I hadn’t considered it quite like that, but yeah… He should have a lot of conflicting emotions here. The boy transforming into Griffith didn’t phase him in the moment or the aftermath.I hate how Guts didn't react when the Moonlight boy turned into Griffith. I bet the next time he sees him he is going to act like nothing happened.
SO MANY things that should be on his mind after Cascas kidnapping and Mori made him cry about his damn sword.
After seeing all the clusterfuck that has piled up since Berserk's revival, I have to question whether Miura actually told Mori anything about how the rest of the series would proceed. Almost everything I've seen looks like a well-drawn (but poorly written) fanfic; nothing like what or how Miura would've written.I hadn’t considered it quite like that, but yeah… He should have a lot of conflicting emotions here. The boy transforming into Griffith didn’t phase him in the moment or the aftermath.
After seeing all the clusterfuck that has piled up since Berserk's revival, I have to question whether Miura actually told Mori anything about how the rest of the series would proceed. Almost everything I've seen looks like a well-drawn (but poorly written) fanfic; nothing like what or how Miura would've written.
Sure, the episodes are bad, but it's not Miura's fault at the end of the day.
When people heard about plans, I think, they created way too lofty expectations.
That's not the readers' fault. It's on the people who decided to launch this continuation like they did. Hakusensha, Young Animal's editorial department, and yes, Mori and the Studio Gaga staff. It's on them. They're calling this Berserk. They're pretending it's continuing "like nothing happened". That's an irredeemable decision.
I don't want people to see this new Berserk and be so frustrated by the poor job they've been doing as to blame Miura so to speak.
Re-reading the episodes "Spring Flowers of Distant Days" where we see Guts before meeting the Band of the Hawk when he encounters a flower spirit named Chich, I wonder what the purpose of including this 3-part flashback was?
While the death of the flower and disappearance of Chich and the death of the tree and the disappearance of the ethereal creatures on Elfhelm (save Puck and Ivalera) seem to share little in common, it still seems as if there was meant to be some kind of connection or relation between the two phenomena or story themes, because it does not seem like there's enough story left the way we are moving towards the end that would pay off what we saw being set up with Chich if it wasn't that.
Maybe the point of Chich was so that Guts would meet her again if the disappearance of Danan and the Elfhelm creatures is resolved by bringing them back somehow from wherever they went
He didn't seem to pay any attention to Danan or the creatures disappearing and was not even really there to witness it, it's hard to imagine him caring that much with everything else going on
Let's ignore any speculation about Guts' beherit for the moment
Are Apostles still being created around the world since the beginning of Fantasia by use of behelits and sacrifices? And how would that work for Griffith exactly who has incarnated into the physical plane, does he still get pulled into those ceremonies on a regular basis or at all?
Did Miura intend to explore the despair of someone who would not even receive the "gift" (or curse) of a behelit helping them, and how they'd get out of it on their own?
The story has moved away quite a bit from this theme or idea of humans being seduced by demons that seemed to be a major one at the start of Berserk
We have not seen any ceremony when an Apostle is created apart from brief flashbacks, except for Griffith - which was also a flashback and dealt with a Godhand ascension rather than Apostle creation.
Now, about the inconsistency or "out of character" aspect of Guts as he does not even attempt to move while being carried onto the boat in this episode. Could the barytes have anything to do with it?
I assume "causality" in the world of Berserk is not the same as the cause and effect of our world, that it is not simply random but acts with some sort of purpose and possibly through the use of barytes (almost like an "infection" since elementals seem to have agency and are not just passive forces of nature).
Speaking of barytes, I like the theory going around that the Berserker armor works through barytes elementals and the reason it didn't activate (and possibly can't activate in proximity to Griffith) is because Griffith swallows the barytes into his torrent.
It would be a neat way for Miura to have Guts not lose his mind to the armor whenever he confronts Griffith towards the end of the story.
The armor is useful when confronted with monsters and Apostles, but it seems unlikely to really add anything to a fight with the actual Godhand members, so having it be automatically disabled in such situations might be a blessing.
We know what happened to King Gaiseric when using it against the Godhand.
Anyway, going back to the recent fight between Guts and Griffith, we see a panel that looks like Griffith noticing the Beast of Darkness. I wonder if this is something Griffith picked up on while possibly absorbing barytes elementals from the Berserker armor, just poorly drawn or conveyed by Studio Gaga without Miura?
By the way, a note on Casca's brand not spraying blood in such close proximity to a member of the Godhand... Was this not already an inconsistency back during the eclipse when Femto raped Casca? Her brand didn't do more than bleed a little back then either.
Miura said at the time that he had wanted to show a bit of Guts' journey during that period for a long time. He also wanted to explain why Guts is uneasy around Puck when they first meet, repeatedly telling him not to touch him.
When we first saw that little segment of the story, it was immediately apparent to me that Chich's nature as an elf tied to a flower was significant and that it might perhaps relate to the Sovereign of the Flower Storm. So yes, I think it was something Miura intended to do, but his untimely passing meant we did not get to see it. What's left to be told of the story doesn't really factor into this, since we also will not get to see what Miura intended to do. It will at best be a dumbed down approximation of some of the major beats.
As before, I would caution against trying to find deep meaning in the minute details of those episodes. Keep in mind Mori and the staff only know a bit of what Miura intended to do, and they don't necessarily know how he meant to do it either.
No, it's not. During the Eclipse, you can actually see the brand start to bleed over time, from panel to panel, as it becomes active.
Do you have the source for that? All I found was Miura's comment in YA translated by puella where he mentioned the second thing, but not the first one about having wanted to show a bit of Guts' journey during that period for a long time.
Those 3 episodes, however, did not really convey that Guts ended up disliking elves... Or, at least, that's not what I took away from them.
Right, but do you think Danan might have been the only one to disappear if Miura did it, and right as the tree died?
The confrontation with Griffith was already set to happen at the end of the last episode Miura did, and given the tree dies pretty soon afterwards as the island falls apart it seems like it would still happen too quickly for it to give Danan anything but a very abrupt and sudden end. Unless the island was meant to fall apart a bit later, but I'm not sure a scenario where anything other than the presence of a God Hand member would cause such cataclysmic damage to the place.
Well I wonder about that, since these episodes are so close to where Miura left off. And he supposedly had similar talks with his assistants and editor as he did Mori. It seems odd that they would be left with only a bit of what Miura intended to do right off the bat
especially when you also consider comments in interviews such as this one
So the implication is that when the brand is fresh it doesn't bleed as much because it takes a while to become active?
Do you wonder about it, really? Have you looked at these episodes closely? Do they seem to you like they faithfully mirror what Miura would have done? If so, that's shocking to me, and I would encourage you to read my posts on the matter in each of the relevant threads. It is quite clear to me that they either were missing a lot of details or did not know how to interpret and convey them. Or both.
[...] For any doubts you have, my answer is: look at what they've produced.
Other than that I haven't found anything necessarily wrong with the overall direction things are moving, other than, as mentioned, the pacing, the dialogue, the finer details, etc.