true… i feel like modern au griffith would be more of a drama queen or like, channel it through. healthier? outlets like social media. or being a groomzilla.
yeah i think depending on the au i could see a way more emotionally open griffith. like one thing about his general… mr calm and composed attitude to everything is that it’s not intrinsic and it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to him, he’s just forced himself to be very self-controlled throughout his life.
tbh I don’t think I should’ve said i can’t imagine griffith completely losing self-control, because i can imagine it under some circumstances, and i mean we’ve seen him attempt suicide (and he’s not in full control over himself when he’s self harming, eg, like he didn’t even seem aware he was doing it in Casca’s flashback, etc).
But yk to me drama queen suggests like, ott and melodramatic/overexaggerated emotional responses. imo Griffith’s most extreme emotional responses are pretty justified as reactions to extreme circumstances. Even Guts leaving was imo demonstrated to be genuinely significant to him, so his reaction didn’t feel overly extreme to me, and because we got his internal monologue we saw how much of his feelings he still kept hidden.
So it’s less that I can’t imagine him losing self control, and more that I can’t imagine him throwing a hissy fit, or screaming at someone in outrage, and generally blowing things out of proportion. that kind of thing.
But yeah like modern au Griffith, in different circumstances without a dream his life revolves around that forces him into a perfect self-controlled leader image, I could see him, yk, expressing his feelings before they started seeping out in self-destructive ways like unconscious self harm. Engaging in arguments, crying a bit more easily, etc. idk if I could really imagine him as an actual drama queen even then, but he could definitely be less cool and calm and composed in general.
But also like… bear in mind that this is me in unfun, contemplating the nuances of Griffith’s characterization mode. I want to respond to this with like a fun modern au groomzilla griffith scenario, I’m just bad at having fun and thinking of stuff like that, and your response made me ponder more about how canon Griffith expresses emotions lol.
I feel like Griffith is the expected answer, and I almost said Griffith automatically, but no it is definitely Guts, and Griffith is really like, the opposite of a drama queen. He’s cool and collected to a fault. Even during the second duel – we saw his frantic thoughts, but he didn’t express them. He was cold, and rational enough that everyone there except Rickert and Casca thought his challenge was reasonable (including Guts). His reaction when Guts walked away was to slump into the snow and silently repress really hard. He was hallucinating and breaking from reality when he finally broke down over his post-torture situation – before that he was shockingly calm and chill about it, even at the moment he silently let his dream go. Fucking Charlotte was a terrible decision but it was a method of repression, and he was pretty calm and composed during, even making cute jokes.
He smiled calmly when he made the sacrifice.
His breakdown in the river in front of Casca was spoken calmly and he stopped and put on a fake smile the instant he realized how badly his mask had slipped. He casually referred to being taken advantage of by a child predator as “seducing an old man.” He was completely cold + polite + perfunctory when he killed Gennon. “Do you think I’m cruel?” was one of his more emotional moments and it was v quietly so. His replies to Guts asking why he risked his life for him were all v chill, either rationalizations or calm admittances of irrationality. His most emotional, unconsidered moment (other than like, the suicide attempt) was probably lifting his hand to strangle Guts in the torture chamber, and that came after a year of torture and brooding over Guts, and he immediately switched to holding his hand when Guts started crying lol. yk, etc etc etc.
I honestly can’t really imagine Griffith completely losing his self-control and throwing a drama queen type fit. He’s understated.
Guts on the other hand makes a big production out of everything. Guts loses control and declares wars to get a demon’s attention. Guts screams at ghosts, Guts threatens dudes by throwing severed heads at them, Guts cracks wise when he’s fighting people whether it’s in fun tournaments or in life or death situations, Guts loses control and strangles people, Guts lets people stab him when he’s upset, Guts cries a lot, Guts screams a lot, Guts makes dramatic bitter speeches a lot, Guts, let’s be honest, throws tantrums and lashes out at whoever happens to be nearby when he’s upset. He tells kids to kill themselves, tortures apostles when he’s extra mad, fights a hundred men because he just wants to swing his sword, exaggeratedly pouts when Casca is mean to him, rushes into battle before everyone else, and is honestly really, really self-centred in general imo. (Which, to be clear, is something I love about him. Guts’ brand of self-centredness is a gr8 flaw.)
Plus like canonically his central motivation for just about everything he does is wanting attention, specifically Griffith’s attention.
So yeah I would say Guts is by far way more of a drama queen than Griffith. Griffith completely downplays everything that affects him as much as humanly possible, while Guts thrives on melodrama and big emotional responses.
(tbh I wouldn’t exactly call Guts a drama queen either lol, he’s also p chill and understated about a lot of things, but compared to Griffith he totally is.)
I think the point of gut’s changing his ideals and stating them against Mozgus is to show that he is on the path of becoming a less damaged human being. Even comparing his goals in the conviction arc to the blackswordsman arc, he started changing especially when he realized he wanted to regain casca as opposed to him wanting to hunt down neo griffith. I don’t think it’s inconsistent writing on mirua’s behalf but i think its supposed to show the beginning of gut’s growth.
Sorry, I think I wasn’t super clear because that post was kind of rambly and off-the-cuff lol, but my point is actually that it isn’t a change for Guts at all, it’s the exact same attitude – it’s just the narrative framing of that attitude has changed.
Guts saying the dude and his daughter were too weak to survive so they don’t matter is no different than Guts saying that the ten thousand refugees about to die deserve it because they’d rather bow down to a god than fight to survive or w/e
It’s just that now that’s shown to be badass rather than a fairly pathetic denial of guilt.
Consider:
vs
It’s like the Conviction arc takes these super cynical lines from Guts which, in the Black Swordsman arc, are clearly meant to show how fucked up he is and not something we’re meant to agree with, and pretties them up or makes them sound badass and legitimizes them.
I mean it’s even the same essential circumstances: Guts’ brand calls up spirits that kill innocent people. In the Black Swordsman arc Guts feels immense guilt and covers it up with cynical bravado. In the Conviction arc, Guts and Luca both blame the dead for failing to survive.
And idk if that’s a sign if we’re maybe supposed to take the themes of the Conviction arc with a grain of salt, or if Miura’s opinions just 180ed somewhere along the way.
Like do
people deserve to die for not being strong or resourceful enough to survive
against a force stronger than them or not, Miura?
In fairness this could very well be purposeful – showing like, both the negative side and the more palatable side of Guts’ survival of the fittest thing. Similar to how we get the positive side of Griffith’s utopia where the weak are protected from harm and exploitation (which come to think of it is also partly shown to us by Luca, hmm) and the negative side (it may be great but it’s the only peaceful place to live).
But also incidentally, if you’re on Guts’ side of this whole thing, yk you gotta be strong to survive and if you’re not it’s your own problem – you can’t really have an issue with Griffith filling the world with monsters lol. The world outside of Falconia right now pretty much illustrates Guts’ philosophy to a tee.
I could see this coming up again along those lines actually. Doesn’t someone actually say that now everyone has to deal with what Guts deals with, directly comparing brand-life to Fantasia? So there you go, you got Griffith’s world (Falconia) and you got Guts’ world (Fantasia), pick one.
Anon who sent me the Griffith-hate ask, I accidentally deleted your second message while trying to delete a different one lol, sorry about that. Once again I hope you see this and sorry about the lack of notif again.
But basically what I wanted to say is that yeah sure that “warming a man is a woman’s duty” bit is misogynist (and I think you mentioned the Promrose Hall speech too? as another example the person you’re hatereading gave?), but yk, so is Judeau’s “she’s our woman and we want her back” statement while rescuing Casca, so is 90% of everything Guts says to her ever, and so is 90% of the narrative voice honestly.
Idk man this is another instance where I’d say if they’re going to judge other fans for liking something w/ offensive elements, they should probably just put down Berserk and find something else to enjoy.
not to mention how that particular statement coming from griffith smells suspiciously of like heteronormativity and intense repression moreso than i think it says anything about how griffith sees women
how griffith sees women is clear from the fact that he didn’t rescue casca, he gave her a sword to rescue herself, and then let her join his band of mercenaries. imo anyway
ia.
yk i was going to say something like, “in fairness I wouldn’t use it as an argument against ppl saying that line makes Griffith misogynist bc that’s giving Miura way too much credit” but lol I’m actually torn because it’s so easy to ascribe that line to repression, especially because, like you say, it contradicts what we’re later shown and told about what Griffith thinks women are capable of, and it’s at odds with his general existence in the GA narrative as the progressive dude who scares the conservatives lol.
So either it’s a deliberate contrast to show that Griffith has a particular blind spot when it comes to physical intimacy between people, which also fits in nicely with the fact that he has trauma related to same sex desire and Casca lays all that out at the same time she tells Guts that she admires Griffith because he threw her a sword and gave her a blanket and generally treated her with respect, and expresses her jealousy of Guts because of Griffith’s feelings for him. Like, basically Casca’s flashback ties everything together in a neat little repression bow.
OR it’s a mildly ooc moment because Miura needed some kind of plot contrivance to give Casca a reason to hate Guts and potentially to get her naked in bed with him for the sake of future sex, if he was thinking along those lines this early.
I still wouldn’t use it to try to shut someone down in an argument I guess lol, but I mean, I would say “okay fair enough but here’s how I take that line and why” and consider that a fairly strong interpretation.
major thought: it’s a sign that griffith is emotionally compromised. not just the slap but also the way griffith did not have a single thing to say in response to rickert other than acknowledgement that the hawk emblem has changed, ie that he’s not the same person rickert was loyal to
his silence suggests that this is troubling to him. that rickert’s rejection is meaningful to him as a rejection of his identity, and therefore that acceptance from the last remaining member of the old band (who is sane and hasn’t declared war on him) would have been meaningful to him.
which suggests that this
said by Guts to Rickert shortly before this lol:
applies to griffith.
basically i think that scene is a strong indication that it’s not just his dream ngriff’s longing for.
oh also I hope there’s also potential for ngriff to have a bit of an identity crisis a la ascended ganeshka after rickert’s refusal to accept him as the same person and ngriff’s acknowledgement – especially w/ his “nothing has changed” statement being repeated.
like there’s room for irony in both directions there, ykwim? “nothing has changed” = lol ngriff still has feelings for guts, he was right but not in the way he thought. and “nothing has changed” = a denial which he’s forced to confront eventually
oh and one more thing along those lines – you could suggest he’s doing the same thing guts is doing right now
I think they don’t understand Griffith at all and probably willfully ignore a huge amount of his story.
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.
I mean I’ve talked about my take on Griffith enough that I could collect it all into a book at this point lmao, but in essence no he is full of self loathing and guilt and exists by living in denial and trying to bury it.
He portrays an image of utter confidence and security, maintains it well enough that he buys his own con to an extent, but even that confident self-assured image isn’t god-complexy. His assessment of his own abilities is realistic. He knows he’s good, he has confidence in his abilities, but he also knows when he’s outclassed.
He doesn’t think by default he’s one of the people he believes are fated to change the world, he just hopes he is. He wants to see how far he can go, and not for the sake of being important, but in service to a greater goal which is fueled by disgust at the state of the world and his own sense of guilt.
He doesn’t have a falsely inflated perception of himself, if anything his self-image is much more negative than it should be.
You see any other mercenaries in Berserk who feel guilty for the enemy soldiers their underlings kill?
And like, eg, Griffith feels ashamed about assassinating people while Guts thinks he should be telling the rest of the Hawks all about it and has absolutely zero problem with burning a room full of nobles and royalty alive.
And as Casca lays out here
his confidence isn’t an ingrained personality trait, it’s something he manufactured and wears like armour, which is why sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite – the guilt, the self-loathing, the insecurity – underneath.
Idk it seems like the same type of Berserk fan who calls Griffith a sociopath or a narcissist or a control freak or whatever. Like… no. That’s a wild misreading of his character, and honestly the story isn’t exactly subtle about his giant heap of issues that drive him so idk why so many people refuse to see it.
Like, re-read chapter 17 and this time look at the pictures of him self-harming too, bc that adds a little necessary context to statements like:
Like, this is so far from subtle that people just choose not to understand it lol.
(This isn’t directed at you anon, just yk, the fans you’re talking about.)
There is really something to be said about the significance of physical contact between Guts and Griffith.
Like the fact is that this intense moment of Guts racing for Griffith, wondering what on earth he can possibly do, is a lead-up to a single touch that sends Griffith into despair. This touch is what causes the Eclipse.
A similar physical touch marks the moment Griffith thinks of when he wonders when Guts gained such a strong hold over him:
Their first duel is the only fight either of them ever engage in, as far as I recall, featuring direct physical contact rather than swords (or other weapons) clashing, and moreover, the scene depicts the sense of a gradual physical pull between them. Before the duel, Guts wakes up from a nightmare featuring his childhood trauma, falling into a near panic as he wakes up and feels a body on top of him, until he realizes she’s a woman, not a man.
Touch is highlighted as a concept to take note of here, particularly Guts’ aversion to it.
Guts remembers Griffith as the figure on a horse that he couldn’t reach before collapsing, gazing down at him:
Then they duel. The fight begins at a distance, with swords. Griffith nearly wins without touching him, and again while on a higher plane than Guts bc goddamn Miura gets a lot of mileage out of that imagery:
But then Guts bites Griffith’s sword, they lose those swords, roll down a hill, and Guts just starts punching. We get significant commentary from onlookers highlighting the uniqueness of this fight bringing Griffith down from his heights of untouchability:
As well as from Guts:
Griffith wins with a hold, and finally:
The sequence leads up to this intense moment of physical contact: Griffith pulling him up and gazing into his eyes.
Throughout the Golden Age there aren’t a lot of casual touches between them, but when we do see them touch (pre-torture) it’s usually during a very significant moment.
(Or once, casually, right after Griffith has reminisced about this particular fight:
Not particularly emphasized, but still during a nicely fitting and illustrative moment.)
Griffith remembers another moment of physical contact between them while thinking about how he loses his composure when it comes to Guts:
And this is the scene that leads to the highest point in their relationship, when Griffith admits he had no logical reason to save Guts and Guts dedicates his sword to him in turn. Plus Casca’s outrage also serves to highlight touch as a feature of the closeness of their relationship – and that relationship’s potential to destroy Griffith(’s dream):
And of course, at the climactic moment of the arc as a whole, we get this moment:
Griffith reaches down to pull Guts up to him at the beginning of the first scene we see between them (a contrast to Guts looking up at a distant Femto at the top of the stairs):
We get a nice close up of their handclasp the first time Griffith saves Guts’ life (again, pulling Guts up):
A full page the very last time Griffith saves Guts’ life:
And we get another panel of their hands when Guts lets him go and falls away from him:
Which brings me to the way there is also a particular emphasis given to the lack of
touch between them, compounding the impression that the physicality
between them is significant.
For instance, in contrast to their first fight where they lost their swords, swords – which each represent their respective dreams here – uh… come between them in chapter one, foreshadowing how dreams tear them apart and also highlighting Guts’ more immediate concern that Griffith is growing distant as he gets promoted and draws closer to attaining his dream:
(also i love having an excuse to post those 2 subsequent panels)
Eyes meeting across a vast ballroom and through a window as they smile at each other, after another reminder that Guts is planning to leave very soon:
Guts’ sword falling where we later see Griffith with self-inflicted scratch-marks:
I obviously can’t skip over Griffith thinking about Guts’ departure at the exact moment he
penetrates Charlotte, followed by Charlotte reflected in his frantic
eyes, emphasizing Guts’ absence here in contrast to Charlotte’s presence. All on the same page in 4 subsequent panels. While he’s fucking Charlotte.
Like, this is by far the gayest hetero sex scene I’ve ever seen.
Guts reaching for him fruitlessly here:
Frankly, and not fun but still unfortunately significant to the story, Femto raping Casca while staring at Guts, later compounded by the Beast of
Darkness telling Guts to do the same to get closer to him.
There’s also Femto’s use of telekinesis rather than physical force to keep Guts away from him in the Black Swordsman arc, and the aforementioned staircase of inequality between them.
And of course NeoGriffith’s distance. Both literally:
And symbolically:
Physical touch emphasizes their closeness. It punctuates the strong emotions between them. It pulls Guts up and brings Griffith down until they meet together in the middle, illustrating the fact that their emotions for each other make them equals despite their predetermined + false notions of what equality is.
Again:
It’s highlighted during the moments of their relationship that signify their emotional closeness:
It’s a contrast to the distance which signifies their relationship falling apart:
For instance, Guts holding Griffith throughout like half of the post-torture content shows us that he doesn’t want to leave again long before the story tells us that directly.
Griffith asking for his armour rather than taking off his mask, placing a physical barrier between them, shows us that he wants to keep some emotional distance from Guts, because their closeness is devastating to him. And that foreshadows his choice to sacrifice Guts to escape his vulnerability. His demon form incorporates his mask and, so far, they never touch again.
Basically physical touch is one of the tools Miura uses to illustrate their intense relationship, either through its presence or its pointed, painful absence, and I just wanted to take a moment to illustrate some of that, bc I dig it.
Thank you! I’m glad you found something to enjoy in my meta despite different ship preferences, esp since I like to think a lot of what I have to say about them is applicable even if you go the platonic friends route in your interpretation.
When it comes to NGriff’s unfrozen heart, I definitely go with option B. I completely believe Griffith was lying to himself about his feelings, as he is wont to do lol, like you said – definitely related to his “take all the sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire” method of dealing with his feelings, ie pretending they don’t exist.
I’m going to link a previous post on this topic bc I feel like I said most of what I have to say about it already. But in short I definitely don’t think the fetus is responsible for Griffith’s heart beating while he watches Guts fight Zodd, though it may be responsible for Griffith saving Casca from falling rocks.
As for the moonlight kid, I’m not sure what to make of him. It’s suggested he’s the soul of Guts and Casca’s kid, what with the family imagery in that one chapter. Conversely it’s suggested he might be associated with Dannan, and therefore possibly taking the form of what that child would look like for the sake of… well I want to suggest manipulating them, bc I have high hopes that Danann is gonna turn out to be shady and using them for her own ends.
I do have a hard time with the popular theory that Moonlight Kid is part of NeoGriffith and like, escapes during the full moon to hang out with the rpg group bc the idea sounds very silly to me.
And on a personal level I hate him lmao. I just… I hate most cutesy fictional children, I vastly prefer Black Swordsman Guts to family man Guts lol, I don’t like that the kid’s role is to prevent Guts from succumbing to the armour because I want Guts to succumb to the armour, at least for long enough to shake things up and have consequences. I don’t like that Casca has strong maternal feelings for him despite not even having a personality right now, bc it’s so gender essentialist. Not in a surprising way, just in an annoying way. I don’t like the way he’s used to tease the audience about the possibility of Guts eventually settling down with a family. And I don’t like the implication that he briefly like, possessed NeoGriffith to make him save Casca lol, because again, it strikes me as really silly.
My biggest hope and dream involving Moonlight Boy is that he’s either a) secretly bad news because he’s a trick of Danann’s, or b) going to be what Casca sacrifices to become an apostle if she opens the behelit.
UGH i hate how entirely plausible this all is because it makes everything that’s already terrible even more tragic 😦 … and running with it being a possibility, it’d give guts a really bad association with his very thoroughly thwarted near-attempt at being purposefully affectionate towards griffith, possssibly even an acceptance of his own gayness. i know this is all just wild speculation but, jesus. ughhhhhhhhh it hurts.
oh man i kinda want to explore that now
like i always say the eclipse puts everyone’s potential character development on hold/cuts it down in its tracks, imagine if it also slammed the door shut on guts’ potential realization that he’s not straight
i mean it’s all there – the parallels to casca realizing she was in love with griffith when she stopped seeing him as a god, the realization that he fucked up because griffith was in love with him, guts taking this away from griffith’s sacrifice:
Like ending up burying a burgeoning realization about himself and his feelings fits right in here
(idt i ever posted it but i remember thinking once that guts’ post-eclipse character development would work so well if there was an element of him coming to terms with his sexuality. i think i was thinking about a hypothetical “what would change about the story of Berserk if all the subtext was intentional and going somewhere” angle lol. i bet that half baked thought is in my drafts somewhere.)
but yeah, strong agree here. I do kind of wonder what Miura wanted to portray – like I definitely think it very much comes across in the story that he added their relationship entirely for the sake of fridging Casca to motivate Guts more (the fact that he admitted it is icing on the cake lol). But he also didn’t shove it in as a badly written last-minute true love story, he was very deliberate in showing that there were flaws there from the start, like Judeau pulling the strings, both rebounding from Griffith, both using sex as a distraction from their negative feelings, the jealousy during the rescue mission, Griffith still taking priority to Guts (and this holds true until after the Hill of Swords confrontation), Casca becoming Guts’ “sword,” their hookup helping enable Guts’ denial so he doesn’t realize he shouldn’t’ve left the Hawks until it’s too late, etc.
So idk bc to elicit the correct reaction from his readers during the Eclipse he had to make them invested in their relationship and Guts’ feelings for Casca, but he also doesn’t do a damn thing to make Guts feelings for Casca matter or affect his decisions or anything. So imo it ends up feeling awkwardly pasted on when we’re supposed to believe they have strong feelings for each other, and the rest of the time it feels deliberately portrayed as negative.
(Like I’ve pointed out before, but a good example of this is the way Guts decides he screwed up before and wants to stay with Griffith this time while talking with Judeau, before consulting with Casca. It would’ve been so easy to have him decide while talking to Casca, showing that what she chooses to do also affects his decision, but nope. Too bad for Casca if she really wanted to leave with Guts, Guts is sticking with Griffith now.)
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.
tbh yeah it does seem like such an over the top reaction, especially since in griffith’s nightmare of the future he’s pretty again so whatever happened to his face is probably not permanently disfiguring to a huge extent (yeah it was a dream sequence but it was deliberately meant to be a realistic one). but imo there’s also a legit answer.
Guts’ kind of extreme, omg this can’t be griffith, omfg, reaction is less “oh no he’s ugly now” and more “wow i’m being confronted by the extremely painful, horrific, and undeniable fact that griffith is actually not a god, he’s human and vulnerable and broken and it’s my fault.”
it’s putting an image to Casca’s words:
Guts being hit over the head with the fact that this image:
is bullshit.
And I love that it happens when Guts takes off the mask, not before when he’s checking out his cut tendons and cut out tongue, because the mask is such a strong consistent symbol for the image Griffith hides behind.
tbh it doesn’t really matter what Griffith’s face looks like, it’s the fact that Guts takes off the mask and sees the real, human Griffith, and it hits him how false his idea of him, the idea he based his decision to leave around, was.
And it’s a nice set up for this moment later:
Guts is symbolically accepting the real Griffith here, but Griffith isn’t able to drop the image and be vulnerable yet. Another tragic missed connection.
(And yeah like @chaoticgaygriffith has said, from a character perspective Guts is still dancing around reality here, and it’s not til another few chapters that he really fully acknowledges how immensely he fucked up (”why do I always see these things… after they’re done and gone?”) but yk. it’s a baby steps attempt lol. the tragedy is that they both suck at this.)
Also an additional detail because I love it
Guts’ eventual acceptance of Griffith’s humanity mirrors Casca’s realization that her feelings for Griffith weren’t just distant awe and respect, but actually romantic, I’m just saying.
I love getting questions! And I haven’t really discussed this as far as I remember.
But I think that moment makes a lot of sense tbh.
Griffith’s feelings towards Guts in his torture chamber monologue are incredibly intense, but not exactly positive. He’s all-consumingly in love with him, but he doesn’t want to be. Being in love with him is what lost him his dream and got him tortured for a year, which is a hell of an experience to resent someone for.
And the way his immediate response to Guts suddenly showing up is to try to strangle him seems like a very solid prelude to the sacrifice imo. Being in love is not fun for Griffith, it ruined his entire life, made him incredibly vulnerable, and made him emotionally dependant on a man who may very well leave him again and whose feelings Griffith has no reason to believe match his own.
If killing Guts can take the edge off those feelings and maybe return him back to factory settings when his dream was the most important thing and life made sense, in the irrational frame of mind he’s in after a year of torture, that would definitely seem like a good plan.
Add a side of plain old lashing out because he’s blaming Guts for the fact that he’s in that torture chamber, and I think it works very well that Griffith’s first act here is attempted strangulation.
What’s really incredible to me is that all it takes is Guts starting to cry and Griffith just welcomes him back, life destroying feelings and all. Like being in love is one thing, accepting that love and deciding to try to roll with it right after those feelings made him want to kill Guts is… wild.
This
to this
in a page.
So there’s also something to be said for extreme emotional instability after a year of torture, and a lifetime of repressing his feelings. He has no practice dealing with his feelings constructively, so when he can’t repress them he does some extreme, stupid things (like the duel, like the night with Charlotte, like self-harm, like reaching up to strangle Guts.)
OH AND ALSO it’s worth noting that Griffith is very aware that his hands don’t work anymore. He has no physical ability to kill Guts, and while in a moment of irrational overwhelming feeling he might try, I wouldn’t count this as a genuine murder attempt because somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he can’t actually strangle him. Like if, say, he had physical strength and access to a knife, I don’t think this moment would translate into suddenly slitting his throat without warning. Maybe more like holding the knife to his throat threateningly before dropping it and collapsing into his arms lol.
So tl;dr imo in this moment he’s spent a year hating Guts because he loves him and that ruined his life, so he’s lashing out and potentially trying to/wishing to cut those feelings off at the source the same way he does soon after during the Eclipse. But he just loves Guts so much he ends up holding his hand instead.
God I love this ship.
Anyway ty for sending this and your kind words, I hope you also have an awesome day!
i’ve said this before but still like, literally both g/c sex scenes began with the dude saying “hey here’s a great way to stop thinking about painful, painful reality” right after being devastated by their belief that they destroyed their relationship with the other dude, like they both seek out sexual connections in the face of losing their relationship with each other!
Like I don’t think anyone would deny that this is clearly what Griffith is doing.
But Guts does it too:
“The dead or broken” refers back to Casca’s “the almost broken dream of someone who might not even be alive” incidentally, so you don’t even need to make your own connections here, they’re delivered in a neat little bow. It’s about Griffith being in a dungeon right now because of Guts.
There’s a big empty space very clearly defined where Guts and Griffith should’ve fucked each other, and because they didn’t the Eclipse happened.
That’s the thesis statement of Berserk as far as I’m concerned.
look at guts trying his damnest to be casual with griffith and make him feel even a little bit better about his situation (and also to distract himself from his guilt)
i’m honestly willing to think this wasn’t just a stupid, slightly insensitive naive moment from him but, in fact, an actual pathetic attempt at re-establishing their intimacy which he fucked up by leaving
he doesn’t look hurt when griffith kinda sorta refuses (i.e. changes the subject) but he’s still in the trying to act casual/make him feel better/distract himself mode
# i feel like griffith asking for his armour instead of taking off the mask kinda marks a switch for guts from the attempt at intimacy # and beginnings of real acceptance of griffith’s like… vulnerable humanity and the fact that he isn’t a god # to kinda following griffith’s lead and piling on more denial lol # like guts is a dumbass but he almost got it right here
ia i just think the elephant in the room is too big for guts to try to be this casual to start off? like it’s so transparent? and i get that what went down isn’t something he can just dive into without prepping either of them, especially considering the consequences it had for griffith and the guilt he feels over that, but like the way he handled it (following griffith’s lead like you said and all that) they didn’t get to talk about it* at all, which is imo so much worse
*of course it would have been one-sided bc griffith can’t talk but you know, better than nothing
tbh yeah true actually, at this point Guts falling to pieces and just screaming some real genuine words like the rambling guilt ridden monologue that’s been occasionally running through his head for a few days would probably be a step in the right direction more so than more dancing around everything
yk I think the number one reason Griffith had to lose his tongue, narratively, like you were talking about the other day, is because in the lake when Guts was running towards him if he could talk he would’ve finally broken and said everything. like I think to that point he would’ve kept repressing and not actually started the relevant conversation, but there is a breaking point when it would’ve come out then
but Guts, who could talk, never reached that breaking point
This is a topic and a half lol. Ok, I have many many thoughts, and I’ll try laying some out.
To start, I’ve seen the heacanon that his mother was a prostitute a few times and tbh it makes a lot of sense to me and seems v plausible.
But also I don’t really get any indication that he views sex as a way to control/own others, at least not pre-Femto. I’d actually argue the exact opposite, that throughout the Golden Age sex for Griffith is indicative of his own powerlessness relative to others. Sex, to Griffith, is something that he can trade to people more powerful than him for something in return – or something people take from him.
(I mean you can argue that seduction and trading sex for power/security/etc is a way to control people, but everyone Griffith does this with has more societal power than him and Griffith never pursues sex with them for its own sake, so to me the dynamic comes across as less rakish rogue using sex to get what he wants and more csa victim with a warped view of sex as something to trade for the things he needs.)
under a cut for length and yk the whole topic
Gennon was straightforward prostitution, plus Griffith was a literal child whose guilt was taken advantage of by a pedophile. And as Griffith’s first sexual encounter we see, it certainly sets a tone and establishes the beginning of a pattern.
Later, as a villain, Gennon’s goal is literally just to rape Griffith, and Griffith is very aware of this, since he incorporates it into his battle plan. There’s also some indication that he’s been overtly getting his creep on for years on end, possibly explaining how Griffith knew Gennon would shoot himself in the foot just to get to him:
So Gennon is both a sexual threat and someone with power who gives Griffith something in exchange for sex.
Charlotte is a princess he has to seduce to realize his dream.
And when he does have sex with her I’d argue that it’s basically an attempt to escape from his feelings (rejection, need, self-loathing, being in love with Guts) through refocusing on his dream (which is consistently his alternative to and escape from Guts), essentially irrationally trying to prematurely seal the deal on the “transaction.”
It’s the sex version of this:
And it also negates every scrap of power he clawed his way up to and lands him in a dungeon.
Next you have the torturer and his incredibly creepy suggestiveness, which makes Griffith’s sexual victimization here technically subtext, but I mean, “we were like husband and wife,” the Gennon-like fixation on Griffith’s beauty, the tongue thing, the uh speculum he was holding in his introduction… it’s not subtle subtext.
Then when Griffith makes a move on Casca in the wagon he’s offering himself to her because he’s entirely out of options and kind of desperately grasping at something, now sunk from trading sex for a kingdom to trading sex for a caretaker, painfully highlighting his complete and total lack of power at this point in his life, and the future he envisions should she take him up on that offer makes him suicidal.
So like, four out of four sexual encounters we’re aware of pre-Eclipse focus on his vulnerability and powerlessness, then he turns into an evil demon and expresses his newfound power and invulnerability(/frozen heart) thru rape. So yk, there’s a thread there to pick up theoretically.
I mean I honestly have a really difficult time ascribing any meaning
to the Eclipse rape beyond assuming Miura wanted a cheap + shocking way
to piss Guts off, write out Casca, and presumably get himself off
judging by how he drew it, but yk… take the rest of the Golden Age and
the general concept of Griffith’s inner darkness raping Casca, the last person he felt that sexualized powerlessness to, while
ignoring the depiction of the actual scene, and you can read some amount of depth/cycle of abuse stuff into it. That was probably at least part of the point, if I’m being generous to Miura and his writing.
(Really given the amount of content in Berserk that
revolves around sexual violence you can read a million things into the
Eclipse rape. But yk if Miura wanted me to do that, he shouldn’t’ve
treated it like a sudden detour into actual porn. Ok mini rant over.)
(Oh I should probably add that obviously Casca was in no way complicit in Griffith feeling vulnerable to her there lol and I’m not suggesting she bears any responsibility at all. Griffith in the wagon and his subsequent dream was basically him projecting a bunch of issues on her. I feel like that goes without saying but I want to cover my bases.)
Then you get NeoGriffith with his magically heightened literally untouchable, beyond the reach of man vs an army of monsters is basically in love with him stuff.
There is approximately 0 chance the placement of that “hunger and thirst” panel is accidental js.
But now Griffith has all the power. His beauty and magical sex appeal can be used as a tool without Griffith ever having to make himself vulnerable.
(Also speaking of using sex to control others… like I don’t think it fits human Griffith based on what we see in canon, but imo there’s plenty of room to explore that with NGriff.)
This isn’t a real threat, Griffith can just go “lol” and completely destroy him without breaking a sweat. Now Griffith has switched from he who is taken from to he who takes.
Like, the stakes of the Battle of Doldrey, for instance, was the threat of Griffith being captured as a sex slave. Some of the tension came from Casca’s suggestion that Griffith volunteering for the battle may not have been a rational decision, because his rapist is the commander of that army. We don’t learn Griffith’s full plan until partway through, there are cliffhanger moments during the battle chapters where Our Heroes look like they might lose, and the sequence is tense and nervewracking as a result.
The war against Ganeshka has absolutely no tension at all. There isn’t even a moment where the outcome is not absolutely certain. And that’s a strong way of showing that NeoGriffith may face the same threats he did as human Griffith, but he’s no longer vulnerable to them.
Uh I guess my point is basically that NeoGriffith’s kind of sexualized untouchability feels like a narrative response to human Griffith’s particularly sexualized vulnerability. Enemies and monsters still go on and on about how hot he is, but they can’t act on that now.
But there’s still Charlotte. Like, despite all this godly distance and inability to be harmed and pointed contrast to human Griffith experiencing sex solely as a bargaining chip or a weapon, he’s still gotta marry her to make his dream official.
I feel like it’s unlikely that Miura intends me to read their relationship like this, so it’s not gonna be addressed, but ngl it’s something I find theoretically interesting. Like I see a lot of people assume that NeoGriffith is going to like, murder Charlotte after they get married, and tbqh I think that’s generally stupid, but if there’s one angle you can look at the story from and conclude “yeah NGriff may just off Charlotte with extreme prejudice as soon as possible” it’s this imo. Not to prove how pointlessly maliciously evil he is lol, but because she still has a form of sexualized power over him.
But I think it’s more likely that NGriff doesn’t give a fuck anymore, or if he does he won’t admit it to himself, because he carved out most of his emotions and it’s gonna take more than that to get him to admit it didn’t completely work.
Also speaking of Charlotte there’s the whole like, heteronormativity and repression aspect while we’re talking Griffith and his relationship to sex. The related fact that he deliberately performs a certain image/makes himself a symbol. And I barely even mentioned Guts. Agh actually there is a ton more to say about Griffith + sex, but I don’t want this to be even longer lol.
So ok, those are my thoughts on Griffith + sex + power specifically.
I’ll just link you other stuff I’ve written which kind of covers a wider variety of topics re: Griffith and sex, if you’re interested.
Sorry I ran out of characters in the last post so I’ll continue from
here: And in the dream sequence where Griffith imagined Casca was his
wife and Guts was there child? Did you think that what happened in the
wagon was Griffith attempting to rape Casca and was the dream sequence
suppose to reveal ANY sort of feeling he had for her? What do you think
is the case and why?
I definitely don’t think the wagon scene or the dream sequence (I call
it a nightmare lol) suggest that Griffith has feelings for Casca. And I
don’t think the scene in the wagon was a rape attempt, because I mean
for one Griffith stopped when Casca told him to stop, so yk, qed lol,
but also because I think it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse
rape, rather than like, a sneak preview. It’s an offer, the only way he can make that offer without the ability to speak.
Griffith is at his absolute lowest point here. He’s lost everything that he perceives gives him worth, and Wyald’s just literally and metaphorically stripped away his last lingering ability to deny this. He overheard Casca tell Guts she wants to be held right before the wagon scene, and as Casca is bandaging his hand she reflects on how Griffith could always comfort her with just a hand on her shoulder – but now it’s her turn to do that.
So imo Griffith is offering himself to Casca for two reasons:
1. He desperately wants to be this person again:
She’s shaking, she wants comfort, and Griffith wants to be the strong leader who can ease her trembling.
It’s a way he’s denied his vulnerability in the past:
But he’s simply no longer able to be this person.
It’s a humiliating, and depressing reversal of their roles, emphasizing how far Griffith’s fallen.
2. It’s sexual for one or both of these reasons:
Guts and Casca just had comfort sex. As a failed attempt at initiating comfort sex, the contrast highlights Griffith’s removal from their new dynamic. Also, since Griffith knows they’ve hooked up, this could be an attempt to insert himself into that dynamic and redress the balance because he’s afraid of being left behind.
What may be a harder sell depending on your reading of Griffith but makes the most sense to me is that frankly, Griffith is desperate. Wyald just gave the Hawks a run-down of how fucked he is for life – he can no longer be the Hawks’ hope for the future, and he can’t even live on his own. He’s been hiding behind that hawk mask, clinging to the last vestiges of his image (like when he asked Guts for his armour), and now that’s gone. If someone doesn’t take care of him, he’s dead. Griffith is someone who judges his worth by what he can be to other people, and now in his eyes he’s nothing but a burden with tens of thousands of corpses worth of guilt hanging over him.
And kind of hammering this point home for the reader, outside the wagon Judeau is backing up Griffith’s own depressing image of himself too – he’s telling Guts to take Casca and run because otherwise she’ll basically end up stuck taking care of Griffith, while he himself offers to take Griffith with him because he feels like he owes Griffith. And after this scene, Casca cries because she feels like she can’t leave Griffith behind, even though she wants to leave with Guts.
Ironically, considering what Griffith overhears right after, Guts is the only person who actually wants to stay with Griffith now, as he keeps trying to tell the people who keep telling him to leave lol:
So, imo Griffith’s offering sex to Casca mostly because it’s something he can offer that still
potentially has worth – it’s something he can give in exchange for being
taken care of.
Casca was in love with him, and lbr Griffith knows that, so this is theoretically something she might want.
And Griffith like, sees sex as transactional. It’s something he can trade to those with more power than him, who can give him something he needs. Money, with Gennon. A kingdom, with Charlotte. And here it’s Casca, for security – plus maybe Guts. So imo trading sexual favours absolutely seems like something Griffith would fall back on if he’s desperate.
And this leads right to Griffith’s hallucinatory nightmare after he overhears Casca telling Guts to leave – he’s envisioning the life he just asked for, believing Guts intends to leave, and it’s fucking horrific.
Griffith is living in what seems like a state of permanent dissociation. Guts is out there, still pursuing his own dream, totally out of their lives.
You mentioned the child being Guts, as in a surreal nightmare, but I think he’s just intended to be named after him. The “he” swinging his sword out there somewhere who Casca mentions would be the actual Guts, and this – blondish – kid is presumably Griffith and Cacsa’s.
imo a p disturbing way of underscoring that Guts is gone but far from forgotten.
Anyway yeah to me this whole sequence reads like Griffith grasping at the last straws available to him.
So to basically just sum up My Take on all this:
Griffith offers himself to Casca in the wagon both to try to reclaim a piece of his past self, and in an attempt to secure his future by offering Casca something she wants. And imagining that future, sans Guts, drives him to suicide.
So like, I don’t think it’s indicative of Griffith having any romantic feelings for Casca. It’s more a painful illustration of Griffith’s current powerlessness and desperation.
In case you want to read more lol, I talk about these scenes more thoroughly and with more context and build up in like the first half of the fourth part of this Griffith analysis.
Oh actually I do have one thing I can add about NeoGriffith, that I’ve been kind of thinking for a while but haven’t posted because it’s potentially controversial lol
But I think you could make an argument that NeoGriffith is… Griffith. As though transforming from Femto back into a flesh and blood body returned his whole range of emotions as well, basically if NGriff has the same emotional and psychological make-up of human Griffith.
Like, imo he is exactly what Griffith would be if:
he talked to god and god told him he’s not responsible for anything and everything he chooses to do is the correct fate-sanctioned thing to happen and he’s basically just a pawn
he spent a few years as a demonic embodiment of the dark side of himself and humanity, with the rest of his humanity stripped away
while he was that demon, he committed an unforgiveable and unjustifiable act of evil for no reason but spite
he is removed from the rest of humanity because he has another level of awareness/partially exists on another metaphysical plane
he made the choice to sacrifice everyone he loves both to achieve his dream and to cut out his heart because his feelings for guts ruined his life and sent him into suicidal despair
Like, basically NeoGriffith as Griffith in deep, deep, deep denial lmao, and finding it really easy to stay in denial because god gave him a thumbs up and he’s extra detached from his human emotions due to being a godlike entity with intimate knowledge of fate/the astral plane/his place in the world/etc.
I say this as someone who genuinely believes that human Griffith was more or less a good person. But I still think it would absolutely be in character for a Griffith who remembers being Femto to tell Guts he regrets nothing and then leave to do his thing.
So in this way you could say that NeoGriffith is the extreme fantasy story version of a dude who deliberately detaches himself from his own emotions for the sake of achieving a goal.
But to be clear I don’t think this is actually the case in canon.
I think NGriff probably actually has magically dampened emotions due to the sacrifice, and due to having magically transformed a few times most of human Griffith is genuinely lost, like we see him losing pieces of himself, and I don’t think he got those pieces back.
But like, I think NGriff kind of works on another level as not just the embodiment of the image Griffith portrayed, but how he maintained it, ie, by denying all his feelings. And I find the idea of NGriff as Griffith-in-extreme-denial really like… interesting and fun lol, in a headcanon way.
@bthump whew it’s been a while since ive talked berserk w/you but i had to reply cause this. this is so much more than a hc to me because i’ve always felt it HAD to be (at least semi) canon that neogriff HAS feeling but that he chooses to bury/ignore them instead.
‘it seems i’m finally free’ MY ASS.
femto was the emotionally distant one, or at least the ‘complete monster’ version of griffith that (could) truly rise above his mortal feelings and he still was acting out of spite over guts and casca and all that hurt he had to endure (partly/MOSTLY over them) when he was still human.
it blows my mind when people argue griffith now has no feelings when the whole driving force of the entire golden age and after when everything went to shit was because of the sheer depth of his emotions for guts because let’s be real that’s all we’re here for) and the fact that he tried (in vain) to bury them- which then caused them to come out later in uglier ways.
(there’s that quote by Freud right…)
“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
AKA berserk: a summary.
I agree 100% with neogriff being in denial tho, like wouldn’t he love it to be free of his obsession with guts? wouldn’t the old griffith who had his heart more or less cut to pieces over his doomed love for guts give anything to be free of those feeling so he could pursue that dream of his that killed thousands? OF COURSE HE WOULD. but that’s not the reality of it. not even now that he’s gained this new body and his new kingdom.
like there is no doubt in my mind that consciously or subconsciously everything neogriff does or will do plot-wise is not going to at some point be overshadowed by his eternal longing for guts.
and anyone who disagrees can fight me.
If he did lose parts of himself that’s only right, like a dark reflection of guts who continuously tries to rid himself of whatever’s left of his love for griffith that could stand in the way of him absolutely destroying him. (i mean- counting the parts before the happy boat trip from hell. like- when things were still, yknow, good.)
and yeah maybe there is ancient demon magic sealing griff’s heart from unwanted emotions that could stand in the way of HIM achieving HIS goals but like- didn’t it throb tho- bthump– when he saw guts again? even if it’s at 0.01% capacity I’LL TAKE IT. It’s enough, even if it’s a sorry remnant of everything there used to be i’m sure eventually it’ll be enough to fuck up all his plans, i mean with his invulnerability now honestly what else could cripple neogriff now other than his heart itself? SO POETIC.
(also i remember when ppl used to send you song recs?? they were so good man i made an entire playlist. here’s another one: say it right by nelly furtado ‘oh you don’t mean nothing at all to me’ ugh so perfect for this little piece of meta, i listened to it on repeat typing this lmao)
Oh yeah I mean like, I 100% believe that NeoGriffith still has some emotion lol, I’d be willing to bet real money that we’re headed straight to a reveal that he’s not nearly as over Guts as he wants to be. But I think that canonically he’s somewhere between “Griffith in turbo denial mode” and “totally emotionless shell.”
Like, dude is going to do something irrational when Guts shows up again. That’s just how narratives work man, it’s gotta happen. I’ll join you in that fight lol. So I completely agree with you.
Also ty for the rec, it totally works for me. and lol ikwym the recs ppl sent me made my berserk playlist like twice as long, it’s gr8.
Oh actually I do have one thing I can add about NeoGriffith, that I’ve been kind of thinking for a while but haven’t posted because it’s potentially controversial lol
But I think you could make an argument that NeoGriffith is… Griffith. As though transforming from Femto back into a flesh and blood body returned his whole range of emotions as well, basically if NGriff has the same emotional and psychological make-up of human Griffith.
Like, imo he is exactly what Griffith would be if:
he talked to god and god told him he’s not responsible for anything and everything he chooses to do is the correct fate-sanctioned thing to happen and he’s basically just a pawn
he spent a few years as a demonic embodiment of the dark side of himself and humanity, with the rest of his humanity stripped away
while he was that demon, he committed an unforgiveable and unjustifiable act of evil for no reason but spite
he is removed from the rest of humanity because he has another level of awareness/partially exists on another metaphysical plane
he made the choice to sacrifice everyone he loves both to achieve his dream and to cut out his heart because his feelings for guts ruined his life and sent him into suicidal despair
Like, basically NeoGriffith as Griffith in deep, deep, deep denial lmao, and finding it really easy to stay in denial because god gave him a thumbs up and he’s extra detached from his human emotions due to being a godlike entity with intimate knowledge of fate/the astral plane/his place in the world/etc.
I say this as someone who genuinely believes that human Griffith was more or less a good person. But I still think it would absolutely be in character for a Griffith who remembers being Femto to tell Guts he regrets nothing and then leave to do his thing.
So in this way you could say that NeoGriffith is the extreme fantasy story version of a dude who deliberately detaches himself from his own emotions for the sake of achieving a goal.
But to be clear I don’t think this is actually the case in canon.
I think NGriff probably actually has magically dampened emotions due to the sacrifice, and due to having magically transformed a few times most of human Griffith is genuinely lost, like we see him losing pieces of himself, and I don’t think he got those pieces back.
But like, I think NGriff kind of works on another level as not just the embodiment of the image Griffith portrayed, but how he maintained it, ie, by denying all his feelings. And I find the idea of NGriff as Griffith-in-extreme-denial really like… interesting and fun lol, in a headcanon way.
said:
What are your thoughts about the current Griffith? In my eyes he has
become like the Snow Queen – Beautiful, yet cold and empty. Practically
unable to experience emotion and lacking in any humanity. A pretty
doll. A shell. A walking facade. What do you think?
My answer to this ties into the other thing you asked me to expand on, re: Griffith and contrasts, so I guess I’m just kind of doing both answers at once.
Basically I agree, but I think there’s more to NeoGriffith (ie post Femto, resurrected, godlike Griffith) than that.
Griffith as a human is so interesting to me in part because he’s full of contrasts, which is one of those hooks that really get me interested in a character. And those contrasts mostly stem from this attitude right here:
He hides away all of his weaknesses, his negative thoughts, the truth of what actually drives him on (guilt), his self-loathing, even from himself. He smiles and portrays an image of perfection so well that he essentially believes it himself most of the time.
So you have things like the Promrose Hall speech, where he’s fully embodying that image of himself:
vs Casca’s flashback, which is a glimpse of his darker, much more fucked up self underneath, and directly contradicts the above:
So you have the contrast between the perfect leader, the guy who can take down an army of 30,000 with 5,000, the guy who waxes poetic about how great dreams are, the guy who is this fucking cool while burning a queen alive:
And the guy who self-harms after prostituting himself to a pedophile to prevent as many deaths of his followers as possible despite claiming he doesn’t feel responsible for them, the guy who falls to pieces and destroys his own life when Guts leaves, the guy who hates himself and desperately wants to be told he’s not a monster:
And both are Griffith. Griffith isn’t just faking his confidence, he genuinely is that confident. He genuinely believes that his dream is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself, and he can’t call any of his followers friends because they’re clinging to his dream rather than finding their own dreams.
He’s portrayed that image so fully that it’s a real part of him. But at the same time, sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite underneath: the self loathing, the fear, the fact that he’s in love with Guts and has nearly lost his dream because of that love multiple times (ie nearly dying while trying to save him from Zodd, burning his own life down after Guts leaves, even going back and rescuing him personally that first week).
And that brings me to NeoGriffith, because what NeoGriffith is, is that image, and only that image, with none of the very human weaknesses behind it.
He’s described as a painting, as untouchable, etc, like fifty million times.
He’s basically become the impression he used to leave people with.
If Griffith contradicted himself – confidence vs insecurity, conviction vs self loathing, unwaveringly pursuing his dream vs Guts making him forget his dream, etc – then NeoGriffith is one side minus the other. Confidence, no insecurity, conviction, no self-loathing, the dream, no Guts.
And it’s uncanny too. He’s pursuing the dream, but he’s no longer motivated by his very human feelings of guilt (and also fear/insecurity, which we’re shown here:
I got this whole argument about dreams in Berserk being essentially shitty coping mechanisms lol, which I won’t get into now but is worth mentioning as another aspect of human Griffith that NeoGriffith lacks)
He’s lost his human flaws, and that makes him kind of disturbing imo, because those human flaws drove him, and now he’s driven by nothing, he just is.
And, just as a side note, it’s also worth noting that Femto is the other side imo – the self-loathing, the insecurity – in the sense that Femto is the embodiment of the monster Griffith believed himself to be deep down, the monster he believed Guts saw him as too, after this exchange (and then Guts leaving):
I mean it’s ultimately the final puzzle piece that makes him agree to the sacrifice:
And I 100% believe that NeoGriffith is referencing that here with his “you, of all people”:
So like, tl;dr Griffith is a land of contradictions, and that’s embodied in 2 magical fantasy transformations that make those disparate elements of him literal personifications.
NeoGriffith is the side of himself that he showed the world as a human, stripped of his humanity, and Femto is basically a personification of his own self-loathing, in which he became everything he feared himself to be, everything Guts failed to tell him he wasn’t.
But this is just like, the thematic take lol. This is what I think NeoGriffith essentially represents. But it’s also more complicated than that, because
But when it comes to like, NeoGriffith as a character, rather than a construct, who potentially still has emotions and ties to his previous life, I guess I’ll leave you with links because I don’t really have much new to say:
Basically I think there’s plenty of indication that Griffith failed to entirely purge himself of emotion and isn’t quite the serene image of perfection he seems.
mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least
oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.
Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:
I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.
But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.
imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol
And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.
Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.
Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.
(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)
oh!! absolutely, you’re right on all of this, i didn’t want to get too wordy on a reply to my own post then spiral into an incomprehensible analysis before dinner, but i know both of my statements were flawed. i got too thinky and offered no explanation to back up because i was in a rush 😭
i didn’t want to discredit the amount of strength it took to hold himself together more than anything else. i don’t know how he made it as far as he did honestly, knowing how thin that veneer was that kept him from shattering. i imagine he was mythologizing himself just to survive. the ~concept~ of griffith was his alone to bear. he’s ABSOLUTELY fragile. and i wouldn’t call it strength per se (in opposition to this fragility idea) but perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of it.
maybe i was thinking in a … “could i possibly deal with this?” kind of mindset. i couldn’t, for sure. i’d have to be an extraordinary actor, at worst (as you mentioned, fake it till you are it, basically). even with his mountain of issues and posturing he somehow managed to pull through (until it was too much, obviously) and it’s very admirable (to me, a very fragile person, lol), and very, very sad. i feel like the guilt alone would’ve killed me. but i know he’s a master of compartmentalization and appearing strong to anyone looking up to him (maybe aside from guts, who i think he was fairly comfortable being honest with, maybe because guts treated him like a real person and not an idea/ideal, among other things.)
i’m sure you’ll agree with some of this! and i absolutely do subscribe to and understand these things you’ve pointed out, i’m just … very clumsy at cobbling together my thoughts together coherently or in order sometimes 🤧 i very much appreciate your deep analyses 💖 i could think and talk about this stuff all day, but i digress, because somehow it’s 4am???
Oh yeah I absolutely agree with all of this! and like yeah I didn’t think one off the cuff sentence encompassed all your thoughts, it’s why i was like idek if I disagree with you bc the word “fragile” is so nebulous, but yk genuinely if someone says something about Griffith to me I’m immediately like LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I THINK lol. And ty for your response, this is all so good!
Like everything you’re saying is something I really, really love about Griffith. it’s a contrast that highlights both sides – the severity of how he cracks in those vulnerable moments, like the self-harm, up to burning his life down around himself when Guts left, really shows how fucking impressive it is that he goes from back-alley peasant to nearly royalty while containing all of that in him. And his sheer self-control and the perfection of the image he portrays shows how intense the dark negative feelings are when they do break through.
Like eg Casca’s flashback makes the scene where he tells Gennon he gives zero fucks about him before killing him that much more powerful, because we know some of what he’s holding back.
Like I wouldn’t really say he’s admirable because his way of dealing with his issues by completely ignoring them is not great and causes many problems to put it mildly lol, but it’s impressive and pretty awesome, and like I would also crumble immediately in Griffith’s shoes lol. So I can see why Casca watches him bury his breakdown behind a smile and calls it strength and decides she wants to be his sword.
also
perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to
focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m
sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of
it.
yesss i love this. I never really thought of it like this but yeah the idea that he’s focusing on being this ideal image of himself not just because he has to to achieve his goal, but because it’s practically a distraction from looking at the darker, guilt-ridden, fucked up real him buried underneath.
and that makes the “do you think I’m cruel” conversation that much more heartbreaking, because it was Griffith opening himself up to starting to address some of it, maybe able to with Guts as emotional support, but instead he gets shut down.
mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least
oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.
Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:
I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.
But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.
imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol
And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.
Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.
Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.
(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)
This parallel/contrast is a great little illustration of the significance of the Zodd encounter.
Cuddling with his sword the way he did as a child when faced with mistrust and derision vs dedicating his sword to Griffith – in the first his sword is a comfort object, an escape, a distraction. In the second his sword is a tool – he’s not wielding it as a distraction from his own pain, he’s wielding it for someone else, as a symbol of a meaningful connection with another person.
It’s also worth noting that right before the conversation with Griffith, Guts was angrily swinging his sword as a distraction while remembering Casca making him feel like an outsider (”you’re just a mad dog!” “it’s your fault!”), essentially underlining this contrast between the way Guts regards his sword before and after Griffith says he saved his life for his sake.
And check out these matching visuals of Guts looking at his blistered hands, just to drive the point home:
this is one of those grand thematic statements that applies to a lot of berserk, like guts’ nearly obsessive need to fight monsters, or like, well, most sacrifices imo. But I’m thinking about how it applies to Griffith – the reverse, I mean. Griffith doesn’t really express fear, like he doesn’t really express most of his feelings, but what does he strike out?
Well, here he’s assassinated a bunch of would-be assassins, including the Queen. Gennon. Tyranny/the natural order of things in general lol.
And Guts.
Or maybe more accurately, his feelings for Guts.
tbh one of my major criticisms of Berserk is that as far as I can tell the theme of fear has been mostly dropped, like, i’m pretty sure the last time we saw a suggestion of Guts being afraid for himself rather than of himself was 150 chapters ago with Slan, and that was like the only time post-Eclipse at all lol.
So I can’t exactly say that Guts surviving the Eclipse and then Femto/NeoGriffith pointedly failing to strike Guts out suggests his narrative is gonna end with falling under the wing of what he fears, but screw it that’s what I want and I’m using that panel up there to justify it.
i fucked up. why did i stop at the golden age??? both those posts are clearly perfect set ups for this:
like casca’s not the only one who got all self destructive while thinking about griffith my dude
anyway i don’t think we’re meant to take guts’ statement up there without a hefty grain of salt considering guts immediately proceeds to have a flashback and talking about his dead father figure makes him feel better, and also considering that in a few days guts embraces the exact opposite point of view when he decides to stay and take care of griffith despite judeau basically repeating this sentiment to him
and also it’s callous as shit and pretty much tells us that guts is in full denial mode here while fucking casca
in fact it’s kind of similar to
oh holy shit and look at this, which i hadn’t even noticed til rn:
like we all accept and understand that Griffith is projecting when he tells Charlotte to ignore the sad shit, but SO IS GUTS!
and ACTUALLY yeah i’ll do this whole thing right now: Griffith fucking Charlotte and Guts fucking Casca are both attempts to deny their feelings for each other after being made painfully aware of those feelings
Griffith being left in the snow by Guts, and Guts learning about Griffith’s consequent crashing and burning – and specifically being stabbed by Casca while she screams that he broke Griffith
Both deny their feelings in like, a self harming manner. Sex with Charlotte is itself an act of self-destruction, while Guts just lets himself be stabbed first while denying any guilt in a disturbingly detached way
And additionally both these sexual encounters revolve around their respective dreams. Charlotte is a clear representation of Griffith’s dream and fucking her is his way of attaining it, just very badly timed due to being completely emotionally fucked up.
And Guts’ brief relationship with Casca represents his dream to an extent as we see when he compares her to his sword in his inner monologue after sex, when she’s the one he directs his whole promrose hall-y dream monologue to, when he invites her along with the caveat that she doesn’t get in the way of his dream, and when she tells him to leave to pursue his dream at the worst possible moment.
Griffith couldn’t manage to deny his feelings for very long, breaking down after Charlotte falls asleep, while Guts manages to hold out for a few days, and I’d say finally fully stops denying his feelings when he conclusively realizes he shouldn’t’ve left. “Why do I always see these things after they’re done and gone?”
basically i think guts and
griffith have parallel arcs wrt coming to terms with their particular
relationship and realizing they both value that relationship more than
their respective dreams, and both those arcs involve trying to use het
sex as a distraction before facing the music.
you're the only one 