Idea's true plans and Guts's true destiny, and the happy ending.

I've been thinking about Idea's true motives behind all of this, and i think i've come up with a pretty good possibility.

Idea, like all organisms, ethereal or not, requires to feed. We can already assume that his favorite meal are the souls of humans, but let's ask the question: what makes human souls nutritive?

The answers: Memories. Stories. Anecdotes.

This is what truly sustains Idea: not the souls themselves, but their histories. And the truly, tasty souls are the ones encrusted with torment, lamentation and suffering.


Consider Ideas ability to affect the events of human affairsm and consider Midland's dark ages, wars, famines and pestilences. This was Idea getting gluttonous. And if Miura's interpretation of the middle ages was anything like it's real world counterpart, Idea must be VERY fat indeed.

Of course, too much is too much, and Idea needs time to recover. He needs to bring order and control to the "nutritional value" within his constant influx of souls. While he could have simply manipulated humanity into a golden age (with the occasional massacre or cataclysm for Suffering's sake), this would have taken too much time ...probably a millenia too long. Enter Griffith, his champion. Order personnified. capable of charming all of humanity with his presence alone, and crushing any opposition effortlessly. These gifts would give Idea his much needed rest while griffith turns entire continents of humans into cattle, penned in a corral disguised as a world spanning empire.

Of course, Idea is a relatively new player into the world, and forces not so keen on him introducing a Scion of Order decided to balance things out with their own Champion. Enter Guts, chaos personified. One needs only to look at his life to see that he is Griffith's true opposite. While Griffith thrived on carefully laid out plans, strategies and ruthless manipulation, Guts thrived on charging in headfirst into problems and improvising his way out. One must also look at the cirumstances of Guts' birth: he was born while his mother died. He SHOULD have died. Medical Science as we know it says he should be dead. And yet here he is swinging a 300 lbs piece of iron. He is an istant aberration while Griffith is the result of a carefully chosen bloddline.

In light of all this, it is likely that Guts' final victory over the Godhand lies not in killing Griffith. Because he can't. As mirror opposites (in universal terms), they will clash, they will hurt one another, but one will never truly annihilate the other. If anything, they can only destroy one another.
So guts' real victory, at least in the foreseeable future, lies in making sure that Idea's much needed golden age never comes to pass by opposing Griffith's attempt at establishing his empire. This must be done with whatever chaotic means necessary, be it killing of personnel or wanton destruction of property. If ucessful, Idea gets overfed and croaks, or shuts himself off from the flow of souls, thus depriving the Godhand of their patron's support. Their powers dwindle considerably to the point of vulnerability and brings them within the reach of Guts' and Skull Knight's formidable weapons.

Void gets voided. Conrad loses a LOT of weight through surgery and Ubik won't be smiling no more. Slann will probably get impaled by somthing. Sonething HUGE.

As for griff and guts, i dunno. maybe Griffith will continue to pursue his goals without the powers granted to him by godhood, and Guts continues to oppose him at every turn for the rest of their mortal (or perhaps immortal?) lives.

I liked where you were going with that. Perhaps though, I don't think then end will be Gut's always fighting and opposing Griffith. That sounds to much like Goku vs Vegeta tye thing. Not really Berserk style.

I also hope that it isnt a Cowboy Bebop ending as well, meh.... That is one thing that I never really liked about Manga or Anime... then endings are usually non-conclusive, or atleast for my tastes.

The two of them negating each other would be too much like Matrix:Revolutions. :(

Idea cuttin' the strings to GodHand and Griffith pursuing his dream as a human sounds pretty cool, especially if Guts and Casca can resume living in the Material world instead of the Interstice. Perhaps Casca regains her sanity, spits upon Griffith and all he stands for, and she and Guts retire to Godo's place to live out their lives with Rickert and Erika. With GH out of the picture, the Apostles slowly lose their powers until they're ordinary humans again. Humanity doesn't enter a Golden Age, but it gets alot better than it had been.

sticking with the true spirit of berserks multiple plans of exsistince, i don't think it's possibly for conclusion in this story, gutts can die, but then let's supose due to the massive amounts of his spiritual entity brought out by the brand when he dies wont he most likely be a demon? (I use demon because most of the things that attack him during at night are more zombies, I would imagine demons would be the next step up, thinking creatures) or possibly higher, ergo it would not end his fight only bring it to a new plain unless there were some way to totally destroy a soul, thus a cowboy bebop like ending where he just dies, unfilling, although cowboy bebop is like number two under berserk.

then we can have the happily ever after ending which i think would be horrible because it's not possible, i don't think gutts will win this battle with god hands either, if he does be odd because of the amount of power it would take in order to destroy it, if the idea was to be weakend to the point it would take thousands of years to regan power i think it would put everything into a cycle that would end at less the miura standards...bah i hope something new is used

Then what role does SK play in your awesome theories?

SK, or more precisely Gaiseric, sought to unite the continent under his banner and bloodline. Ideally, the Empire would probably be under a form of Pax Gaesericia: tribal wars, raids, strife and the like would not be allowed to happen within its borders, thus bringing forth an age of peace.

of course Idea, still very much fond of his newfound taste in tormented souls, sent out a ripple in the weave of fate and made Gaiseric your typical, greedy, hedonistic tyrant. Unrest builds up due to High Tax and disease, and instead of fixing anything, Gaiseric just walls himself up in sumptuous palaces and forgets his troubles with daily and nightly orgies. It is at that time that the Wiseman publicly spoke out against the Emperor in an attempt to rally the people and bring down his rule. He obviously failed, as he was soon imprisoned within a tower to be continuously tortured, day after day. The Wiseman, with little else to do to sustain his ailing sanity under the gruesome menu of pain, jsut prayed to his gods. As the tortures grew more "creative", so did Wiseman's prayers turn into curses...and when he could take no more, hew let out all of his hate with Druidic chants which eventually reached Idea's perceptions. Idea, having made a more direct connection to the material plane, saw in wiseman a potential agent through which he could control history more directly, and his next great meal.

Idea makes the proposition to Wiseman who accepts all to eagerly, and the "Festival" begins. The Imperial Capital falls, all within its walls are branded like cattle and are slaughtered as such.

Without a capital, and with no designated heir, the empire ifractures into smaller countries divided by the many sons of Gaiseric (I'm assuming he did: Miura could very well have modelled him after Charles Magnus). With their constant bickering, war breaks out across the continent, and Idea eats well for another thousand years.

Skull Knight, my big hypothesis is, is not actually Gaiseric but his favored, youngest SON, present at the Festival and witness to the murder of his people and his loved ones (his lover? his father and perhaps his mother?). Junior miraculously survives for reasons unknown (Flora?) and after recovering from the ordeal, goes on a quest to find a kill void once and for all. As a last sign of respect for his fathere, and to strike dread in the hearts of those who would die by his blade, Junior dons a Skull shaped helmet, like3 his father before him.

how long did u think to make this up :-\

interesting theory but i'd like to see something to back it up.

well, tell me which part doesn't make any sense to you, and i'll try to explain.

u explain well grasshopper :)

I ment as to any clues or hints that would leave you to believe this or is it all theory?

well, it's all theory, really. If anyone wants to debunk this, it should be pretty easy. :/

meh.

i think your theory is really good. nice job!

Well, theories are just that until they are proven right or wrong.

And this one was pretty interesting. *grins*

I really can't think of anything that outright speaks against it, it feels nice and self cointained, which is everything that can be said for a theory that do not include the inner workings inside Miura's skull. And none of us can know those...

I am also a sucker when it comes to paralellism in storylines, the obvious one would be gasaeric and Griffith. Not being the hugest of skullknight/gasaeric fans I haven't ventured deeply into that part of the theories, I am rather more fond of another piece of paralellism:

G*ttsu and Griffith. I'm not sure that they are destined to eternal opposition. granted they are very much unlike, but over the last years I think that it seems like G*ttsu are more and more starting to walk griffith's path.

With that I don't mean grasping for power or glory, but rather walking his path to damnation. It only seems to be a matter of time before he succumbs totally to the beast for such a long time that he will irrevocably hurt those closest to him. It already was a close call with casca, and with the berserk armour things seem set to get worse... Eventually he will do something that will end up with falling as deep as he can fall. He can't be an apostle, at least if we should believe Slann, but whatever he can be seems to be just as nasty.

On the other hand Griffith is still an enigma. We haven't seen much of him lately, hopefully the new story will change that. I get the feeling that he might be recovering his humanity, even if he still seems rather gunshy and shellshocked about it. Not that he was ever given to emotional outbursts, except around G*ttsu. But all this is based on the few glimpses we have seen so far, and for all I know he could pretty much be an emotionless automation of evil. But really... that wouldn't be half as fun and complicated now, would it?

i don't rule out some demon, if not an apostle it could be a demon but something differnt because we can see slann has some affections toward him.

Good Afthernoon

it seems to me that the IDEA was based on the principle of the coletivo inconciente, the accumulation of basicos religious principles that we inherited of our primitive ancestros that thought for the first time about the concept of superior deity or espiritu, segun says I capitulate lost in the dialogos between Griffit and the IDEA this was created by the men by the massive accumulation of negative human emotions in his mayoria or aggressive and this retroalimenta these emotions to as well be able to subsist and to maintain constant its main power supply, that explicaria because in history the wars and the fear in all the senses increase the powers of the darkness, IDEA acquires conscience being based on general concept of the humans of "GOD" Gods, divinities, ect, asi, perhaps whereas in midland or tudor or but or in Europe the concept of a superior divinity sobreother aid to the proliferation of the emotions that give force to the IDEA, the hand of God actua like agents of propagation of such emotion in the men and while greater it is the accumulation of aggressive emotions that finish in the death of people who take hatred feelings or frustration before dying that feeds the idea, quiza the same concept of sky and hell are not but that a massive accumulation of ideas on the other world that they have the humans, and who create in such concepts when dying in their mind they think that they go ahi when in fact they deberian.... to go to a different place, but when being catched in the religious concepts of his epoca and to believe in them, they are catched in the dominion of the IDEA with respect to GATT, quiza the case is that in special fight to make its own way, without mattering that as much the world to his around this desmoranando itself, follows its own bases and their own beliefs, create an own identity that not this subject one with as much force to the direct manipulation of the IDEA, certainly so far he has been victima of its aims, but in I complete moment has been able to escape of its influence although it is nearly and it leaves an imperceptible track in the world, but that hollow leaves a hole in the curtain of the dominion of the IDEA and something asi cannot be taken lightly by the IDEA because if the same event in different people were repeated its threatened quedaria existence hell we are all, said Sartre, it even is to clarify if the world of espiritus of Flora were before or despues of the IDEA and if its presence puts it in danger or simply it hinders it, or quiza, this world already existia but was invaded by the IDEA, and now it controls it, that explicaria because I exercise of Griffith I attack the house of Flora? good, one is single opinion of my part

thank you very much to listen to me

i read, but i did not understand. sorry, behelit, but your translator is...inadequate.

Woah ! what an interesting theory ;)
but there are some things I haven't well understood :

- Why should IDEA be overfed ??! I guess it doesn't matter how much it eats ???

-Also, you said that Griffith follows the path Casualty (or IDEA if I'm not mistaken) has chosen for him, but we should keep in mind that the "new" Griffith has one part of Guts and Caska's baby (thus experiences emotions through his body and mind , that's why he saved Caska from the fall of the mine during Guts vs Zodd fight) so he may try later to go against IDEA (that's only speculation :) )

-Also I don't understand how could the Wiseman sacrifice even Gaiseric (as I assume they were enemies to each other) ???

- Finnaly, i guess that instead of being overfed, there will be a reduction in IDEA's power, because with Ganishka, I guess many Apostle will die, thus altering the power of God Hands (which rules over Apostles) and of course IDEA (wich seems to rule over God Hands according to your theory ;D)

behelit said:

Good Afthernoon

it seems to me that the IDEA was based on the principle of the coletivo inconciente, the accumulation of basicos religious principles that we inherited of our primitive ancestros that thought for the first time about the concept of superior deity or espiritu, segun says I capitulate lost in the dialogos between Griffit and the IDEA this was created by the men by the massive accumulation of negative human emotions in his mayoria or aggressive and this retroalimenta these emotions to as well be able to subsist and to maintain constant its main power supply, that explicaria because in history the wars and the fear in all the senses increase the powers of the darkness, IDEA acquires conscience being based on general concept of the humans of "GOD" Gods, divinities, ect, asi, perhaps whereas in midland or tudor or but or in Europe the concept of a superior divinity sobreother aid to the proliferation of the emotions that give force to the IDEA, the hand of God actua like agents of propagation of such emotion in the men and while greater it is the accumulation of aggressive emotions that finish in the death of people who take hatred feelings or frustration before dying that feeds the idea, quiza the same concept of sky and hell are not but that a massive accumulation of ideas on the other world that they have the humans, and who create in such concepts when dying in their mind they think that they go ahi when in fact they deberian.... to go to a different place, but when being catched in the religious concepts of his epoca and to believe in them, they are catched in the dominion of the IDEA with respect to GATT, quiza the case is that in special fight to make its own way, without mattering that as much the world to his around this desmoranando itself, follows its own bases and their own beliefs, create an own identity that not this subject one with as much force to the direct manipulation of the IDEA, certainly so far he has been victima of its aims, but in I complete moment has been able to escape of its influence although it is nearly and it leaves an imperceptible track in the world, but that hollow leaves a hole in the curtain of the dominion of the IDEA and something asi cannot be taken lightly by the IDEA because if the same event in different people were repeated its threatened quedaria existence hell we are all, said Sartre, it even is to clarify if the world of espiritus of Flora were before or despues of the IDEA and if its presence puts it in danger or simply it hinders it, or quiza, this world already existia but was invaded by the IDEA, and now it controls it, that explicaria because I exercise of Griffith I attack the house of Flora? good, one is single opinion of my part

thank you very much to listen to me

Click to expand...

Let me try to translate that (I'm making a free interpretation of this):

"It seems to me that the Idea was based on the principle of the collective inconscient, the accumulation of basic religious principles that we inherited from our ancestors that thought for the first time about the concept of a superior deity or spirit. According to the lost chapter (dialogues between Griffith and Idea), this (it? - Idea?) was created by the massive accumulation of negative or aggressive human emotions, mostly, and this (it? - Idea?) feeds (something like feedback) these emotions to be able to subsist and maintain constant its main power supply, which would explain why in history the wars and the fear in all the senses increase the powers of the darkness. Idea acquires conscience being based on the general concept of the human' "GOD", or gods, divinities etc. So perhaps whereas the concept of a superior divinity serves the purpose of helping the proliferation of the emotions that empower IDEA, the Hand of God acts as agents of propagation of such emotions in the men. With greater accumulation of aggressive emotions in men, there'll be more death and feelings of hatred or frustration before dying who feed Idea. So, the concepts of hell or heaven are nothing but a massive accumulation of ideas on the other world, and those come to the mind of men that are dying, going there when they should... go to a different place. But, when caught in the religious concepts of their times and believing them, they enter the dominion of IDEA. Concerning Guts, in his fight to make things his own way, without caring too much about the world crumbling around him, following his own concepts and beliefs, he creates an identity that is original, unique, one that is not subjected to Idea's manipulation. Surely, he's been a victim of its goals (Idea's?), but he's been able to escape of its influence and, although it's nearly imperceptible, he IS leaving a track in the world, creating a hole in the curtain of Idea's dominion. Obviously, something like that can't be taken lightly by Idea, for it threathens the very hell that is our existence, as said Sartre. (the last part's more confusing to me) It would even clarify if the world of spirit of Flora was (began to exist) before or after IDEA and if its presence puts it in danger or simply hinders it, or, perhaps, this (?which one?) world already existed but was invaded by the IDEA, and now it controls it. Could that explain Griffith's (i think that by excercise he meant sacrifice) and the attack on Flora's house?

Well, just one single opinion from me."

My comment:
The Idea thing has been pretty much cleared up on this topic and in the manga. I liked his opinion on Heaven and Hell as being traps, illusions that humans themselves, through religions, create to feel safer about the Idea of death, ones that keep their souls from reaching their real, final, destination. So they live tortured in their own hell, instead of following their natural path.

About Guts, it's like this: he is showing the way. Others may follow. That would be what Idea's worrying so much about. If people abandon their fears, they won't rely on Gods or supernatural powers to make it through their lifes. They'll stick to reality, to the things they know for sure, and will focus on their own strength, rather then on prayers, to get what they want. Best of all, they will fight instead of cower and wait for miracles.

Believing in things beyond reality - miracles - is the reason you get angry when someone close to you dies. You can't accept that what happened was natural. And believing you're a good person - in this case, that you're a good follower of your God - is why you would get frustrated when YOU die. What have you done against this God that made you unworthy to live on? Haven't you obeyed his will as he said you should? WHY?

All of that is shown by Farnese's change. By being with Guts, by seeing his strength and the truth that her ideologies have been hiding, she's changed. A lot!

That's the threat Guts is. He is himself, not anyone's puppet. He ain't part of Griffith's or anyone's dreams, as he has his own. And he is on his own. No need for Gods or miracles. (Idea WAS born because we needed reasons, right? If we find them on our own, Idea'll have no purpose and will disappear)


Am I going too metaphysical here? Sorry.

This would all make sense if it weren't for the fact that Griffith is pretty much proven to be the Dark Hawk of prophecy. "Leader of the Black Sheep and false leader of the blind white sheep." They'll all make Guts out to be evil when he is really saving them, despite his massive killings to go along with it.