Tag: theme: speculation

Oh yeah, Griffith being dead will effectively kill his potential redemption, pun maybe intended, and I’ll be really sad and disappointed.

I feel like it’s a pretty sure bet that at least his feelings for Guts survived the various transitions, but yeah I’m still waiting to find out how much of a relation NeoGriffith has to human Griffith. I don’t really think he’ll be technically redeemed either way, especially since his narrative seems kind of outside conventional morality what with Berserk’s take on God and religion and Griffith being the saviour of humanity etc etc, but the more of human Griffith, his feelings and character etc that remains, the better and more cathartic an emotional climax to the Guts and Griffith story is going to be, so yeah. I need that.

Like if he’s totally inhuman and all human Griffith’s feelings are dead and buried and it’s just fetus feelings left, the emotional catharsis can only be one-sided on Guts’ side, and meh. I’m seriously invested in NeoGriffith revealing some remaining emotional depth, and if he does it’s going to be amazing.

But lines like “my blood should have been frozen” and “this is the crystalization of your last tear shed” seem to hint at Griffith’s lingering emotions with the potential to be reawoken imo, so I’m assuming eventually that’ll get some good payoff.

I have a theory that Guts will use the Behelit to sacrifice Griffith himself in their final battle. I mean Casca is already sacrificed, but Guts’ second most important person is STILL Griffith. If he did, he will turn into complete Beast of Darkness who has basically *nothing* hold him back from his pray Griff. (We don’t know what the ending of Berserk would be like, but Gruff(Femto) vs Guts is something would definitely happen). What do you think? :/

man I’m pretty into this as a concept. Like I personally think Griffith is still his most important person, and it feels appropriately cyclical to me. Guts’ vengeful obsession with Griffith finally turning him into a monster and equalizing them. (well it wouldn’t really be equals if guts just became an apostle, but symbolically it could work? or hell maybe the elfhelm timeskip is 200 some years and he comes back just in time for the next eclipse lol)

I don’t rly know how likely it is, since it seems like way more of a downer ending than Miura might like based on what he’s said in at least one interview. Especially since Guts would have to fall into despair first which probably means bye bye Guts’ rpg group. Plus it’s maybe a little too neat and on the nose? but on a v personal level I’d enjoy the hell out of Guts sacrificing NeoGriff.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

gamerweeb:

bthump:

Forgot to mention this when it comes to Griffith + Casca parallels (Guts leaves for a year/two years to pursue a dumb dream, abandoning someone who needs him, then he comes back, realizes he may have fucked up, and rescues them):

Im glad im not alone on this. Its so weird that casca was guts’s last chance to make the right choice but he still messed up in some way.

Ooh yk when you put it like that, what I find striking is that he did make the right choice, pre-Eclipse. He realized he shouldn’t’ve left and decided to stay with Griffith despite getting told multiple times to leave by Casca and Judeau.

It was Casca telling him to leave that fucked Griffith up lol, not Guts wanting to leave or being reluctant to stay.

Whereas with Casca he makes the same mistake again, and directly compares leaving Casca alone in a cave to leaving Griffith, but when he gets Casca back he’s his own worst enemy when it comes to sticking to his resolution to stay with her.

First he plans to leave her in the cave again anyway

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and when it caves in he knows he’s not just gonna abandon her in a field somewhere but he’s reluctant af to postpone his revenge quest for her

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and then when he decides taking her to Elfhelm is the thing to do he does it still fully intending to return to his revenge quest eventually. (Plus, yk, the fucked up Beast of Darkness shit that happens before he gathers some extra babysitters.)

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I don’t really have a point other than Guts taking one step forward with Griffith and ending up like five steps back when the situation is repeated with Casca.

And I mean yeah a lot of shit went down in the interim and he has a pretty good reason to be obsessed with revenge, but the comparison between leaving Griffith and leaving Casca is made over and over by both Guts and the narrative so when you sit down and actually compare them it’s striking that Guts is still like, struggling to rise to the level of caring about someone over his “dream” (fighting stronger and stronger enemies/vengeful rampage) that he’d already reached once with Griffith right before the Eclipse.

I just noticed the parallel with Guts putting his cloak around both of them.

It’s so … quaint.

Also you’re absolutely right. While he sort of makes the decision to stay in both cases. In Griffith’s case it was a final decision he came to after going over his ‘this is where I belong after all’ and consciously admitting to himself that his dream side quest was stupid and unnecessary anyway. And he sticks by that realisation even after Judeau and Casca’s speeches. Casca telling him to leave wasn’t significant because it made Guts’ reconsider his decision, if I remember correctly we aren’t even shown Guts’ face in that panel- it’s significant for Griffith to hear and believe .

If anything Guts had already made the subconscious decision to stay waay before the raiders ran to him.

In the tent/wagon with Griffith he talks about the future once Griffith heals. “ We’ll be able to see that soon enough” he says we.WE.

Whereas with Casca his decision to stay always seems to be in lieu of there either being no other choice or in response to someone else’s prodding. Staying with Casca seems to be a means to an end where he can leave her in a safe and wholesome place and state and move on with a clear mind.

The only time there seems to be a real resolve behind his decision to stay is when he’s directly substituting the situation with already having failed at it with Griffith.

Even his “even if you put something back together piece by piece it may never be the same.” Dialogue ties in with this. He says this after his Griffith fueled Casca endeavor has sort of failed.

And yeah.

After Casca tells him “if you’re Griffith’s friend and equal… you have to. Even if it’s alone… you have to go” we get the “why do I always see these things… after they’re done and gone?” line. It seems p clear to me that that Guts is referring to his realization that he had his “dream” in the palm of his hand and threw it away by leaving to pursue it, ie he broke Griffith’s heart by leaving, though granted it’s not the plainest of statements.

But anyway yeah to me that sounds like Guts is absolutely unwavering in his resolve that he’s going to stay and he thinks leaving in the first place was a great big fuck up.

tbh I do wonder what Guts is thinking will happen when Casca gets her mind back, considering his brooding about the warnings he got. “She went to pieces because she can’t fully cope with it. What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” Like is he hoping she’ll join the trail of revenge with him? Is he planning to just play it by ear – take her with him if she wants to go, leave her in elfhelm if she wants to chill somewhere safe, etc? Cross his fingers and hope she doesn’t do something drastic?

I was kind of wondering if he’s hoping that getting her back the way she was will be enough motivation for him to take Godo’s advice and stay with the “irreplaceable things” instead of going back for revenge, but like I said, even on the ship he was still doing his “when this journey’s over, I’ll [not actually be able to finish this sentence]” thing, so I don’t think there’s much indication of that.

idk i’m just thinking outloud. it all comes back to griffith’s pull being like, the strongest force exerted on him lol, for both good and bad. devote himself to griffith, or leave to become griffith’s equal, or stay with griffith, or ditch casca to chase griffith, or stay with casca while comparing the situation to one with griffith, gritting his teeth, and anticipating being able to chase griffith again.

i wonder if it’s not so much that he’ll overcome the pull of griffith on him as the nature of it will shift again, from revenge to maybe realizing that his desire isn’t actually for revenge, but still to be griffith’s equal. maybe he’ll actually untangle some of his feelings at some point, considering things like “the instant I saw him… I forgot my urge to kill.”

Thank you! I feel like I’m bothering you with all these questions and you’re so nice! Casca getting attacked so many times really is bad writing on Miura’s part :/ She deserves better tbh. If there is any indication that Femto/NeoGriff has a “soul” or smth it’s the fact that he could’ve killed both Guts and Casca during the eclipse but chose not to do so. It could be that he was already “plotting” to use the demon baby for resurrection, but idk if he can predict the future??

Not bothering me at all, I love talking about this stuff! (As may be a little obvious considering how long I ramble on in response to your asks lol.) And yeah, Casca needs to be saved from Berserk tbh.

yk I’ve seen that theory but I think it’s really, really unlikely that Femto let them go because he knew about the demon baby and the whole resurrection thing, unless Miura plans to retcon stuff.

Like first of all his actions during the Eclipse indicated that he fully wanted Guts and Casca dead. He attacked Skull Knight when he showed up to save them, and Guts was so mutilated what with his missing limb etc that without Puck’s healing powder he probably would’ve died anyway.

Then you have Femto nearly killing Guts in the Black Swordsman arc and apparently believing he did when he slammed him against a wall (”it seems i have unintentionally granted your wish, count”). Guts was necessary for the mock Eclipse (two sacrifices needed to pull all the spirit residue together into a malicious destructive force) so if he could predict the future he wouldn’t try to kill him.

I mean granted Miura writes on the fly so i’m sure he wasn’t thinking about details re Griffith’s resurrection that early, but still.

I mean just look at the scene where Femto lets them go:

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Reach followed by Guts closeup followed by … followed by escape followed by Femto awkwardly lowering his hand lol.

Like if it was a Casca closeup I could maybe see an argument that Femto got a message from God telling him to let them go, or something, because of the fetus, but it’s Guts he looks at before hesitating. The dude he does stupid self destructive, impulsive shit for.

Plus the other Godhand didn’t predict this. Void’s a silent wildcard, but I personally think his suggetive silent closeup

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is an indication that he’s seen something like this happen before.

I definitely think Guts and Casca’s survival was fated to happen (lotta weird coincidences that all add up to them facilitating NeoGriffith’s resurrection), but I don’t think Femto is in on the plan.

I think this basically sums up how fate works in Berserk:

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Femto can do whatever he wants and it’s going to make whatever is meant to happen, happen.

So imo Femto let them go for personal (Guts related) reasons.

Same anon, different question. A friend pointed this out to me: everything Femto did negated everything good Griffith did, saving Casca -> raping her, forming band of the hawk -> destroying it etc. He didn’t do anything reprehensible and outright evil after coming back (yet). I don’t really know what that means tbh since it’s really vague, but it paints him morally grey rather than pitch black in my eyes.

Yeah I think Griffith + Femto is morally grey if you combine them into one entity (which… I guess is just saying Griffith is morally grey lol since Femto is his dark side unleashed or w/e). I’m v curious about how NeoGriff fits in. One theory I have is that if Femto is Griffith with all the “good” parts of his humanity stripped away, then maybe NeoGriff has the “evil” parts stripped away too, and all that’s left is like, a heart full of neutrality (and whatever feelings made him call off Zodd and save Casca from rocks), making him the perfect fulfiller of humanity’s desires.

bc you’re right, he hasn’t done anything malicious. He’s been darkly pragmatic in eg sending apostles after Flora, but that’s not really any different than Guts and Griffith assassinating the queen from his point of view.

Ofc NeoGriff could just be Femto in a human suit who’s gotten better at concealing his petty side, who knows?

Also wrt Femto negating Griffith’s good deeds, ia – I think especially the rape is meant to be a v direct contrast to Griffith saving her from attempted rape the first time. The movie even uses the same Casca point of view shot to make the connection painfully clear. Though I don’t necessarily think that’s deliberate on Femto’s part (tho it could be) so much as the narrative drawing a strong contrast between Griffith and Femto. Griffith was Casca’s saviour, Femto then destroyed her, that kind of thing. Femto was a part of Griffith, but always tempered by Griffith’s ideals and morals, so stripping that part of him away is shown by negating his good deeds.

There’s also the way he literally replaces the nobleman who tried to rape Casca – he says, “do you think you’re chosen by God?” to him when he saves her. Now it turns out Femto literally has been chosen by God. Coupled with Berserk’s cynical take on religion, God being the Idea of Evil, etc, you get the sense that divine right isn’t any better or more noble than the class system enabling predators.

But again NeoGriff is all about that divine right and he hasn’t done anything malicious yet so the ultimate message might end up being more complicated than that.

(also i just want to be clear that theorizing about why miura had femto rape casca during the eclipse isn’t me saying i think it was a good writing choice. it makes sense in context of berserk’s themes, but that’s bc casca’s character is defined by rape and rape attempts from beginning to end, which sucks)

How big do you think the timeskip will be after Guts and the others leave Skellig? It’ll probably happen since time flows differently there, but it can’t be too big. Maybe just enough for Falconia to get even bigger or something. Rickert could start a resistance movement? What do you think?

Yeah ia a time skip seems really likely. If I had to guess I’d say maybe 10-15 years?

If it’s like, a century then Guts would come back to Griffith running an empire as an immortal god-king, all the characters we know like Rickert and Charlotte and Silat etc would probably be dead, and I think it would change the tone of the story too much. Like yeah it’s an epic story, but at its core it’s about relatable characters, and if you start kiling those characters off for no reason other than to add to the epic-ness then it throws the balance off.

I could maybe see 50ish years, making Rickert an old wise mentor like Godo lol, and maybe aging Sonia so that she reminds Schierke of Flora? Could be interesting. But overall I’d probably prefer less time, that still seems like too much.

10-15 years gives Griffith some time to start acquiring his Gaiseric-esque empire, it’s enough time for the new fantasy reality of the world to change how things work and function, it’s enough time to Rickert to grow up and do whatever he’s doing up in the mountains with Silat and co (resistance movement sounds good tbh), enough time to make everyone sad (like say if Farnese’s parents died in the interim or something, or Isidro had a family waiting but not anymore), but it’s not so much time that the world Guts returns to is unrecognizable and without familiar touchstones.

Also just to be self indulgent for a sec, several decades is too long for NeoGriff to be chill and serene and doing his thing without Guts despite his unfrozen heart imo. It makes the whole beating heart that he blames on the fetus thing seem irrelevant if he can easily function for that long regardless. But a decade or so sounds like a perfect range of time for NGriff to start out serene, throwing himself into his empire etc and pretending he doesn’t care at all about Guts, only for the cracks to begin showing just as Guts is set to return.

Of course if he is able to put Guts out of his mind for 50 years until he’s standing in front of him, unaged, and then he has an emotional response, I’d still be okay with that. It’s just a little less fun to me.

How do you think that guts’ new party would react if they knew he sexually assaulted casca?

I actually don’t know lol. It’s a tough question because I’m not sure how much Miura thinks we should condemn Guts for it – on one hand he’s getting consequences for his actions in the form of Casca hating him and I don’t think it’s likely that she’ll forgive and forget and everything will go swimmingly. On the other I think we’re supposed to feel like he should get a pat on the back for stopping, and we’re definitely not supposed to hate him for it, we’re probably more meant to empathize with him and his loss of control and his regret, and admire the steps he’s taken to protect her from himself by travelling with people, and his willpower in keeping the hound on a leash.

So I guess ideally I’d like their idealized and infatuated images of Guts to be shattered as they realize that he’s capable of some fucked up shit even without the armour. Farnese could get protective of Casca and take off with her and Serpico and whoever in the party wants to follow, quite possibly all of them, give or take Puck and Isidro. Because she’d definitely choose Casca over Guts and that would be nice to see.

But I think it’s more likely that some of them, like Farnese and Serpico, would maybe get a bit warier of him and he might lose some of his shine in Farnese’s eyes, but overall consider it a past mistake he’s overcome and atoned for, and just another signifier of how much of a struggle it is to be Guts akin to how they feel about how Guts + Berserker armour = trying to murder them all. Yk like it makes Serpico anxious but no one blames him for it even though it’s his own inability to control his rage that leads to the armour taking over without magical hand-holding to save everyone from him.

Idk that’s at my most cynical. Don’t get me wrong I love Guts and his narrative for the most part, I just think aspects of it and the magical fantasy metaphor of the Berserk armour, hound, etc aren’t handled as well as they could be lol.

Anyway it’d probably be something between those two extremes tbf.

Anyway, on Griffith always facing away in Guts’ memories:

Guts left Griffith in the snow in an attempt to become Griffith’s equal. When he came back, by all standards of measurement these two dudes give a fuck about, Guts is by far his superior. Griffith was broken by Guts leaving, then broken by torture, and is dependent physically and emotionally on him.

It’s a very be careful what you wish for thing lol.

However, one side-effect of the Eclipse, not intended by Griffith but intended by the narrative, is it’s a reset button on their stupid power dynamic obsession – Guts has another shot at achieving his dream, ironic as that is.

Guts left, when he came back he discovered in as brutal a way as possible that he left for no reason. The fact that his leaving destroyed Griffith was proof that his attempt to become Griffith’s equal was based on misinformation. However, after the Eclipse, Griffith is a god and now Guts is back at square one.

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This is basically directly stated when Guts thinks of Griffith’s friendship speech while declaring war on him.

So I think part of the reason he usually remembers Griffith with his back turned is basically because he’s in a cycle of pursuing him, first to stand beside him, and now to drag him down to him.

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Which begs 2 questions imo:

1. Can Guts break free of this cycle?
2. Does Guts need to pursue Griffith at all to be his equal, or does the irony of the Golden Age (I left to be your equal but turns out I already was lol whoops) still hold true? ie, how emotionally compromised is NeoGriff?

@mastermistressofdesire

i’m in an attaching whatever shit i think of while looking at something to the post instead of keeping to the tags mood rn so

this has to come full circle at some point, right? this is one of the most important themes of berserk it can’t just be left dangling with no resolution

so there are 2 ways (imo) for it to come full circle – Guts finally becomes Griffith’s equal (either they’re equalized in some way that makes the whole absolute god incarnate thing irrelevant, eg focusing on emotions rather than power, or Guts becomes a god, or Griffith loses godhood)

or the fact that Griffith is now absolute and therefore totally alone and Guts is achieving his new-found goal of not caring anymore gains significance

i’m expecting the latter tbh. bc i mean like… this can’t just never come up again, how unsatisfying would that be? it’s the driving force behind the wedge between Guts and Griff and was replayed when Guts was seeking revenge after the Eclipse, and there’s no conclusion to that thread yet.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

Scrolling thru my blog past this art and suddenly hit by a huge amount of love for Casca. If I could rescue one character from their shitty writing (in anything, not just Berserk) it would be her.

The more I think about it the more appealing the thought of her waking up and absolutely wrecking everything is. Like I know this doesn’t make sense because the same dude is still the writer, but there’s something viscerally satisfying to imagining her getting her mind back, gaining some impressive amount of power (Behelit, elf powerup, whatever), and metaphorically flipping the table and completely changing the trajectory of the plot as a pseudo-meta response to being locked away as a non-entity for 2 decades, and playing support for two dudes before that. I want her to cause something to happen that’s as epic and active and hardcore as her being a childlike waif for so long is passive and shitty and awful.

Idk I guess I’m mad about it so I want to see Casca angry – effectively angry.

Like all this thematic stuff about inner beasts becoming literal beasts ft Griffith and Guts, and the character I most want to see lose themselves to rage is Casca. Even if it’s depicted as a negative I would be fistpumping.

Those years of being locked away in your own head need to count for something.
I’m a little sick of Casca’s romantic ‘feminisation’ arc which took place simultaneously to the Gatsca mini arc.

It’s almost as if, by virtue of realising her feminity and ‘gentleness’ Casca suddenly started getting more positive attention and began to be written as more likeable.

Like as long as she was the head strong commander who called Guts out on his shit and kept everyone in line she was the ‘salty bitch’ and suddenly she’s trembling and blushing and holding onto Guts’ cape and she’s everyone’s ‘waifu’ .

I don’t have a problem with the softness. I have a problem with how this is treated differently in the narrative than how she originally was portrayed. And one is positive and the other was rather unflattering.

omg strong agree

it was like as soon as casca became a love interest she started fretting about whether her muscles weren’t womanly, judeau talks about how she had to give up being a woman (lol jesus) as a mercinary, when she takes the healing powder to guts he also fondly thinks about how she’s “showing a soft side,” and then during the sex scene you have her getting self conscious of her scars and guts having to tell her he thinks she’s womanly enough.

like it’s run of the mill sexist stuff but still so annoying and unnecessary. i wouldn’t even dislike casca being self conscious when sex enters the picture because like, fine, she’s inexperienced, she’s different than most women in that she’s a strong mercinary, i could understand that affecting her self-image, but combined with the running commentary from judeau, plus like how you said, the way she seems to get consistently weaker and clingier and blushier, just doesn’t sit well with me.

(which isn’t to say she doesn’t still have some great moments after getting love interested up, but it’s like she has to be damseled extra hard to compensate.)

plus just in general what I love most about her seems to be more her informed attributes and a few moments of awesomeness (punching a wounded man in the stomach because she doesn’t like him, terrifying corkus, wholly commanding the respect and adoration of the Hawks, being called the 3rd best fighter in the Band who can take on ten strong men at once even if we never get to see that in action, taking command and leading the Hawks when Midland turns on them and at the start of the Eclipse, etc) so when she returns as a full character I’d just, really love to see that badass side in full epic action finally, without being weakened by her period or a drug or exhaustion, or up against an extra powerful enemy Guts needs to save her from, etc etc.

Scrolling thru my blog past this art and suddenly hit by a huge amount of love for Casca. If I could rescue one character from their shitty writing (in anything, not just Berserk) it would be her.

The more I think about it the more appealing the thought of her waking up and absolutely wrecking everything is. Like I know this doesn’t make sense because the same dude is still the writer, but there’s something viscerally satisfying to imagining her getting her mind back, gaining some impressive amount of power (Behelit, elf powerup, whatever), and metaphorically flipping the table and completely changing the trajectory of the plot as a pseudo-meta response to being locked away as a non-entity for 2 decades, and playing support for two dudes before that. I want her to cause something to happen that’s as epic and active and hardcore as her being a childlike waif for so long is passive and shitty and awful.

Idk I guess I’m mad about it so I want to see Casca angry – effectively angry.

Like all this thematic stuff about inner beasts becoming literal beasts ft Griffith and Guts, and the character I most want to see lose themselves to rage is Casca. Even if it’s depicted as a negative I would be fistpumping.

dicks-out-for-griffith:

@bthump

I think you have mentioned a few times how you would like to see people exploring NeoGriffith’s mind in a similar manner to Casca’s. And I would like to add, maybe this is the reason why he is said to dread a witch more than a whole army (or something similar).

The first thing he does after being reborn is to make sure he doesn’t feel any emotions any longer – especially towards Guts. And even if he believes the reason why his heart was bthumping was the demon kid, we already saw him hesitating to harm Guts during the Eclipse – even though he was bereft of any humanity, a physical body and his heart was frozen. Or at least this is how I saw the scene.

Because this is certainty to me:

While this is hesitation:

This scene was even better in the movies.

Anyway, what I was trying to get at – while trying to tell himself he is free, he must have had a reason – doubt – to visit Guts and prove it, which only proved the opposite.

And I think, what if the reason he seems to dread witches is, that he is aware he has a weakness, after all – somewhere deep inside, spot, a place, a feeling or a memory, which once brought back to life might mean his downfall – and only magical beings like them can enter his subconscious and trigger such a change.

And another meta about this so called “Age of Darkness“, which is related to this post – what if actually making him weak again is what would cause it – similar to the Eclipse. Because we all know how he handles, when being hurt and desperate.

I want this so much.

Gr8 point about how he was specifically going after Flora – and you know, the fact that Flora got killed but her protege got away has got to lead to Schierke doing something that Griffith feared Flora would do, right?

And we’ve seen Schierke do a lot of psychic exploration, with Guts and now Casca. So I’m down with this theory.

Plus like, the concept of someone getting inside NeoGriffith’s head and altering him again – unlocking latent emotions properly, or whatever – is so good. Dude’s been through weird magic processes that alter his mind twice now, so third time’s a charm.

Also interesting thought about the Age of Darkness – I’ve been assuming it’s the whole high fantasy thing, but we really don’t know for sure, do we?

Semi-relatedly, I’ve had a thought before that while NeoGriff is the messiah/saviour of humanity/dude who grants humanity’s subconscious desires and has the power to save or damn everyone according to the lost chapter, etc, does that hold completely true if the theory that he’s incomplete (because 2 of his sacrifices escaped) is true?

Like is there a scenario where he goes against what humanity wants deep down because his remaining emotions get the better of him once again? Idk this feels like it would fit well with your (rly cool tbh) idea of a weakened/hurt NeoGriff lashing out irrationally and starting an actual Age of Darkness, so I thought I’d throw it in.

Thanks for tagging me in this!

everytime i try to imagine an ending for berserk i cant come up with anything solid because miura completely subverted the good/evil trope. like you got an antag whos actually the messiah and acting out god and humanitys will/desires while the protag isnt fighting for any greater good but merely for revenge. if guts ends up killing griffith then what the hell happens? does god die too and the wheel of fate get broken? what would exactly constituite a satisfactory ending for this story to you?

Same, this is a real problem for me because I like trying to predict things, but I just can’t with Berserk lol.

I feel like he could swing an ending where somehow the Idea of Evil/Fate in general is like… defeated by humanity, who, thanks to whatever, would now rather struggle in an uncaring universe than blame all their problems on God. But I feel like that’s kind of unlikely because, idk, it just feels a little too big of a metaphysical change and too positive of a take on humanity for Berserk.

Honestly for me if Griffith does something irrational because he (not the damn fetus that’s a red herring as far as I’m concerned) still feels those pesky life-ruining emotions for Guts, and in turn Guts demonstrates his mixed-feelings towards Griffith in a powerful way, I’ll consider myself satisfied. Basically I’m thinking a 3rd duel (assuming Guts’ brand of sacrifice, which removes him a little from fate according to Skull Knight, means he can potentially hurt Griffith) where emotions are at their peak.

I’ve also vaguely considered an ending where Guts lets Griffith stab him, because he has a bad habit of doing that when he’s feeling conflicted about killing someone, or when he’s confronted with something that makes him feel guilty (in this case, the memories of human Griffith and their first two duels). In this scenario Griffith would be shocked because he expected Guts to block or w/e a la that time Casca stabbed him, and maybe have a breakdown beside his corpse.

I have a whole long speculative post here too but I can’t commit myself to one perfect ending lol, there’s so many possibilities. At the end of the day I just want that heavy emotional GutsGriff drama.

strangemonochromes:

Berserk (ベルセルク) // Kentaro Miura

lol i seriously love this

like a traditional narrative would have guts going on his fix casca sidequest, which is overall framed as A Good Thing, succeeding, and then getting a reward at the end in the form of a loving sane gf because he Did Good.

Berserk instead fills it with ominous foreshadowing because yeah Guts is growing as a person and trying to do good, but it’s not that simple. When he first chose Casca over Griffith he was a huge danger to her and he needed companions to mitigate that danger, and she’s still afraid of him. Guts’ motives are also in question – for one it’s suggested that he’s being selfish in trying to fix Casca because he’s not taking her needs into account (”That’s right, she went to pieces because she can’t fully cope with it. What will she do if she does get her sanity back?”), and for another, he was still planning to ditch Casca again right up until Griffith showed up and soundly rejected him, suggesting that part of his motivation for trying to move on from his obsession with Griffith is straight up spite.

Nothing in Berserk is ever simple and pure and uncomplicated. No motive, no goal, no relationship, no emotion.

Guts is overall doing a whole lot better than he was during the Black Swordsman revenge rampage fiasco. He’s made new friends, he’s subdued his inner beast for now, he’s maturing, etc. But the same was true of Guts during the Golden Age. I don’t think anything as bad as the Eclipse is going to go down, but the way Berserk rolls, you don’t get an A for Effort. Guts had a very noble goal when he chose to leave the Hawks, and it was still a mistake.

Guts has learned from his mistakes enough to recognize that friends are more important than stupid dreams and he’s embodying that lesson now, but I suspect there’s a new one waiting around the corner: not just ‘you can’t force back what was lost’ but ‘if you try anyway be prepared for the consequences.’

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dang i totally forgot that the forshadowing was laid out so explicitly like this

kinda rubbing my hands together gleefully rn. “what will she do” not how will she act or what will she think or feel, but what will she do?

(ngl tho this coming right after another showing of the moonlight kid makes me a little concerned that casca’s gonna do something in a rage but he’ll show up and soothe her spirit with maternal feelings or smthn like it keeps chilling guts’ inner beast out. OR maybe she’ll sacrifice it! holy shit i think i just discovered my ideal next volume! yk maybe lead the audience into thinking she’ll sacrifice farnese but surprise, moonlight kid was the soul of her own child and he’s a goner but farnese is gonna live forever. haha yes i just solved the puzzle of how to turn casca into an apostle without losing farny.)

@removing-the-part-that-continues said: I know
Miura has a bad history on the subject, but would even Miura have had Guts
sexually assault her if he meant for them to get back together?

I want to believe. I mean mostly I do believe – Skull Knight’s ominous warning plus Guts’ “even if you force back what was lost it still won’t be the way it was” are a pretty serious one-two punch of foreboding. But idk considering the antagonist’s first act was to rape a beloved character and Miura still writes him as morally ambiguous and not a true villain and has in fact directly said he thinks of him as such, I feel like if the romance doesn’t happen it’ll be because Miura is just not into happy romance lol, and goes a different direction, rather than it being a direct consequence of Guts’ actions.

On the other hand Casca is still scared of him so it’s not like Miura dropped it as a factor, so maybe I’m being too cynical. It’s hard to say when you’re dealing with an author who sometimes writes rape fairly sensitively and with a focus on the victim and how it affects them, and sometimes just goes all-out for nothing but pure shock factor :/

What do you think of the fact guts and casca originally weren’t supposed to be together (and as such casca wasn’t supposed to be important to the story) and miura only did it to make the eclipse more dramatic for guts? Imo it really speaks of the sexist nature of miura’s writing (i know he got better recently but still) and g*tsca.

Strong agree. Like I’ve said a few times that if Casca wakes up and does something really important plot-wise in reaction to her trauma that has to happen at this point in the story it would at least help a little to justify Casca’s 20 year long non-existence, but Miura’s comments make it so clear to me that he had no real long game for her in mind, and it wouldn’t change that fact. Like, like Guts, he shoved her into a cave for two years to keep her out of the way until he needed a damsel in distress and then a handy reason for Guts to try conquering his rage.

She really is like a walking plot device and it seems so obvious that it’s entirely because he didn’t know how to include her as a character in the plot so he just got rid of her character for a while in a really shitty way.

When it comes to G*tsca like… I mean technically I guess I prefer the tentative, two people giving something a shot vibe to say, a planned out epic romance, but the fact that it was just to give Guts more manpain is so, so gross. On the one hand at least there’s a silver lining there in the fact that Miura did not plan G*tsca as a true love happy ending thing from the start, which hopefully makes it less likely to happen, but on the other hand if it does turn into a romance again, then extra ew.

Especially since like, if he’s making it up as he goes along, the idea of Miura writing their “relationship” the way he did throughout the last 3 arcs and then deciding romance is the way to go from there is… horrifying lmao.

But whatever I’m clinging to “your wishes may not be her wishes” like a life raft rn.