personally betrayed when he sacrificed everyone. Like that was gr8 writing and feeling rly pissed off and then impressed by how mad you are, making you like him as a character bc of the emotional ride he took you on, makes sense to me. But I feel like that’s not really what you’re referring to.
So I guess tl;dr my answer boils down to it sounds p silly to me but I guess it depends on their exact reasons lol.
“You should have known. This is the man I am. You of all people.”
NeoGriffith’s “you of all people” imo is a reference to “ain’t this part of the path to your dream? You believe that, don’t you?” The moment the Godhand shows Griffith to convince him to make the sacrifice, because Guts was prioritizing his dream more than Griffith was and telling him to do whatever’s necessary to achieve it. And the moment that made Griffith believe that Guts saw how dirty/cruel/etc he was and decided to leave him because of it.
That’s what Griffith thinks. NeoGriffith seems a little bitter about it, probably thanks to that beating heart making him less unemotional than he’d like.
Guts doesn’t actually think that. To him the kind of man Griffith was was someone who cared about people, who did some fucked up shit for his dream but felt bad about it and needed reassurance, and who was driven to a point of desperation where he’d sacrifice his friends bc Guts left him and he was tortured for a year (”[Was I] the one who drove you…? Was I the one who brought all this upon you?”)
I find it rly curious that “You of all people,” leads directly, on the same page even, to Guts thinking about NeoGriffith saving Casca, and looking like he’s wondering about it.
It’s obvious that Guts still sees NeoGriff as a monster, given how pissed off he was about his ‘lol idgaf’ attitude towards the Eclipse and the fact that it’s still a struggle not to slip back into revenge mode. But he did watch NeoGriff save Casca from falling rocks for no apparent reason, and now he’s thinking about it while thinking about NeoGriffith saying he should’ve known what kind of man he is.
I mean if you go along with my explanation that part of why Griffith was so devastated when Guts left is bc he was convinced that Guts saw him the way he saw himself,
as a cruel and filthy monster climbing over corpses to get to a castle,
then what Griffith did when he made the sacrifice is choose to transform into and fully embody that version of himself, wiping away everything about him that belies it (or trying to). “You should have known. This is the man I am. You of all people.”
tl;dr Guts left because he admired and loved Griffith, Griffith thought he left because he was disgusted by him, and NGriff is referencing his belief here.
In that final page I think Guts dismisses the issue and decides to focus his attention on Casca – after this as far as I remember he doesn’t think about NGriff’s weird contradictory behaviour again. But I have to wonder if it’s going to come back with a vengeance, alongside the fact that Guts and Griffith both have very different perceptions of what kind of man Griffith was.
like a traditional narrative would have guts going on his fix casca sidequest, which is overall framed as A Good Thing, succeeding, and then getting a reward at the end in the form of a loving sane gf because he Did Good.
Berserk instead fills it with ominous foreshadowing because yeah Guts is growing as a person and trying to do good, but it’s not that simple. When he first chose Casca over Griffith he was a huge danger to her and he needed companions to mitigate that danger, and she’s still afraid of him. Guts’ motives are also in question – for one it’s suggested that he’s being selfish in trying to fix Casca because he’s not taking her needs into account (”That’s right, she went to pieces because she can’t fully cope with it. What will she do if she does get her sanity back?”), and for another, he was still planning to ditch Casca again right up until Griffith showed up and soundly rejected him, suggesting that part of his motivation for trying to move on from his obsession with Griffith is straight up spite.
Nothing in Berserk is ever simple and pure and uncomplicated. No motive, no goal, no relationship, no emotion.
Guts is overall doing a whole lot better than he was during the Black Swordsman revenge rampage fiasco. He’s made new friends, he’s subdued his inner beast for now, he’s maturing, etc. But the same was true of Guts during the Golden Age. I don’t think anything as bad as the Eclipse is going to go down, but the way Berserk rolls, you don’t get an A for Effort. Guts had a very noble goal when he chose to leave the Hawks, and it was still a mistake.
Guts has learned from his mistakes enough to recognize that friends are more important than stupid dreams and he’s embodying that lesson now, but I suspect there’s a new one waiting around the corner: not just ‘you can’t force back what was lost’ but ‘if you try anyway be prepared for the consequences.’
Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.
Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.
Griffith is everything Gambino never was, but that Guts needed him to be. Dude has daddy issues, let’s be real here, and Griffith was a bigger, better, brighter Gambino who actually loved him. Who risked his life to save him and didn’t even have a reason. To Gambino he was p much only worth the money he brought in, but to Griffith he was worth risking his life for, for no reason or reward at all. Griffith in turn is similar to Gambino in that he’s a mercinary leader with a hold over Guts, but he’s otherwise superior in every way. More noble than Gambino in that he’s driven by ideals rather than money, has greater ambitions, greater skill, better manners, better morals, etc.
He was another person Guts respected, admired, and looked up to, and another person who Guts desperately wanted to have look at him, with some v explicit comparisons drawn by the manga:
After the Zodd debacle but before the Promrose Hall speech is a period of just about limitless potential for them. Guts accepts that Griffith loves him, or at least feels some kind of strong emotions for him – he recognizes the significance of the words “for your sake” here – and returns the sentiment by pledging his sword to him.
I don’t know if this is the answer I was searching for or not… but for now… For now I’ll wield my sword. For his sake.
Look at that – recalling the night he killed Gambino just before he pledges his sword to Griffith. Replacing one man with a new, vastly improved version.
This is also why the Promrose Hall speech hits him so hard, imo. Because for a brief period here Guts knew some extent of Griffith’s feelings, and the speech ripped that knowledge away and made him feel insignificant in Griffith’s eyes. We the audience know perfectly well that Griffith is head over heels regardless of the speech, but all Guts knows is he isn’t seen as Griffith’s friend/equal and he desperately wants to be. Because he needs him to be that better version of Gambino who actually loves him, not Gambino all over again.
Of course unlike Gambino, Guts’ perception of Griffith is based on a misconception, likely fueled and heightened by his own issues. Guts doesn’t get to see Griffith crash and burn when he leaves and then contemplate how brightly he shines within him, even compared to his castle, but we do.
Anyway so Guts inadvertantly breaks everything, fast forward a year and Griffith, like Gambino was for a time, is now disabled and dependant and really fucked up about it. Like Gambino he blames Guts, though unlike Gambino he still loves and almost immediately forgives Guts, and also unlike Gambino Griffith’s state actually is in part because of Guts (ofc you can’t blame Guts for Griffith’s own shitty decision-making, but you also can’t dismiss the fact that Guts leaving without explanation caused Griffith to have a breakdown lol). And, finally, like Gambino, this culminates in lashing out at Guts.
Gambino irrationally blames Guts for the death of his lover and all his bad luck since, Griffith blames Guts for making him fall in love with him (”only you made me forget my dream.”). Very different reasons, very similar result.
Now, and this isn’t a direct parallel imo but it’s one that I feel may be somewhat suggested, Guts blames himself for both Gambino’s death, and Griffith’s “death.”
Gambino was a terrible person who Guts killed accidentally in self defense, and he still has serious guilt issues because of it. When he has a flashback his panicky explanation to Casca ends with him crying and saying, “I’m sorry Gambino. Father…” Guts acknowledges and understands that Gambino betrayed him but that doesn’t make his feelings about him simple, and it doesn’t lessen his guilt.
I think this is also a large part of the reason Guts takes ages to stop hacking at Femto’s egg and trying to save Griffith after “I sacrifice.” Because he does blame himself. And even after he admits to himself that Griffith did betray him, this is how he looks back before leaving and fighting more monsters:
Anyway this brings me to Femto I guess.
In a way the Black Swordsman arc is a version of Guts’ missing years between Gambino and the Hawks: cursed and a bad omen, but now very literally because he draws evil spirits who kill people who get too close. “You should have died eleven years ago beneath your mother’s corpse!” = you should’ve died when you were sacrificed during the Eclipse.
Routine fighting to survive vs literally fighting every night to survive thanks to the brand.
Continuing on after killing Gambino vs continuing on after Griffith becomes Femto, with hints of survivor’s guilt all around, and strong visual comparisons:
But the real parallels are in how he responds to Femto.
Guts still craves acknowledgement.
His first reaction isn’t raaaagh I’ll kill you, that’s what he does after Femto dismisses him to focus on the issue at hand. His first reaction is hurt followed by, straight up, a need to be acknowledged. This scene starts with Guts basically fighting for attention, powering through his attack on Femto while the rest of the Godhand cheers him on until Femto knocks him into a wall and they move on to the Count’s backstory. Void even tries to get them back on track and then has his ‘…okay ANYWAY’ moment lmao (Enough of the sideshow.)
Same thing happens when he meets NeoGriff for the first time. His initial reaction isn’t to swing his sword at him, it’s to let Rickert hold him back while he pleads for him to acknowledge his betrayal (which, as this post points out, is similar to his morning confrontation with Gambino).
In fact, there’s a pretty interesting contrast drawn just in the Gambino
chapters – when Gambino lashes out and gives him the scar on the bridge
of Guts’ nose, he admits he might’ve been a dick and gives Guts
medicine for it. “Perhaps it was for no other reason than to soothe his
guilty conscience.” When Gambino sells him to Donovan, he doesn’t even acknowledge what he did let alone regret it, and even throws it in Guts’ face to hurt him a couple years later.
But this comes back after Guts’ flashback.
Despite just violently reliving the worst thing Gambino did to him, the last thing he thinks of is his seemingly contradictory mild kindness.
NeoGriffith never gives him the regret he wants him to feel either. But despite that:
My point is that Guts’ feelings are just as complex towards Femto/NeoGriffith as they are towards Gambino. He feels betrayal and rage, but also inadequacy, guilt, and a continuing desire to be looked at and acknowledged. He’s still driven by a v basic need to make Gambino proud – it transferred to Griffith during the Golden Age, and now it’s still there, complicating his hatred.
Which ties into the larger themes of Berserk, the good and evil in the heart of humanity. Gambino demonstrates this subtly – he’s a dick who shows just enough complexity and v mild compassion for Guts to crave more kindness from him. He’s very human in a very negative way. Griffith is the larger-than-life fantasy equivalent, who starts out as a positive version of Gambino – loves and is interested in Guts, behaves selflessly for him, is admirable in a fantasy-hero kind of way, etc – and literally transforms into a personification of evil, becoming a more heightened version of all the negative humanity in Gambino.
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