i love it when shit happens in my life that dredges up old wounds and coincidentally im re-experiencing the media i intrinsically link it to cause then i get to remember exactly why i love it and find it so meaningful all over again. there's a fucking reason ill always say Berserk [& RGU] both came into my life at a perfect fucking time and holy shit they fucking resonated with me so hard and as much as life can suck ass and lovvves kicking me in the balls when ive just recovered from last time i a least get to remember how & why i love something so much.

Hello, I can’t help but feel that the criticism of the rape in berserk and misogyny is completely invalidated by the fact that this is realistically what would happen, it’s meant to show the worst of humanity, trying to censor it would be more misogynistic as you’re not showing what actually happens to women. It’s a bit hypocritical to claim feminism but then argue for a woman to be removed from the story, or to argue that showing women suffering is misogynistic. It’s almost like Miura is the real feminist because he’s actually showing women partaking in this world and going through realistic suffering and challenges instead of just being a Mary Sue like 99% of modern female characters.

I don't personally have any issues with rape or misogyny being used in stories provided it isn't being portrayed as something to admire or approve of, which it isn't in Berserk.

That said, stories aren't supposed to be realistic, they're supposed to be compelling and interesting. This is one of the things that any basic writing course or book will tell you - fiction is a metaphor for reality, not a reiteration of it. If you think about the things that happen in fiction, even fiction that feels realistic, they're still going to be full of things that don't work that way in the real world. For example, generally people don't change their perspective because of a single epiphanic moment in real life - it's more of a process - but it happens in fiction all the time because watching someone think about something while inching along toward doing something about it for literal years in real time is boring.

Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that from a pure storytelling perspective there comes a point where the use of a single narrative device, regardless of how realistic it is, ceases to be effective and starts to feel repetitive. Mileage varies on when that is, yes, but that's basically where I got with Casca specifically - sure it's realistic but it's also overused as a story beat.

My biggest issue with the rape in Berserk, though, is that it's often exploitatively drawn. Though I imagine that has a lot to do with the fact that most of what runs in Young Animal is like... naked girls for horny men.

As for Miura and feminism, look, I'm a Miura stan in almost all areas. I'm barely critical of the series at all - I have a few complaints but overall there's very little I'd change. And I do think Miura put a lot more effort into his female characters than many mangaka have done, and he did speak specifically about not wanting them to be hormone bait and wanting them to be interesting and well-fleshed out.

That said, he also said he had a difficult time writing women because he didn't know any women, and that he wouldn't have any women in the series at all if he could get away with it.

Finally, you're not going to get anywhere with me by suggesting that it's inherently anti-feminist to think a story would be better without a specific female character - which I didn't even say, so I'm not sure why you're complaining to me about it.

Casca isn't "a woman," she's a character. People are allowed to dislike characters.

It’s an old ask and can’t find it rn but just imo grifflotte is miserable. Griffith, even with all of his power, is again in a way “forced” to use his body and charms to achieve his goal, something we see quite a lot happening in his youth and being his big issue. He has everything that should allow him to actually make his dream come true, but he still needs to pay a prize for it. I’m not saying it’s the same as Gennon, but the theme is always there. Charlotte being happy is also not the best? Like, I think it’s mostly narrative fault and the way women are presented in the story, but it is so sad. She is happy because she is manipulated into that happiness and lives through fantasy of some kind. And I hate how it can be interpreted as positive. And I do think theres a big chance we gonna see a child too, but I hate the idea of that kid inheriting Griffith kingdom and being destined to rule it, without the baggage (quite popular theory in normal side of the fandom) instead of an actual princess with good ideas who should already have much more growth tbh. It’s like her character ultimately gets turned into just incubator for the next cycle. Not the worst fate in berserk but I hate it so much. Women in berserk are better-ish than most characters we used to but that don’t make them good. But hey, that’s just me wanting more

All right, I think I get where you're coming from now. It's just not how my head works, so I had to kind of adjust my perspective a little. When someone says a relationship is miserable my assumption is that they mean the characters are miserable, but it seems more like commentary on the type of relationship it is. Sort of similar to the child/heir thing - less about the story supporting it than that you perhaps find the turn unsatisfying or undesirable from the perspective of what you'd rather see. I might still be off base, feel free to correct me. But yeah, I mean I'm not here to argue with people's preferences, it is what it is.

From my own perspective...

I do think Griffith pre-eclipse seemed to perceive his relationship with Charlotte as being in the same vein (not to the same degree) as his encounter with Gennon in the sense that he was once again "paying" for something he needed by trading his... body (and the performance of affection in Charlotte's case) for that thing. I think this is part of the reason for his post-coital breakdown with her - this sense that he had lost someone he loved and wanted and is now left with this person that he will always feel he is "selling" himself to on some level.

Honestly, even allowing the Godhand to destroy the remnants of his human flesh and carve his heart out in exchange for his ascension is in some ways just the extreme end of what he's always done: giving away pieces of himself in exchange for things he needs in order to accomplish his goals. Even the external sacrifice is described as needing to be something that is essentially so loved as to become a part of the person making the sacrifice.

"Take hold of the world in exchange for their own flesh and blood," as they say.

And I do think that is incredibly tragic - he's a tragic character. Absolutely. I'm just not sure whether that's something Griffith cares about at all post-eclipse due to the destruction and reconstruction of his emotional world.

Anyway, I'm of two minds about the whole thing because... I've written at some length about my frustration with Casca, the way her character is constructed and the motivations she's given. Yet, at the same time, if I think about what could/should happen with her character, I can only do that from the reality of what she is in the story rather than a hypothetical about what I would have made her or would have preferred her to be.

Plus my writer brain is stronger than my fan brain, so when I think about things like this I always think about them as being one of many moving parts within a narrative. So I think things like, if Charlotte were the sort of character to take over like a boss after her father passed away then the whole story about Griffith courting her so he can run a country makes no sense. That being the case, she's designed to be a person who doesn't do that because... that's just the role she has in the story.

All that said, and now I'm just continuing to talk about this grifflote child concept as though I'm invested in it and I just akjnakjnsd like I'm REALLY NOT I'm just thinking from a narrative perspective since it keeps coming up...

Let's say she has a kid, and then Griffith dies.

The kid would be like... an infant. So wouldn't she need to step up anyway?

ETA: And I have no idea what the mainstream western fandom is doing aside from performatively spitting fire every time Griffith's name is mentioned. Still, they can't be wrong all the time. Stopped clocks and all that.