If Griffith hadn't sacrificed the band of the hawk, they would have met Rickert latter that day...

If Griffith hadn't sacrificed the band of the hawk, they would have met Rickert latter that day, who was carrying enough elf dust to completely heal Griffith's wounds.
They would have to start over as a mercenary group, but Griffith still would have Guts' friendship, which he supposedly values a lot.


Berserk would've taken a very different road, where Guts, Griffith and Casca would be on the same side and eventually would fight the invading kushans. Would you guys like Berserk if it had taken that road?

I think Griffith needed a lot more than Elf Dust to fix him

Guts once had his hand impaled, which would make anyone's hand useless, yet he was already holding a sword again after sprinkling some elf dust on it.
As long as the wounds are physical they can be healed (the wound that Slan gave Guts can't be cured because it affected his astral body too).

It wouldn't be Berserk if that happened.
Instead, Griffith and the Band of the Hawk would have fallen to the invaders, upon which the behelit would have been activated and the astral plane would have met with the world again.
No rape, no lost eye, no lost arm.

It was over the course of like a year that all of Griffith's torture happened though. Everything that could possibly heal naturally had healed, and seeing how Guts is covered in scars already, I doubt the dust could help Griffith's year old wounds

From the last thread -

>he never communicated this and that's why Guts left.

There's nothing there that indicates that, you aren't interpreting, you're merely assuming with no evidence. There's certainly no direct, and not even any circumstantial evidence for interpreting Griffith's actions that way.

I always interpreted Griffith rushing things with the princess as a desperate act of tempting fate to try and reassure himself that he was a 'key' person with an immutable destiny.

Griffith was so self-assured of the infallibility of his own existence that while Caska was panicking that he might he poisoned, Griffith himself felt no need to even bother to make certain he was unscathed by the arrow. In his mind he just 'knew' that such a petty death was beneath him.

Everything always worked out his way and went according to his desires. Nothing had ever contradicted his beliefs before, ever, until the day Guts left. Of course, there's the explicitly stated issue of Griffith depending on Guts, and that loss surely shook him. But the other side of it, I think, is that Griffith was immensely shaken by the simple fact that something happened that actually caused him to experience something he never had before - self-doubt. Going to the princess then was his way to try to reassure himself that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and there would be no consequences. But, of course, that rash desire to reassure himself backfired.

I know to interpret it that way because I'm human, and I've read plenty of other Chinese cartoons where something similar happens.
>Guts joins Griffith to help him out
>They have good time
>Griffith caught up in chasing his dream
>Griffith finds out Guts is leaving but wants him to stay
>Battles Guts and loses, his best friend goes on his way
>Realizes he lost his best friend and has a breakdown, made clear by his fucking of the princess
Any human in this position would naturally ask, "Why did I lose my best friend?" Of course, the answer Griffith would naturally come to is, "He must not have thought he was my best friend."
It's the classic "you don't see or value what's around you properly while you're looking up" situation.

Weren't all these supernatural happenings popping up in Midland before the Eclipse in anticipation of it? Causality and all that, it was inescapable.

Even if you work the story around that, how would this wounded, worn out mercenary band contend with demons and larger armies? Midland was in dire straits by that point already and the Kushan were on the horizon. The same result would play out only slower if the Band stayed together. This isn't even bringing up the inevitable divide between Griffith and Guts.

Again, that just looks like assumption more than interpretation. You're just saying you've seen similar things and that's how you'd expect somebody to react.

Maybe with some authors I might see that sort of approach as valid, but Miura is far too straightforward as it is. When he wants you to know something about a character, he pretty much just says it, or gives pretty clear evidence for it. He even felt the need to explicitly state that the dog in the new chapters represents Guts, even though that was already patently obvious. Caska gives Guts a whole spiel about how he's dense for not realizing Griffith needed him, but nowhere is it ever said that Griffith realized anything similar about Guts. Yes we see that he despairs over the loss of Guts, but that is directly explained by what Caska said to Guts about Griffith's weakness and dependence.

You're making a good point with the direction Berserk has gone lately with the whole dog thing, but I think you're not giving Miura enough credit - Berserk is touching on some deep themes and they aren't always explicitly stated. With Griffith, we see him smiling with Guts following the Wyald incident, but he is deprived of almost all ability to communicate so there is no way for any explicit statement to occur. All we have to go on is the smile.

Thinking back, it might be more plausible that Griffith had not realized why he felt the way he did after Guts left - he did reach for Guts' neck upon being rescued. However, when Guts embraced him, and following the Wyald incident, I think Griffith had figured out that Guts was his best friend, and that that was why he felt so pained when Guts left.

Has he ever eaten the red one before?

Why do people act like Griffith cared so much? Yes, he was shocked at how much he DID care when Guts left and it sent him into shock. But the fact that he is completely remorseless after sacrificing everyone who loves him is a clear indicator that he still only saw them as tools and stepping stones for which to create his kingdom.

It's more complicated than that shit. You can even HEAR his thoughts at that time for fuck sake.

>he is completely remorseless after sacrificing everyone who loves him

He didn't kill Guts when he could have. He clearly hesitated.

I'm not trying to say Miura is incapable of subtlety - my own interpretation of Griffith's self-image I elaborated on here involves one instance of Griffith pretty much directly spelling out his beliefs about how he holds a special place in the world, but I also referenced the poison arrow scene, which shows Griffith's overconfidence much more subtly.

So it isn't that he's incapable of illustrating nuanced interactions, but just that he generally spells everything out at some point as well, as in the above example.

Maybe at some point in the future Griffith might bare all and say man I really regret losing my best friend, but that hasn't happened yet, and knowing Miura's style, I just wouldn't be inclined to assume that with nothing else indicating it.

>Would you guys like Berserk if it had taken that road?
No, because it wouldn't make sense then, and it wouldn't be a tragedy then. Tragedy is the greatest form of art. It challenges us on a spiritual level deeper than anything else, because tragedy is the most severe experience we can have as humans.

>It's the classic "you don't see or value what's around you properly while you're looking up" situation.
There's a bit more to it. Griffith shows loneliness during the Golden Age, and he is lonely because there is no one that he can deem as his friend. He also shows an almost masochistic attitude at times. His relentless self-overcoming to achieve his dream made him cold, but he struggled with getting rid of his humanity completely, particularly because of Guts. Guts made him vulnerable and his leaving opened up the wound of loneliness he was attempting to conceal, which is why he loses his shit and fucks Charlotte. When Griffith says "never again" and "if you touch me now..." right before the eclipse begins, we see exactly how emotional Griffith is at that point and what he is struggling with.

I agree with both views in a way. Griffith definitely saw Guts up to that point as another stepping stone in the way to his dreams. After Guts defeated him and left, he saw that not only things can get out of his control, but that Guts wasn't just another pawn, but someone that can shape his own destiny as his equal. In a way, you can say that he looked back and realized that he lost a "friend", so to speak, because he didn't saw him as one up until then. Then he proceeded to fuck the princess to both let out his frustration and to test if he had actually lost control of his destiny.

I think.

No considering they only show up every 200 years or so.

I wonder what Void was like as a child

Jewish.

There's a difference between "healing" and gaining back what Griffith lost. His tongue was cut out, the torturer implied that he had been castrated, and most of his face was cut off alongside slabs of flesh all over his body (with tendons also severed to make his limbs useless). I don't think those wounds, now covered in scar tissue, could heal. If those wounds could heal, then why doesn't the elf dust give Guts his arm back, or his eye back? And why doesn't the elf dust heal the scars Guts has? It wouldn't have worked on Griffith.

>Guts wasn't just another pawn, but someone that can shape his own destiny as his equal. In a way, you can say that he looked back and realized that he lost a "friend", so to speak, because he didn't saw him as one up until then.

That's a clever reading, because it logically makes sense, but the problem is that I don't think Griffith was analyzing the situation logically like that. If he had been, then he would have realized that fucking Charlotte right then and there was a bad idea.

Plus, he didn't seem at all like he was going into that fight with the happy notion that Guts might finally become his equal and his friend. Quite to the contrary, he was prepared to kill him if he refused to remain subordinate.

He can analyze one thing logically and then totally flip out about what he realized later.

But what I'm saying is that his 'true friend' speech was basically a farce. He claims that he would respect and befriend anyone who stood up to him to seek his own path/dream/whatever, and maybe he believed himself when he said it, I don't know. But either way, when Guts did exactly that, Griffith absolutely did not befriend and respect him the way he said he would.

Maybe he could have realized he contradicted himself later on, but certainly not before he fucked the princess, he was clearly not in his rational mind then.

Go master

>Why do people act like Griffith cared so much?
Because you can't sacrifice something that you don't care about.
That's the whole point.
>But the fact that he is completely remorseless after sacrificing everyone who loves him
Not exactly. He sacrificed his men, became a demon and only then he wondered why he doesn't feel any remorse. That's one of the key points of the apostle transformation: it frees you from the chains of morality.

>when Guts did exactly that, Griffith absolutely did not befriend and respect him the way he said he would
Yeah, because he realized that the way he thought about friends was idealistic and shit. I think he realized it before he fucked the princess; a sort of, "Ow why does that hurt so much? Oh, because I lost my bestie. FUCK." (losing his mind ensues)

>I don't think Griffith was analyzing the situation logically like that. If he had been, then he would have realized that fucking Charlotte right then and there was a bad idea.

I don't think he meant "test" as in experiment in a logical fashion to verify a hypothesis, but more of a "throw yourself into a risky situation to see if you come out of it alive" test.

It was by far the riskiest thing he could have done short of outright attempting to make a military coup on the throne. He was deftly navigating the whirlpool of the throne politics until that point, and then decided to see if he could just slingshot himself out of it by beelining to the middle of it, just to prove something to himself.

>the apostle transformation: it frees you from the chains of morality.

It doesn't really seem like becoming an apostle just automatically switches off your humanity. The count still wouldn't sacrifice his own daughter, and apparently there's always the possibility that could happen, which is why the godhand forces the behilit user to make a choice and a sacrifice in the first place.

I think it's the act of making the choice itself that makes them unfeeling monsters, and not the process of becoming a monster that makes them unfeeling. Imagine if you decided to kill someone you love for money or power or something, it's that choice itself that would make you dead inside.

Ok, I will give you that.
It's kind of murky, though. Because if apostle transformation doesn't forcibly change one's psyche at all then Griffith's affection for the throne of Midland is probably still genuine and he is pretty much the perfect king for this country.
Guts almost kills him and the rest of the Godhand offers the extension in exchange for the Midland.

Of course, it isn't as simple as wanting just money or power. The behelit is far too insidious to just randomly go "Dude! Sacrifice your loved one right now and you'll totally get whatever you want!"
No, it only activates when the wielder is in utter despair. Like when Griffith envisioned his future as a mute cripple and tried and failed to just kill himself.

Berserk has been a while ride full of twists and turns and surprises, but when will we get to see Casca peeing?

From the nature of his crime it's also very likely that Griffith has been castrated. Elf dust can close the wounds but doesn't grow back severed limb.

That mixed with all of the psychological trauma he had.

You guys do realize that Berserk is pretty heavily founded on the idea that there are objects that embody fate, right? It wouldn't happen any other way because it couldn't.

>it isn't as simple as wanting just money or power.

That's not really what I was implying, but it's true in all cases that we see that the behelit involves a trade where the user gets something they want for the sacrifice. Money and power are examples, but more generally it's just desire for something, whatever it may be. In most cases we see it seems to be a desire to escape from some harsh reality, the count was trying to escape from the pain of his treacherous wife, Rosine was trying to escape from the pain of her childhood, and Griffith was just trying to escape from the pain of his commonality which he couldn't accept for reasons we don't really know.

Yes the godhand grabs people in their moment of despair, which makes it easier for them to manipulate them into making a horrible choice. But once you have made a horrible choice as such, it's unlikely that you'll pat yourself on the back and just say 'oh well I was said, I didn't mean to kill my own kids'. It's already too late at that point.

>Guts is actually cracking jokes while Griffith is sitting there with no tongue balls and half his muscles missing
Wow, Griffith really did do nothing wrong. Fuck you Guts.

What determines the strength of the apostles? The amount of sacrifice? The type of behelit? There are demons (Zodd/Grunbeld/etc) that completely outclass the rest of the fodder and we also have the God Hand. Specifically for Griffith, were all of the bodies he killed on his path to his desired kingdom part of his sacrifice, or was it just the remainder of the Band of the Hawks that was currently present?

>being this dense

>Elf dust can close the wounds but doesn't grow back severed limb.
Or severed tongue, missing muscles and long healed severed ligaments.
>That mixed with all of the psychological trauma he had.
It's hard to say how much he could've recovered psychologically. On one hand he's always been driven and resilient, and after he got rescued he was as alert and sharp as ever. On the other hand, his prison monologue shows he was pretty messed up.

Well the type of behelit is at least part of determining the strength of the apostle (i.e. the red behelit is only destined for members of the god hand). Other than that, it seems like the potential of the behelit user somewhat determines the strength they have in apostle form. Many of the strongest apostles in Griffith's army were storied knights before they transformed. Griffith's sacrifice was only of those he branded during the eclipse.

He wasn't trying to prove anything to himself; he went to self-destruct. His empty eyes, lines about forgetting everything, crying after sex, and the long endless "it's all junk" monologue in prison all show someone in suicidal depression. He cared about Guts more than anyone knew and more than he was willing to admit to himself, because somewhere deep down, Guts ended up mattering more than even his dream, which was unacceptable. Even Casca realized that ("You made Griffith weak!".

>potential of the behelit user somewhat determines the strength they have in apostle form
This sounds reasonable to me. How many back stories of apostles do we have, anyway? The Count, Griffith, Rosine, Void, the egg apostle. Are there any others? The new light novel coming out might be pretty interesting, even if it isn't written by Miura.
>Griffith's sacrifice was only of those he branded during the eclipse.
Oh, shit. That's right. I completely forgot about the sacrifices ended up being branded.

We only know some fleeting information about some of the other apostles. Rakshas was a bakiraka and extremely skilled assassin exiled from the clan before he became an apostle. Locus and Grunbeld were both famous knights. Zodd has been a warrior on the battlefield for centuries. Most of the information about them is fleeting.

Well, 食 (shoku) means both feast and eclipse. I assume that anything that isn't an eclipse isn't a feast, meaning that wide-spread sacrifice doesn't happen for Apostles like it does for the God Hand. It would be reasonable to assume that each member of the God Hand was important enough in life that they had a large amount of people they saw as dear to them. While all Apostles are dangerous, there are some that are far more dangerous than others like Ganishka. It's possible that their initial emotional fortitude determines their reborn strength as an Apostle.

Meant to respond to

Would Grunbeld beat Zodd in a fight?

When's the next 3 pages chapter coming?

Probably. Zodd isn't worthy of his own novel.

He was being tortured by a psychopath with pent up sexual frustration for a year. I don't think it's actually possible for one's mental health to be intact after, unless he's one of those monks who separate mind from matter

Bitch please.
Zodd and Skull Knight both would crush the everliving shit out of that weak ass dragon.
He even got his shit kicked in by Guts, who is weaker than both.

Considering how behelits work with fate, wouldn't the power of the behelit used always end up being exactly proportional to the would-be apostle's potential?

even if griffith healed, one way or another he's still ended up to become femto since it's already destined by idea of evil

wait, there's going to be a light novel?

The only thing that kept Griffith's mind together by the end was the memory of Guts.

It's the suffering. The more the future apostle loves the sacrificed and the more the sacrifice suffers, the more the future apostle suffers, the more humanity he is able to shed. The count shows that not all is shed and Griffith's lack of interest in Guts' death shows that it's not the death that matters. Goes to show, honestly, how Guts' life is at least comparable to what people in the vortex experience. Usually, the sacrificer would kill/eat the sacrifice, but in the case of a godhand being born a huge amount of sacrifices is needed to reach the desired collective suffering. Even assuming that the temporal conjunctions can last as long as the godhand wants (I don't think so, I remember Slan saying something about the portal closing or whatever with the count, but it might be different in the eclipse) it would still take a while for the sacrificer to off his sacrifices. So instead, the apostles throw a bit of a banquet, an all you can eat buffet, celebrating and recognizing their new overlord.
Nope, Grun is a shit warrior and a coward at that. But I doubt Zodd would be able to harm his apostle form either

>unless he's one of those monks who separate mind from matter
It seems he did something of the sort. In prison he comments that he feels completely numb, to the point he questions if he has gone insane.

Ganishka is the strongest apostle. So whatever made him that powerful.

Written by the Berserk 2016 script writer. It's going to be shit.

That could be an effect of most of his nerves being destroyed from the torture

Thank god it's not written by Miura himself though. Then he'd have another excuse for hiatus and bad art.

why the fuck is he taking a month to make 17 pages? shouldn't monthly manga be 30-40 pages?

'tis the nature of the monkey's paw, user

But rosine was the fastest apostle and she was just a loli.

>weaker than both

Guts was kicking zodds ass when griffith reincarnated.

>Many of the strongest apostles in Griffith's army were storied knights before they transformed
how do you know this?

What was Griffith thinking during this scene? He almost looks like he's smiling.

He is.

Now a more important question:
Did Griffith rape casca to celebrate the regrowth of his penis and balls?

>No benis
Gud. He's a dirty rapist anyway.

I think it mostly to hurt Guts after being abandoned and partly his confused feelings about Casca as a romantic partner

He's slow af, that's literally the answer

no no, it is hard to draw with only one hand

I'd say it's almost exclusively the former. The fact that he barely looks at Casca the whole time he's doing it indicates it wasn't really about her at all.

> Meanwhile Murata can draw 42 pages in 5 days

Are you fucking with us?
Guts has never "kicked zodds ass" ever. He held is own against his "human" form at the cemetary of swords if thats what youre talking about, but then Zodd transformed into his apostle form and shat all over Guts.
Guts didnt stand a chance in hell against Zodd once he got serious.

>If Griffith hadn't sacrificed the band of the hawk, they would have met Rickert latter that day, who was carrying enough elf dust to completely heal Griffith's wounds.

I hadnt even considered that.

He was fighting on par with zodd at the BOTH cemetary

Guts vs normal human fighting opponent WHEN?

now think if lady oscar didnt go bang the princess, that would have solved everything even faster
really makes your brain overdrive

Serpico.

Guts was wounded and it wasn't a fight to the death using all he's got so it doesn't count.

>He held is own against his "human" form
Considering how he held is own against his "human" form during the golden age and how massively powered up he is after the eclipse, I'd say he did more than that

user he won against zodd in his human form. Zodd was constantly surprised at how fast and strong guts was and was exerting effort. Guts broke zodds sword and sent one into his gut. And even in his apostle form he never managed to hurt guts until casca came along and distracted guts.

Is Miura Jewish?

He's Satan from Devilman. His dreams of world conquest only get challenged by his friendship with the main character. Although he threw that all away during the eclipse, theres a high chance the eventual final battle between them two will end the same way that Akira's and Satan's fight ended.

I have no clue what you are talking about

After zodd transformed, Guts landed one hit on Zodd. Then he was thrown around like a ragdoll.
Saying that he won against Zodd is abit excessive, he did no damage to the guy, yet Guts was bleedind. Had Zodd been human, sure I would consider it a win, but a puny little rapier to the torso does nothing to the guy, Zodd could go on forever like that and Guts would wear out to fatigue. Zodd wanted to experience a good fight going all out, and once he did, Guts got overwhelmed.

Because when they show up, it seems like everybody knows who the fuck they are. You can't be that well known as a soldier unless you're a fucking badass.

he never managed to use the cannon in any of the fights with zodd, dunno if was impossible to find time to do it or what, but if he can land a good hit with it he can "probably" kill zodd
also berserk armor would make the fight on equal grounds. he couldnt kill the dragon giant who apparently is weaker than zodd by how he talks so i dunno

Guts was wounded and at a huge disadvantage and still kicked Serpico's ass. Normal humans really don't stand a chance against Guts.

Yes but who's to say that they didn't acquire their fame after becoming apostles?

>Griffith's overconfidence much more subtly
It's open for the interpretation. He is an extremely goal-oriented person, so there is basically two states to his existence:

- Moving towards his goal
- Dead

So why should he worry about getting killed by the stray(or not so stray) arrow?
If anything, the death would be a welcome relief.

He was doing fine against zodd until casca came in. He wasn't over whelmed. And he was only thrown once.

As for zodd, yeah I'd call it a win for guts even if it didn't kill zodd. Zodd was trying and exerting effort in his human form but failed to land any fatal or even just serious damage on guts. Guts beat him martially and broke his sword. Guts "won" because while zodd failed to even scratch him guts had a sword lodged in zodds body.

not him but also consider the insects in the moth saga: the 2 ex knights are way stronger than the other random shits, so i would guess that the better the starting material, the better the apostle result
not a unbreakable rule tho, after all emperor was not a fighter and he became op anyway. probably the amount of hate and sacrifice are connected too

Because no other human so far has had the life guts had. Imagine if boscogn lived and continued to train as hard as guts. And skull knight was probably badass when he was human too.

i wonder if he became a demon from getting cucked by berserk armor or unrelated

>What determines the strength of the apostles?
Force of will. If you're a powerful warrior or ruler with drive and aspirations your apostle form will be awesome.

If you can rationalize things enough to want excitment and enjoyment, your apostle form is crude and grotesque, but powerful and gets the job done.

If you just want to eat and fuck, then you get turned into a giant dickmouth.

Those where not apostles, just apostle spawn. Also, Griffith himself was pretty weak just before the transformation, Rosy was a loli, Wyald was an old man (unless you return to your would-be age when killed). The only one we know to have been at least somewhat strong before becoming an apostle was the count, and that was regular human strong, nothing exceptional.

you are pretty naive my friend

yeah yeah was just to give the idea. well even a standard apostle should be pretty strong, consider wyald was just a shitty old man and was more than a challenge to guts. ok he had no cannon nor good experience vs apostles at the time but still.
zodd was apparently a legendary fighter even before, same for that spear guy. those seems on a different level from the others.
but yeah that doesnt explain it all, as you said rosy was just a kid but still powerful
griffith isnt considerable into the apostle group, the quality of god hand is different

>my griffith's
>zodd was apparently a legendary fighter even before, same for that spear guy
Again, nothing says they were famous before they became apostles. If anything, Zodd's fame to have existed for 300 years on the battlefield is a testament to that he was an apostle back then too, or at least for the 260 of those 300 years. The theory that "strong human=strong apostle" doesn't explain it all because it's invalid. What matters the most is suffering