Episode 358

This is irrelevant to what's happening in Berserk. Miura used the name Jötunn because it's cool, but there's no relation to the associated mythology. It's his usual modus operandi for names (Qliphoth, Enoch, etc.).

You think Guts would help Falconia? Absolutely not.

Looks like my editing got mixed up. In the next paragraph I wrote:
But if Guts killed Griffith now I doubt humanity would cease it's war against the evil creatures.

Would that change the situation?

at comparison to Dune really misses the point, I have to say I'm impressed by how unfitting it is. Here are things I'm sure of: Griffith is absolutely setting up an oppressive regime. He absolutely has ulterior motives beyond that. The eradication of astral beings isn't merely for self-defense. He will not be fighting his kindred, but rather be working with them

I think you've missed the point about everything I've written. Dune is a story about the dangers of blindly following messiahs. That putting all your hope in one person fixing everything is misguided and dangerous. It will lead to genocide and oppression. Either you didn't read it or didn't understand it. Of course I mentioned Dune Messiah because Dune is really 3 books, the first 3. Without Dune Messiah the first book is incomplete.

Griffith's has always been to become a Messiah, lead humanity into a Golden Age as it's Emperor. This is happening and he's causing it to happen. I don't see some secret nefarious conspiracy involving the Godhand at this point. It may happen in the future but he hasn't committed any evil yet, besides his usual self serving power grabbing and eliminating threats. (Rickert) We loved this kind of thing in the Band of the Hawk era. We know what his sins are, selling his soul to Cenobite-like beings to be reborn and accomplish his dreams, raping and sacrificing his friends and companions in the process. He needs to get his ass kicked for this but I don't see tacking on extra sins or secret evil conspiracies to feed unicorns and elves to Zodd is necessary. If there's a secret plot by the Godhand to do something else evil, why didn't they all lead the apostles and evil creatures to enslave and slaughter humanity instead of all the subterfuge? The story is going to get a lot more complicated now that Griffith is Casca's son and straightforward revenge is no longer an option. And the editor's choices are interesting, why are they portraying one of Griffith's thugs as an anti-hero in their crappy spin off story? They're idiots but..

Anyway the point of all this is, I'm guessing the long awaited and cherished reunion of Casca and Guts is about to be crashed by Griffith aka Moonlight Boy which may ruin Gut's chance of getting some.
 
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Aazealh

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Would that change the situation?

Yes it would actually, for a variety of reasons. I mean just in this very episode we see Griffith push for expansion and conquest while everyone else was content to simply hunker down. Everything that's happening in Falconia now is a reflection of Griffith's will. The advent of Fantasia and all that followed are part of a plan being executed with a specific goal in mind, and Griffith is the one overseeing it. Saying there might not be any plan, like you did, just shows you haven't been paying attention.

I think you've missed the point about everything I've written. Dune is a story about the dangers of blindly following messiahs. That putting all your hope in one person fixing everything is misguided and dangerous. It will lead to genocide and oppression. Either you didn't read it or didn't understand it. Of course I mentioned Dune Messiah because Dune is really 3 books, the first 3. Without Dune Messiah the first book is incomplete.

Haha, I've missed the point? Sorry but you're the one who thought the God Hand was waging war against Falconia. :ganishka:

As for Dune, which happens to be my favorite novel, it has a lot of themes to it. As a series (since Dune Messiah is a sequel, whether you like it or not), it certainly deals with the dangers of following messiahs, although I wouldn't reduce it to just that. But that's not what I was talking about. My point with that comment was that what's going on with Griffith in Berserk has nothing to do with Paul's evolution in Dune. Thinking otherwise just reveals a serious misreading of Berserk's story. See below.

Griffith's has always been to become a Messiah, lead humanity into a Golden Age as it's Emperor.

The conclusion of the Eclipse, after Femto was born, was Slan saying people would call the coming times the "Age of Darkness". And his birth had been prophetized thusly: "When the sun will have died five times, a red lake will appear at the west of the city with a name both new and ancient, and it will be the sign that the fifth angel is born. The angel shall be a Falcon of Darkness. Both master of the sinful black sheep and king of the blind white sheep. The one who shall bring an age of darkness upon the world."

Griffith is only a hero and messiah to the "blind white sheep". To everyone in-the-know, he's a demonic overlord. This isn't a secret, nor is it meant to be a parable. Femto is literally just wearing a white knight costume in order to better bamboozle clueless people. But readers should immediately be able to see through that facade. If you're caught up along with the sheep from the story, then you're not only ignoring the facts, but the clear demarcated line that Miura has drawn for readers. Do you recall the scene between Silat and Jarif in volume 33? Griffith's rule undermines humanity's agency, and it's pretty plain how Miura is weighting that choice, since the leader of that party is a demon rapist. If it were intended as a matter up for literary interpretation, Miura would have distanced Griffith from any morally dubious decisions, instead of doing the opposite.

This is happening and he's causing it to happen. I don't see some secret nefarious conspiracy involving the Godhand at this point. [...] We know what his sins are, selling his soul to Cenobite-like beings to be reborn and accomplish his dreams, raping and sacrificing his friends and companions in the process. He needs to get his ass kicked for this but I don't see tacking on extra sins or secret evil conspiracies

You seem to be missing the fact that Femto is a member of the God Hand. The fifth and last member, and their vanguard into the corporeal world. He didn't sell his soul to the bad guys. He became one of them. And as one of them, he's furthering their plans. Again, this isn't a secret. You say Griffith is "just" following his ambition, without second thought? That he's acting all alone? Then you haven't been paying attention.

The situation in Midland that preceded Femto's incarnation into a new body was set up by several catastrophes. The king's madness. A country-wide plague, which is shown to be Conrad's doing. The invasion of a foreign nation led by an apostle. At the tower of conviction, we see Slan's influence among the heretics, and we learn the incarnation process is a "once in a thousand years" event. Was it mere luck that it happened just a few years about the God Hand became complete? No. It was by design. That is why it mirrored the Eclipse ceremony, during which Griffith had become Femto.

After Femto was incarnated, apostles flocked to him from all parts of the land. Most of them had been reborn long before Griffith became a member of the God Hand. Did the others not know this would happen? Of course they did. Now, for years we had people like you, who don't pay attention to the "details", who wondered why Griffith bothered doing all that stuff. Couldn't he just become king immediately with his overpowering charisma? What did he even need the apostles for? They were even more perplexed when, in Vritannis, while he had the opportunity to eliminate Ganishka, he chose to let him go, giving him a chance to regroup in Wyndham for a final battle.

But it all makes perfect sense when you realize that he goaded Ganishka to become that enormous Shiva monster... for the sole purpose of popping him and merging the worlds (this was of course the fate that had been decided for Ganishka from the beginning, before Femto had even been born). Thus bringing about a chaos that ended ended pretty much all other pathways for humanity's survival except from Falconia. And when the worlds were merged, after all the astral creatures, at the very end, we got treated to four double pages... showing us the four other members of the God Hand. It's all there for you to see, and there's more I haven't mentioned. Griffith isn't a hero with a dark past. He's a false savior leading mankind on a sinister path.

If there's a secret plot by the Godhand to do something else evil, why didn't they all lead the apostles and evil creatures to enslave and slaughter humanity instead of all the subterfuge?

Because they seek to dominate humanity, not end it. Like I told you in my previous post, the God Hand is all about humanity. They were human, and have dominion over mankind. The Idea of Evil, their master, was born from humanity. They're all part of it. But what they're doing will end up effectively as slavery. The kind of rule Griffith is setting up will inevitably undermine humanity's agency. That's a big part of what merging the worlds achieved. People don't have a choice. They have to live in Falconia or they'll die. And there they have to fit into a new kind of authoritarian society. There may be even more to it than that, but this part is already clear as day.

That takes us back to astral creatures. Why exterminate them? Because they are not human. Because they're an unknown factor as long as they exist.

And the editor's choices are interesting, why are they portraying one of Griffith's thugs as an anti-hero in their crappy spin off story? They're idiots but..

Apostles are not just born evil. The main ones are often somewhat tragic figures. Shades of grey, remember? The light novel sucks because its author is a bad writer, but even if Miura were to address Grunbeld's backstory in the manga, you can be sure he wouldn't be portrayed as a straight-up villain.
 
I think you're over-interpreting the story quite a bit. It's about mankind working together to reach the heavens and God intervening to prevent it. However in the case of Falconia, God's agents are working on uniting mankind to accomplish some dark goal that follows God's plans. So I just don't think it's a good comparison.
Hey, so people have been arguing over the meaning behind the Tower of Babel myth for a long long time and probably still will be long after we are all dead, and there are a bunch of different interpretation of it’s meaning. Some more religious views of it’s underlying themes is that it is inherently sinful to challenge gods authority, others view it as a warning about being too prideful. A more “modern” less religious take on it, Is that it’s a warning about people who try to build a utopia for all becoming unstable and likely to fragment the larger they get. I mean if you really wanna go full tin foil hat with that view I guess you could boil it down to a “you can’t please all the people all of the time” sort of thing. So I think if you’re looking at it like that, you can compare it to what’s happening in Falconia, in that it involves people trying to build a utopia that probably won’t have a happy ending for those people.

Similar stories to the Tower of Babel pop up a bunch of times in ancient mythology. Just speaking broadly they are about a group of people who build a tower/pyramid/city…ect in an attempt to reach a utopia/god and then get broken up it some way. They usually involve language and are sometimes preceded by a flood or large catastrophe story. All that being said there are some pretty crazy theories as to why you see them so much and there meaning, I remember hearing one that they are simply saying if you build a house too high and there is a flood or earthquake it might to fall apart.
 
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Aazealh

Administrator
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Hey, so people have been arguing over the meaning behind the Tower of Babel myth for a long long time and probably still will be long after we are all dead, and there are a bunch of different interpretation of it’s meaning. Some more religious views of it’s underlying themes is that it is inherently sinful to challenge gods authority, others view it as a warning about being too prideful. A more “modern” less religious take on it, Is that it’s a warning about people who try to build a utopia for all becoming unstable and likely to fragment the larger they get. I mean if you really wanna go full tin foil hat with that view I guess you could boil it down to a “you can’t please all the people all of the time” sort of thing. So I think if you’re looking at it like that, you can compare it to what’s happening in Falconia, in that it involves people trying to build a utopia that probably won’t have a happy ending for those people.

The story of the Tower of Babel as it appears in the Bible is pretty straightforward. And while it's open to interpretation, I don't see how you can properly derive "you can’t please all the people all of the time" from that text. Sounds like something someone just made up. Putting that aside, no matter how you look at it, it doesn't make sense to try to compare that myth to Falconia. There's no tower, the city was already created, Griffith is an envoy of god, and humans are being concentrated, not scattered. Lastly, what was described in this episode is not the creation of a utopia, it's a large scale conquest framed as a fight for mankind's survival. In short, you can sand the cube's edges all you want, it's still not going to fit in the round hole.

Similar stories to the Tower of Babel pop up a bunch of times in ancient mythology. Just speaking broadly they are about a group of people who build a tower/pyramid/city…

"Similar stories" aren't equal to "that specific story", which is what was brought up. Also, merely evoking vague notions without providing concrete, sourced examples brings no value to the discussion.
 
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