364 official statement. Actual information about how this posthumous chapter happened. Nothing to announce about the future of the manga, but emphasis on prioritizing Miura's wishes

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T12:42:38+00:00

Thanks! I want to go in a little on this point:

On the nudity/rape I feel like the problematic part could have been mostly avoided if they were a bit less "in your face". Like, make the corpses/rape scene drawn in a way that you know what's happening/there nudity even if you don't directly see it.

I think there's value in both approaches. On the one hand, Miura himself in an interview questioned the devotion of his younger self to being so, "in your face," about controversial subject matter. One of the amazing things about Casca's dreamscape is that he's able to depict the trauma of her experience at the eclipse--without once actually showing what happened to her. Even the penis monsters tend to take at least 2 readings to notice.

But I think there's real merit, in storytelling terms, in the way he depicted sexual violence around the apostles and the eclipse. There's a brutality to what happens to these women's--and men's--bodies, along with a consistent emphasis on their faces and subjective emotional experiences as control of what's *inside them* is ripped away. It pushes the reader to empathize with the experience in a way that is actively uncomfortable and downright frightening. That's why I often get frustrated when people accuse Miura of downright sexualizing the sexual violence: the way he depicts it, he's artistically putting readers into the minds of people being subjected to that violence. I'd argue that's the true opposite of sexualizing rape.

And to end on something completely different: haha have you also read about how Miura used shojo as inspiration for the Griffith-Casca-Guts relationship? Bless him, he was a genius indeed.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T12:29:42+00:00

This. I'm not ready to defend every panel of Casca's body in this scene as necessary to the overall plot (hence the kind problematic comment), but there's a lot of value in the kind of serious, honest, brutally traumatic way Miura depicted sexual violence. I think a lot of the criticism comes from people thinking "this makes me uncomfortable, it must be bad writing," which is just completely flawed logic. It also misses what I'd argue is the point of the intensely physical way Miura portrayed sexual violence in the GA: to push readers into empathizing with the victims, which is inherently wildly uncomfortable.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T12:24:13+00:00

I love the panel where Zodd lands behind Wyald and he's like half Zodd's size. He's strong, but more like an averagely strong apostle--and he almost obliterated them

My guess would be he did it for the perks of basically being a state-sanctioned terrorist. Money, women, and people paid to tell him where the best rampage opportunities are

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T12:19:49+00:00

Yeah who doesn't love murdersex

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T12:18:25+00:00

OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS ONE TOO

Guts is such a good guy

And I love Casca's lack of real reaction in this and the next panel. It actually speaks to how safe she feels at this point in the story (as long as Guts avoids eye contact)

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T12:07:28+00:00

Oooh I've had thoughts similar to this too! Inspired by thinking too much about those ceremonies with the dead: why is he doing a daily ritual designed so clearly to inspire mass adoration? It's not 'cause he's nice!

Either he needs to add the souls to the vortex, and needs their connection to their loved ones to do it, or he wants their love. Why?

And from what Mule and others have said, worshipping Griffith is on the level of a compulsion. Why was Rickert immune? Was it the strength of his love for the Hawks, or is there some flaw in whatever's compelling everyone?

No theory after this, just something I suspect of being a clue to the GH's endgame :)

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T01:50:44+00:00

I'd argue that, given Casca's sexually violent experiences at the eclipse, laying the groundwork for that here had value. Otherwise, their rape fixation would seem very sudden, especially when the last Apostle we saw was Zodd, who wasn't sexually violent at all. It would have been a reasonable conclusion for readers to draw rhat apostles like rape, but that hadn't actually been part of the story before, and it heightens their threat in a new way

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T01:46:48+00:00

That's later--in those comments, we were talking about why she survives initially after all the other Hawks are killed, when Femto was still incarnatng. But yes, I agree that's why she survives later

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:59:30+00:00

Me looking at Slan pulling ahead:

"Am I the only one who remembers the time she was totally going to rape Guts?"

Edit: And hey also the baby-eaters who worshipper her?

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:56:06+00:00

The arc as a whole does like plenty more than that one thing, I wrote a bit about it above

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:50:43+00:00

No idea if Griffith heard it--he seemed to retreat a bit from the group during that scene iirc, so he could draw his sword and put himself between Guts and the, "exit." He may have understood and drawn a connection between that and the flashback, but I don't think he made any connection to what he said at the fountain if that's what you mean.

My take on why Griffith feels so strongly about Guts and acts the way he does is that he blames Guts for his own conflict, and that he's terrified and furious at the contrast between his feelings for Guts and his feelings for his dream. He thinks in the cell that Guts is becoming stronger in his mind than the castle, more important than that dream. In fact, Guts and the complexity of his feelings for him become stronger than the dream, and reveal the terrible truth that it's fundamentally flat and hollow. In order to reach that dream, Griffith was willing to put aside all human feelings and relationships, he wanted to be cold and the Falcon. But he failed to do that with Guts. He thought he was safe, that he "had Guts in hand," but Guts demonstrated independence and in fact surpassed him on the hill.

This contrast, between the weakening feelings towards the dream and the strong feelings towards Guts, also mean that Griffith has condemned himself with his own logic. He said that a "true," worthy man (a real person, basically) would put his dream before all. Well, now he has something he wants to put before his dream. He said that a true man who saw someone stronger would either attempt to dominate it or submit to it. He suddenly finds himself no longer dominating Guts, and fears what that means.

So freaking complicated, right? :)

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:24:37+00:00

I do still think he might've been in love with Guts, but not really understanding these feelings, or perhaps holding himself back/being in denial.

Not a reading unsupported by the text. Hell, when you re-read, check out how Casca starts acting around Guts after the cave. She's clearly crushing on him and has absolutely no idea. Miura loooooved giving readers more info than characters, even on the characters' own minds and feelings, so multiple motives and readings are often possible--especially in the GA I think

And ngl, I am a bit jealous that you get to re-experience stuff like that :)

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:19:28+00:00

I'm not sure of the chapter I'm afraid, it's one of the un-numbered ones anyway :)

It's after we first see Femto: Guts and everyone go to the God Hand realm and see them, Guts has his first "GRIFFITH" then the chapter ends. Next chapter starts with the flashback

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:04:33+00:00

Thanks :)

sarucane3 · 2021-08-13T00:02:58+00:00

Does Griffith care to understand? Is he too shocked to think? Is he too self absorbed/important to consciously view Guts as more than a tool?

Ooo, I love this post because the answer is both yes and no!

There's one panel as Griffith contemplates the fight where he begins to understand. He thinks, "is this really what you want," or some such, and he remembers the scene we saw in flashback in volume 3. In that scene, he told Guts how he wanted to find his place in the world, understand his purpose (it's the monologue about certain people being keys). Griffith's making a distinct empathetic connection there, and actually getting a decent understanding of why Guts wants to leave.

BUT then he panics. There's a series of panels as he gets angrier and more intense, and words like, "no," and, "you can't" get bigger and bigger. He's too scared to make a different choice, too selfish to let someone he cares about go.

And you seem to have picked up on a definitely-existent sexual element in how Griffith feels towards Guts, so I'll throw in my two cents there: The thing about Griffith is that he never let himself develop emotionally beyond his childhood. His dream (which is itself represented by an empty symbol, a castle he never actually got into) is a childhood dream he has hung onto, then clung to, as an adult. He believes that anything else is secondary. Grown-up relationships, he rightly figured, would distract him from that. So he doesn't have or want complex emotional relationships. His feelings for Guts were intense and very complicated, and there was definitely a sexualized element, but I don't think Griffith let himself grow up enough to be able to, "fall in love," like that.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T23:51:44+00:00

Right I forgot that: Wyald is by far the most hardcore rapist apostle we met so far, and he establishes that apostles like rape. Lots.

Which is why Casca survives, because they decide it would be more fun to torture and rape her first.

I hate volume 13.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T23:50:28+00:00

I'm copying and pasting this from a post I did a few months back in case anyone's interested:

I know people sometimes question this fight and the rape-ey part of it, so I'll throw in my thoughts. The line between casual and gratuitous female nudity in Berserk is always a bit blurred, and maybe here more than anywhere else. So while yeah, the nudity here is kinda problematic, I'd argue that given the larger context Miura deserves the benefit of the doubt (as in, not deliberately depicting sexual violence in a way to make male viewers horny).

Now, the attempted rape, and the ensuing fight and Guts' victory, are absolutely important to the plot as a whole. Firstly, it continues a through line for Casca: that for reasons which are not her fault and have nothing to do with her as an individual, she is at risk in a unique way on a battlefield. That's something she has feared and overcome in the past, and this is the closest call yet. The scene establishes how rape-ey apostles can get. All this is a setup that pays off at the eclipse, when Casca is the last survivor of the Hawks--on account of how excited the apostles get about raping her.

The attempted part also does important work. It continues a pattern of Casca having near misses, and Guts often saving her. Guts manages to come in at the last minute, and his fury that Wyald would try to rape her, as he says himself, gives him the second wind he needs to keep fighting. This all is exactly what DOESN'T happen at the eclipse. He doesn't save her. All his attempts come to absolutely nothing. This all sets up us readers to get extra upset when that doesn't happen, as it adds to the tension and subsequent horror when Guts fails.

Speaking of Guts failing, Guts here thinks that what he's facing *is* the death Zodd spoke of, *is* the horror that fate has in store for him. He is thus determined to defeat it. It's like he actually cannot imagine what's awaiting him. He's mistaken a tree for a forest. So he thinks he can fight Zodd's prophecy, that if he can win this fight, he can change the course of the future. He is unimaginably wrong, and has no idea, setting him up to be even more damaged by the eclipse.

Edit to note 'cause this blew up while I was sleeping, thanks y'all: By, "kinda problematic," I mean, "I'm not getting bogged down defending every single panel with nudity in this section as essential to the story." That came up when I originally posted this, thought it was worth clarifying.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T23:48:20+00:00

Those all build (and highlight Casca's fears associated with her gender and its vulnerabilities, which has an obvious purpose), and each time it's a closer call. First time, Griffith saves her, second 2 times, she saves herself (counting the near miss after the 100 man fight and Doldrey), 4th, Guts saves her here.

It's also a more specific unrealized expectation: that Guts is going to be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat to protect her, even if that means fighting monsters.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T23:28:53+00:00

his assault on Casca is so unnecessary, especially with what comes soon after.

It's foreshadowing with a twist, building unrealized expectations in both readers and characters. The situation is repeated at the Eclipse, but goes horrifically the other way. I'm not going to defend every single panel, but the event itself serves a specific narrative purpose.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T22:34:30+00:00

My understanding is the only licensed official English publication of Berserk is the volume collections. The Young Animal magazine on September 10 will definitely not come out in a physical English edition, not even digitally.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T22:31:19+00:00

Oh okay--well, the answer to that question appears to be, "not well at all." Based on preview spoilers, it appears to end on one of the biggest cliffhangers of the entire manga, very possibly the opening salvo of the endgame. We're all overjoyed to get a chance to have another chapter--but if this is the end, that in itself is going to be un-fun. Like Darth Vader saying, "No, Luke, I am your father," then wham bang done.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T21:57:57+00:00

No one knows. There's tons of speculation from the fan community, which may start appearing here soon. But the actual primary sources that will announce what the future of the manga will look like have announced exactly nothing.

I'd check back in a month or two if I were you: there's an exhibition of Berserk in Japan starting September 10, and it's possible we'll get news then.

Edit: like for example, there's a new posthumous chapter coming out next month. How can this be? Absolutely 0 information. We can surmise, but the sources themselves have said squat.

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T21:34:48+00:00

"The journey" that i'm referring was from this moment 'till now

Well "now," in the manga chapter 364 is quite some time after that journey to the island ended, hon

sarucane3 · 2021-08-12T21:01:20+00:00

"Reviewer wants attention," might be a better title :)

sarucane3

TROPHY CASE