- Joined
- Dec 29, 2000
- Posts
- 13,156
As I was at work today (11 days off in a row now-sometimes, working for a college comes with some nice perks), for some reason the notion of how Berserk might end popped into my head. I wasn't really sure why the notion struck me to think about it. I really only think about Berserk when there's a new chapter and then, because Miura has conditioned me to conserve my energy for this series like a lion protecting the pride, I compartmentalize my enthusiasm because that also comes with the frustration over the frequent delays if I dwell on it.
It hit me that I think we were already shown how it will end.
There is a passage early on when Casca is imagining a world where she is living a simple life with Griffith in a humble home somewhere. She's doing all the talking and because of the way he's sitting there, quiet and unmoving, it's implied that this is 'as good as he's going to get' following his ordeal at the hands of Midland's king. She makes a reference to Guts, who I can only presume is her son with Griffith, and clearly a name bestowed upon him to honor their friend. The adult Guts, the protagonist of the story, isn't shown in this pseudo dream sequence.
I think this is how Berserk ends.
There's been this assumption all along that Guts will get his revenge, that he will have his blood price, that he will make Griffith pay for everything he's done.
I also think that after over thirty years of this story, that's a pretty simplistic finale. Especially given everything that has happened to these characters in all that time.
Not only have the characters themselves grown and changed over time. Miura himself has changed over time. Anybody that lives long enough and gains experiences enough is bound to undergo some kind of spiritual and/or psychological transformation.
We've seen that rebirth is the constant theme of B erserk. Characters are constantly undergoing transformations, either physical or psychological (sometimes both) that effectively change who they are, reshaping them from the remains of what they were before and turning them into something entirely new, but familiar, in the process.
These constant 'rebirths' are most evident in Guts, Casca and Griffith, although to a lesser extent other characters also undergo these changes.
Even Casca's hideos baby is reborn and given new life when he evolves into a new Griffith that can exist in the plane of humans despite joining the God Hand.
And that child has also been shown in the story as a naked youth with long, flowing black hair and looking down on them from above. This is the 'soul', if you will, of the child that the baby could have been had Griffith not used the body to come back to the ream of humans.
That boy is the one that, when it's all said and done, will be given the name 'Guts'.
Now, what does this mean for Guts, the one we know, in the end?
Well, we've seen that his reunion with Casca has been bittersweet. She can't see him without being haunted, to the point of paralyzing dread, by the events of the Eclipse.
I do not think that Casca will ever overcome this psychological damage.
And Guts will come to eventually accept that as much as he may want it, he can never be with Casca. And since he loves her so much, he will want her to be happy and live a peaceful, contented life.
So, then...what happens to Guts?
I think that he's going to look at his own existence as someone that lived outside of causality and recognize that Griffith was not only subject to causality but he was an absolute victim of it. The God Hand engineered a series of circumstances which guided him down a path. He never had the freedom that Guts had because his path was chosen for him long before everything else. The only choice Griffith ever truly made was rigged against his own agency the whole time.
So Guts will come to eventually see that the real Griffith, the one that Casca sees sitting across from her in her vision, has never really been given a chance to live how he wanted to. If he'd never been sold the egg of the king, he might not have ever believed he could rise to become a king by any means. That he was 'egged on', so to speak, because his potential ambition was so great that he could accomplish something for the God Hand that no other human being could.
And the end result of all that causality has been nothing but suffering, misery and hatred.
I don't think Guts' struggle will, in the end, be with Griffith. I think Casca would want all of this damage to somehow be 'undone' or 'made right'. And I think Guts will see that as her path to happiness. A reconciliation of all these cosmic evils perpetrated upon all of them so that they can just live happy.
So Griffith was never really given a chance to truly be his own person, and thus Guts' equal and, by his own logic, someone he could call a friend. And Guts will, in the end, want to be able to look Griffith in the eye as an equal and call him that friend.
So Guts, too, will make a 'sacrifice' of his own. Somehow, the belehit he's been hanging on to all this time will play into things. I'm not sure how. I believe he may somehow use it to summon the God Hand to a place where they will be vulnerable to his fury. He'll kill them and undo the spiral of causality. All the souls will be freed. All of the victims of causality that chose to make the sacrifice and become apostles will realize they were all subject to the whim of the God Hand, who needed agents in the realm of man in order to see their ambitions realized. By 'breaking the wheel', so to speak, Guts will defeat the true villain of Berserk: Idea.
Whether Guts is alive and wandering the world as a soldier of fortune or he's dead, I can't say. I think he'll survive but he won't be able to get together with Casca in the end. Or, whereas Griffith was reborn through Casca's son, perhaps Guts will be the one to be reborn, his soul added to the child's so that he can be given a chance to live a happy life that doesn't exist solely to survive.
At any rate, I think this is how Berserk will end.
All that came to me as I was filling out a P.O. for art supplies. Odd.
It hit me that I think we were already shown how it will end.
There is a passage early on when Casca is imagining a world where she is living a simple life with Griffith in a humble home somewhere. She's doing all the talking and because of the way he's sitting there, quiet and unmoving, it's implied that this is 'as good as he's going to get' following his ordeal at the hands of Midland's king. She makes a reference to Guts, who I can only presume is her son with Griffith, and clearly a name bestowed upon him to honor their friend. The adult Guts, the protagonist of the story, isn't shown in this pseudo dream sequence.
I think this is how Berserk ends.
There's been this assumption all along that Guts will get his revenge, that he will have his blood price, that he will make Griffith pay for everything he's done.
I also think that after over thirty years of this story, that's a pretty simplistic finale. Especially given everything that has happened to these characters in all that time.
Not only have the characters themselves grown and changed over time. Miura himself has changed over time. Anybody that lives long enough and gains experiences enough is bound to undergo some kind of spiritual and/or psychological transformation.
We've seen that rebirth is the constant theme of B erserk. Characters are constantly undergoing transformations, either physical or psychological (sometimes both) that effectively change who they are, reshaping them from the remains of what they were before and turning them into something entirely new, but familiar, in the process.
These constant 'rebirths' are most evident in Guts, Casca and Griffith, although to a lesser extent other characters also undergo these changes.
Even Casca's hideos baby is reborn and given new life when he evolves into a new Griffith that can exist in the plane of humans despite joining the God Hand.
And that child has also been shown in the story as a naked youth with long, flowing black hair and looking down on them from above. This is the 'soul', if you will, of the child that the baby could have been had Griffith not used the body to come back to the ream of humans.
That boy is the one that, when it's all said and done, will be given the name 'Guts'.
Now, what does this mean for Guts, the one we know, in the end?
Well, we've seen that his reunion with Casca has been bittersweet. She can't see him without being haunted, to the point of paralyzing dread, by the events of the Eclipse.
I do not think that Casca will ever overcome this psychological damage.
And Guts will come to eventually accept that as much as he may want it, he can never be with Casca. And since he loves her so much, he will want her to be happy and live a peaceful, contented life.
So, then...what happens to Guts?
I think that he's going to look at his own existence as someone that lived outside of causality and recognize that Griffith was not only subject to causality but he was an absolute victim of it. The God Hand engineered a series of circumstances which guided him down a path. He never had the freedom that Guts had because his path was chosen for him long before everything else. The only choice Griffith ever truly made was rigged against his own agency the whole time.
So Guts will come to eventually see that the real Griffith, the one that Casca sees sitting across from her in her vision, has never really been given a chance to live how he wanted to. If he'd never been sold the egg of the king, he might not have ever believed he could rise to become a king by any means. That he was 'egged on', so to speak, because his potential ambition was so great that he could accomplish something for the God Hand that no other human being could.
And the end result of all that causality has been nothing but suffering, misery and hatred.
I don't think Guts' struggle will, in the end, be with Griffith. I think Casca would want all of this damage to somehow be 'undone' or 'made right'. And I think Guts will see that as her path to happiness. A reconciliation of all these cosmic evils perpetrated upon all of them so that they can just live happy.
So Griffith was never really given a chance to truly be his own person, and thus Guts' equal and, by his own logic, someone he could call a friend. And Guts will, in the end, want to be able to look Griffith in the eye as an equal and call him that friend.
So Guts, too, will make a 'sacrifice' of his own. Somehow, the belehit he's been hanging on to all this time will play into things. I'm not sure how. I believe he may somehow use it to summon the God Hand to a place where they will be vulnerable to his fury. He'll kill them and undo the spiral of causality. All the souls will be freed. All of the victims of causality that chose to make the sacrifice and become apostles will realize they were all subject to the whim of the God Hand, who needed agents in the realm of man in order to see their ambitions realized. By 'breaking the wheel', so to speak, Guts will defeat the true villain of Berserk: Idea.
Whether Guts is alive and wandering the world as a soldier of fortune or he's dead, I can't say. I think he'll survive but he won't be able to get together with Casca in the end. Or, whereas Griffith was reborn through Casca's son, perhaps Guts will be the one to be reborn, his soul added to the child's so that he can be given a chance to live a happy life that doesn't exist solely to survive.
At any rate, I think this is how Berserk will end.
All that came to me as I was filling out a P.O. for art supplies. Odd.
