On griffiths motivation to become Femto

Guys...I am reading through Berserk for the first time and it is amazing...but I want to point out something that makes me despise Griffith/Femto as an antagonist.

Let me explain. Guts first attracts Griffiths attention after his victory over Gaszuso, and is forcefully recruited after Griffith wins in a duel, claiming that guts is his and that he wants him. They then escapade across midland for a few years, ending in Griffith and the band of the hawk being intergrated into the midland regular army. Guts and Griffith became close during that time, however Guts became distant from Griffith as he became more known, and ultimately left because he didn't want to be smothered by Griffiths ambition. After guts defeats him in a duel that allows him to leave, Griffith goes spiraling into a depression instantly and does stupid shit like fuck Charlotte which lands him at the bottom of the tower of rebirth for a full year to be tortured. When he is rescued, the first Eclipse event happens and he sacrifices the entirety of the band of the hawk to become a demon God. Griffith even rationalized it by stating guts made him "forget his dream".

This is retarded. Girffith brought the entire situation upon himself by recruiting guts in the first place. He killed every last one of his friends, raped his admirer and betrayed who was essentially a brother to him, and plunged the world into a shitshow because guts made him "forget his dream"...when, again, he quite literally brought it upon himself. It wasn't guts' fault he acted like a dumb fuck after guts left. HOW do you rationalize griffiths actions? HOW do people like him?

Guts was the only person he ever loved. That's what he means by "he made me forget my dream". The departure of Guts made him completely crazy because he was his only friend. At this point, Guts was more important than his dream. And after the departure, Griffith lost everything he has worked and fought for. He hated Guts for that, when the band of the hawk rescue Griffith, you can see that Griffith wants to kill Guts several times in spite of his handicaped body.

You have to sacrifice a loved one to become an apostle or a god hand and that's why he did it. That was pure revenge and also a total rejection of his humanity. It's like the Count in the first arc, who sacrificed his wife by pure revenge even if he loved her.

Nobody likes Griffith you've been memed by the oldest meme in the book

Rundown:
>Griffith is a narcissist
>Has homolust for Guts
>Muh dreem
>Guts does basically specifically what Griffith requested and leaves TBOTH to become Griffith's "equal"
>Griffith gets anally annihilated when Guts whoops him in a duel and leaves TBOTH
>Does a stupid, gets impatient, and fucks the princess out of frustration
>Gets rekt by king and torturer
>Gets cucked by Casca when Guts returns
>Blames Guts for all of his failings
>Summons the S&M club from hell
>Muh dreem
>Aloha Snackbars TBOTH just so he doesnt have to live as a crippled cuck anymore
>Rapes Guts' waifu
>Acts like a snobby cunty douche about it
>Raises some stupid city so he can round up plebs for another mass demon rape/slaughter

he's a faggot

I was gonna make a wall of text but I'll keep it simple.

If you had to choose between:
1) Being a deformed cripple that canot walk, use your hands nor talk, with no one being with you if its not out of pity; or

2) Being fully healed and get everything you ever wanted in life in exchange for a part of the dudes that followed you 3 years ago and a friend that ditched you once and is planning to ditch you again.

What would you choose?

Lets try that again

1) Being a deformed cripple that canot walk, use your hands nor talk, with no one being with you if its not out of pity; or

2) Being fully healed and get everything you ever wanted in life in exchange for the lives of thousands of people who faithfully followed you LITERALLY to Hell, and your best friend who only ever had good intentions.

FTFY niggerfaggot

And I can very well understand that Griffith loved him, and I can also understand that he would want to kill him over the fact that ultimately guts was the cause of his downward spiral (thought I am reluctant to say guts is at fault). Dont you think that becoming a Demon God and slaughtering your friends (who put you in that position to do so, as he couldn't do any of the things he did without the Hawks) is a rational conclusion?

I like Griffith. His ideals were/are greater than anyone else's in the story, and his story shows what it takes as a human being to reach such an ideal. You have to lose your humanity to do it.

11/10 bait you got me to reply

he also got bitch slapped by rickert.

And what a fantastic moment it was

>His Ideals
What ideals? To create a nation? He had a conquerors ambition, and it was never for any nobler reason other than "I wanna be da king" essentially. Others within the story had much better ambitions including the main cast of guts and co.

any character can look sympathetic if you gloss over the times they fucked up to leave them in such a pitiable state.

TBOTH being sacrificed is functionally no different than if they had died in battle or something. They would have given their lives for Griffith anyway. Taking Guts' eye and arm and "raping" Casca were over the line because Guts wasn't actually part of TBOTH anymore and Casca had already chosen Guts.

This!
Thank you for saying it
All this "Muh Dream" shit is so stupid
He is ruled by his ambition, and unfortunately has the charisma and military talent to get idiots to follow him

There is nothing noble about his goals, especially since he's literally willing to sell his soul to the devil to do it

Who in the story has a greater ambition than wanting to rule the whole fucking world, and doing something as seemingly impossible as uniting said world, which was currently intertwined in war, under one flag?

Muh emotions aside, an ideal like wanting to start a family or being with the Band of the Hawk again or some shit just does not compare to such an ambition as that.

It's not about the scope of his ambition. It's about the nobility of it. And his ambition is not noble, he just wants to conquer for the sake of conquering, and that's rediculously vain and edgy. He's no better than the Kushan Emperor.

>plunged the world into a shitshow because guts made him "forget his dream"
Did you miss the part where he was a cripple and all his underlings pitied him?

He didnt want to rule the world m8 he wanted a kingdom.
Greater doesnt explicitly imply "big" in this context. Putting yourself constantly on the brink of death and journeying around the world just to save the woman you love is far more admirable than wanting to be a king even if it costs "a pile of corpses", as Griffith put it.

Nobility is for old men. A dream like Griffith's is for the innocent, hence why it shows us that Griffith's ideal began when he was a kid. All innocent young boys have those kinds of ideals when growing up, but most of them abandon them (i.e. they abandon their true selves) because of "nobility" and other things society makes them follow.

In a way, it would be more ignoble for him to have been false to himself and not pursue his dream.

It only makes him seem all the more fucking stupid. He acted so damn high and mighty and even admitted so in his internal monologues but once he is put in a position that people would pity him for he murders them all.

...upstanding gentleman...

So its ignoble if my dream is to murder someone and I dont follow through with it because its immoral?

>this fucking logic

Griffithfags never change

Putting it that way only makes him seem like a child, and all the more unfit to wield the power that he does.

Think of it this way: you're either gonna live your life for yourself, or for someone else. There's no in-between. There's two different cultures (in Nietzschean terms, master and slave morality) who see each of those being more noble than the other.

Who has given more to others, Guts or Griffith? If you think about it, Griffith has given more to others than Guts has, way more. He gives others a dream to follow, he's given everyone the most luxurious and happy kingdom they have ever lived in, etc. So because Griffith does more taking than Guts, all the giving he's done just doesn't count?

It's fine if you hate Griffith, but imo if you can't appreciate both Guts and Griffith you are missing out on the real story of Berserk.

Was he not being at least partly manipulated in his introspection during the eclipse? The old woman becomes one of the demons for a brief moment near the end.

There's a lot of grey. He seemingly had a simpler, naive view of his ambitions at first which gave way as his rose into power. He clearly was far more strict and moral as a military leader than many others shown throughout. I think there was genuine guilt but it got lost in obsession and rage, with Guts at the center of it when it peaked.

A tragic character in some eyes? I can't say I'd agree but it's not cut and dried one way or the other to me.

Griffith also TOOK from others way more. But this goes in one ear - and out the other

Pretty sure Miura did his absolute hardest to make the reader vehemently hate Griffith and thus make him an effective villan, which he did masterfully, and you have missed the point completely.

You're that same sort of guy who defends the person doing the cucking in NTR doujins

>Griffith also TOOK from others way more. But this goes in one ear - and out the other
I said this in my post though.

I think Miura did go to some length to demonize master morality in Berserk for the readers. I also think he took a lot from Greek tragedy which was a morally gray landscape of storytelling. In Berserk, it's made clear that Griffith and God Hand only look demonized to Guts and co. — Griffith sees them as angels. This hearkens back to the Hellraiser movie poster tagline "Demons to some. Angels to others.", a movie Miura was fond of. So, there's this moral relativity obviously present in the story, it's not meant to be taken that Griffith and God Hand are inherently evil. They are seen as evil.

And God Hand are the hand of fate. So basically, fate is being seen as evil here. Nietzsche pointed this out about slave morality. And we know Miura was fond of him too.

Shit's morally gray, nigga. But stronger people like Griffith too ;)

>;)
Not him but you invalidated your previous statement by being a faggot.

He's a selfish fucboi douchebag and I cant wait for the day when Guts burns his stupid little city to the ground as he watches helplessly before getting his girly head cleaved off by the Dragonslayer

The god hand literally serve the will of a physical embodiment of evil whose name is "The Idea Of Evil". Ignore the text selectively to fufill your contrarian reading of it all you like, but in summary: you're a huge fag dude.

Berserk has such human characters. Griffith is asshole of the century but it's his humanity that makes him so loathsome.

Even so what would you choose.

Take in mind that you know that this friend is not going to stick around you and that with you in that state the band of hawk is as good as disbanded. So you would be a living corpse with no one to take care of you except MAYBE Casca, if she doesn't go after Guts' dick that is.

>TBOTH being sacrificed is functionally no different than if they had died in battle or something.
Uh no, there's a big difference between people following a leader and dying in the pursuit of the fulfillment of their own hopes and aspirations, and being sacrifices solely for the advancement of the leader. If you can't make that distinction, you are a sociopath.

Certainly a lesson can be learned about the danger of following charismatic men with high ambitions but that is no justification of Griffith's choices or belief of them as mere stepping stones. He might as well as killed them all himself.

Will Guts even be happy

...

>Who in the story has a greater ambition than wanting to rule the whole fucking world, and doing something as seemingly impossible as uniting said world, which was currently intertwined in war, under one flag?

Griffith has destroyed the world for the sake of ruling the ashes, you troglodite. Did you miss the part where humans cannot survive anymore outside of his wank city and other locations protected by supernatural powers? Every war before then, even Kushan invasion which was part of his plan anyway, were as nothing before apocalypse he unleashed for the sake of having his pretty castle.

>I also think he took a lot from Greek tragedy which was a morally gray landscape of storytelling.

It really, really wasn't. Greek tragedy (when it was not about decent people getting ass-fucked by fate) was, as everyone agrees, about exploring fatal human flaws, hence "tragic flaw". Exploration of flaws is not possible without having a standard.

>In Berserk, it's made clear that Griffith and God Hand only look demonized to Guts and co. — Griffith sees them as angels.

Stop lying.

>Take in mind that you know that this friend is not going to stick around you and that with you in that state the band of hawk is as good as disbanded. So you would be a living corpse with no one to take care of you except MAYBE Casca, if she doesn't go after Guts' dick that is.

Even Griffith himself did not believe in this bullshit. He very clearly imagined being well cared about and spending the remainder of his life with as much dignity as was possible in his condition.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING

>You have to lose your humanity to do it

Fucking what? The throne of Midland was basically his if only he didn't sperg out and do the one fucking thing that fuck it up for him. Now instead of actually rising up from the slums to become a king, Griffith's playing on Piss Baby Easy Mode to get one fucking kingdom.

Saying Griffith needed the Godhand to achieve his dream is like saying the only way to win a Civ game on Deity is to turn the difficulty down to Settler.

I think most people are in agreement that it isn't Gut's FAULT Griffith had that downward spiral, but rather the cause of it. Giant misunderstanding and that's why Griffith's speech and the scene outside the city is so sad to me, especially when you hear Griffith's thoughts right before they duel.

The thing about the eclipse is that the godhand offer you such a thing when you're at your absolute most vulnerable. You're almost destined to agree to sacrifice.

Keep this in mind and remember when Griffith is talking to Caska while bathing in a river, and explaining that he feels compelled to keep going because of how many people have died following his dream. This clearly bothers him to the point of clawing his own arms until they bleed.

Then you have this proud leader being shown time after time how useless and weak and helpless he has become, and that now (aside from seeing Caska - who once idolized Griffith - has fallen in love with Guts, and then turns down his advances and friend-zones him) he's actually a burden on his friends' dreams, he hallucinates (or maybe it was the god hand), falls into a lake and FAILS at trying to kill himself. At this point he's utterly broken. Then the eclipse happens and hey you'll be better and more powerful than ever before, you just have to let all of these people die that were willing to die for you anyway, and also that girl you isn't interested in you anymore and the guy who (as far as griffith is concerned) caused all of this.

I understand completely why he chose to do it, but he's still a cunt. It's just a sadder story than people make it out to be. Also the caska rape was just taking back control etc.

Aside from the eternity of torment as a trapped, tortured soul; sure.

Will the Berserk newfags abate slightly after the anime ends, or are we doomed to have like four threads a day of crossboarders who just picked it up for the rest of time?