![]() ![]() Throughout this arc the audience is lead to expect a dramatic, action-packed, and revealing confrontation between Guts and the object of his ire. Like, this arc couldn’t be more blatant about Guts wanting Griffith/Femto’s attention.)īut even now the focus is on the potential for more revealed backstory, not on Guts’ attempt at turning talk into action. (Something, btw, that Guts is still brooding about a chapter later lmao: Guts is finally spurred into action when Femto directly says he doesn’t give a fuck: Guts, more than anything, wants Femto’s attention. The audience is expecting rage and violence, and what we get is neediness. Guts taken aback and offended, which is less expected:Īnd then begging for attention when Femto turns away from him to address the matter at hand, which should definitely come as a surprise for a first time reader: The details of this sequence make the parallels stand out even more.įirst of all, before we learn much of anything, we see Guts’ reaction to Griffith/Femto. In fact, the sacrifice that serves the main purpose of setting us up for Guts’ story is the only sacrifice of a romantic partner we ever see - the rest are all parent/child, weirdly abstract a la Eggman sacrificing “the world,” and ofc Guts and Griffith’s undefined, suggestive thing. My point with this is just to emphasize that the driving hook of the Black Swordsman arc is the build-up of the mystery of what makes Guts tick, the tension pretty much entirely coming from the audience wondering why Guts is so obsessed with revenge, and the reveal of the sacrifice is the climax of this arc.Īnd our example of a sacrifice, which we are explicitly told is also what happened between Guts and Griffith? A husband and wife. ![]() When Guts screams “Griffith!” at him we see Puck asking “Griffith? Who’s Griffith?” The Godhand that Guts has been searching for shows up, Femto front and centre, and Guts’ rage is directed right at him. The first six chapters have been teasing the mystery of what happened to Guts to piss him off so much, from the way we kick off in media res, to hints about his issues and trauma (eg the aforementioned Vargas comparison, the way he lets the possessed corpse of the kid stab him, etc), to Puck directly asking what the hell happened to him outloud for the benefit of the audience. The information is given to us surprisingly straightforwardly, and the way the information is revealed to us is pretty telling. The comparison to Vargas hints that maybe he lost some loved ones, plus an eye and a limb to an apostle which is close enough to the truth to be decent foreshadowing.īut it’s not until the Godhand show up as the Count’s about to die that we learn what’s really going on with Guts. Before the appearance of the Godhand we know that Guts is really fucking angry, we know he’s monster slaying because he’s out for revenge, we know he’s looking for a group called “the Godhand,” and thanks to Puck spelling some stuff out we know that he’s also sad and deeply afraid that he’s fighting a losing battle. We’re introduced to Guts and Griffith’s relationship near the end of the Black Swordsman arc. Part One - Our Introduction to the Concept of Guts and Griffith Part one covers the Black Swordsman stuff and the way Guts and Griffith’s relationship is revealed to the audience, part two covers the first several chapters of the Golden Age with a focus on visuals and how Guts sees Griffith, part three tackles Casca’s role in the story, and part four is more of an overview on why I think reading Berserk through a gay lens works so well. My point is only that Berserk readily lends itself to gay readings, with a focus on Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith (as I feel like it tends to be neglected in favour of interpretations that Griffith has a one-sided crush.) I’m not going to speculate on Miura’s motives for adding a ton of gay subtext, like, it could be anything from trying to be as gay as possible without pissing off his publishers to it all being totally coincidental and meaningless with an alternate explanation for every point I have, or anywhere in between. Basically my intention is to show why I find it so incredibly easy to read Guts as attracted to Griffith, and explain how this reading adds layers of meaning that fit neatly within Berserk’s themes and enrich the story. This is the shortest part of a four-part series, and this isn’t a short post. Thesis statement of this goddamn thesis: Guts is sexually attracted to Griffith. ![]()
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