mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
Tag: theme: revenge
it’s been a while since i read any of the lost children arc but i looked over some of it the other day and lol, there goes my assumption that Guts doesn’t actually know that a sacrifice has to be someone’s most important person/people.
and tbh I like this way more than Guts being in the dark and regarding the sacrifice as maybe a sign he wasn’t as important to Griffith as his dream after all. It fits Guts’ attitude towards Griffith better post-Eclipse, like the way he still knows that he was as important to Griffith as he wanted to be.
And his pretty significant devastation when NeoGriffith claimed he didn’t feel anything anymore.
And while he was unconscious while the Godhand were discussing it during the Black Swordsman arc, and they didn’t really say anything that revealing that everyone could hear during the Eclipse iirc, it still makes sense for me to assume that Guts could put 2 and 2 together re: the sacrifice requirements based on what he does know. Like he missed “it must be someone important to you, part of your soul” but he heard “the life of the person you loved the most and hated the most” so, that’s still pretty indicative.
Plus it really adds a certain something to Guts’ revenge campaign.
Like with the sacrifice as active proof of his importance to Griffith, it makes me wonder about what kind of complicated feelings that, say, the brand hurting in the presence of monsters might invoke.
It is kind of an additional little suggestion that Black Swordsman Guts is in fact pursuing his dream, and is still motivated by his desire to be Griffith’s friend and equal, and have his attention on him (in yk kind of a fucked up way Guts doesn’t really acknowledge to himself). He does go off alone to fight stronger and stronger enemies, leaving Casca behind, and in the Lost Children arc especially the risk of Guts becoming a monster himself and joining Griffith again that way comes to the forefront.
And in general it fits nicely with the sense that Guts leaving people and doing his own thing is bad shit, and Guts staying with people who need him is positive and good. Casca’s encouragement is misguided, leads to the Eclipse, and ironically fits Guts’ dumb actions post-Eclipse.
So yeah I’d call it forshadowing for Guts leaving Casca behind in the cave to pursue a version of his dream.
tbh I actually love it in the Black Swordsman arc bc I don’t think it was meant to be anything particularly significant, like, plot-wise (tho lmao i wish, but it’s probably only a coincidence that it looked kind of like a fetus lol)
I think it was just supposed to be a recurring demon that represents like, the self destructiveness and futility of Guts’ revenge rampage. like a proto beast of darkness but instead of being scary and cool it’s just sad and pathetic. the twisted remains of yourself after you’ve been consumed by revenge.
which i say mainly because of that one image where guts sees it with vargas’ face. but also if you re-read its early appearances with that in mind it fits very nicely with the rest of the black swordsman arc’s themes and the way it unnerves guts more than anything else he sees, and the way it appears when he’s feeling self-doubt and fear of failure, makes a lot of sense.
also his chapter 2 nightmare where it chases him works super well with that in mind. This nightmare is later echoed by his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s a monstrous representation of donovan chasing him, which is echoed again after Guts kills Adonis and sees himself as that monster. It’s very neatly cyclical – chronologically, it goes Guts’ own personal monster followed by Guts’ fear of becoming a monster followed by Guts well on his way to becoming that monster. And I just love that the fetus thing isn’t a cool monster, it’s just pathetic, which is perfect in the Black Swordsman arc where Guts is paralleled to Vargas.
relatedly it’s really off-putting to re-read the scenes where it appears after miura retconned it into being his weird demon kid lol. Totally fucks up that interpretation. Like you can maybe read it as a reminder of Guts abandoning Casca/his repressed guilt over it, but I have no idea how that’s supposed to work with the nightmare, or the direct comparison to Vargas, etc.
Maybe it still kind of works as a symbol of Guts becoming a monster in that the fetus is is all demony because it was corrupted by Femto or w/e, but like… considering all its later appearances are helpful and protective rather than sinister, it really doesn’t work for me. It’s a big mess.
yeah i was also super into that fanart. probs not the artist’s intention but made me think of casca holding guts’ sword after he left lol
mm on the subject of broken swords in general, ngl ia, i like the idea of the dragonslayer breaking
like if guts dies that would be an appropriate af prelude to it. a nice subtle rebuke of living your life by the sword.
actually it could also be a gr8 prelude to guts sorting out his feelings properly. you know like how i say that i want to believe guts’ current sidequest is a distraction from his conflicted feelings towards revenge/griffith/etc and what he should actually be doing is trying to untangle the emotional snarl that happens when your “true light” is also your nemesis lol. well the point is guts’ sword shatting could be a nice symbol of his distractions failing him and leaving him no choice but to confront his own feelings. maybe say something.
like it would go nicely with a third duel that has a strong emotional core
I genuinely think the authorially intended reading of Guts’ decision is that it’s complicated and there are multiple reasons Guts is choosing to take Casca to Elfhelm over revenge right now. It’s not a simple matter of Casca straightforwardly being more important to him or just choosing Casca over Griffith.
Hopefully this is the kind of answer you’re looking for, idk the subject is a little broad. I’ve kind of said this in some other posts too but I think it’d be handy to have a nice and orderly list to link to so I’m just throwing it all out in response to you.
So here are the various complicated reasons I think Guts has for going on his take Casca to Elfhelm quest:
1. He gives a fuck about Casca. He gave a fuck about her and saved her life even back when he hated her, because she was his comrade, and I’d certainly hope he cares about her now.
2. Elf cave is gone, and he’s not so shitty a person that he’s just going to abandon her in a field for ghosts to eat.
3. He is aware that revenging made him a worse person and he wants to be better. Guts at his best is someone who does not abandon his friends and family but rather stands by them in their hours of need, and he wants to be that person again.
Good Guts:
Bad Guts:
Good Guts:
Bad Guts:
Like, yk, abandoning people or staying with them is kind of Guts’ major thing throughout the story.
4. He is longing for a piece of his lost past, and Casca represents the Hawks.
Additionally suggested by how every time he pictures her from the past, after that last pic, it’s as a Hawk commander.
And statements like this:
And the general fact that he’s trying to “force” her sanity back despite forboding warnings and actually contemplating on page how awful it might be for Casca, suggesting that it’s less for Casca’s own sake and more Guts’ selfish need to regain some of his happy past.
5. Griffith looking human and sexy makes him forget his urge to kill, lessening the temptation of revenge and probably making Guts doubt his ability to follow through.
nuff said
6. Guts’ whole revenge campaign was less about revenge and more about making himself feel better and getting Griffith’s attention. Last time he saw Griffith the dude declared that he was completely free of his feelings for him and then “deserted” him in the snow lol. This has also lessened the temptation of revenge – now pursuing Griffith feels extra fruitless, because Griffith (claims he) doesn’t give a fuck.
7. He feels guilty for abandoning Griffith back in the Golden Age and refusing to abandon Casca (this time) is a way to make up for that mistake.
8. Like the Beast of Darkness says, Casca reminds him of “the wound Griffith left” because he wants to keep feeling the pain he caused him. Both because it helps simplify his conflicting and confusing feelings into rage, and because, harkening back to point 6, imho it’s a masochistic reminder that he meant enough to Griffith for him to be worth lashing out at.
I mean consider the context of some discussions of wounds in berserk. “I too want a wound… that I can say you gave me.”
Or Griffith tracing his shoulder where Guts’ sword failed to touch him, maybe:
Anyway regardless of how suggestively that statement can be taken in the greater context of Berserk and wounds, there’s definitely some truth to it because it’s what Miura gave as the reason he didn’t kill Casca:
9. He’s still planning to return his focus to Griffith eventually. He hasn’t so much given up his revenge quest as put it on hold. It’s probably easier to say “not now” to himself than to say “never.”
10. Narrative convenience keeps him on the straight and narrow. eg:
cue Guts literally passing right out ten seconds later. it’s pretty easy to decide to get on a boat instead of get revenge when you can barely stand and going for revenge would be literal suicide. and even then Guts needed Serpico to step in and tell him not to be a dumbass.
Soooo yeah I think that about covers the various reasons Guts has for putting aside his revenge quest to take Casca to Elfhelm, which add up to smthn a lot more complicated than choosing Casca over revenge. I contemplated adding another section that’s like… a giant list of Guts utterly failing to prioritize Casca or demonstrate that she’s “more precious than Griffith” lol, but I might just do that in a separate post next time I’m feeling salty.
These lines are only 4 pages apart.
I’ve been thinking of running away as like… something Berserk contextualizes as immature and negative. Rosine running away to her land of the elves and eventually regretting it when she flies home to die. Guts running away so his malice could burn inside him. This dude:
Griffith’s sacrifice:
yadda yadda yadda.
And I’ve been kind of reluctantly expecting Falconia to follow suit as an immature, ultimately negative escape from the realities of the world.
But, in addition to Godo’s first statement up there, there are also lines like Casca’s as Guts fights Wyald:
“Why does he… always have to fight…? It’s alright… to just run away sometimes…”
So there’s a distinction to be made between running away so you can fuck shit up and express your anger (Guts’ revenge campaign, apostles making a sacrifice in despair and turning into monsters) vs running away from war and hatred and violence. Maybe running to a peaceful place where the monsters help humanity.
Like, maybe it is an important distinction that Rosine’s land of the elves was essentially a place where she could reenact the violence done to her on other people and call it a game, while Falconia is… just a sweet place to live lol. A kingdom where the violence suffered and perpetuated by its more monstrous inhabitants has no place anymore.
i was just about to say basically the same thing @chaoticgaygriffith did here lol … he needs that constant reminder of why he SHOULD hate griffith because he’s still so emotionally invested in him and it’s too easy for him to slide into pining and sadness over him. and guts has never seen the griffith /he/ knew do anything awful, so i imagine he has a really hard time accepting that femto=griffith, but lbr so do i, griffith was not cruel and miura is an asshole
yeah i mean considering neogriffith’s effect on him:
I feel like it’s pretty heavily suggested that part of why Guts is able to drop the revenge quest to take Casca to Elfhelm is because NeoGriffith showing up all hot and non demonic threw a bucket of cold water onto his rage boner and replaced it with a regular boner.
Like I will never, ever, ever get over how fucking sad Guts is about NeoGriffith ditching him lmfao, idk how anyone can look at that panel and think Guts feels nothing but hate for him now.
And yeah like Guts also separates human Griffith from Femto in his mind, like when he tells Rickert “that’s not the Griffith you know anymore” while remembering Femto. Which is another reason NGriff’s human appearance fucks him up, because it makes it harder for Guts to separate NGriff from human Griff.
@xiyyh said:
all of this! i agree.
guts saying/doing ANYTHING at this moment could’ve pushed him over the
edge imo. also just, ugh, griffith conversely loving and hating him
because of his dependence on guts for stability. not only stability tho
he’s fucking in love with him lol. so yeah griffith coming to terms with
his absolute need for guts (whether he likes it or not, & he does
not) during the same moment of guts realizing how bad he fucked up,
re-igniting griffith’s value in his own mind, hhhhhhh
and these parallels! my god. somehow berserk is constantly mirroring itself, it’s endlessly fascinating and infuriating
ALSO WRT your tags; lol i agree and i
don’t understand how anyone could read it any other way if i’m being
completely fucking honest
ty! it’s so good isn’t it, like the fact that griffith’s moment of pure despair was guts touching him is beyond amazing and so fun to think about. i just want to second what you said here.
Whether by accident or design (since yk from the sounds of it Miura wrote the first chapter or two before really figuring out where he wanted to go with the story) I actually consider the opening few pages to be very in character lol, which might be an unpopular opinion, idk.
Consider: it fits perfectly into Guts pattern of self-destructively doing whatever it takes to get close enough to his enemy to blow their head off. He’s deliberately let monsters throw him around, break bones, shove him through walls, eat him, and stab him just so he can maneuver himself into position to take them out. This is an apostle that likes to fuck her victims, ergo.
It also like… actually I’d never thought about this before so bear with me bc this is going to get rambly, but damn it’s actually perfect, because it also makes the connection between Guts’ sex related issues and his stupid monster fighting rampage very direct on page one.
Like if that’s not purposeful then Miura accidentally hit it out of the park with our intro to Guts. But actually it’s gotta be purposeful. Even if it’s just to equate Guts’ particularly phallic violence (big sword, shoving his fist into the monster’s mouth mid-sex and blowing her head off) to sex right off the bat because Miura wants to like… well I think it’s part of what Miura wanted to kind of examine. Swords are dicks in Berserk, just like they’re dicks in a lot of action stories. But what does that mean – why? What’s the connection between violence and sex that makes that imagery fit?
And the answer here is Guts’ rape trauma. Liiiiike ok I completely think that Guts lashes out at enemies, particularly enemies that are bigger and stronger than him, particularly monsters once he learns they exist, because of that trauma. He is very driven to destroy anything that scares him, and that’s the root of it. Monsters scare Guts, we see this very viscerally during the first Zodd encounter and the Wyald encounter, and (particularly after he abandons his emotional support in the snow) Guts is driven to destroy them.
So like on one level Guts fucking the apostle is like, a hook for the dudes and a surface image for Miura to unravel: cool manly action hero bangs chicks and kills monsters, sometimes at the same time! On a character level, it’s a self-destructive strategy to get close enough to kill her because Guts absolutely isn’t the kind of cool hero who regularly bangs chicks, he’s the kind of dumbass who would do anything to kill a monster. And potentially on a thematic level it’s a story opening that primes the audience to equate sex and sex related issues to Guts’ monster killing revenge rampage, ie set up for an undertone of Guts lashing out not because he’s righteously angry or a hero who protects the innocent and kills evildoers, but because he’s traumatized and killing monsters makes him feel better.
(god that panel is gr8 shorthand for everything i want to say lol)
Or idk maybe it’s not that deep. But damn it now I’m definitely going to include this scene in the next big meta post I write about Guts, his dream, trauma, and his relationship with Griffith.
Anyway I definitely 100% believe the first bit I said, about it being in character for Guts because it’s a self destructive ploy to kill her. The trauma theme stuff is more of a stretch but it’s worth thinking about.
(Also lol @ Guts being faithful to Casca when he left her to rot in a cave for two years. I mean they had sex once and the last significant interaction they had before the Eclipse was Casca essentially breaking off whatever form of relationship they’d begun.
I feel like people reach for that bc they need an explanation for why cool badass protagonist Guts is basically celibate and has never expressed attraction to a woman other than casca (and tbqh casca’s debatable), but honestly it’s cause he’s gay.)
Honestly, Black Swordsman Guts, especially in the Black Swordsman arc (tho he’s also p good in the Lost Children arc). The way he starts out as the epitome of the asshole antihero out for revenge and that image almost immediately starts crumbling until you’re shown that he’s terrified and pathetic and not a whole lot better than the monsters he’s fighting and really sad about a bad breakup.
The way he opens the story by banging an apostle on page one and eventually you realize that is one of a grand total of two occasions on which he’s had consensual sex. The way he ends the first arc crying after a kid swears vengeance against him. The end of the first chapter when he tortures the snake apostle and the art and tone shift to make Guts the villain and the monster the pitiable victim. Encouraging children to kill themselves because he’s upset. Refusing to admit how monstrous he’s getting when he gets temporarily possessed. Letting a zombie kid stab him.
The driving mystery of why Guts is so obsessed with revenge followed by the reveal that it’s because he had a relationship comparable to marriage with the dude he wants to kill and Griffith didn’t just betray him, they betrayed each other and like half of Guts’ motivation is guilt/distracting himself from guilt.
The way his current situation, haunted by monsters claiming ownership of him after being given to them by someone he loves reflects his childhood so effectively.
I mean yeah part of what makes Black Swordsman Guts great is what the Golden Age reveals about him too, but I’ll still take Black Swordsman over the happy Golden Age version.
For one thing, when Black Swordsman Guts is a dick, the narrative is very clear on that being a negative thing. While when Golden Age Guts is a dick (eg most of his scenes with Casca) it feels like we’re supposed to find that at least somewhat endearing. And also like… I just really, really love the way Miura starts Guts out as strong badass archetype and then immediately sets about complicating it by answering the question of: what would make a real human person this fucking over the top and ridiculous? What’s actually underneath the cool image?
Like Guts goes from badass mccool 80s action hero send up to being directly compared to Vargas in terms of how sad and pathetic he is within a couple chapters, and it’s So. Good.
Answer to your second question under the cut
This question… is actually a very tough call lol. Like yeah okay the smart money’s on the character whose introduction didn’t include a gratuitious rape scene, but I genuinely love Femto regardless? Mostly because I disregard that choice of intro since it was um Badly Written lol, and Femto had me at
And I just love dark inner monsters as a concept in general despite the author’s reliance on rape as his primary illustration of evil.
On potential alone I’d go with NeoGriffith, because boy he is full of potential to be amazing depending on where those hints about his feelings, isolation of being a singular god, etc go. But what we actually see from him is like… so bland 99% of the time. Like yeah that’s purposeful, that’s a big part of the point, but still. He does feel like a shell of the old Griffith, literally – the outside with v little of the depth (so far).
I can headcanon and theorize a bunch to make him interesting to me, and I do, but idk if that counts lol.
So as for what we’ve got on the page and how seeing him makes me feel, I’m actually going to pick Femto. Like, the same way I inwardly cheered when we saw Guts’ slasher smile at Godo’s after he killed the pig apostle, because it was such a “he’s baaaaaack” moment, I cheered when we saw Femto confront Ganeshka. I love his stupid offensive camp villain makeup, I love his stupid exoskeleton, I love what a petty asshole he is, I love how silent and scary he was when he first appeared and I love how awkward and pathetic he was when he lowered his hand and let Guts escape, I love that he expresses emotions, I love that Void had to basically tell him to shut up during his petty back and forth with Guts in his first scene, and I love him partially out of spite because Miura tried to make me hate him in the shittiest way possible.
Like yeah okay put your super gay character in vampy makeup and make him a rapist to piss off the manly protag while writing out the woman you have no idea what to do with, fuck you I love him anyway.
I have a tendency to love the characters the narrative goes above and beyond to try to get me to hate, because I don’t like being told what to do lol, and if I feel like the narrative is pushing me to feel something without properly selling it/while poorly and/or offensively illustrating it I get contrary. Like basically the Eclipse rape only made me feel hate for Miura. If I hated Femto for it, then I feel like I’d be validating Miura’s bad and offensive writing.
Which is not to say I don’t fully understand and respect people who do respond to the Eclipse by hating Femto. This is just how I personally respond to fiction lol.
I think there’s a strong argument to be made that, rather than being
depicted as burgeoning true love ruined by the Eclipse for the
sake of extra tragedy, Guts and Casca getting together is depicted as a mistake from the start.
This is really cool and all but, if Guts didn’t love Casca in the true sense of the word, why did he travel half the world to rehabilitate her?
Well canonically there are a few alternative motives suggested:
That’s the darkest one. Incidentally it’s also the reason Miura gave for not killing Casca off – because Casca keeps Guts angry and prevents him from fully moving on – so it’s not just the Hound spinning his wheels, it’s a legit factor.
There’s also making up for past mistakes:
Longing for a piece of the good old days:
Which I suggest because almost every time Guts thinks of the old Casca it’s as a Hawk commander, rather than as a lover. Plus his insistence on “forcing” Casca’s sanity back despite warnings suggests to me it’s not really selfless on Guts’ part.
And honestly I think partially it’s because:
Prior to NGriff’s dismissal Guts still planned to go after him:
Erika suggests making the cave homier and staying with Casca, so Casca will be content and won’t run off again. Guts is like, yeah that’s true, and then:
Then he goes into his “the instant I saw him, I’d forgotten my urge to kill” internal monologue, raging at himself for his lack of desire to kill Griffith (”and that can’t be!”)
He’s still planning to go after him again, but then NGriff completely refuses to even give him the time of day, mysteriously saves Casca, and fucks off, and that’s when Guts decides to stick with Casca this time.
So imo it’s also partially because “I’d forgotten my urge to kill” + NGriff “deserting” him = losing his drive for revenge. Now he’s emotionally capable of trying to move on, so he’s seizing on that because revenge was a big self-destructive mess and he totally failed in his goal of either killing Femto or getting his attention, and Godo + Rickert etc all kept hammering it into his head that he’s better off taking care of the last remnant of the Hawks.
And bc Griffith’s apparently successfully moved on from him, so he wants to move on from Griffith and he’s focusing on Casca to do so.
I mean if you ship Guts and Casca and think love is Guts’ strongest motivator then go for it, it’s also one potential explanation, and maybe it’ll end up unambiguously confirmed as true love, but I honestly don’t get the impression that Guts is in love with her at any point myself. I think Guts’ actions make perfect sense even if romantic love isn’t a genuine factor, and some of his actions make very little sense if he’s truly in love with her (like leaving her in a cave for two years and then needing to debate with himself before he actually decides to take a time out from revenge and rescue her in the conviction arc.)
Like I think he’d make the same choice to go to Elfhelm if his relationship with her had remained platonic the whole time, or if it was Judeau who survived but lost his sanity, etc.
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.
We yet have to see keeping his own promise to himself:
I think that is fulfilling his promise to himself. I always saw that statement of Guts’ as ominous, especially considering the pointed shot of the behelit in the full thing.
He is what he is, and what he is is a dude getting a little too monstrous for comfort. His inner beast is part of who he is, and Guts reasserting his revenge quest “I will make my way to him” strengthens it.
very similar to this from the black swordsman arc:
“You and I got nothin in common” is blatant denial, immediately undercut by Guts continuing on his monstrous revenge quest. He’ll do it with his own flesh and blood, but that doesn’t actually make him much different than the revenge-obsessed ghosts trying to possess him.
hill of swords sets up the ideal climactic griffguts drama so perfectly that it’s ridic
Guts: conflicted because he desperately misses Griffith, the way he was back when all Guts wanted was for Griffith to look at him (value him, love him). He maintains his rage by separating Griffith now from Griffith then, and NeoGriffith’s existence makes it that much harder.
That same beating heart?
Griffith: has failed to completely eradicate his past self.
Like, that’s the two important emotional points this scene sets up: Guts conflicted about killing NeoGriffith because he’s reminded of human Griffith, and NeoGriffith evidencing human Griffith’s emotions.
You can’t write this without intending to pay it off by forcing Guts to square with the fact that there’s still some of his Griffith remaining in NeoGriffith. This absolutely requires a future moment where Guts and NeoGriffith confront each other and Guts realizes that NGriff is still in love with him.
Ofc this could lead to like, a final test of Guts’ obsession with Griffith which he then passes by killing him anyway or something like that. But if the narrative turns back to Guts and Griffith focused on each other rather than Guts and Griffith steadfastly focused on their goals in their mutual attempt to get over each other it could lead to some excellently hightened, resonant emotions during their final confrontation.
Plus it’s worth noting that Guts’ obsession with Griffith which he’s trying to drop is an obsession with killing him – that’s what leads him to darkness – while this conflict between Griffith now and Griffith then makes Guts forget his urge to kill. So yk, if Miura’s theoretical not super bleak ending involves Guts not succumbing to his inner darkness and urge to kill, this conflict might actually facilitate that happyish ending.
Or maybe this is irrelevant and it’s all the fetus anyway and NGriff is fully removed from human Griffith’s emotions so Guts can kill him completely sans internal conflict and then ride off into the sunset lol. Or maybe the perfectly on point emotional content is an accidental side-effect of just establishing NGriff’s plot-point weakness.
Huh, I’ve never rly seen that opinion tbh, maybe we hang out in different parts of fandom. Well, I’ve seen a few people expressing worry that Casca might forgive Griffith, but honestly if Miura writes that I will like, personally fly across the ocean to salt his garden. And I definitely don’t think it’s likely.
As for Guts… hm I’m just going to go all out and explain my take on Guts’ reaction to NGriff bc you gave me an opening lol.
I don’t think forgiveness for the Eclipse rape is on the table. But I definitely think his feelings towards NeoGriffith are very complex and he’s absolutely emotionally conflicted towards him, not just surprised by his appearance.
But yeah I don’t think his emotional conflict stems from wanting to forgive Griffith. What he wants is for Griffith to be or contain the version of himself that like, doesn’t require forgiving, because the only thing human Griffith did that hurt Guts was sacrifice the Band – and Guts never seemed to really blame him for that anyway.
Like when we’re talking about a dude who has undergone two (2) magical transformations and basically exists as three versions of himself, each with apparently very different internal emotional lives, it’s hard not to be conflicted about him.
Guts differentiates between human Griffith and Femto, and Guts does not hate human Griffith. We never ever not once see Guts direct an iota of rage towards Griffith as a human. Not even during the Eclipse, after he sacrificed everyone.
Very consistently, every time Guts thinks about human Griffith it’s with regret, sadness, a sense of loss. He regretfully thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow like a million times, and never expresses anger about how Griffith sacrificed everyone and turned into an evil demon a year later. He thinks about Griffith among the dead Hawks during his run through memory lane, right after the Eclipse, and cries. Griffith is the most prominent shining light Schierke sees in his subconscious. Griffith is a part of the “campfire from those days” that still burns in his chest, and prevents him from being fully consumed by hate. etc etc.
He thinks about demonic-looking Femto when he’s feeling rage and hate, never human Griffith.
And I’m going to suggest that there are three main, related reasons that Guts feels emotional conflict in regards to NeoGriffith.
One is that it’s another change. Guts doesn’t know what exactly to expect from this third version of Griffith, who looks human again rather than demonic. He knows that he’s not “his” Griffith, because Skull Knight told him the fifth Godhand would incarnate, because he flew away from the Tower of Conviction on Zodd, and because the brand bleeds around him, but there’s a reason Guts rather desperately searches for a hint that NeoGriffith has regrets or feels remorse. Deep down he’s hoping that he’s closer to human Griffith than to Femto, basically, or that more of human Griffith is in there and reachable, or however you want to phrase it.
He lets Rickert hold him back from attacking until NeoGriffith directly says he’s free from his emotions, and then doesn’t actually try to strike until NGriff reiterates that sentiment with “I’ll not betray my dream. That is all.”
If NeoGriffith had feelings, if he felt regret, if he was no longer a malevolent demon, then Femto could be considered an anomaly that would carry sole blame for the Eclipse rape. Like, when we’re talking magical transformations that affect your mind as well as your body, the concept of blame is kind of nebulous. If NeoGriffith basically had all of human Griffith’s emotions and was horrified by his actions as Femto, and wanted to regain his relationship with Guts, then tbqh Guts would probably be able to go “oh well it wasn’t really you anyway.”
Yk, kinda like a Berserk fan who doesn’t consider Guts to be responsible for “the beast of darkness” assaulting Casca, but with the handy addition of a literal transformation. You can argue fictional moral philosophy wrt the morality of magically transforming into a monster and back again lol, but I definitely think Guts would seize the opportunity to write Femto off.
So, to split hairs, it’s less about potentially forgiving him, and more about potentially not holding him responsible. But yk, unfortunately for Guts NGriff turns out to be an apparently emotionless asshole who still won’t give him the time of day and says straight up that he regrets nothing, so that’s not an option for him.
The second reason is that, well, he looks like the dude that Guts felt such ridiculously intense feelings for that he rearranged his entire life and abandoned the people he considered his family just to feel like he was worthy of being his friend.
It’s a whole lot easier to feel rage against an aspect of someone you’re p much in love with when they look like a bona fide monster, rather than exactly like the person you love. You’ll even notice that, except in moments that emphasize the potential Guts has of following in his footsteps, Griffith’s face tends to be obscured or completely nonexistent when Guts thinks about Femto.
And the third reason is that he was already very emotionally conflicted over Femto. Femto raping Casca did not make him retroactively hate human Griffith, but his love for the man Griffith once was absolutely complicates his feelings with regards to Femto.
We see this in the way becoming a rage-fueled monster is framed as a temptation because he still wants to be his friend and equal, as per Griffith’s Promrose speech.
It’s also there in how Guts blatantly wants his attention and regard after everything.
He “threw away” Griffith’s love, so if he can’t have that then he wants Femto’s hate. He wants to be seen and acknowledged, even as a threat, so when Femto says that Guts doesn’t even register to him as an enemy, it pisses him off so much it gives him the strength to climb a flight of stairs with like half his bones broken and potentially-fatal pain in his brand, and swing his giant sword at him.
And we see it when he still thinks of him as a shining light in the darkness, despite everything.
Basically, on some emotional, irrational level, he still wants this:
Like, to reiterate, imo Guts’ emotional conflict isn’t about whether he can forgive Femto/NeoGriffith. It’s about the fact that Femto and NeoGriffith are both aspects of a dude that Guts had incredibly intense feelings for. They are distinct from Griffith but also inseparable from him, and that’s really, really hard to reconcile emotionally.
Hence, eg, a bunch of this maudlin shit:
Idk basically no I don’t think Guts is going to forgive NeoGriffith, but I do think that he is still very conflicted about him. He wants to want to kill him lol, but just as much, he wants to be seen by him, he wants his attention, he wants his love, he wants to be his equal, and he also wants to completely move on and just forget all his painfully fucked up and conflicting feelings towards him.
And I guess time will tell whether he achieves any of that.
i think berserk is walking that “revenge will destroy you” route and im not against a kind of emotional catharsis here but that would ideally be between guts and griffith and like that kind of reconciliation (given thats the angle were taking here) would leave an awful taste in my mouth bc of the eclipse rape lol.
tbh this is why i hope berserk isn’t so much going for a ‘revenge is bad and futile’ thing as it’s going for a ‘guts getting revenge in this particular case is bad and futile because it’s not his right to get revenge for the eclipse and also he wants revenge for the wrong reasons, ie bc it’s an easy outlet for his very complex feelings, but casca’s the hawk representative who never abandoned the band and also the person who suffered most so she’s the one who should get revenge.’
kind of suggested in part here at least:
and yea youre right about the
railroading thing ughhgh that really gets me (im a broken record but it
reminds me of vriska and like that shit gets me). it feels pretty hallow
when you have to acknowledge this in the context of the whole story
especially bc griffiths helplessness to the waters of fate and destiny
isnt emphasized as overtly tragic as it really is. which is a valid
storytelling choice ic it just, again, gets me.
also femto is the consequence of guts actions and its clearly framed that way idk what people get out of insisting otherwise.
yeah i feel you, griffith’s narrative is so sad to me, but a lot of what’s tragic about it isn’t in your face.
and yeah it’s like, you can say guts didn’t deserve to experience the eclipse, which is obviously true bc v few people deserve that shit, and def not for making a mistake based on low self esteem lol, but narratively it’s the consequence of his actions bc berserk is a very dark story. guts is the main character who actively made a choice which set all the tragedy dominos falling. it’s even ironically fitting – his choice to “abandon” the hawks and griffith resulted in losing everyone permanently.
like i think ppl equate saying the eclipse/femto/griffith’s breakdown/etc is a consequence of guts’ actions to saying either a) guts deserved to suffer and/or b) if this happened in real life it would be right to blame guts for everything lol, neither of which are statements that necessarily follow the first one, and are clearly untrue. but fiction operates by different rules than reality.
Eventually I’m going to actually sit down and rly suss out the light/dark stuff in Berserk, but for now I’m just gonna say:
in the context of Guts’ feelings towards Griffith, light is the companionship he lost, and the longing for it, and therefore I’m calling Guts’ desire to kill Femto/Griffith his own way of trying to carve out his heart.
ooh these are some good visuals
how long will i have to creep in darkness… until him? but femto, depicted at peak inhuman here, is just more fucking darkness.
because this is still guts scrabbling for whatever’s left of the “dazzling” griffith, the griffith who shone and chased away the darkness of loneliness. like i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again, but his revenge quest isn’t (solely) about revenge, it’s about missing griffith and desperately wanting that connection again. the rage is a convenient reason to chase him that’s more justifiable to himself than “I still want him to look at me.”
the visual metaphor of light and dark, companionship and isolation, and how constant it’s been in guts and griffith’s relationship in particular is just so fucking good
true answer: miura is a misogynist hack who doesn’t really gaf about casca, and needed to get rid of her for a while because he hadn’t invented her yet while writing the black swordsman arc, and is less than concerned about whether guts even comes across as someone who genuinely cares for her.
meta answer:
whyever Miura decided to go that route, Guts’ actions after the Eclipse seem like a pretty strong indication that he wasn’t as angry on behalf of Casca as he was about Griffith transforming into a monster and destroying everything he values. Casca became a symbol of everything he lost – the good old days with the Hawks and Griffith – rather than seeing her as a person in her own right.
And to take that a step further, remember, Guts’ pre-Eclipse revelation was that he broke Griffith’s heart when he left, and therefore he already had what he tried attaining by leaving. The Eclipse wipes that away. Whatever Griffith has become does not (apparently) love or value Guts, and is not Guts’ equal or friend.
and this fucks Guts up
Femto raping Casca was proof that he has fundamentally changed into a monster who looks down on Guts, and Guts does drastic things when someone he loves looks down on him, thanks to his giant collection of daddy issues. Like leaving the woman he supposedly cares for in a cave and going on a self-destructive monster hunting spree.
Yeah I think his heart was in the right place, it seems like he genuinely just wanted what was best for everyone even if his methods were a little… underhanded and dishonest. Like towards the end eg, he probably thought Griffith would be better off with him and his thieves than with Guts and Casca as well as vice versa (and if Guts and Casca stayed together while taking care of Griffith he might’ve even been right, bc lbr that would’ve been a shitshow lol.) He’s likeable, and fun, and he has some great moments, like telling Guts he’s sure he’ll find what he’s looking for with the Hawks. Ngl his death scene always makes me cry lol, I do def like him overall, in part because he makes mistakes too.
Also I wonder if there isn’t a subtle indication from Miura that Judeau and Casca should’ve gotten together instead of Guts and Casca, and it’s its own little sub-tragedy based on stupid self-esteem issues that they didn’t. The way during the Eclipse Judeau does his best to save her and defends her with his own life while Guts is up on the hand still trying to “save” Griffith lol feels kind of starkly telling. I don’t ship them myself, I like their friendship and I kind of wish Judeau hadn’t had a crush the whole time lol, but it fits into the whole missed opportunity vibe of the Golden Age.
It is kind of a shame that the Golden Age side characters got way less backstory and development than the current RPG group, but the current group has so much more time. Like 200+ chapters vs 70. I did love the little enriching hints we got about the Hawks though, like Judeau feeling inadequate as a jack of all trades, the hints that Corkus is bitter about his own lost dreams. I’d say ‘etc’ but actually that’s about it really. Wish we got more on Pippin too.
Holy moly, what have we even been doing for the last 200+ chapters?? As much as I love the rpg group, nothing beats the original Hawks for me.
I definitely think that the Golden Age was all about people missing what was right in front of them, and losing their chances, or screwing them up on purpose. I mean, it can’t just be Guts and Griffith in this crapsack world that do it.
You mentioned how during the eclipse Guts was focusing of Griffith while Judeau was focused on Casca. Got me thinking about how his final acts were to be a literal shield over her body, and how he fell from her arm as he died. I don’t have the scans, but it reminded me of how Guts and Casca always compare themselves to swords. A sword and shield go mighty well together.
Lmao right? It really puts it into perspective when you realize the Golden Age was less than 100 chapters and we’re on 354 now.
Yeah that really sums up the Golden Age in a nutshell lol. And Judeau’s thoughts at the end do include, “I missed my chance to say it,” which fits.
tbh good call with the sword/shield imagery. Like yeah he does literally use himself as a human shield against that one weird apostle, and then Casca leaps up and kills it with her sword. I could def see that being purposeful. Also like… Judeau is Casca’s last real human interaction with someone before she’s driven insane. I’d love to see that acknowledged when she wakes up tbh.
You found the image I was talking about! I already put it on the post itself, but the way he fell off her arm reminds me of how shields are worn on the arm and get dropped when they’re broken!
This chapter was pure badassery on so many levels. I really hate that basically every female character is subjected to assault tho. All of them. (Sadly, I guess it’s not so different from the world we live in.)
On a GriffGuts note, I wonder if the reason Guts focuses so much on casca’s assault is because it drives home for him what Griffith has become. Griffith being his singular focus and all.
Whereas in the last chapter that got released, Casca’s memories encapsulate the whole Eclipse.
Yeah it’s genuinely fantastic, badass and touching and emotional and then it ends… like that
tbh ia. It’s like the way Guts wasn’t angry at Griffith, just sad and regretful, even while all his friends were dying and he was being attacked by a hoard of monsters, up until the rape scene. In a way it makes sense for Guts to focus on that since it’s like, the source of his violent rage that keeps him going and keeps him wanting to kill Griffith/Femto, as opposed to the rest of the Eclipse which is probably more a source of guilt (”was I the one who drove you…?”)
the beast of darkness pretty much suggests that this is why Guts was keeping Casca with him, basically so he could brood. (As did Miura in one interview :/)
Idk I wish it wasn’t so utterly manpain-y, with Guts being so focused on something that didn’t even happen to him, to the detriment of the person it actually did happen to, just so he can stay angry. You’d think his missing arm would be enough of a reminder. But it is what it is, and at least it’s not really portrayed in a positive light I guess.
Ye, the manpain is rlly intense. Muira basically fridged her and Farnesca is my only solace. And the hope that she gets badass again and bitchslaps N.Griffith and Guts tbh.
Personally the way I read it is that Guts put Griffith above acts like that, and what he did to Casca is a display of how corrupted Femto is compared to HIS Griffith. Guts would have gladly given an arm for Griffith under any circumstances, but to see him attack Casca was unthinkable from original Griffith in Guts’ mind.
I definitely don’t agree with the fact that it happened in the narrative, and even less with how she was treated as a character afterwards. (I feel like I’d be more ok with her insanity if the assault had been left out.) But considering I don’t buy the idea that Guts and Casca were “meant to be together”, my only conclusion in terms of Guts’ character is that it demonstrated how far the Godhand had perverted the man he loved. I’m really crossing my fingers that the upcoming chapters don’t focus too much on that part of her narrative.
yeah pretty much agreed on all counts.
While Guts accepted that Griffith made the sacrifice and even seemed to understand to an extent, raping Casca was like a harsh dividing line, and I’m sure that was the whole point from a writing perspective. Griffith saved her from rape, Femto destroys her through it, contrasts, yadda yadda yadda.
tbh it’s very telling that while Guts’ feelings towards Femto/NeoGriff are “tainted” by his love for human Griffith – eg still wanting his attention, still can’t stand to be looked down on by him, forgets his urge to kill when NGriff sheds the evil exoskeleton, acts like he got dumped when NGriff flies away on Zodd, etc – his feelings towards human Griffith haven’t changed. He doesn’t think back on him and hate him, he only feels longing/regret/loneliness/guilt/love/friendship/etc when he thinks of him.
Like it really does seem to show that Guts hates Femto/NGriff because he’s not his Griffith. When he reminds him of his Griffith, ie, when NeoGriff shows up, he suddenly finds it a lot harder to hate him.
Guts echoes NeoGriffith’s “nothing has changed. This is the man I am.”
Has Guts come this far, letting go of his “obsession” with Griffith, by letting himself buy Griffith’s own hype?
Like I’m not sure about this but I don’t remember any moments where Guts reminisces about human Griffith after this:
Is there an underpinning of Guts letting himself forget and downplay how much Griffith loved him, in order to let go of his fruitless obsession?
Guts’ obsession with killing Griffith has ultimately been about wanting his attention, which Femto/NGriff has consistently refused to give him, at least overtly. (lbr the fact that he goes to see guts to test his capacity to feel, and the constant eye contact and needling taunting as femto belies the shit out of that)
Like to lay this out real quick, “you of all people,” is Griffith asserting that he was always a monster, and Guts knew it. Part of the reason Griffith was devastated when Guts left is because he saw it as a rejection of him, based on everything he hates about himself. He let Guts in to see those things he hates, and he thinks Guts left him because of it.
Of course we know that Guts left entirely because he loved and respected Griffith. He “shone before [him] as beautiful, noble, and larger than life.”
The last 30ish chapters before the Eclipse revolve around Guts slowly realizing that he already had Griffith’s love and respect, and therefore leaving was a mistake. Even he knew that Griffith ended up in that dungeon because of him.
Guts knew Griffith loved him.
But does he still know it, after being “deserted” by him? After NeoGriffith’s assertion that “it seems I am free,” “nothing has changed,” “this is the man I am,” “you of all people,”?
And if he’s let himself forget, what happens if Griffith finally does start paying attention to him again?
in 30 years when berserk is finally over ppl are gonna go ‘omg can you believe that the creepy demon thing that we saw all the way back in chapter one turned out to be the key to everything all along and guts and casca’s child, wow miura is a genius, he really thought everything through blah blah blah blah’
and i’m still gonna be like, the creepy demon feus was 500x better when it was just an abstract symbol of guts’ potential to lose himself to revenge, miura played himself.
lol i didn’t even predict the fetus showing up in casca’s mind, idk.
i think it’s still possible that casca’s going to wake up and lose it? what with the whole thing about shoving her metaphorical heart in her metaphorical chest while it’s covered in metaphorical thorns. actually i’m pretty stoked about that because farnese had her line about wanting to help casca overcome her darkness the same way casca helped her, so either we’re going to get some good farnese and casca interaction or that’s going to turn out to be a pipe dream and casca’s going to do something dark, and either way i’m super intrigued.
whatever guts does would depend on what casca does, i figure. i’m thinking they’re not getting back together immediately, if at all. worst case scenario that i could easily see happening is that miura teases a reconciliation for most of the rest of the manga and i have to live with that sword of damocles hanging over my head indefinitely.
so like, if casca is chill and recovers with farnese’s help, the plot has to get going somehow. maybe we end guts’ narrative on a high note, farnese helping casca recover and guts having achieved a goal without ruining everything for once, return to griffith’s in a flash forward, and he’s about to attack elfhelm logically because it’s the last remaining threat to him but actually because he’s bored and misses guts. honestly i would mostly hate this scenario for many reasons, like guts’ narrative being passive and boring and ngriff having a more unambiguously villainous role, like it would just feel shallow thematically imo, but i could maybe see it happening. I’ve been mostly bored by Guts’ narrative for like 200 chapters now so it wouldn’t be out of place lol.
or something else entirely could kick start the plot. maybe the flower king encourages guts to go fight griffith and we start getting into skellig moral ambiguity. maybe magic deus ex machina happens. maybe casca learns of a way she can use magic to siphon her stupid kid out of griffith and that’s the new objective lol. I was gonna suggest that maybe guts takes off on his own for revenge spurred on by some unforseen event, but the fact that he’s on an island makes that unlikely I guess.
god tho i still think that the neatest and most efficient way to kick start things into gear, fulfill a lot of foreshadowy promises, re-motivate guts into doing something, and shake things up in an interesting way is for casca to use the behelit. this is the hill i’m going to die on, at least until it becomes impossible. and yk what, casca’s last remaining and most important piece of herself, her heart, being the kid could be solid set up for sacrificing it. “Someone so close to you it’s almost like they’re a part of you,” and “bury your human heart,” after all.
I mean the way we revisited the Eclipse and Casca’s trauma, ie, we didn’t, kinda makes me less inclined to think Miura’s going to do anything with it/make it a real motivation, but, yk. thorns and whatnot. ~i want to believe~
i just want something dark and permanent with real consequences to happen, guts’ story has been progressively lighter and happier for over 200 chapters by now, come on.
lol sorry anon this got kind of long and meandering, hopefully it answers your questions though.
I guess I think that Guts isn’t really fully self-aware about the fact that he’s still trying to be Griffith’s equal. It’s not like a real goal for him the way it was when he left the Hawks, it’s just that he can’t help but crave Griffith’s attention. He needs Griffith to see and acknowledge him as someone who matters to him.
It’s why Femto’s dismissal back in the Black Swordsman arc was what spurred him to finally stand and walk up to him despite like a million broken bones, it’s why he refused to heed much sounder advice like stay and take care of the Hawks that are left, and insisted on his attention-getting revenge campaign instead, and it’s why NeoGriffith ditching him makes him do this:
Because becoming Griffith’s “equal” was only a means to an end in the first place – what Guts really wanted was to be Griffith’s friend, or, put in Guts’ own terms:
He wants to be Griffith’s number one priority. At the most genuine point of their relationship, when Griffith admitted he had no rational reason for risking his life for Guts, Guts like basically found personal fulfillment. That scene on the rooftop where Guts contemplates it and decides that this means his home (at least for now bc Guts sucks at committment) is with the Hawks, is probably the happiest moment of Guts’ life.
And when Griffith became an evil demon this core desire of Guts’ didn’t go away, I guess, Guts just started expressing it through attention-getting monster killing and wanting to personally murder Femto, to force him to look at him and value him, if not as a loved one then as an enemy.
Also, to address that last bit, I think it’s very telling that Guts doesn’t hate Griffith. It wasn’t sacrificing all his friends that made Guts’ love turn to rage and hate, it was Femto spitefully raping Casca, which is something Guts knows his Griffith wouldn’t’ve done. While Femto was born out of the darkness of Griffith, something Guts probably at least has some understanding of, he’s not the same as Griffith. He tells that to Rickert too on the Hill of Swords “That’s not the Griffith you know anymore.”
And I think a huge part of the reason he doesn’t hate or blame Griffith for making the sacrifice is because he blames himself for breaking Griffith’s heart and ruining his life.
Like Guts’ narrative from coming back after a year to this moment revolves around his slow realization that leaving was a huge fucking mistake lol. And he finally figured it out right before the Eclipse, so when he thinks of Griffith afterwards he’s associated with guilt and sadness and regret and love, rather than bitterness or hate or resentment.
Like I guess Guts’ feelings are kind of contradictory but in a way that makes sense to me. The situation is complicated af and while Guts is consumed by hate, that doesn’t conveniently erase his love. Separating Femto from Griffith is probably part of how he reconciles that, which is also why when NeoGriffith shows up looking like the old Griffith it was particularly confusing and painful for Guts to handle, and why he “forgot” he wanted to kill him lol.
And both Guts’ hate and his love lead to wanting Femto/Griffith’s attention, it just changes how he goes about trying to accomplish that.
Idk if this is a prediction or wishful thinking lol, but if I had to lay down a bet I think she’s going to wake up, have all the Eclipse related betrayal and despair and trauma hit her, and use the behelit, then go for revenge herself. I’ve been theorizing this for a while and tbh I haven’t come up with anything better yet so I’m still going with it.
My hopes for her getting a happy ending away from Guts are essentially zero, especially since reading in an interview that Miura only had her survive the Eclipse so Guts wouldn’t be able to fully move on.
And I’m assuming that Skull Knight’s warnings are going to come to something other than Casca being prickly for a while before hooking back up with Guts or w/e, then getting killed to make him want revenge again. Dramatic shudder.
So what I really want is for her to finally, finally react to what happened to her, and for that reaction to be epic as fuck.
I also think it’s plausible because:
there’ve been a lot of ominous shots of the behelit recently
flora specifically suggested guts might be carrying it for someone else
guts revenge quest was bad for him partially because it wasn’t his right to avenge the hawks after abandoning them, but if anyone earned some vengeance it’s casca
griffith instinctively acted to save casca once, giving him a huge weakness against her
“What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” Just sounds so delightfully ominous and suggests Casca actively doing something Guts wouldn’t like.
guts’ revenge quest is played out imo, time for something new. also seeing casca decide to go full monster in her rage would probably fuck him up and wake up the beast of darkness, so it would still motivate him to do something
honestly there’s some great stuff with morality and apostles just waiting to be explored and seeing a beloved character turn into one would be really interesting
Casca’s strong, badass, and her anger manifests in violent lashing out making her a perfect candidate to take over the revenge stuff.
I think Guts hasn’t really given up on the idea of revenge yet – he was still fantasizing about going back after Griffith while on the boat – but it would be pretty anticlimatic if Casca just stuck around in Elfhelm to recover while Guts went “ok side quest over, back to the main quest now,” so I’m sure there’s going to be something more to it.
And I like the idea of Casca taking over the revenge quest and Guts maybe re-evaluating himself, his motives, etc, while fucked up once again because things went south and he did something with mostly good intentions and everything got all fucked up anyway.
Like tbh I think that the conflict as it’s set up now, ie revenge = bad, helping Casca = good, is much, much too simplistic for a story like Berserk. It’s boring lol, whether it ends up tragic and Guts backslides back into revenge, whether he continues doing the “right” thing and chooses Casca over it, it’s still black and white. In the Golden Age there were no easy right or wrong options – eg Guts thought he was doing the right thing by leaving, turned out to be a huge mistake that fucked everything up, and I really liked that. I think the current arc has the potential to be similar which would be great imo.
Guts isn’t helping Casca solely out of the goodness of his heart, he’s doing it because he wants the old Casca back despite misgivings and warnings that he might be going about it the wrong way – and he’s doing it to distract himself from revenge, and also from the fact that he’s not so gung-ho about revenge now that Griffith looks human again. Imo. It doesn’t have to be as simple as revenge = bad, magical therapy = good, and looking closely at Guts’ motivations makes me wonder and hope that, like the Golden Age, a seemingly positive choice could have negative consequences, and the secret actual right choice is dealing with your many issues, Guts, instead of running off for a dream, or revenge, or to “force” someone’s sanity back.
@metalbutter that’s the going assumption but i have an extremely unlikely pipe dream that maybe she could sacrifice moonlight boy
it
would feel more symbolic of losing whatever romantic family potential
w/ guts there theoretically was, whereas sacrificing farnese just feels
like the only possible choice available and therefore not significant
enough on a narrative scale, since Guts can’t be sacrificed twice. plus
there’s this sequence of panels way back when:
i mean that’s kind of ominous right?
plus apostles sacrifice some weird shit sometimes, like eggman sacrificing “the world.” a ghost kid doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch after that.
“the only woman guts ever loved” as if guts has ever come within breathing room of any other woman since the only one he knows personally is on account of her being his coworker and thus forced to share space with his smelly b*tch ass….
lmao true
also luv that w/ het ships ppl can declare shit like this with utter conviction despite guts never speaking or thinking of casca in terms of love, and despite the writer saying that casca and guts hooked up for extra eclipse drama and casca’s only around now so guts can keep being bitter.
but anything gay? clearly fake and just reaching
so it’s been stated that casca didn’t die literally to fuel guts angst (which, let’s leave aside how disgusting THAT is for a second) and bitterness, which leads me to believe that basically
without casca there as a very heavy reminder
guts would have 100% just forgiven griffith pretty much asap after seeing him again? ha
lmao right?
I mean yeah if Casca died with the rest of the Band during the Eclipse then sure Guts absolutely 100% would forgive Griffith/Femto immediately because it’s pretty clear that he never blamed him for sacrificing everyone in the first place lol. He was sad, sure, but he wasn’t angry about Griffith choosing to make the sacrifice. If anything he’d’ve blamed himself. But if say Casca died during the Conviction Arc, should we assume Guts would’ve gone ‘ok w/e fuck it idc anymore’ and moved on?
Actually yk what considering his “forgot my urge to kill” moment and how sad he was about NeoGriff ditching him it’s actually not that hard of a sell.
But damn either way I wish Miura would do something with Casca’s character other than continue making her an accessory to Guts’ desire for revenge.
Browsing through the rebirth chapters and it just leaps out at me how utterly sexualized Griffith is, especially in comparison to Casca, who is (at least by Miura’s standards) totally desexualized.
Guts’ internal conflict is essentially desire vs responsibility, ie revenge vs escorting Casca to Elfhelm, ie Griffith vs Casca, and the visual depiction of that conflict is straight up, extremely loud and clear, naked sexy Griffith vs Casca all childlike in a shapeless cloak
yk what I was partly wrong here and over simplifying things
it’s not that Guts’ desire for revenge is sexualized through Griffith, it’s that Griffith’s sexualization is actually at odds with Guts’ desire to kill him. You can’t rly ignore “the instant I saw him… I’d forgotten my urge to kill.”
Revenge and sexual desire aren’t rly equated yet. Guts wants to kill faceless masked bird boy with great prejudice
he does not want to kill sexy naked Griffith.
Now that he’s actually reachable I’m having second thoughts oh no what the fuck.
So when the hound says he’s longing for Griffith and tells him to give him a heap of raw iron, what’s actually going on is less sexualization of revenge, and more… revengalization of sex, yk?
Sexual desire and violent stabby revenge are being equated by the hound to encourage Guts to pursue Griffith. Guts wants to stick something in him all right, and he should still want revenge, so it’s best if that something is a literal sword. As opposed to his desire for revenge becoming sexualized, the inherent sexualization of Guts’ desire for Griffith is what the hound seizes on and twists to lead Guts back to revenge.
Anyway basically Griffith’s desirability is still hardcore contrasted to Casca’s lack thereof, but honestly I think it’s less a metaphor for wanting revenge vs being stuck babysitting and more plain old straightforward gay subtext which is then utilized to give an added layer of complexity to Guts’ desire for revenge (and desire to desire revenge.)
ik this comes across as fake jokey analysis and/or giving the subtext too much weight so I can reach super hard, but tbh idk how to read this part without it. i mean you could just say that Guts fantasizing about Griffith’s pretty hair and ass and forgetting his urge to kill and whining about being stuck with Casca and Griffith abandoning him and the hound’s many innuendos are all unrelated or accidental but
l b r
i love these moments because they all seem inspiring and badass but they all have those ominous undertones – guts’ rage stemming from fear that he is just like the ghosts who want revenge, the shot of the behelit, guts’ inability to let go of the prospect of revenge, and the way his “war declaration” puts him a step closer to being griffith’s equal.
it’s guts repeatedly refusing to acknowledge how very thin the line that divides him from ghosts and monsters and evil gods is imo
Browsing through the rebirth chapters and it just leaps out at me how utterly sexualized Griffith is, especially in comparison to Casca, who is (at least by Miura’s standards) totally desexualized.
Guts’ internal conflict is essentially desire vs responsibility, ie revenge vs escorting Casca to Elfhelm, ie Griffith vs Casca, and the visual depiction of that conflict is straight up, extremely loud and clear, naked sexy Griffith vs Casca all childlike in a shapeless cloak
Like to a rather extreme degree Guts is seeing Casca as someone who needs to be taken care of, at this point, and fairly reluctantly at that. She is a responsibility, not a reward.
Contrast that to Griffith. Guts sees Griffith as an object of desire. From his sexy rebirth to Guts thinking about how he wants to pursue him to stick a sword in him to pleading for acknowledgement, Griffith is the individual Guts wants. Casca is who he kind of ends up stuck with.
And let’s return to the best page of the manga to really illustrate this dichotemy between the way Guts views Griffith and Casca right now:
Casca is a child here, directly mirroring Erika, and Griffith is absurdly beautiful and desireable.
We can also compare sexy naked Griffith above to:
Which comes right after Guts accidentally sees her tit and averts his eyes.
“he/you used to be” – Guts imagines Casca in full armour leading a charge, and imagines Griffith Like That.
Casca reminds Guts of all those days with the Hawks, Griffith reminds Guts of Griffith.
When Casca is sexualized, that sexualization manifests as a desire to
rape and kill her to be closer to and then pursue Griffith. It’s both
depicted as a very bad thing and as his desire for Griffith fighting
back, essentially. (”She’s a sacrifice so you can continue longing for
Griffith.” “If you just do this you’ll get closer and closer to
Griffith.”)
When Guts is being responsible, he’s thinking of Casca as a charge, a child-like person he has to take care of, while Guts’ temptation to pursue Griffith is sexualized, both through Casca and directly with how Griffith is depicted.
lol so this response is going to be kind of long because you made me want to talk about her story role and speculate a bit lol, so ty for sending this.
I think there’s a difference between having whatever Casca does when she gets her mind back further the relationship between Guts and Griffith, and having Casca function as solely a plot device for the sake of the Guts Griffith story.
By which I mean secondary characters should serve the central protagonist’s story, but they should do that while also having their own satisfying arcs that serve their own characters as well. So a well-written secondary character would have her own arc, her own issues, her own stuff to work through and her own reason and way of developing, and that could still shed light on the protagonist as a parallel, or foil, or simply by weaving their stories together and playing them off each other.
When Casca was an active character during the Golden Age, there were a lot of problems I had with her writing, but she did have her own story. It was a story about being obsessed with first one man and then another, and how much it sucks to be a woman surrounded by attempted rapists, and having emotional breakdowns, etc, so like, not a great story, but she had her own issues, she made mistakes based on those issues, she changed based on her experiences.
Eg when she and Guts slept together they were both using the other as a substitute for Griffith, so at least it wasn’t just Guts using Casca, they were using each other. (And I don’t mean using in a cruel way, just in a there’s-other-stuff-going-on-for-both-of-them-than-just-wanting-each-other kind of way.) That scene didn’t only further Guts’ internal story, it also furthered Casca’s. Ofc Guts’ story was furthered by working thru trauma and starting to recognize past mistakes while Casca’s was furthered by switching which dude she’s obsessed with, so like, still a shitty story for her, but c’est la berserk.
So yeah I don’t think her writing was that great during the Golden Age, but it cleared the bare minimum bar of giving her her own motivation and character arc at least, even though her own story was pretty weak compared her more blatant, main function of serving the relationship between Guts and Griffith.
Then after the Eclipse she became a complete plot device with absolutely no story of her own, only existing for Guts to play off of and project onto.
So I guess what I think is most likely to happen is that when Casca gets her mind back, she’s going to have her own motivations and goals again. She’s going to do something active, based on what she wants. But whatever it is she does is also going to further Guts and Griffith’s story, and lbr it’s still going to revolve around her relationships with the men. So hopefully she won’t be so much just a plot device, and her own choices, goals, actions, etc might even be stronger and more central to the plot than they were during the Golden Age, but Guts is still the protagonist so Casca’s story is sitll going to further his story and his relationship with Griffith.
My guess, based on where she was when she was traumatized to insanity, and where the story has gone since then, and where I think (hope lbr) the story goes, is that she’ll come back and be similar to where Guts was right after the Eclipse. In the last 200 or so chapters Guts grew, he worked at refocusing on his own emotional growth rather than revenge, he made friends, he chilled out, he’s in a much better place mentally than he was during the Black Swordsman arc.
But the story is still about the dark places trauma and desire for revenge take you. I think it would be interesting to shift the revenge theme to Casca. It would kick the plot into gear and make things happen because Casca would have a goal, this way we could bring Guts and Griffith’s narratives back together without having Guts’ development backslide into revenge obsession again, and it would make Casca an interesting foil to Guts – if she’s at the place he managed to work past, she’d be like a reflection of himself at his worst. Now Casca would be able to drive the plot, her goals would be the ones furthering the story, and Guts’ narrative would shift in focus from his own goals (revenge, fixing Casca) to reacting to Casca’s actions.
She would still serve the main story about Guts and Griffith by being the catalyst that brings them back together, by being a dark mirror to Guts, quite possibly by embodying the dark sexual undertone to revenge in a more blatant way than Guts did (bc lbr she’s always been the one to illuminate Guts’ desires by virtue of being a woman and making them hetero), and maybe by forcing Guts into making a choice between helping her and trying to stop her (either for her own sake or because he’s still ambivalent about killing Griffith or maybe both). But now she’d be serving the story by working towards her own goals based on her own experiences and her character, rather than by being a passive mindless object for Guts to interact with.
“What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” The fact that NeoGriffith instinctively saving her demonstrates a very strong disadvantage against her. The fact that the main characters all get to kill their own rapists/attempted rapists/abusers/etc. The way Guts decided he didn’t really have the right to avenge his comrades after abandoning the Band but you know who didn’t abandon the Band? The way revenge in Berserk isn’t always a bad thing, and it could be interesting to explore how it’s bad for Guts because he was basically using it as a form of self harm, but maybe for Casca it’s earned. The behelit which, if Casca is the one to use it, would open the door for more parallels between her and Griffith for Guts to play off of.
So I guess my overall answer to your question is that yeah, I think she’s still going to exist to further Guts’ story and relationship to Griffith, since that’s still the axel on which Berserk turns, but hopefully she’ll at least get to have some agency and motivation of her own while doing it, and if we’re really lucky her own internal story might be more important to the plot now than it was during the Golden Age.
But of course there’s always a horrifying chance that she’ll wake up and just be Guts’ love interest/narrative reward for moving beyond revenge, continuing to exist purely as an accessory to Guts rather than as herself, while something else moves the plot forward, but yk, prayer circle that that doesn’t happen. And like others have speculated with dread, there’s even a chance that she’ll join Griffith and make Guts return to rage and revenge in the worst possible way. I think it’s a tiny chance, like I really don’t expect that to happen, but you never know
(also the whole revenge speculation is just my preference bc i want casca to have the chance to get angry about what happened to her, and it seems plausible, but there are probably other routes for her story to go that would bring back her agency and have her affect the plot in satisfying ways.)
you're the only one 