Berserk Lover

Both her and Guts went through the traumatizing experience of The Eclipse and granted Casca did have it worse due to what Griffith did to her but why is it she mentally regresses and Guts becomes a mentally broken wanderer? Why does Guts get to wander around and slay demons and shit but Casca basically mentally becomes a child and has to be taken care of? Why can't Casca become a badass demon slayer too? Why can't she be mad and try to process what happened like Guts did? And then when Casca finally gets out of her mental regression, she gets kidnapped by Griffith

Like why are the writers so obsessed with making Casca this mentally regressed damsel that needs Guts to save her? Did they forget who she was in the golden age? I understand being betrayed and hurt in unspeakable ways by the man who gave you hope and watching all your friends be violently murdered by unholy abominations has to fuck you up something severe but why does she have to mentally regress? Why can't she be allowed to go through similar character development like Guts did? Why does Guts get to go on this journey and go through all these arcs when Casca doesn't go through any? It's like Miura didn't see Casca as something beyond a mentally regressed damsel for Guts to protect and take care of after The Eclipse and the writers who picked up where Miura left off are trying to keep this idea of Casca being a damsel which I know Miura had a weird history with how he drew and wrote Casca

Anyway, I think in the grander scheme of things, this all falls under the category of people who rip on present day Casca’s character, which I don’t know why people continue to do so. As if we haven’t gone over the fact that Casca isn’t being chickified, but is going through the brutal aftermath that is rape trauma syndrome, but I still don’t think people understand the full extent of Casca’s insanity. 

I mean no disrespect to Casca, but the trauma that she went through didn’t reduce her to the state of a child: she was reduced to something less than a child. Children grow, develop, and learn, and advance at a surprising speed in the course of 2-3 years (given that they have normal health). It’s been 2-3 years since the Eclipse, and Casca is just, static. She aside from physical appearance, she hasn’t changed much psychologically. She basically has not logical drive; I don’t like saying it much, but Casca is on the level of a wild animal.

That said, she reacts the same way that animals do when they’re in danger: if something poses a clear and present threat to her, her first reaction is to flee or fight. Casca, though she has wielded a sword in her insane state, doesn’t fight with logic. She fights with her instinct in order to protect herself.

Now, I want nothing more than my ship to be all happy and stuff. Alas, I’m not one to just glance over stuff like this, because as much as we want to hug Guts over his crap life justifiably so though, if I was in Casca’s position (God help me if I was), I’D BE DOING THE SAME THING. 

On another note, while I do want Guts and Casca to find happiness soon, it’s not as though I haven’t thought of several alternative thing that could happen: most of them being bad (lol) and at least one of them being bittersweet (for Guts anyway). Like, maybe Casca sees that by giving her life for the dreams of two men that she loved, she never really realized what she wanted for herself. What are her hopes and dreams? With that, she departs from Guts, and starts her own journey…

I know that there are arguments against this scheme, from Casca’s strength against the supernatural dangers of the world, to the fact that perhaps Miura just doesn’t have the time to focus on Casca’s character as much as he does with Guts or Griffith. But, I think it would be an interesting direction to take upon Casca’s recovery. 

Judeau is so fucking fascinating and I WISH we got more of him. He really casts himself as the “observer”, doesn’t he? Look at what he says in Morning Departure:

ANON SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO CIRCLE BACK TO THIS.

The shortest possible answer to this is that they’ve had sex. 

It wasn’t an issue before when they kept their friendship just a friendship. It’s natural, however, to feel jealousy over a romantic partner expressing feelings for someone else—especially when you’re 19 years old and this is your first ever romantic and sexual partner (neither of them have EVER had consensual sex) who you have been trying to avoid thinking about romantically for a year only to finally strip away the thing that’s been holding you back, admit your feelings/desire for one another, and share a night of incredibly emotional, raw, and passionate lovemaking that only deepened the feelings you have for one another. Guts straight up asked Casca to run away with him. Casca explicitly chose Guts over Griffith and was even enraged when he said something that reminded her of Griffith. 

Casca has framed her romantic feelings for Guts as a positive and good thing, and her romantic feelings for Griffith as a negative thing she no longer wants to feel. The desire to be Griffith’s sword is something she called “bluffing” and a “lie”, something that was never going to satisfy her and that she needed and wanted to let go of, and Guts knows that.

Additionally, they’re both trying to cast off feeling bound to Griffith or underneath him/owned by him/his tool, and Guts gets upset not just because he’s a jealous boyfriend but also because he too is trying to stop feeling “bound” to Griffith. 

Hey Anon!

No offense, but I don’t think you realize that Guts and Casca loved each other way before they even “dated”, as you said. xD

I mean, he offered her to come along with him and leave the Band of the Falcon right after they realized they were deeply attracted to each other. Rather than calling that dating, I’d say it sounds more like a proposal of sorts. Anyway, Berserk’s world has nothing to do with ours so the social constructions just aren’t the same.

My point being, nothing really binds Guts to Casca, he has no obligation as you say, which is why he went on his own as the Black Swordsman for two years. So the reason he chose to make her a priority when he came back is very easy to understand...

It’s because he loves her a lot.

Yes, it’s that simple. :3 However if you’re one of these fans who think they just slept together once with no deep feeling behind, then I think you should reread the story because you’re missing a lot on the main dynamic which is theirs, with Griffith.

Additionally, it’s because he loves her and makes her his priority, that Guts himself will eventually be able to heal.

TL;DR there is no depth that love cannot pull you back from. That’s what Berserk is about.

I think that when you watch all of your friends (basically family) be ripped to pieces and eaten in front of you, are betrayed by someone you loved and respected, and watch the woman you love be raped in front of you while you desperately scream and cut off your own arm trying to reach her and stop it, and see the life sucked out of her by what happened and your baby that you didn't even know had been conceived be miscarried and corrupted by demonic energy, you become traumatized in a way that you and I are probably entirely incapable of grasping and that trauma alters who you are, at least temporarily if not permanently. It becomes a part of you even if you don’t want it to, and it warps how you see the world and yourself and the people you care about who remain in it.

*Goes and looks up my own fic to remember what chapter 8 was* lol

Gosh I assume it was some of Guts' more goofy faces and behaviors in the manga and his tendency to tease Casca.

Goofy face collection:

A few occasions teasing Casca:

Griffith & Guts.

I believe that Berserk as a story is about maturing as a person and learning to deal with one’s emotions. Therapy, essentially, but in the form of an action manga. Throughout the story we see our main character Guts struggling with maintaining his humanity in the face of turning into a literal rage monster. This is paralleled with Griffith’s transformation into a demon 

But what does the demon transformation actually mean? Who lets this happen to them? I think this represents the easy solution to the struggle of life, which is learning to understand and process one’s emotions. In a difficult situation, too painful to handle, the sacrifice presents itself as the solution. 

Griffith’s journey as a character is presented as the antithesis to Guts’. Throughout the story we see Griffith repressing his emotions or trying to ignore them. This manifests itself as self harming or trying to feel dominant by having sex with women (classis toxic masculinity). Griffith’s transformation into Femto comes with this scene

The second image was all I could find but basically it is revealed that the behelits are actually tears. It is the pain of the person that summons the demons, and the sacrifice’s promise is that they will never again shed another tear. It is interesting to me that the first thing Griffith does after turning into femto is performatively severing his ties with Guts by raping Casca. It’s meant to insult him and make sure that Guts has no power over him. Guts was the only person Griffith ever loved, and therefore the only one who had power over him.

Now let’s look at Guts as a character. Unlike Griffith, he gradually opens up to people and learns to see himself as the sum of his experiences with other people. The cracks in the blade represent all of his interactions that have changed him as a person. The life long trauma of being raped by Gambino is finally processed when he reveals it to Casca and she accepts him. She had previously done the same when she opened up to him about her past

In a way this relationship is the most satisfying in this story because both of them find someone who accepts them for who they are. Casca is loved by Guts, she doesn’t have to be content with serving him with all her skill and strength like with Griffith, while getting no affection in return. She gets to be loved and appreciated by someone she is genuinely attracted to. And so does Guts.

Also, Guts sees Casca as a person and not an object to be used and then thrown away like Griffith does. The only time when he does see her like that, is when he is on the verge of becoming a monster himself.

So here we have a story in which big manly man dude matures and grows as a person and actually manages to be happy for once by opening up to someone he loves and respects and showing vulnerability. And that theme repeats itself. Right when he is on the verge of losing his humanity, opening up to people and forming relationships with them restores a certain amount of peace for him. That’s why he smiles again for the first time in like, a million chapters when he acquires his new companions

But the most significant thing about this story for me has to do with something Godo said to Guts.

“The thing about hatred is, it’s the place where people who can’t look sorrow in the eye without wavering run off too.”

So what is revenge, or the demonic sacrifice? It’s cowardice. Its’s fear. Fear of mourning, of grieving, of understanding and processing your pain. THAT is the temptation of the beast of darkness. Giving in to weakness. Guts wandered off for three years on murderman revenge quest because he wasn’t strong enough to deal with his grief, and it almost turned him into a monster. He hasn’t even fully processed what happened to him, or Griffith and his transformation. In fact, he seems to be avoiding to reconcile the demon that raped Casca in front of him and the man who was his best friend and truly loved and admired. He seems to have mentally separated the two, compartmentalized Griffith so he could process him. He wants to kill the monster but doesn’t know quite how to feel about the friend. That’s why when Griffith regains his human form, Guts “forgets” to kill him.

So in the end, Guts is the struggler, not because he fights day and night with abominations and horrors but because he chooses the path of maintaining his ability to feel and constantly trying to make the right choices moving forward, reexamining his priorities and dealing with his traumas. The story is telling us that the real manly man is the one who learns how to deal with his feelings. The struggle, is exactly that. And the other side is the side of cowardice, represented by those who sacrifice their humanity to the demons or let themselves become consumed by their dark side.