Guts' Eye

This is just something trivial I've been wondering about, and this might just be a stupid question but oh well.

As we all know, Guts' eye was gouged out, impaled, or whatever you want to call it, and he simply keeps it closed. Is this possible in real life? Whenever someone is missing an eye, they usually get something to replace the eye or wear an eye-patch, or both. Is there something magical about these? I don't care if it isn't realistic because Guts looks much better without an eye-patch. Just wondering if you can simply keep it shut, or sew it shut (doesn't really sound like a great idea to sew it but who knows). Couldn't really find an answer on Google, but I have a feeling eye-patches and such aren't necessary as long as the socket is clean. :guts:

Edit: I guess a reason for an eye-patch would be to keep too much air from getting into the socket which could maybe dry it out, and that its probably not fun to shut one eye all day. But the question still remains as these are not problems that can't be solved by keeping the eye closed somehow.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Godot and Rickert probably cauterized his eye and eyelids together to prevent hemorrhage and infection, which means it is fused and can't be opened.
 
Aazealh said:
Godot and Rickert probably cauterized his eye and eyelids together to prevent hemorrhage and infection, which means it is fused and can't be opened.

Huh. I always had the impression the most likely scenario was that he had lost sensitivity in the area because of the injury, and just couldn't control the eyelid, thus keeping the eye closed due to the inability to open it.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Arles said:
Huh. I always had the impression the most likely scenario was that he had lost sensitivity in the area because of the injury, and just couldn't control the eyelid, thus keeping the eye closed due to the inability to open it.

Localized loss of sensitivity is the most likely scenario to you? Really? Seems on the contrary rather far fetched. Anyway, if that had been the case, the numerous times Guts was upside down or knocked down or endured some kinetic force, his eyelid would have opened by itself. Since it never has in the entire series, I think we can discard that notion.
 
Aazealh said:
Localized loss of sensitivity is the most likely scenario to you? Really? Seems on the contrary rather far fetched.
Yes, really.
I was thinking of an extreme case of Eyelid Ptosis due to trauma. Like this: http://bit.ly/1iHI0UC
I considered it likely because: "Ptosis due to trauma can ensue after an eyelid laceration with transection of the upper eyelid elevators or disruption of the neural input." And I know many cases of loss of sensitivity in the zone of the injury.
But maybe the fact that we don't see a scar in Guts right eye is a strong point against a laceration of the eyelid.


Anyway, if that had been the case, the numerous times Guts was upside down or knocked down or endured some kinetic force, his eyelid would have opened by itself. Since it never has in the entire series, I think we can discard that notion.
That is true.

About the cauterization: Wouldn't that leave some kind of scar, too?
 

Lithrael

Remember, always hold your apple tight
There's probably a little bit of stylization goin on here in any case.

Horses are the easiest guys to look to, since they damage their eyes doin stupid horse shit on a pretty regular basis. Typically when a horse has poked a hole in its cornea badly enough that they aren't goin to bother trying to save the eye, they'll do an evisceration or enucleation of the eyeball, and permanently close the eyelid. This eventually results in a closed-sunken eye look. If they do try to save the eyeball but the results aren't perfect, the eyeball will usually shrink, once again looking sunken when closed.

I'm not sure if it's really possible to end up with fused eyelids over a badly damaged eye that doesn't eventually look pretty funky. The way Guts is drawn certainly implies a nice full eyeball under those eyelids. So it looks to me like somehow, the globe of the eyeball ended up extraordinarily well-healed (and not fused to the inside of the eyelids, or it would definitely atrophy and shrink), and the eyelids are fused together with really amazing cosmetic success. Undoubtedly all this success is due to the liberal application of fairy dust.

And yeah it never looked to me like he suffered any damage to the eye area besides the actual open globe injury. And his injured side goes through the full range of motion when he's emoting so I wouldn't think anything is simply unable to respond due to nerve damage etc..
 
Lithrael said:
And his injured side goes through the full range of motion when he's emoting so I wouldn't think anything is simply unable to respond due to nerve damage etc..
That is a very good observation!
 
Arles said:
Yes, really.
I was thinking of an extreme case of Eyelid Ptosis due to trauma. Like this: http://bit.ly/1iHI0UC

Something tells me that the guy in the picture doesn't just use that pole to help himself get around...
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Arles said:
But maybe the fact that we don't see a scar in Guts right eye is a strong point against a laceration of the eyelid.

Well yeah... I mean we clearly see what his injury was: his eye was pierced, but the eyelid was left intact.

Arles said:
About the cauterization: Wouldn't that leave some kind of scar, too?

Well like Lithrael said it's not like this is meant to be 100% medically accurate or anything. What matters, regardless of the method, is that his eye is dead and his eyelids are sealed shut.
 
Every time I read Berserk, I always thought to myself how badass Guts was just for fighting with one eye. His depth perception must be shit, but he just keeps on kicking ass. :guts: I guess it must be all that "pure" warrior instinct. :ganishka:
 
^
Yeah but tbh I think he almost immediately solved that equation, y'know with all that countless battle experience from the past. And training with such long and heavy swords all his life, that balance/coordination's got to be godlike. When going into battle mode every move (sword slash, evading, dodging etc...) pretty much became second nature at some point even long before the the Eclipse. (The moves "are in the spinal cord" as we say where I live)

Whats messing with his sight atm though is the armor.
 

Lithrael

Remember, always hold your apple tight
For those interested in the depth perception of one-eyed persons, here's a wall of text quoted from a NYT article from 1983:

Traditional theories have held that the most significant reason the brain perceives depth, even though the image on the retina is flat, is that the two eyes are laterally displaced, and therefore see slightly different images of the world. When the brain fuses the two images, the perception of depth is created. This phenomenon is called stereopsis, and it depends on visual information from two separate channels.

Recent research (1983 lol), however, is showing that the visual system also has a mechanism sensitive to motion, through which a single eye can allow depth judgments as fine as those based on stereopsis.

Dr. David M. Regan, professor of physiology and ophthalmology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has been studying athletes and pilots with vision in only one eye, comparing their ability to judge depth with that of people with stereopsis.

He said there are two particularly robust cues to motion and depth. The first, called stereomotion, is related to stereopsis and requires visual information from two eyes. When their displaced images are fused, the brain can determine the speed of an object by processing the change in the disparity between the two images of an object as it moves closer or farther away.

The other cue, the one so-called stereoblind people apparently use, is monocular, and is related to the size of an image as it moves on the retina.

''As the ball gets closer it gets bigger,'' Dr. Regan said. ''In the brain we have found nerve cells that very accurately respond to that changing size. They can compute how rapidly it is moving and its direction.''

The speed of the ball is discerned by the rate at which the image grows on the retina, and its direction by the path of the image. The visual system also automatically factors into its calculations the speed of the body, which affects the relative position of the ball. This means that as long as an object or the body is moving, the visual system can make depth judgments.

Dr. Regan said the set of nerve cells sensitive to changing size operate independently from the other perceptual systems, which process sideways motion, position and a variety of other spatial information. Therefore, this system is not affected if other depth systems are impaired.

He pointed out another, better- known monocular cue to depth that also takes advantage of motion, the so-called motion parallax. Motion parallax refers to the fact that images of objects close to the eye move across the retina faster than images of further objects. For example, a passenger in a car sees bushes by the side of the road racing by, while a house in the distance moves gradually.

The visual system is able to process the relative speeds of these images as they move across a single retina and can determine their distance relative to each other and to the body.

Personally I think a good way to picture it is to think of a modern 3-D movie, which gives you that stereoscopic information in isolation from many other depth cues of the normal 'seeing' experience. Then try to think about all of the ways that a 3-D movie falls short of the way you experience depth and vision in general out in the real world. Understand those are some of the ways that a one-eyed person experiences depth.

Focal depth, for example, is not yet accurately represented in any flat-screened media. Instead, we are presented with the focal depth of a camera, chosen by the director (not that this is a bad thing in a film, as it's an artistic tool used to direct the viewer's attention, but we are here talking about how it's different from 'real seeing'). I can't even think of any way it could be implemented in any device meant to be viewed by more than one person at a time, since to achieve it, you'd need the picture to respond to the actions of the viewer's eyes.
 
IronBerserk said:
Every time I read Berserk, I always thought to myself how badass Guts was just for fighting with one eye. His depth perception must be shit, but he just keeps on kicking ass. :guts: I guess it must be all that "pure" warrior instinct. :ganishka:

True enough, but Guts' missing eye is a boo-boo compared to the guys in Shigurui. :griffnotevil:
 
IcePuck said:
The problem is also directly addressed in the manga, when we see Guts training to get used to only having one eye. (salmon cutting :azan:)

what volume/episode is that in?

As for his eye I just assumed since fairy dust is has godly like qualities that it healed his eye so perfect that aesthetically speaking it looks perfect and handsome, it just did not restore it's ability to see out of it.
 
Not that this is a be all answer...but I am a Bank manager and one of my customers came in last week. He had both of his eyes lost from a cooking accident gone wrong and they had to be removed. Both of his eyes are completely gone and both his eye lids were always shut.
 
do you think if fairy dust healed his eye so well it would retain it's shape and not shrivel up and die, that fairy dust from the great elf king might restore Guts eye sight completely when they reach skelling? This is something I have wondered if the fairies might be able to restore his eye sight along with Casca's mind.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Hot Chic said:
do you think if fairy dust healed his eye so well it would retain it's shape and not shrivel up and die, that fairy dust from the great elf king might restore Guts eye sight completely when they reach skelling? This is something I have wondered if the fairies might be able to restore his eye sight along with Casca's mind.

I don't believe Guts' eye or arm will be restored on Skellig. My guess is, he'll carry those wounds for the rest of his life.
 

Kompozinaut

Sylph Sword
I think it's too far gone at this point. I don't see Gut's regenerating an entire forearm and hand. Getting his eye back is only marginally more believable. Note: The arm cannon has saved Guts on numerous occasions: Female apostle, Snake Baron, the two (have their been more?) times he's needed to use his Spinning Cannon Slash patton pending, etc.

Getting his left arm back might help him wield his sword more dexterously but at the cost of one of his most devastating trump cards? I think he'd be significantly weakened by taking his cannon away.
 

Lithrael

Remember, always hold your apple tight
If I were to make a wild-ass guess, I'd suggest something slightly different. Since the armor has been weakening his natural sight, perhaps something magical might be done with his ruined eye - not to restore it, but to allow it to 'see' something else in some other way. And then he could have a reversible eyepatch depending on what he wanted to look at, lol, full circle to Prototype! Seriously though, I doubt the episode would have been named the right eye's last sight if Miura intended for it to ever be restored.
 
Many things are possible but I don't think this scenario is plausible since those physical elements totally shaped who Guts is, the way he's interacting, and his special abilities . That being said and as others stated for years, i't's pretty obvious that he (and the rest of the group) will probably get on Elfhelm some sort of magical enhancement, upgrade, new gear which could give him new sensibilities/abilities.
 
Hot Chic said:
do you think if fairy dust healed his eye so well it would retain it's shape and not shrivel up and die, that fairy dust from the great elf king might restore Guts eye sight completely when they reach skelling? This is something I have wondered if the fairies might be able to restore his eye sight along with Casca's mind.

I think it only restores what the body itself could heal when properly stabilized. Only a behelit and a sacrifice could possibly restore Guts' eyes to full. Even then, that's not so much healing as it is becoming a inhuman or terribly human depending on how you look at it.
 
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