Just to be clear, the actor who provided his voice Hirotaka Suzuoki passed away, not the character. Not saying anyone is mixing that up but just in case. Anyway he died of lung cancer on July 2006. RIP. :sad:
The moment Guts was born under a his dead mother strung up on a tree and the moment Griffith got the red behelit the ball was rolling.
Even Zodd commented on that as far as the tides of casuality would fate that Guts and the Band of the Hawk would get pwned if they stayed with Griffith.
My ultimate theory is that the way in which Guts was born had a huge effect on everything, including the Beast of Darkness within him. I think that alone gave him this “outisde of fate” effect on the whole story.
Even now I think Griffith knows that he eventually is going to have to do something about Guts because Guts lays outside of the story. Guts is an unknown variable that could possibly fuck up everything that he planned.
Berserk
Spoiler
Just like Griffith had to kill Flora because she too was outside of the story
Like in most good stories, Giffith really is hard to tell weither he is truely evil, but he is nevertheless the villian of the story. Guts is even harder to tell that he is NOT EVIL (let alone “good”). And this isn’t some Naruto shit either were someone is tortured because of some emotional problem and gives you glary eyes, Guts has really been fucked since day 1 of his life.
Though the latest stuff has been showing his good side mostly…
The rape of Caska was a simple act of revenge.
Femto hurt one of the only things that was dear to Guts. Yes, that was evil. It was an act of revenge.
About, dreams, it’s not “bullshit”. Dreams are one of the most important factors in BERSERK.
Guts was not out of fate’s path until after the Eclipse.
The quote about ants, it was Guts who said that, not Griffith. That is how Guts views bystanders/people.
I could say the same thing, that is how Griffith views people, and he is pursuing his own dreams.
BERSERK’s story and characters, and concept are a lot deeper than other stories out there. That is why I say the concept of “good” and “evil” is very blurred in BERSERK.
2 points that I wanted to bring up to both of you:
Do you guys consider Zoddo evil? If yes, why? If no, why?
I personally do not consider him evil at all, and I think most would agree with me.
However, on the same terms as Griffith and Guts, Zoddo is beyond other normal humans. He is looking for a challenge.
By normal standards, Zoddo would be considered evil; He lived for over 300 years, killed thousands and thousands of people, looking for a challenging fight. He has killed MUCH more people than Griffith. But even with the body count, I don’t believe Zoddo is evil, out of his motives.
Previous story arc with Griffin/New Band of the Hawk vs Kushan army.
You can see here that Griffith is not evil, but he is doing everything possible to gain a country. Sometimes gaining a country is not by force.
Griffith and NBOTH saved Windham castle (I think it is Windham…either way it is a huge castle) and in doing so, Griffith saved thousands of lives. Without Griffith and his Band of the Hawk, everyone would of died.
Now, why did Griffith do this? Not because he cares about the lives of the people inside the castle, but because it is a step towards pursuing his dreams. Griffith will do whatever it takes to obtain his dream.
Well the character was based on a real life Saito, and that saito died a long time ago, so obviously the character saito died a long time ago (I think it was 1950s IIRC). But in short, RK doesn’t go on long enough to watch saito die but he does die eventually.
Griffin is evil, Zodd is evil, I mean, rape, mass killing, total domination, these are evil traits. You can use whtever euphinism you want, but at the end of the day these people are sociopaths.
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Yeah, I saw the point there. It is a hard call in Berserk in terms of Zoddo. We know nothing about Zoddo besides that. He’s more on the terms of as stated, so I wouldn’t get into dissing him anymore on that field. In fact, I’m starting to like him. But rape and country domination through trickery and employment of the very same demons feared by the country you’re trying to rule over? Saving lives still a trick by Griffith and his motives to do so is strictly out of his own ambitions.
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Sonia scares me even more. She even read Silke like Peanuts strips. You want to kick that football, Charlie Brown but I won’t let you.
I wouldnt say Zodd is evil in nature…
He is a warrior… and as far as I can remember, he has only killed other warriors, as far as I can remember, all in battlefields… however, his tendency to ravage those helpless terror-stricken soldiers make him ruthless… you can’t really damn him into an “evil” category just cause he is a soldier with enormous strength/vitality…
Its not like he is going about killing innocent helpless villagers…
However, perhaps, by association he is evil… i.e by helping in furthering a bloody ambition, or by being a loyal (debatable) subordinate of an “evil” character… he is evil…
Still, I see him as more of a warrior than anything else…
and a legendary one at that
Zoddo is more the same as Gutts. Just Zoddo I think doesn’t truly have a choice. He is an apostle.
I tseems that no Apostle has a choice when it comes to Griffith. Even the Kushan emperor
was caving in to Griffith.
- Too much mercy there from Griffith: he should have finished him off during the kneeling. He clearly overpowers the Emperor. I doubt that he’ll even recruit him onto the correct side.
But to become an apostle you must have a behelit (SP?) and then sacrafice something important to you to gain the power of an apostle. At least that was the way it was protrayed in both the case of griffith and the slug king.
In regards to Gatsu being as cold hearted as griffith. I don’t agree.
Situation 1). Gatsu was picked up by the girl and her grandfather and they were killed. They weren’t killed because of Gatsu though. He told them that they’d be better off without him and they wouldn’t give in. When the battle started, he told them to stay back, but they didn’t follow his orders and died/became possessed and tried to kill him. Gatsu did everything that he could to save them short of telling them his whole life story (which they wouldn’t believe anyway). So he at least gave them a quick redead. Also one of the last panels of that arc showed him crying.
Situation 2). A tortured fellow stole something from the slug king and got punished. What was he going to do? Expose everyone in the village to the fact that their king was an apostle during the execution? Had that happened, it’d likely be a repeat of what happened during the Snake apostle arc. Where nearly everyone in the city dies to the apostles wrath. And even though the guy died, when the slug king died too the tortured guy was one of the people to drag him to hell. So he got his revenge, far more so than had he been alive.
Situation 3). Slug kings daughter… come on now. Gatsu saves her life twice. It wasn’t gatsus fault that the godhand replayed what happened when her father first became an apostle and killed his wife/her mother with mentally raped her. Then seeing that her own father was going to kill her just to get his powers back further hurt her. She may have been hard headed about whose fault it was (she’d rather live blindly than with the knowledge she gained), but Gatsu at least gave her a mission in life. A goal… a dream as it were.
Sure Gatsu is a badass, but it isn’t the evil damning entity that Griffith was.
I agree with ShinjiGohan, Guts is not even close to Griffith under it all. Especially if you are up to date with the series you can easily tell Guts is becoming more and more of a good guy, like FF4 Cecil status or something like that.
Gut’s is like the ultimate anti-hero for most of Berserk. Yeah he has a lot of bad traits but it’s more like destiny didn’t shine very well on him. He really isn’t evil more so just jaded from all the crap he has gone through. He is nevertheless taking the right action.
ShinjiGohan: Guts was crying after the slug king’s daughter, not after the girl and her grandfather. Since it was the first real story arc, and the only time Guts has EVER cried, I think Miura was still establishing Guts as a character. That one instance of crying DEFINITELY does not define how Guts is. Guts has shown countless times, especially in the early stages of Band of the Hawk and post-Eclipse, that he can be just as ruthless, if not even more, than Griffith. Yet another good example of Guts killing innocents was when he stabbed that kid through the heart, when Griffith asked him to assassinate the king. Yes, it was an accident, but Guts didn’t show remorse about it at all. He was more like “oh crap I made a mistake”. There are more instances where Guts has royally screwed up innocent people’s lives, but I’m not going to go check for the sake of checking.
However, I do agree that Guts is indeed softening up as a character. It is probably because he has a mentor relationship with Isidro.
I wanted to clarify, after thinking about it more.
I still don’t think Griffith is evil. HOWEVER, I believe he is extremely selfish.
Also, I never stated that Guts was evil.
I stated that Griffith and Guts are more alike than most of you feel.
Both of them have strong dreams and ambition, and both of them were pursuing those dreams full force ahead.
It just turned out that both of the dreams were on conflicting crossroads.
Guts pursued his dreams with raw power, an iron will, and strength. You can see that the lesser members of the BOTH looked up to Guts a lot, and they were really proud of him as their commander. Guts is selfish, like Griffith, but not as selfish as Griffith. Apart from the time where Guts was emotionally hurt by Griffith (“friend as equal”), Guts has only relied on himself his whole life.
Griffith pursued his dreams with his charisma, his style, and his unnatural ability to draw people to him. You can see that by how attracted the members of BOTH are to him. Caska was in love with Griffith. Griffith is extremely selfish. Apart from the time where Griffith was hurt by Guts (when Guts defeated Griffith and walked away) Griffith has only relied on himself his whole life.
Cecil ftw.
Just to clarify this.
Guts did looked stunned when he accidentally stabbed through the kid,because he knew he fucked up.He even held the kids hand to assess what he had done,but by then it was already GGPO for the kid.
It wasn’t just he stabbed though the kid,“oh shit” then ran away.
As luck would have it,Guards started swarming in so it wasn’t like he could sit there brooding for too long.
Endless, you also seem to be forgetting one very important thing. Griffith and Femto are two sides of the same coin. Griffith = Femto. It is the same mind, just in a new incarnation. The newly reincarnated Griffith is still Femto in mind, he’s just taken on the classic Griffith’s appearance. Griffith is completely evil ever since joining the Godhand. He only appears as a savior now to “lead the blind white sheep” in his hawk of light guise. We know better, that he is truly the Hawk of Darkness leading the apostles into the Age of Darkness.
Side note about Casca, she didn’t love Griffith, she WORSHIPPED him. She elevated him to godlike status in her mind.
For Guts: Guts and Griffith parallels have been drawn ever since Femto’s first appeareance in Vol.3. They are similar in actions and very few personal traits, which makes them such a dynamic, strongly coexisting, but also strongly contrasting pair. It may not make any sense, but it’s the fact that Guts and Griffith are so similar that their differences truly show.
one more sidenote: Guts did indeed feel remore for killing Adonis, But like Biolink stated, the situation really didn’t lend itself to him spending time there mourning.
Femto does not exist anymore.
The analogy is that Femto was the caterpillar, and Griffith reborn, is the butterfly.
Griffith became a part of Godhand to pursue his dream, and yes, to further that dream, he needed to be reborn. New Griffith is NOT Femto with a new skin, definitely not.
What you stated about Guts/Griffith is what I mean. However, I feel that most people that replied back to me believe that that Guts is “good” with a hint of “bad”, while Griffith is simply “evil”, and I don’t believe that is true at all, nor do I feel that it is Miura’s intention to have relatively static characters like that. What you said about them being so similar that their differences truly show, I completely agree with.
As for the murder of Adonis, ok. You guys are right.
Lady Charlotte: Your friends are probably following you because of this charm
Griffith: …
Griffith: They are my good workers
Griffith: We have faced death many times. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for my dream
Griffith: But… for me… They are not my friends
Griffith: A friend must not dream with someone… and is a person who finds his own reasons to live…
Griffith: And if someone was to destroy his dream… He’ll fight back even if that person is me
Griffith: A friend
Griffith: in my mind
Griffith: is someone equal to me
So from the very beginning, even before the Eclipse, Griffith knew he was above everyone else, and that Band of the Hawk was expendible.
Ruthless? Yes
Selfish? Very much so
Evil? Not in Griffith’s eyes, because that is how he saw them. In addition, Griffith built up Band of the Hawk when they were regular mecenaries with no direction.
Griffith’s thinking is beyond the concepts of “good” and “evil” because everything he does is to further his dream.
In our human eyes, we may see that his actions are evil.
A very crude example of it would be something like this:
Let’s say that you have a pet chicken, that you raised your entire life. You have a lifelong dream and goal to start a farm.
Then World War 3 hits, and you have NOTHING to eat, nothing. You went without food for a week, and you’re barely alive.
You have a choice to eat your pet chicken and live, to rebuild and start a farm. Or not eat your
pet chicken, and die.
Griffith chose to eat his pet chicken.
I bet you that was the first time that sentence has ever been typed out in the history of mankind :lol:
Oh, and the part where Guts brought up on the death of the little girl and grandfather, he shows ABSOLUTELY NO REMORSE WHATESOEVER afterwards.
Another point on how dark Guts is as the protagonist, is with Puck.
There have been many times when Gut’s inner darkness, hatred, anger have erupted, and Puck is in extreme physical pain. Puck has stated that elves can feel other peoples emotions, depending on how strong it is. Whenever Gut’s emotions came out, Puck was in physical agony.
I don’t get how Femto =/= Griffith. 
He is still part of the God Hand(the king no?), coming back in another form doesn’t mean that he isn’t. Hell in that form, Guts still calls him Griffith. The only other people to hear that name are the ones that escaped being sacrificed, and on of 'em can’t even speak coherently.
Griffith is evil. He didn’t show mercy to the Kushan king because he felt sorry him, probably just looking at him as another sacrifice. A soldier can’t be a good tool if he’s dead.
On another topic, what future story elements are looking forward to more than others? For me, I think Caska’s health and the Berserker armor are ones I can’t wait to see more of.
Berserk is the greatest manga ever written, although at the moment I have to say it is rather tedious… it really needs to start picking up the pace and start answering at least some of the most important questions, such as the Skull Knight’s history (even though we all know he is Gaeseric), The power of the Beherit’s, etc. I am growing impatient to see Guts and co visit the Elf kindgom so that Casca can be healed.
Still, knowing Miura, however the story pans out, we know it will be amazing, he is just too good as a writer.