Tag: volume 38

also lol @ the implication that rickert looked back and put 2 and 2 together wrt the assassinations, what with calling griffith kind of shady

idk if i like that. on the one hand it makes sense and it’s a good look for rickert, on the other hand the whole point of griffith hiding it was that the hawks wouldn’t know, so if a dumb kid figured it out why were the rest of the hawks so naive

buuuut then again this is after rickert learned that griffith sacrificed his friends so the rose coloured glasses kind of came off. so i could buy the hawks being willfully blind bc they admired griffith so much.

BUT then the question is why did all the nobles who didn’t give a fuck about griffith not notice.

anyway whatever it doesn’t really matter i guess. pluuuuuus this isn’t the official translation anymore so one wonders if ‘shady’ and ‘scheming perfectionist’ might be language choices affected by the fandom’s popular view of griff. tho the meaning is p straightforward even if the wording changes so that prob doesn’t make much difference anyway.

w/e w/e

it’s rly rare that i hear character voices in my head while reading, especially when i’ve never heard them voiced before, but raksas is one of the v few characters that has a distinct voice in my head and i love it

this really is what it boils down to in berserk. all the should i stay or should i go drama for various characters, all the good and bad decisions, etc. tbh i love that about this story. there’s no real right or wrong answers most of the time, it’s all just picking a route and then dealing with the consequences.

this is honestly hilarious tho like, dude. he’s a kid, griffith’s a god, griffith can take care of himself

otoh maybe griffith did send raksas after rickert and locus is cracking stone in a rage upon seeing griffith with charlotte down there. i wouldn’t put it past him.

i love this shit. it’s so blatantly griffith feeling things and hiding them

what kind of things? well it’s hidden from us as well as charlotte and co for a reason so it’s probably not murderous tendencies since we see the results of someone’s (cough locus cough) urge to kill rising very soon. If it’s Griffith’s, there’s not much point in hiding that.

idk but i’m gonna sail on this neogriffith’s self doubt and emotional weakness boat til it either carries me to a good place or capsizes tbqh

Well so far these are probably my favourite pages of the Fantasia arc (+ the slap ofc)

Rickert’s speech as a whole is just breathtaking, Rickert pointing out the difference in the insignias, the present tense of “I am led by the white-winged Griffith” showing he still respects Griffith as he was but considers this guy not to be him, Griffith’s only words are an acknowledgement of that difference – “…so it is” -, the hair over Griffith’s eyes suggesting he is feeling feelings and we just don’t get to know what they are, Rickert’s smile of pride when he talks about the Band he considers himself a part of…

it’s just so good

I really, really wonder what Miura’s gonna do with this. Morality-wise I keep mentally comparing Berserk to Watchmen, as another story where the antagonist achieved world peace.

but the thing about Watchmen is that it seemed way more impartial. Like the point was humanity was doomed either way (hence the Ozymandias reference) because peace couldn’t last, but we’re never given a reason to hate Veidt. I feel like you can take his side without the text judging you for that. Or, well, more like it judges you equally no matter whose side you’re on – of the two opposing teams, Veidt killed a city of people with his pragmatism and didn’t accomplish anything lasting, and Rorschach doomed humanity with his idealism and is also a creepy dick in general.

Whereas in Berserk you have Guts the protag who garners a shitload of sympathy and, I suspect at least from Miura’s point of view (nvm mine), never crosses the line into hateable, and Griffith the antag whose defining act as an antagonist was raping the hero’s girlfriend.

Which is why Miura can talk about how NeoGriffith is morally ambiguous and not really a villain all he wants, and I’d really like to believe him because I enjoy those types of stories, but it rings hollow because the audience is practically forced to hate him with the cheapest tactic in the book right off the bat.

And why I wonder if at the end of the day we are going to get some authorial judgement, quite possibly of the ‘fuck utopias, it’s better and more noble/human to struggle against a malevolent universe than be taken care of by a saviour’ variety. I mean there’s been a definite thread of struggling = worthwhile in and of itself, like, look at Jill’s shitty ending lol.

but on the other hand that does feel like selling Berserk short and I’ve so far generally been pretty impressed on how it usually shows multiple justified perspectives of any issue brought up. so it also seems plausible that we will get something more impartial, and the whole femto rape thing was literally just to piss Guts off because Miura is prioritizing the rage and trauma theme over whatever morally ambiguous philosophical religiousy thing he’s going for. So I as a reader am supposed to take it into consideration in the context of why Guts is mad and disregard it in the context of what kind of antagonist NeoGriffith is.

Anyway as far as I’m concerned the only way to reconcile this is to show that NeoGriffith is just as different from Femto as Femto was from human Griffith. Like, I dig my idea that Femto = Griffith minus positive humanity plus evil, and NeoGriffith = Femto minus negative humanity/evil, meaning all that’s left is power and Griffith’s ambition and whatever else Griffith contained that’s basically neutral, and the bug in the system that makes his heart beat for Guts and act to save Casca. Idk how else you’re gonna sell a story about a rapist literally made of evil being a morally ambiguous saviour of humanity. But it could also be that Miura doesn’t feel he needs to do anything more to sell it bc he’s going for a dark and edgy kind of “morally ambiguous”.

man idk i’m just thinking outloud here, this is just casual unfiltered unstructured speculation thrown at the wall so don’t take it too seriously.

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so did griffith tell locus in advance that rickert might show up and to let him know what the deal is with everything

like yo there’s one guy i invited to the party who knew me pretty well before i became a god so catch him up when he gets here and we’ll see how it goes

the fact that the fated king with divine right who saves the world and builds a peaceful and prosperous paradise is the antagonist is one of those really basic reversals of expectation that just never ceases to tickle me, i love it so much

yay the return of luca

tbh one thing i adore about falconia is how well miura has built up the people there as extremely likeable. Like, most of the apostles we see these days, mule is a cute everyman, I know sonia’s polarizing but she’s sympathetic, charlotte and anna, luca who we already know and like, owen and laban, the leader of the defected kushians, etc.

there’s some tension with locus and rasksas and rickert now, and ofc zodd and grunbeld have both fought guts, and griffith is mysterious but still the antagonist

but at the same time silat and the kushian magician, whatever his name was, were both antagonists too and they’ve joined rickert so yk

love those shifting, dynamic character roles.

so for a hot second i was vaguely wondering whether neogriff has magical rebranding powers, able to raise a city from underground and add hawk statues everywhere

but i guess it’s more like the return of a legendary city now with hawk motif because enough people around here subconsciously want a hawk-y city for their hawk-y saviour. another result of griffith cracking open the world and bringing everyone’s fantasies into reality.

i kinda love that.