#berserk 3read

[bisexualmikisayaka]

one of the funniest guts panels of all time actually

[bisexualmikisayaka]

can you imagine being the snail with legs apostle and then seeing someone like grunbeld at the eclipse. i would actually kill myself and no behelit would be stopping me

[bisexualmikisayaka]

and like. it’s not like anyone comes to me for meta or any of that this truly is just me and maybe 5 consistent followers but i feel like i Have To Have A Stance On These Things As A Berserk Poster so:

- as much as i like gutsca, i’m certainly not married to it. i posted a little bit about the difficulties i have reconciling the beast of darkness scene with their relationship and like. on the whole i think much like many of the other heterosexual ships written by men who can’t write women i really like the potential it has more than the canon it does. i’ve expressed my strong desire for the alternate universe berserk where casca is still... obviously traumatized but is cognizant and is in possession of all her faculties trying to navigate the world after the eclipse and what a relationship with guts, also traumatized, would look like there. going back to the in-universe content i think they are quite interesting in the sense that they really only have one to two moments of being a “couple” before everything goes to shit, and the rest of their relationship is kind of based off of what could have been rather than what was. guts cares about casca, it’s undeniable, but a lot of what drives him is also guilt and rage at everything that happened during the eclipse. the casca he wants back was a casca he only barely got to know - the thoughts of the future that they shared were driven entirely by hope, and not in experience because of how quickly everything bad happened after that. i don’t want to call it a sense of obligation towards restoring her mental capacities, but it kind of feels like that. i can’t get people who think the story is about their love conquering all, because i don’t know if you can call what they have “love” in that sense. it’s more complicated than that, because berserk is a complicated manga! 

and then on casca’s end, i’ve also posted about my irritation with her lack of interiority even in scenes focusing on her - the most exploration of her life during the years where she’d regressed was through farnese and schierke, not through her own view. and now that’s she’s up and actively dealing with what happened, it seemed like we were getting a step towards casca development, but now she just thinks about the eclipse for two seconds and then passes out. awesome. i just have no idea if miura was actually going to give her that internal development we spent so long seeing with guts, and i have even less of an idea of what it’s going to look like under mori and studio gaga. i almost feel like guts here, lol - i miss the casca we knew before this happened and i wish she wasn’t getting nerfed at every second. i still have hope, especially with the events of 372, but i can’t imagine that being trapped in a castle with griffith and a bunch of apostles is going to be good for her. guess we’ll just have to wait and see, but god i really hope we can actually get some sort of progress on her end. 

- i am a moonlight boy gutsca baby truther though. sorry. that’s their kid. i don’t need for them to be permanently reunited with him to have what i would describe as a “happy ending” - in fact, i don’t see a way moonlight boy makes it out “alive,” because like it or not he is a part of griffith and that seems kind of impossible to separate. now the griffith dual identity thing is very interesting - like, what it means for him to have this form every month and what that indicates, because he is someone who changes forms on a symbolic and literal level pretty frequently, so what does that make moon baby represent for him? but i digress. my feelings on guts and casca as parents are... also complicated, as i really kind of hate the “warrior woman has a strong maternal streak because She Is A Woman And Woman Love Baby” trope but a) i will take anything. ANYTHING. that expands casca’s character especially in the newer chapters and b) casca’s relationship to her presentation of herself is explicitly stated to have been out of necessity rather than any real desire. she is strong, she runs with the boys, but she also didn’t always want that (see her golden era comments about wearing a dress and her body, especially during sex with guts ((and i know, she’s not saying these things, it’s miura writing her to say them, but i’m sticking with an in-text interpretation of this because if i actually got into casca’s relationship to femininity i’d need a whole new post. i’ve talked about her a lot here already!!))). i’d prefer a different way of her showing her caring side - ideally it’d be bonding with farnese and schierke, but i’ll live. it’s not the most offensive writing decision related to her. guts i honestly like being a dad, be it adoptive or biological, because it works with the parts of his character that are already present. him learning to be a good father is breaking the cycle that gambino put him in, whether he’s conscious of it or not, but it’s also not something i need from him. it’s just fun to see. 

- speaking of griffith and relationships i generally engage with griffguts on a.. thematic level, i guess? there’s like this very visceral hatred that a lot of fanboys have for griffith in particular (which often pairs with homophobic-to-homoerotic-sliding-scale jokes, go figure) that is just not present in my engagement of his appearances in berserk. i think he’s a phenomenal character but i also think it’s bullshit to call what he does as femto separate from the character of griffith. yes, he was under horrific, life-shattering duress when he made the decision to become part of the godhand and you could argue that they were manipulating him into making that choice. he still did all that shit, though. i maintain what i said in one of my recent posts about his creation of falconia - the moment he needs to use the power he obtained through that sacrifice, it’s telling that he reverts back to his femto appearance. separate from the godhand he may currently be, but when he needs to draw upon the power he received from them through that sacrifice, he has no qualms about doing so. i think it’s fair to see him in distinct stages - rickert even presents this dichotomy when he rejects griffith by telling him his leader isn’t the hawk of light - but to me he’s not. a different person, he’s just in different stages of his character. yes, he becomes inhuman, and through that he literally becomes a different being, but it’s all progressions of griffith through what was being set up in the GE and the black swordsman prologue. we knew he would do anything to get a kingdom. we knew the behelit would come back to him somehow. this progression was laid out for us from the start; we just watched him move through it. he’s still griffith, even as femto.

- fuck, what was i talking about. oh yeah, griffguts. i definitely feel like i come to appreciate their early relationship more and more with each reread, but it’s definitely more like. a site of observation and analysis for me rather than something i would say i actively “ship.” outside of like My Ideal Version Of Guts And Casca That I Think About Sometimes as well as my own private jokes about serpguts and the occasional farnesca moment i don’t really ship much in the series because... making berserk about shipping would be insane. anyways they’re obviously the primary relationship dynamic in the series and it’s really fascinating to watch how they relate to one another and then change drastically, but still maintain some sort of connection (mostly on guts’ end. on griffith’s, it’s a little more complicated, especially in the newer chapters under the newer direction... but why else would he kidnap casca?). but i do believe that there was something romantic going on between him and guts in the golden age (i mean. there is literally no other way to interpret griffith going crazy after guts wins the fight and leaves him, and guts’ own reasons for initiating that are... also pretty un-heterosexual!), but that’s just one level of their relationship. there’s a lot more to it, both back then and now, and that’s why i think looking at griffguts as just a traditional “ship” in the fandom sense does it a lot of disservice - again, complicated manga means complicated relationships! much more interesting to me to see the ways their journeys intersect and then diverge, but always come back to one another in the end. 

- anyways that’s that; these opinions were also all written at 1 am and are subject to change! berserk is a text i am constantly formulating and re-formulating my opinions on, so who knows. maybe i’ll revisit this post in another year or so with totally different perspectives on these things 

[bisexualmikisayaka]

just fucking beyond belief. watching his art style develop over the course of the manga is phenomenal 

[bisexualmikisayaka]

PANELS THAT MAKE YOU CRAZY INSANE 💯💯

[bisexualmikisayaka]

it really is so 🥴🥴🥴 knowing what an eclipse does rereading this part about king gaiseric’s downfall... the comparisons to griffith as a great leader, but knowing also about the emblematic helm that ultimately becomes part of their inhuman bodies... the godsent four “angels” swooping down to tear down his kingdom... the bodies of people sacrificed in an eclipse literally being the foundation of the deepest structure in the midland kingdom just like the band of the hawk will serve as the “foundation” for falconia through griffith sacrificing them in order to obtain power... oughghgohrgihroighrogih

[bisexualmikisayaka]

it is also so interesting to see these early iterations of guts and femto!griffith - guts is so much... smaller than he is in the rest of the manga. he’s tall, sure, but he’s not built like a brick shithouse the way he gets later. muscular, but slim. in contrast, griffith’s silhouette is much wider and defined (the cape’s shoulder plates help here, but they’re not doing all the heavy lifting), and has musculature/veining that no real human would be capable of producing. he’s a thicker, more exaggerated version of the human body - utterly unlike the griffith we’ll come to know, or the griffith he’ll turn himself into after the merging of the realms. and of course guts bulks up into a human tree over the course of the manga, making this reversal a really interesting one, especially because we know that griffith is still more powerful both physically and like. magically? than guts is

[bisexualmikisayaka]

this is like the manga equivalent of the nights beat switch if the nights beats switch was tinged with equal parts cosmic and body horror

[bisexualmikisayaka]

i do have to say though as much as i love guts and casca like. i’m not going to pretend their relationship is a perfect one and i’m also Very aware of what guts does to casca post-eclipse. i guess you could be like “he was under the influence of the beast! it wasn’t him!” but that comes too close to the “it wasn’t griffith it was femto!” line of thinking for me. stepping outside of the line of canon, i think it was an incredibly shitty writing choice that compromises their genuine care for one another. there are ways to make their relationship difficult without resorting to “the semi-metaphorical evil monster in me encouraged me to assault my girlfriend and i gave in” - two deeply traumatized people trying to be with one another after the worst experience of their lives is already pretty good plot fuel! and i legitimately hope that it’s brought up at some point when casca is recovered enough to talk about her experiences. it won’t be, but like... idk. i largely ignore discussing it because i don’t see it as an in-character decision for guts, but I’m Aware, Even If The Narrative Really Isn’t. 

[bisexualmikisayaka]

i got them ocd and depression berserk midichlorians errrr barbytes sorry

[bisexualmikisayaka]

anyways i love the scenes where serpico and guts are just like. chatting with each other. riffing a little bit. guys being dudes!

[bisexualmikisayaka]

MY PEOPLE

[bisexualmikisayaka]

GET HIS ASS RICKERT

[bisexualmikisayaka]

GUTS MINI FLASHBACK ARC AHHHHH the chitch scenes ALWAYS make me tear up a little bit!!! just such a beautiful and painful microcosm of the story!!!

[bisexualmikisayaka]

hey pal, that’s what i’m saying

[bisexualmikisayaka]

AGHHHHHH the ganishka flashback sequence is so gorgeous it’s so underrated but so beautifully done!! and i LOVE that griffith turns back into his femto form for this part because it just makes sense - when he returned to the human realm he adopted like. an ethereal form of his griffith visage because it’s what would make humans trust him but he can’t do anything he’s been doing without the power of femto. it’s the culmination of everything that he sacrificed and destroyed to gain this identity and he cannot do it as the man he once was, he has to do it as the being that he became atop the lives he ruined in order to bring order to the lands. also this panel is bonkers it’s always lived in my brain rent free since i first read the manga but i mean just look at it