I simply loved this episode. Seeing how everything is being connected reminded me of that one interview in which Miura talked about how everything falls into place subconsciously. It feels all natural and smooth and that's what i love about this.
Aazealh said:I don't know if we can say that this is an "entirely new world", in the sense that this is a fusion between two preexisting "parts" of the world, and that it is a return to a state the world was in during ancient times. Similarly, I don't think Griffith embodies the theme of being strong enough to make your own way without being dependent on others. He failed to achieve his goals, then sacrificed what was most dear to him in exchange for evil power that was bestowed to him by a higher entity that he now serves, directly or indirectly.
Aazealh said:The Holy See worships the Falcon of Light. I don't think it's meant to be related to the Idea of Evil like that, although I also believe the Holy See's establishment was part of the IoE's scheme.
Aazealh said:I don't think that comparison is apt. The way Schierke calls for the help of elemental spirits is radically different to how the God Hand, apostles and the Idea of Evil work. These latter entities are powered by human souls, and specifically by the evil of mankind. When they undergo their transcendence, the very soul of an apostle is infused with evil and irremediably changed. That is what gives them their power. It's really a completely different process
To quote it directly: "Humans desired reasons. Reasons for pain, reasons for sadness, reasons for life, reasons for death. Reason why their lives were filled with suffering... Reasons why their deaths were absurd. They wanted reasons for the destiny that kept transcending their knowledge."
As for Guts, I'm not sure I agree with calling him "brutish", but more importantly you should keep in mind that "struggler" is just a nickname the Skull Knight gave him. It's not some celestial role he fulfills. And no one was really "chosen by fate" either, unless it refers to the Idea of Evil's manipulation of the principle of causality.
Aazealh said:Furthermore, they've been presented as being mostly equals so far in the story. Femto is their vanguard and has the main role in the corporeal world (which makes sense), but amongst them the de facto leader is Void.
Aazealh said:Yes. In Young Animal #17 that will be released on August 26. It was stated early on in the thread, so you must not have searched for that answer very thoroughly.
ABH said:I would reference back to the Egg Apostle whose own wish was to create a new world with his sacrifice being the old world. In volume 34 after the light spreads across the globe, there is a reference to the realization of mankind's desires coming to fruit and a reference to Fantasia. The intro to volume 35 states the "Sword of Actuation turned Ganishka into the source from which sprung a new world." The citizens of Midland when first seeing Falconia describe it as the capital of a new world. It would seem to me to be rather blatant what the reference is.
ABH said:Interestingly enough, the page that first uses the term Fantasia references the creatures coming into the human world now as being the fantasies of mankind for millennia, plural. This could just be that Miura hadn't fleshed everything out fully.
ABH said:How or what the Idea of Evil is remains obscure, obviously. At least in the lost chapter, it refers to itself as god. Griffith in the last panel of the preceding chapter also references, though there may just not be a way to cut it.
ABH said:The comparison cannot be taken too far or too literally. It may be wrong entirely. I am aware of the four elementals, we also have Schierke making 'pacts' with the spirits she draws power from. I only meant that magic users are serving some larger purpose, even if not knowingly (at least all of them) to keep the worlds in balance. They aren't servants of some Idea of Good.
ABH said:To me the good in this world seems somewhat chaotic. If causality is controlled by the Idea of Evil, then the opposite of that would be, I guess, people who struggle against it. Struggle against causality and try to change it. Those who resist destiny. So perhaps there is no overarching Idea of Good out there somewhere yet to be revealed, and we only have the four spirits representing the basic elementals (also sort of a throw back to Greek philosophy which gave way to Christianity). Magic users are tapping into that power of the other world to influence the world they live in which is somewhat similar to the way Apostles and God Hand are beneficiaries of causality.
ABH said:The Idea of Evil says humans desired reasons, and that "I produce those...as it is what I have been brought into existence for." Whether the Idea of Evil has any particular motive isn't clear at all.
ABH said:If humanity is yearning for a collective savior, a Griffith-type character would be the answer. And he would have to create something superficially resembling a utopia to provide the answers. A place where scarcity doesn't exist, where there is peace and everything is controlled by Griffith.
ABH said:Perhaps the better way to phrase all of this is that there is an odd contrast between good and evil in Berserk. It flips standard or conventional notions of good and evil on their heads in many ways.
ABH said:He is a man who, when he goes off to find his own path, can only come back to fighting and seeking out stronger challenges. He has incredible rage. He has killed mass amounts of people. In terms of brutishness, he is not a dumb brute. But he most definitely is viewed as brutish by many of the people he encounters. And that is how he will appear to Griffith. Griffith is a false savior, and I don't in anyway subscribe to the 'theory' that he is the real hero of the story or anything. But he presented as all-powerful, beautiful even to the men in the story, incredibly intelligent and outside his affinity for Guts/sleeping with Charlotte, nearly infallible. Guts by contrast is a cursed individual born from a corpse, generally treated like garbage, and comes off as a mad dog to people when they first meet him after everything he's been through.
ABH said:Then there are the forces that seem 'good' or at least not evil in the Astral world. Back to those four elementals. They are simply representations of elements that don't seem to have a will.
ABH said:The elementals are compared to the sole Idea of Evil chaotic, seemingly without any will, merely forming occasional pacts with people in-tune with the magical world.
ABH said:Guts is an incredible exception in the story itself because of his strength. Most people could not live his way where regardless of what happens, he just keeps fighting. Most of them are the ones yearning out to the Idea of Evil.
ABH said:This is just how I perceive the contrast right now. Griffith is established a rather artificial little safe haven for people that provides them seemingly everything they'd need. Their wants are met, they are safe, and nothing is left to chance. There's a hidden side to that in that Griffith created that scenario, but the world before was a pretty ugly place (though, again, manipulated by the Idea of Evil).
but there must be a place in the great ocean of souls were people with good karma go
Feeblecursedone said:How about becoming a spirit in some layer of astral world? I mean, we know its possible for wizards and witches to likely exist there in afterlife, but a lot of people with " good " karma tend to be mages in fact. In general people who associate with magic and natural order of the world seem to be largely free of the taint of society and evil in general. Not all though, those Kushan sorcerers didn't smell as " good " to me.
Aazealh said:You make a good point though about the fact most of the people we've seen in Berserk seem to have bad karma.
scopedog said:I'd be curious to know how exactly karma operates in the world of Berserk because the specific mechanics of it can vary between Indian traditions. Though I seriously doubt Miura will give much if any additional time to expound on this as there are more important things to focus on.
Aazealh said:Good idea! I agree, that'd be pretty cool to see.
Walter said:One would think that the being who laid plans for Griffith's birth, rise, fall, and ascension, manipulating history for a thousand years to pave the way for him, would have seen such a thing coming.
I think you're a bit confused here. The desire Griffith had as a human to take his own kingdom was born from his desire to rule. It's pretty simple, particularly given the context he provides in the speech you mention (though this happened not after the fight with Zodd, but in Volume 3, during an undisclosed time when they were still young). More than a kingdom, which is a symbol of the power he wants to wield, he wants to become one of the people who set the world in motion.
the immortal bob said:I don't feel that this vision now coincides with his original dream, on a subjective level.
Haha, I'm not sure I'd even really count those nameless Kushan guys as magic users given how low they were on the ladder. Farnese's a prodigy compared to them.
Feeblecursedone said:Haha, cmon, Pishaca were bloody cool. Especially Makara.
My comment still stands in the wider context provided (among other things) by the very episode whose thread this is. It isn't really an "entirely new world"
. And like I told you, the Holy See worships the Falcon of Light. That the Idea of Evil is referred to as God or a god does not mean the Holy See worships it. As far as we currently know, it doesn't. But it still serves Its designs by revering one of its agents (Griffith).
Yeah I'm sorry but no matter how far you take it or not, it's just incorrect. The process is completely different. But sure, magic users serve an important purpose, no doubt about that.
Anyway, I think it's specious to say that because the Idea of Evil manipulates the principle of causality to achieve its results, it must mean that chaos is good. People still suffered before the Idea of Evil was born, and in fact that's precisely why it was born. And is the current chaos outside of Falconia good, when humans can't survive there?
I guess my point is that the opposition between good and evil isn't as simplistic as you make it out to be.
ABH said:I find it odd that someone wants to get so literal about this when the creator of the series has banged the point home multiple times, and it's even placed outside the story in descriptions of the volumes. [...] The dirt in the new world is the same as the old one, but for the people involved in the story, in the big picture, and the way it is being presented is as a new world. The old one with its order and the old reality as a whole are being torn apart and replaced.
ABH said:Curious - do you think Griffith and Femto are one in the same, or is Femto different from Griffith in your view?
ABH said:I interpret Berserk in terms of symbols and ideas based on what is presented in the manga. If there's evidence contradicting my views, I accept it and try to see what Miura is saying. But I don't think meaning is derived from treating what is said as encyclopedic.
ABH said:What the Holy See worships remains unclear.
ABH said:Yet its odd to think that the Idea of Evil brought about the Holy See in some way, presumably views itself as God given the content revealed so far, and yet it has no place in its religion.
ABH said:There is an issue I have here where ideas get shot down definitively, and its not really based on the source material. So a statement such as as far as we currently know, this isn't true when we don't know at all doesn't hold water. We know nothing, and there's nothing indicating it isn't. There's at least some things I have pointed to that indicate there is some connection.
ABH said:Except we just learned last chapter they are serving a greater purpose in maintaining order between the two worlds. And presumably intentionally. And they form pacts with the other world. If you want to view it as completely different, by all means. But I see parallels there.
ABH said:1. As far as what's been revealed so far, it seems like the entire Astral world is created by man in a similar way as the Idea of Evil.
ABH said:2. The world before wasn't 'good.' And I would reference that good in Berserk isn't really stereotypical good.
ABH said:3. The outside, the chaos isn't purely good or evil. But there is freedom there.
ABH said:Do you reject that Miura draws contrasts between Guts and Griffith? And if Griffith is the false savior, then perhaps what he's saving people from isn't all bad in Miura's view. But it isn't meant to be some cliche of good, either.
ABH said:But you did say in your previous post that "[e]vil is pretty clear-cut in Berserk." So if Griffith is evil, an anti-savior, then it kind of makes sense that the world he is building, or however you want to describe his (new?) dream is evil. Whatever he is ushering in is called the Age of Darkness so that's not too ambiguous to me. So I would think the characteristics of what Griffith/Femto is building would be a good indicator of what Miura is trying to say with the story about evil.
ABH said:My own beliefs may influence my interpretations here, but I see a pretty sterile existence where people are accepting the safety and luxury of Falconia blindly in exchange for presumably their freedom.
Kaladin said:Looks like young animal will be releasing a berserk guidebook!
Release Date Will be September 23
jackson_hurley said:I'd like a map, or a mini map. I've always been curious to see what the countries and continent must look like. Especially Midland.
Feeblecursedone said:I've always wondered wether there's more than one continent.
Feeblecursedone said:A map of the entire world would be pretty awesome. I've always wondered wether there's more than one continent. Also more remote islands is always sweet.
Walter said:As Aaz already said, we get a good look at the surrounding geography in Ep 305. I made these little images to provide a slightly better look: http://www.skullknight.net/forum/index.php?topic=10381.msg170647#msg170647