#theme: parallels

[bthump]

Hey, it's been a while since I read Berserk

So today I was roaming some old Bersek forums and found out a few new chapters have come out.

So apparently a certain part of the fandom are upset because the new "writers" are disrespecting Guts and Miura by showing Griffith smiling besides Casca in Guts' imagination. It's been a very very long tine since I read Berserk and it made me wonder, if Miura also had moments like this showing Guts remembering golden age arc Griffith

Sorry I accidently sent an unfinished ask into your ask box.

So My question was that, is there any time "after the golden age arc" where Miura has shown Griffith smiling in Gut's memories similar to the latest chapter?

Some people were mad about it and they thought Guts shouldn't be putting Casca and Griffith on par with each other and be reminded of them smiling next to each other, etc

lmao why am I not surprised that people are whining about that and calling it disrespectful.

Anyway the answer is absolutely yes, Guts has remembered Griffith fondly post-Eclipse before.

There's this classic page from 130:

Cropped to avoid being censored by tumblr, but it's the "the campfire from those days still burns in my chest" page. Griffith's not smiling, his back is turned, but he's pretty essential to the imagery here, with his cloak wrapped around Guts and Casca.

It's also worth noting that his regret over leaving Griffith (describing it as throwing away something irreplaceable without even realizing he'd been holding it in his hand) is what directly inspires him to rescue Casca as he's debating whether or not to bother in this chapter.

There's this memory in chapter 90, directly after the Eclipse, which does show Griffith smiling as he looks back at Guts on a battlefield (taking huge visual prominence over Casca, incidentally):

and makes Guts cry extra hard to remember.

Schierke seeing lights in the darkness of Guts' mind, fragments of Guts' memories that ground him in his humanity, in chapter 228, which include Griffith on a battlefield, naked and smiling after the waterfight, and at the second duel:

There are some memories of Casca as well here, but Griffith's are again, more prominent, being the first and having more, while Casca is included in a Hawk ensemble panel:

Those are all the happy visual memories I can recall off the top of my head, though there may be more that I don't remember atm. There are also a few more regretful ones of like, Griffith kneeling in the snow, eg in chapter 130, or the page where Guts mopes about NeoGriffith deserting him and mentally compares it to when he left Griffith in the snow in chapter 182:

But while imo the context still demonstrates his love for human Griffith, it's not quite the same kind of memory as what you're asking about.

But then there's also moments like Guts forgetting his urge to kill when he first sees NeoGriffith, describing him as "as if he'd been stolen from the past, the way he used to be," in chapter 177:

Which directly conveys Guts' positive feelings for pre-demon Griffith.

And there's the Beast of Darkness in chapter 187 telling Guts that Casca is only precious because through her he can keep feeling the pain Griffith caused, and directly telling him that he's still ultimately longing for Griffith, in very romantically charged language.

(And the Beast of Darkness is a part of Guts and Guts speaking to it is functionally Guts debating with himself and interrogating his own motivations. So there's absolutely truth to what the Beast of Darkness is saying.

Relatedly, in chapter 290 the Beast of Darkness also describes Griffith as Guts' "true light" in contrast to the "warm lights" which are how it describes Guts' current companions, including Casca. I have a post on that here, if you're interested in some analysis of the implications there.)

All that said, I don't think there's a page where Griffith and Casca are both shown like, smiling at Guts the way they're shown in the most recent chapter, but that's mainly because Guts usually thinks about them separately, and GA Griffith actually has more instances of being remembered than GA Casca does, as far as I can recall. (I think it's also because it's kinda visually generic lol and Miura tends to be more specific and interesting than that.)

So yeah, suffice to say that I disagree with the takes on those forums, and to me that moment in the new chapter felt like a return to form rather than an anomaly. It's textual canon that Guts remembers human Griffith with love and fondness and regret and that he misses him, and it makes perfect sense for Guts to remember him smiling while he's having a breakdown about his feelings.

Thanks for the ask!

[kudokurobafreakarchive]

try not to miss me too hard / i'll leave my number on the kitchen table / i'm not going too far / i'll leave my hair clip on your windowsill sine - jack stauber (feat. gabby)

aoyama gosho's collection of short stories: the wandering red butterfly | the ten planets in the night sky

[fuckyeahbatgirls]

Secret Origins 1986 - 1990 ✦ Secret Origins 80 Page Giant

[pnnzzlr]

And Bellamy Blake? Come on.

[bthump]

new chapter: https://mangadex(.)org/chapter/8ceadc31-e41e-4038-8aef-d002aab344a5/1

Thank you for the heads up!

Not much happening lol, but I see more parallels to Griffith in the dungeon and I'm loving that, as well as the prospect of getting a real glimpse into Guts' psyche. I was hoping that would be the point of this dungeon thing, and it looks like it is, so yay.

And I looooooved these two pages in immediate succession:

Like first it's nice to see some acknowledgement that Guts' breakdown is not just about his sword/failed revenge attempt lol, his deeper feelings are still longing, and certainly not just for Casca, but Griffith as well. Confirmation that he's not just reaching out to Casca here, but to both of them.

I've always felt that Griffith and Casca are paralleled a lot in Guts' perspective, in both being changed versions of themselves while Guts desperately misses their original selves. The quest to restore Casca's mind is like... substitution is maybe not the right word, because he does care about Casca for her own sake, but like, he's so focused on wanting the old Casca back in part because he can't get the old Griffith back. He's sublimating his longing for Griffith through Casca.

They're shown as equivalent here, and I don't mind that lol because any parallels between Casca and Griffith just make Guts' feelings for Griffith gayer, but I still do think Guts' feelings for Griffith are the most narratively significant feelings. Like, Guts swings his sword in frustration when Casca is still out of reach after getting her mind back, while he has a full breakdown when Griffith is still out of reach. We'll see how it all shakes out eventually though I guess. If they are fully treated as equivalent desires it wouldn't be the worst thing either, I can put up with a lot of het for griffguts style homoeroticism lol.

And a bit of a reach now, but Zodd's hand vs Guts' hand is a nice visual here. Guts is futilely reaching for Griffith and Casca who are in Zodd's monstrous hand. Could function as a subtle bit of foreshadowing that Guts' solution of choice will be to become a monster.

[bthump]

Have someone pointed this out, yet?👁️👁️

Yeah, on the way to your lowest, i guess...

They could fit like puzzles...

worthless 👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️

Sorry I didn't answer this for like a month, but it only just appeared in my inbox, backdated to May? No idea why that could be, might be a tumblr issue?

But yeah I love that potential parallel! I think there are a few you can draw between Guts right now mid-breakdown and Griffith at his lowest points, and I really hope it leads somewhere good.

[bthump]

Whatre ur thoughts on the Spring Flowers of Distant Days (329-330)? Imo theyre a nice return to the heart of the story which was always psychological more than Fight Big Monster With Big Sword Evil Spirits Begone ectetc touching in themes of protecting "precious things", struggle/survival, regret, deceit, and gratitude. I'm sure u could also read into the whole "equality in relationships" message with Guts trying to return the favor (to the flower and Martino)? Really nice after the seagod/godforsaken Boat Arc.

what's ur opinion on the chitch chapters? i liked that they returned to guts's personal history & psyche after The Boat

lol sorry if these are both you and you thought I'd missed or ignored the first ask. I've been getting a lot of them recently and sometimes the ones that require a more in depth answer take a while for me to answer.

Anyway yeah I agree that this flashback felt like a breath of fresh air after the boat arc especially. It was also really nice to get a reference to Guts' csa trauma after it's felt forgotten about since like, the literal 90s lol. One thing I'd really missed about most of the post-Eclipse story is the sense that Guts is driven by deep-seated fear - not just of his friends getting killed or of losing control, but fear for himself. I don't know if that reference was meant to suggest a return to that aspect of Guts' psychology or was just like, a way of underlining Guts' attitude as a teenager, but it was still good to see.

Loved the Gambino flashbacks too, really gratifying throwback there. (Though it really highlights the art shift in ways I don't enjoy lol, I 100% prefer the early Black Swordsman era art to Fantasia era art.)

It was also quite touching, and had a good sense of aching futility to it. Reminds me a little of the tone of Requiem of the Wind, the chapter shortly before the Eclipse.

So yeah, that's my like, emotional response to it.

On an analytical level, I want to read it as like, essentially an allegory for the cycles of Guts' life, and foreshadowing for the ending of the story. In some ways the allegorical aspect of this sequence is really obvious lol. Like Guts is en route to die building a castle at the start, and Chitch is explicitly an aspect of Guts - his own "weakness," as Guts says, ie probably his humanity, certainly the part of him that longs for companionship and likely the part that wants to help others and do the right thing.

The hill where all of Chitch's "buddies" will find her really feels like a reference to the hill of swords to me, and probably therefore Guts' eventual death. The repeated use of "buddies" to reference both the Hawks and Chitch's flowers seems really deliberate on the translator's part, but also it's just vibes.

The rest can be filled in from there, and some inferences can be made. An older figure who parallels Gambino seems to save Guts from his fate of dying for that castle, but it turns out he was using him for his own ends, to eventually defeat the nobleman who owns that castle.

Seems like Skull Knight, who we know is using Guts for his own ends and wants to destroy Griffith and the Godhand, though I don't think we've seen the betrayal yet (unless providing him with the armour IS the betrayal and we just haven't seen the bad result of that yet.)

I don't think we can get too specific with predicting things based on this allegory (like there will surely be a climactic fight scene, but I don't necessarily think it'll be because Griffith kidnaps Guts and forces him to fight to the death yk) but I think the broad thematic strokes are here and many aspects are already being foreshadowed.

Chitch overextends herself because she gets too caught up in one thing and loses sight of the consequences, which is how Godo once described Guts.

This is likely referencing Guts relying on the Berserk armour, which saps out his humanity.

Chitch's flower ending up crushed could foreshadow Guts' death, or Guts becoming a monster through either the armour or the behelit. Or both - Guts becomes a monster, but maybe manages to die with his humanity intact, or salvages his humanity in death, rejoining the Hawks and maybe even Griffith. He is, after all, framed as the most important of the friends Guts would put his life on the line for. "For him... for them."

Or maybe he doesn't, maybe he dies (or lives) a monster and his od can only "become one" with other monsters in the afterlife. It's ambiguous whether Chitch does join the other flowers, after all.

I also love this page where Chitch describes the cycle of night and day in a way that epitomizes the cycle Guts is caught in of experiencing the potential for happiness and companionship but never fully trusting it, trying to keep it at a distance, even resenting it, because he feels like it can't last thanks to what's happened in his past. The Eclipse obviously, but maybe even the way his time with his first mercenary band ended.

Loneliness and isolation has always been depicted as darkness, and companionship has always been depicted as light, so this is very in keeping with that imagery.

So yeah, I feel like there's a lot to chew on in these chapters thematically. They kinda sum up a lot of Berserk's themes and how Guts' character intersects with them in a neat little self-contained parable.

All that and it's a satisfying throwback to early Berserk. Hard not to love this sequence imo.

Thanks for the ask!

[bthump]

Why do Donovan and Guts have the same eye deformation? I've seen your essay on the similarity between Vargas and Guts, but Donovan has the same thing going on where one of his eyes is closed.

It's not quite the same - one of Donovan's eyes is stuck in a squint rather than being fully closed - but yeah I think it's likely that it's a deliberate similarity to highlight the parallel between Donovan and Guts.

Gambino also gets a shot like this to highlight his monstrousness when he attempts to kill Guts, with only one eye visible, for the same reason imo.

I don't think there's an essay's worth of support for this parallel between Donovan and Guts because I think it's a pretty straightforward cycle of violence kinda thing.

Donovan is a monster who traumatized Guts and in doing so fucked him up and set him on the path to becoming a monster himself. Guts himself draws this parallel between them after he kills Adonis and has the concussed and sexually-suggestive nightmare of becoming Zodd - who is depicted very similarly visually to the way Donovan is depicted in his earlier nightmare.

It's like tying the monsters Guts fights to his childhood trauma, and Guts' own potential to become a monster, which he feels strongly after accidentally killing Adonis.

And I mean in these nightmares they both have 2 eyes, but yk, I don't think the eye thing is the super necessary smoking gun that reveals this parallel or anything, more like a minor additional detail you can tie into it if you want.

Thanks for the ask!