#berserk 372

[griff-1th]

Griffith from berserk episode 372

[deripmaver]

Casca in Ch 372 - Fridged again? Or the beginning of a healing arc?

I’ve seen mixed responses to Casca’s current status as a caged little dove in Falconia, with good reason. It took, no exaggeration, two hundred and fifty chapters, and twenty years of real-world time, for her to be revived after the eclipse - and now after barely beginning to scratch the surface of her trauma, she’s seemingly back at square one. 

Despite her current upsetting circumstances, though, I can’t help but feel cautiously optimistic, which seems like a weird thing to say after chapter 372. To me, Casca’s circumstances seemed to mark a fundamental shift in how she interacted with the Berserk world as compared to Elaine. I wanted to present a possibly more optimistic, Casca-centric look at chapter 372 and why I think we don’t need to start despairing just yet (that can come later).

To start off, I do think I need to clarify that I don’t actually have any fundamental issues with the outline of Casca’s arc up to this point, even post-eclipse, so if you do that’s kind of a non-starter for this whole post. I don’t think, without taking into account the details, an arc where a female warrior is raped by one of her closest companions, becomes completely catatonic due to the trauma, and needs to be taken on an odyssey to have her mind restored is an arc that’s fundamentally bad or misogynistic. Do I think Miura always wrote this arc sensitively or well? No, of course not lol, see the beginning of this post for an example of that. 

As a bit of an aside, though, I actually really think Berserk did something unique by having Casca’s rapist be someone she knew and trusted. In reality, the vast majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knew, but that’s not something you see often reflected in fiction.

With Casca in Falconia, kidnapped by Griffith, I go back to the quote Miura made about her recovery. 

I don’t think it would do justice to the extent of her trauma if, after being revived, she went back to kicking ass and being the same girl she was pre-eclipse, and I appreciate that Miura seemed to understand that. I really think that it’s necessary to take time to have Casca process her trauma before having her jump right back into the action, so the question, to me, is if what’s happening right now is in service of that processing. 

To cut right to the chase lol, I actually do think it is.

In contrast to her time as Elaine, the magical hold placed on her is much more tenuous, and it battles with her will and her memory. More filters through from the outside world, the bath reminding her of Farnese and Schierke, and the band of the Falcon reminding her of the Hawks.

(There’s also a gratuitous bath scene because it’s still Berserk lol)

This is not a trauma response as Elaine was, it’s a position she’s being forced into, and the person forcing her into that is the one who broke her mind in the first place, adding to the aspect of her needing to face up to what Griffith did and what he’s still doing. 

Being kept prisoner as she is, her memories of the Hawks, and of her friends, are necessary to keep her grounded - she can’t let time do its work to heal her wounds. 

This chapter also is the first time that Casca is able to think of Guts without going catatonic, which to me shows significant progress. 

I’m also just realizing that this set of panels has Guts walking away from Casca, and honestly I think that deserves its whole section of analysis. I wonder if it’s making her think of Guts walking away after the eclipse, leaving her with Godot, or how even right before her kidnapping Guts heard her scream and attacked Griffith instead of going to her, hm... That’s for another time though. 

Guts and Casca have a huge amount to reconcile of course, considering how Guts assaulted her as well, but I think being able to think of him is a positive step forward with that.

Then, of course, there’s the big moment in chapter 372 where Casca tries to escape. 

You’re seeing her think like a warrior again, she’s outnumbered and completely unarmed, but she uses her long-honed battle intuition to gain advantage and steal a sword. She is ultimately overcome by fear and trauma and is unable to escape, but this is not at all something she could do as Elaine. This chapter represents, to me, incremental progress in her gaining control of her own mind when she’s not being actively hindered by Griffith. Even comparing her here to her last moments in Elfheim, you see her still struggling with the trauma, but also focused on returning to her companions, and using her smarts to try to escape despite significant disadvantages.

While it’s frightening to know that she’s without friends and near Griffith, I’ve said before I think this is necessary for her to confront what Griffith did to her. She kind of doesn’t have any other choice at this point LOL.

That brings me to one of the questions that I had after the chapter, which is why won’t Griffith interact with her? I remember just absolutely SEETHING after the chapter ended because Griffith broke her mind, ignored her afterwards entirely, kidnapped her away from her support system, and now won’t even acknowledge her. It’s like, I wanted to shake the screen and shout you cared about her once, and now you treat her like this? It’s infuriating!!!! Honestly I think a part of me that’s huffing EXTREME copium wants him to be ignoring her because HE can’t face up to what he did, and that Casca reminds him of that in an inescapable way. The alternative is that he really, genuinely doesn’t care about her anymore, which kind of makes me want to scream. 

I have a couple other miscellaneous thoughts after this chapter. The first, it’s interesting how Griffith has kind of forced Casca into his heterosexual nightmare scenario from immediately pre-eclipse (the one that made him want to kill himself LOL). 

It just goes to show that, while I do think Griffith had affection for Casca in the Golden Age, he always saw her as a doll he could place where he wanted, regardless of her feelings. Of course, in the Golden Age, she would have wanted to be with him always regardless of what happened - but now she very much does not, and he’s overriding her autonomy to enforce his will upon her. 

The second thought I had is that I think Casca’s separation from Guts, though the circumstances are very different, somewhat mirrors Guts’ separation from Casca after the eclipse. Guts had his whole edgelord Black Swordsman arc, and at the end of it he realized that returning to Casca and protecting her was actually important to him. Now, Casca has her own version of this separation arc, which I believe will be an arc where she can process her trauma, and at the end of it she’ll get to a point where she can decide if she wants to return to Guts. I’m not entirely convinced that this arc is just another excuse for Guts to rescue Casca - more will be clear in the next few chapters, I think, but right now he’s having his mental breakdown while again Farnese and Schierke are taking control of figuring out where Casca is. Also, it looks like physically they’re going to be heading east, so they’ll be prevented from reaching Casca for a while. My hope is that we’ll get Casca rescuing herself, but of course I don’t know.

It’s weird to say that I want to see Casca having PTSD flashbacks  and trauma responses every chapter but considering everything she’s been through, I kinda think she has to or it’s just not going to feel appropriate 😭 Honestly, while I’m cautiously optimistic about where she’ll go from here, it’s hard to say how well her story is going to be told until it’s over, and that’s not going to happen for a while. It’s definitely frustrating wanting to see Casca heal and having that dragged out longer and longer, after already waiting so long for her mind to be restored. There’s always a delicate balance of wanting to see things done right by your favorite character and not wanting to be disappointed if they aren’t. 

Still, though, I don’t think my optimism is completely unfounded, hence me making this post. Maybe I’ll be shown to be wrong, but if that’s the case, I certainly don’t regret wanting better for Casca, and hoping that we will get the chance to see her process her trauma. My (cautious lol) optimism won’t be the problem, the writing will. 

[shubbzebubs]

Pov: Wyald in the 16th circle of hell after hearing Zodd regrets everything now that Griffith is playing kingdom and that he can't fight cool battles anymore

[n333mo]

the divine femine

[digitalzombie]

Chapter 372 Berserk by Kentaro Miura and Kouji Mori

[b-a-d-w-i-t-c-h]

[griffgutsiscanon]

griffith kidnapped casca because he still secretly has feelings for guts and he doesn't want anyone romantically involved with his man

[junkdyke]

Cover art for Berserk 372

[heirofdragons]

look at him

god i love this beautiful motherfucker

[wolfgangleblanc]

The new Berserk chapter improves a lot on its pace and structure but I still can't get past how sloppy/unrefined the character art style is 😔. As an artist this is a bit frustrating… but glad the story is moving forward nonetheless.

[bisexualmikisayaka]

like... okay, being trapped in several layers of your own dreams is not a trope exclusive to this movie and has actually kind of been around forever, but the casca dream sequence that takes over all of 372 is a little perfect blue-esque, no? like that part where mima keeps waking up after increasingly unreal action sequences? there's also something to look at there with casca's own fractured identity as a result of trauma and the persona that gets created for her in absence of the "true self," shall we say, which isn't quite the same in PB but the themes definitely parallel each other. anyways big unpacking of 372 under the cut because i love a casca mini-arc!

once you get to the dream sequence itself it's quite interesting - casca is totally mute for the first "loop", and dressed up and paraded around in this illusion of a noblewoman's life. here we're going back to two major parts of her character - the first obvious reference is her life as "elaine" and the behavior she exhibited as a result of how extremely her trauma impacted her, i.e. not being able to formulate words anymore. the second is the corridor of dreams, and casca viewing herself as a broken doll, which is pretty heartbreakingly self-explanatory, but it's echoed here in her being moved around by these presumably illusory handmaidens and having no control over her own dress, movements, or life. she is, for all intents and purposes, a doll. the only time we see the true casca before the bath scene is when she cries at seeing the band of the hawk. the handmaids believe that it's because she's scared of the soldiers, which we obviously know is not true lmao. the one possibly good thing about this scenario is that casca, in her own altered state of mind due to whatever the fuck is being done to her, finally has a way to grieve the losses she experienced during the eclipse without relapsing into her trauma because of the memories that grief brings up. also her taking care of kids makes me crazy insane especially because of Everything with griffith and the moonlight boy but i'm glad she got to be happy and nurturing for two whole panels.

then we get the bath. again, here water serves as a vehicle for truth - just as casca's tears represented her knowledge that at some level, she knows what she's experiencing isn't real, being submerged in this water triggers her memories of farnese, schierke, and dannan plus everyone else on elfhelm. side note but i love that it's the girls that she immediately sees, it is so important to me personally that casca gets to have meaningful relationships with other women. anyways here's when demure, voiceless casca completely shatters with her waking up in the chair (beginning the second "loop") and screaming. i would need to reread quite possibly the whole manga to figure out if there's a deeper meaning to the setting that she awakens to so put that on pause for now or if you've got a theory, drop it in the notes!

here, we are introduced to something of a combination of cascas that the readers are intimately familiar with. her outfit in the simple white dress is pretty similar to what she wore for a while as "elaine," and you can tell that she's reacting out of pure instinct in combat situations much like "elaine" did. but even amidst her panic it's still clear that she's operating at the cognitive level of the golden age/restored casca and her confidence in her abilities to incapacitate and get past the guards is one hundred percent normal casca. nonetheless, i don't want to completely gloss over casca's emotions during this scene - she's scared. you could honestly make a case for her being terrified here. she is one hundred percent fighting off the flashbacks she suppressed during the first loop and does not want to be in this combat situation. it's clear that this is a casca who is traumatized by violence - that reflection of the sword in her eyes after she chops off that guy's arm is once again heartbreaking, and honestly probably warrants its own paragraph if not its own post - but ultimately it is a necessity to achieve her goals of escaping and getting back to guts.

and then she falls. this panel is pretty small so it doesn't get a ton of visual (and therefore emotional/narrative) impact, but i think it is really interesting that casca's final waking moment in the second "loop" is on her hands and knees, collapsed, surrounded by soldiers. i think that has the potential to be an incredibly triggering situation for her, when she's already very triggered by the violence she enacted onto someone else, and thus warranting her passing out. interesting to not emphasize that moment, but then we get the third and final "loop," which seems to be what's actually happening to casca. hazy-eyed, she looks at us once, before drifting back off to sleep, clearly artificially induced by irvine. it's difficult to tell if casca actually managed to wake up and attempt escape before being recaptured, but it's certainly a legitimate possibility. i would also not rule out everything being a dream, and irvine's mention of her "flight" could be her internal struggles to break free which he's currently stopped and put her under for good (for now).

breaking away from the girl of all time, briefly, i want to talk about zodd in this scene. he is away from the rest of the apostles, who are all gathered behind griffith, near irvine when he reports. he's not even by griffith, who he's supported throughout this entire endeavor (he was the one who flew him and casca back to falconia!). zodd's alone, arms crossed and with an interesting expression on his face - it honestly seems like he's eavesdropping. i think his expression is ambiguous enough that you can interpret it a number of different ways, but i'm choosing to see it as him experiencing some form of internal conflict. zodd is the only apostle who knew casca before, uh, everything happened. she's never really been of interest to him, but she was there when he first met guts and griffith (iirc, she's the one who starts launching the volley of arrows that enables them to buy some time during that first battle), she's there when he kills wyald, and she was the other survivor of the eclipse when skully spirited her and guts outta there. while his primary focus has always been guts and griffith, it would make sense for zodd to have at least noticed casca always being around. of course he's gonna support griffith in his abduction of casca (for purposes still unknown, probably to piss off guts but nothing's really been confirmed yet as casca seems to have been allowed some degree of privilege and autonomy while she was being mind-controlled but had no interaction with griffith or the apostles whatsoever before breaking free, which is honestly pretty interesting) coz he'll do whatever griffith tells him. but there's something about this situation that seems to have caused tension between him and his group. idk, i wonder if he's gonna bust casca out, or at least play a pivotal role in getting guts back on his feet and ready to go after her again. i guess we'll have to see where 374 brings us because things are certainly getting crazy on the ship in 373!

[sumsortacryptid]

I cannot express the feelings I have when another chapter is released.

Of course I want Berserk to continue, I want to see it to the end.

But every chapter without Miura feels progressively more soulless. And I mean absolutely no harm or critique to anybody on the art team when I say this.

Miura’s last chapter - hell - Miura’s last panel was filled with soul. It was as if he had poured his entire spirit into it. And then, at the turn of the page, it vanished.

Whenever I see a new chapter of Berserk, there’s this deep ache. A twinge of pain. A gaping wound opens again, one that will never fully heal.

Anyways, I’m a bit hesitant to see where the story goes from here. I’m cautiously optimistic at best. I’m sorry for being so negative, I just felt like I really needed to get this off of my chest.

[deripmaver]

my berserk meta from twitter 9

[manga-meow]

[n333mo]

<333

[digitalzombie]

Chapter 372 Berserk by Kentaro Miura and Kouji Mori