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OhFunny posted:I've always viewed Casca's regression into a toddler's mental state as the result of Guts effectively abandoning her. She's traumatized in the immediate aftermath of the Eclipse, but she does not display any toddler-like behavior before Guts leaves. The overall story is about Guts, even moreso than Griffith who's missing for two whole arcs, so it didn't feel (to me) like Casca is written out. Lost Children is so focused on Guts that everyone is written out. The party starts to grow again in Tower and, in the later half, Casca is integral and frequently participates in the story because of the Holy See witch burning thing. The entire engagement with Mozgus occurs because Casca is there and Guts is trying to rescue her. What feels more out of place to me is Casca's apparent responsiveness to the astral plane and evil in Tower. It felt like Miura tried to build her as a true witch-like character and gave up, switching entirely to Schierke. In Tower, Casca is shown to both attract and effortlessly survive encounters with excess, astral evil, but that power just disappears? A dozen chapters later the group is just non-chalantly falling into traps until the "inexperienced little Schierke" finally speaks up when something is out of place. Instead she has two lightning rods right there that are just... no longer working? So no, I blame Tower for writing Casca out of the story. She becomes an active paranormal agent but instead of using her skills of survival as character development, it all just drops with a thud?
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Aug 20, 2022 15:27
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Whereas I could believe some heartfelt conversation between Casca and Guts, trying to face their issues as friends, it doesn't seem compelling as a solution for Casca and Griffith. Speaking at all for the remainder of the story before Griffith is "saved" would seem strange. In Tower, Casca was saved from the bubbling evil by the pre-egg-child. Assuming the same role now assigned to Griffith, that suggests his appearance was only to get Casca off the island before it was consumed, in this case by the apostles. Much like Flora's place in the woods, it doesn't seem like Griffith is around for the dirty work, only when he can show off his hair to the commoners and kings. After the island is gone, or even during that battle, will be a good time for the remaining Godhand to appear, namely to give Griffith some speech about how Casca needs to be chomped because of the brand blah blah, but that doesn't seem like something Griffith will ultimately accept so he may go out the way of the count. As filler and wrap up, though, it seems possible that Rickert/Slilat will show up at the island with an army, having tracked Griffith somehow or another. The band that remains plus the elves plus Skull Knight may be able to navigate-via-tree/folding to Falconia. If Griffith ends up opposing the Godhand to protect Casca, it could be a one-from-the-inside/one-from-the-outside type of thing with Griffith/Zodd and Guts/SkullKnight cutting off the fingers one by one. There's still an open question of who uses the Behelit, though we might get cheated and that will just be an epilogue (everything is saved, Godhand all gone, world normal, and puck is despairing about not being a king).
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Aug 23, 2022 02:41
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Josuke Higashikata posted:puck better not be dead i swear to god I found some of it hard to follow, but if this was the disappearance of the world tree, did they all just go back to their plane, or were they sucked away somewhere, perhaps to become Griffiths prisoners? At this point, it sure seems like quite a boat trip to the mainland, but maybe Rickert will show up and save the day with a steamboat or something. Still, there's a bit of determination in the final panel before he drops his hand, but is that defeat, resignation, or resolve? Guts learned he "can't land a single blow", so will he abandon his sword? The Behelit seems very useful at this point; I'm kinda surprised they didn't give a glimpse of it as teaser. (Not a spoiler since it happened in the previous chapter) but what options does Guts even have? He can't approach Griffith physically, even with magic in the sword. It seems like he either makes a bargain ("set Casca free, let the apostles chomp me") or becomes a god ("who says these Godhand need to get along, I'll become one and point at Griffith and laugh at his hair"). This really makes me think the aim is a reconciliation to the point of Griffith, Casca, and Guts teaming up to take down the Godhand, maybe with some Rickert buy-in. With the right fifth member, they might end up being the replacement Godhand.
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Sep 9, 2022 00:25
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GreenBuckanneer posted:Regardless of anything else, you do not reconcile with your abuser.  Guts either has to become Griffith to defeat him (rampage, back to going berserk, destroying everything) or follow his own path (which is what, challenging him to a fair fight?). I'm not seeing much speculation on how this plays out. But I'd ask, if Behelits activate with despair, who in the world has the most despair at this moment?
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Sep 9, 2022 23:54
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Oh I think I agree with that.  Dragonslayer cleaves Griffith, a thousand times each day to eternity.I just had this (weird?) moment where the story aligned to suggest a possible resolution via different means. Perhaps it was slightly Griffith-did-nothing-wrong in nature, more like "maybe Griffith is now trying to reform himself and is actually trying to save or cure Casca here" (because she certainly goes mute again on his arrival), but this doesn't seem like an attack on Guts. Griffith merely arranged to avoid being hit, but if Guts can't strike a blow what does he do to resolve the story? If Guts' story is about becoming the best swordsman (after tree in the snow), and subsequently using that skill to struggle against apostles post-eclipse, but that skill is insufficient against Griffith, what does he practice to establish that he is not bound by Griffith's dream? Remember that even SK missed with his sword, so we the readers know that Guts can't succeed in a frontal assault (without some other error or inconsistent lore). In searching for a resolution we've all been hoping for the 8-page spread of that sword slicing each of 1000 strands of perfect hair and proceeding to chunk Griffith in two, but  we just got told that Guts' journey has been insufficient to make that possible.
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Sep 10, 2022 16:13
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Dammit the app lost my entire writeup. So you only get the last bit. In vol26 Guts' Behelit activates! Slan appears and she says, "Why not make a sacrifice as he did?". So both Guts and Casca can have a Behelit activate for them, and Slan at least teases that they could sacrifice. (And to quickly note what the app lost... Slan also contradicts Conrad in Vol3 and says that Guts isn't an acceptable sacrifice for the Count because of emotional attachment.) (And another parallel that I've not seen anywhere. Griffith is shown that he is a demon, therefore the Behelit came to him. Guts is certainly a demon; that doggie would love to eat Casca and the entire party. Griffiths subconscious is about piling up bodies to reach his goal. But who has been directly piling up apostles for 40 books? If a mound of humans creates a Femto, think of what a mound of apostles can create!) It lost all my other quotes from book3 and book12 showing that the brands... didn't work, Guts and Casca are both still alive, so Void was flat wrong on at least one of his statements. What Guts carries came from count, so ownership can change as well it seems? Anyway it lost my nice organized writeup, so I'm in despair and will go fetch my black egg.
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Sep 14, 2022 00:07
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The junk collector posted:Going back and looking I think I might have gotten it confused with a different behelit and now I'm not sure. It's been so long since I read that far back.
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Sep 14, 2022 21:09
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Or they could go with the Japanese voice actors and not have this problem?  (And instead get in heated debates about the Band of the Canary actually being the Owls, I mean Eagles, well ... See they just changed it because who ever heard of the great kingdom of Hawkonnen, wait I mean Hawkonia, well karap.)  Is it about time for the next chapter? I've lost track.
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Sep 24, 2022 01:09
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Pyrus Malus posted:berserk 97 is a lot rougher than people remember it being I think  The anime is certainly more philosophical, whereas the movies are 98% crusades swordplay. They banked on "people want castles" and put their money on trebuchets instead of substance. Things happen, sure, but the climax lacks motivation. For a series introduction I'd still choose the anime. The first episode is the ideal hook, Zodd looks cool enough, you get the hill of bonfires, and the 100 man has more feeling. If the person can't handle sliding manga frames with a few fire sprites, tell them that the art was praised by the elite, feed them another martini, and they'll soon be pausing just to check the detail in those frames.  But seriously, Guts spends a good minute shooting crossbow bolts into the head of a fucken giant lizard dude while it's screaming. Who doesn't want to see that?! (Yeah I have watched them both in the last four years)
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Oct 2, 2022 23:41
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Finally had a chance to read the chapter. Felt like I had forgotten half a chapter so I had to back up and read the previous one again. Naup, I remembered it all, but the new chapter felt like it dropped in the middle of a scene. Also a bit weird trying to figure out which characters should exist in this plane at all. Will have to ponder a bit where I think it goes from here, at least regarding Guts. As to new readers, welcome, but it sounds like you've stumbled on the wrong series; like way wrong. Berserk is not Golden Age, despite what all the modern re-re-re-adaptations want you to think. There's a lot above to unpack, but my first thought was, Wow I had a completely different reaction when I hopped from the anime to the manga. The story and characters spoke to me. It starts with slavery, cannibalism, sex as power, gratuitous violence, body parts flying, and torture. A child murders her grandfather, is sliced in half like a fly, and a mutilated half man is abused. Oh yeah, and then it gets "better": In the first major battle the antagonist is impaled, head split like a melon, sexual slavery backstory appears, ... but blasting people with cannons makes it all better? These are the things that happen in the Berserk world. The story and characters are underneath.
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Oct 31, 2022 07:31
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Nuebot posted:I always just shrug that off as the writing very much still figuring out who, exactly, guts is
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Nov 1, 2022 06:04
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Miura knew what he was doing. There's a page of debate here about screwing apostle lady, and no one is worried that Lost Children is more gory than Black Swordsman, that Guts uses and abuses people in every chapter (LC), that the apostle is visually a big... genital. BS feels weird because, sure, there are a few early story things that were left out later. That happens. But if the reader looks at GA, BS, LC, the characters fit and make sense, and the themes are constant and ultimately unchanged through the arcs. You can't escape it by brushing it under three pages of getting down with a xenomorph.
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Nov 5, 2022 07:56
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Regalingualius posted:Well, I finally went and binged the ‘97 anime, and even knowing everything about the ending, goddrat was that one hell of a trip the whole way through.  Isn't it just amazing?!I mean sure even I have to roll my eyes or look away from the scrolling fixed image thing every now and then, but the pacing, emotion, and emphasis are perfect. Now go back and rewatch the first episode! Just for "closure". 
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Nov 8, 2022 00:07
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That's pure recursive meme territory right there; ie, the correct response to that is those images themselves. 
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Nov 27, 2022 16:52
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