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.
