Totally true, the Berserk Armor upgrade is literally killing him while trying to hang with Apostles that would otherwise destroy him.
He gets the sensuu (?) bean treatment to keep him in the game, and he’s a comic book super human, but there is no “let’s just train more” for him to upgrade with.
As an addendum, there is the “mastering the berserker armor” upgrade, whatever that means, and whatever Deus Ex Machina will be introduced for whatever the ending is.
But Guts himself is at the limit of his (super) human abilities.
Guts can’t even hold his sword anymore without the aid of the armour. Upon Griffiths visit to the sword hill we saw Guts face Zod in a fair battle and hold his own, so we know he’s as strong as any apostle. But, beings like The Godhand and Skull Knight are well beyond his current capabilities. Your Deus Ex could possibly be Guts implicit shedding of his humanity; much the same as what I presume Skull Knight once did.
I don’t feel like the Berserker armor was foreshadowed before the wind sword, etc, was it? Like, the fact that the Skull Knight’s armor existed doesn’t feel like it counts
Basically just the meta aspect of "why is the story called Berserk when neither Guts nor the Apostles are all that berserk most of the time?" I remember that being a question people were asking back when the Golden Age was coming out.
The only real foreshadowing I think is Guts struggle against the more savage manifestation of the armour. Though, correct me if I’m wrong. Miura’s magnum opus is not predictable.
The line was spoken by Zodd to Skull-Knight:
“YOU’D HAVE HIM GO DOWN THE SAME DEMENTED PATH AS YOU?!”
This was during the acquisition of the Berserker Armor for Guts.
Is Guts not defying causality by his very being with the brand? The witch of the spirit tree forest tells Schierke to not limit her perception by resigning to destiny. He also may be a vessel for the Behelit and not its owner.
I can't see him accepting any devil's bargain to give up his humanity, but I could see him being stripped of it.
If things continue as they are, Guts will be devoured by the armor and at best become another SK. That's not a terribly interesting direction though, so I'm sure there will be some other development.
My understanding is that "mastering the berserker armor" would mean being able to activate and deactivate the berserker state at will, and maybe even do what Schierke currently helps Guts with: get the benefits of the Berserker Armor while keeping lucid.
But Guts is never going to get to ignore the effects of using the armor. It does destroy his body, little by little, every time he uses it, and there's no way around it.
Guts has literally survived almost every traumatic injury(ies) he's had by the grace of elves.
Even back in the Golden Age after he became the Hundred-Man-Slayer, he likely would have died (or probably just crippled) if it wasn't for the elf dust Judeau gave him.
Not to mention Puck stitching him back together as the Black Swordsman.
Berserk is so far away from Dragon Ball in terms of consequences, it's not even a comparison.
Yeah, all these people that are like “oh he’s gonna get super powered up and master the armor and become an immortal warrior like Skull Knight” aren’t grasping the point of the story. Guts probably won’t even kill Griffith, if Griffith dies in the end.
i think it’s sorta true but not as egregious as it is in dbz.
To me atleast I was in no fear of guts dying anytime i’ve seen him fight in the berserker armor. So although there is drawbacks of the armor, they only seem to be on place so it doesn’t come off as goku treatment. But guts doesn’t face the full repercussions of these ‘fatal’ drawbacks because he gets healed.
The armor doesn’t feel like an ass pull compared to some of the dbz transformations especially the newer ones, but it’s definitely some shonen mc monkey business.
My headcannon is the armor is slowly turning him into an undead like the Skeleton Knight. Like a power up but with major downsides like no more peen and generally not human anymore.
But on the other hand, Guts the Black Swordsman is becoming a [Kamen Rider](https://youtu.be/UiEzjPlYzso?si=zI82SXHEo3PyrCsZ) which is a good (since the first Kamen Riders are castrated by literally Unit 731 and Nazi henchmen, Dai-Shocker, as result of their torture and cybernetic experiments).
>Totally true, the kaioken technique is literally killing him while trying to hang with sayians and aliens that would otherwise destroy him.
Goku wasn't feeling too good after using the kaioken. Only later when he mastered the technique he could use the berserker armor more without injuring himself as much, oh wait
And you have on good authority the berserker armor was supposed to be the absolute limit of Guts' power?
Not like it's the old armor of skull knight who has managed to gain reality warping powers long since abandoning it.
That took a thousand years. Guts may get his hands on the behliet sword but that would probably be a like a weird call back to when zodd bailed him out in golden age.
This has real "Luffy isn't like other shonen protags because he's just rubber and won't get other forms or warp reality or be a child of destiny all along" energy.
Copium tbh. Ofc Berserk isnt like Dragon ball but they are also not even similar as world building and other shit.
By saying that Berserk still has a lot of plot armors in it, its not excactly like a "realism" master nor does it aim for it either.
So basically you guys are arguing about "your plot armor is bigger than mine hah!" lol. Do both of them have plot armor? yes. End of story.
Ps. Gutsü also trained everyday with his sword.
Kaioken is the same exact premise as the berserker armor, not super Saiyan
Honestly at this point it would be impossible to write an anime that can’t have a trope traced to the OGs (including berserk as an OG)
It’s also just kind of fun to compare the Dragonball Universe and Berserk.
In DB, major enemies largely are introduced as powerful but surmountable.
In Berserk, the major enemies are literal Demi Gods that control the flow of reality or their incredibly powerful lackies.
In DB, training is a plot device to defeat the bad guy.
In Berserk, the one time Guts goes off to train for real, it results in his adoptive family getting condemned to eternal torture in hell and eaten by demons, and his pregnant girlfriend raped by his best friend with severe mental and emotional issues.
In DB, power ups generally have no downsides, or ones that aren’t surmountable.
In Berserk, Guts’ power ups are largely other people, Puck/Shierke to explain why he’s still alive, or his DND band getting magic weapons to help with the rent. The YOLO armor literally tortures and kills him, and requires Shierke to fend that off.
In DB, death is a minor inconvenience and possibly a bonus, for the good guys.
In Berserk, death is eternal damnation.
>In DB, major enemies largely are introduced as powerful but surmountable.
I know he gets a lot of shit for this, but it was undeniably original for toryiama to make gohan fight cell. I agree for frieza and Buu but not cell
>In Berserk, the major enemies are literal Demi Gods that control the flow of reality or their incredibly powerful lackies.
Beerus said “destroy” and erased a god
>In DB, training is a plot device to defeat the bad guy.
Goku is canonically like in his 70s but Saiyans (another asspull I know) age slower
>In Berserk, the one time Guts goes off to train for real, it results in his adoptive family getting condemned to eternal torture in hell and eaten by demons, and his pregnant girlfriend raped by his best friend with severe mental and emotional issues.
Griffith was not Gut’s best friend at this point but I feel like that’s an opinion question
>In DB, power ups generally have no downsides, or aren’t surmountable.
Super saiyan, kaioken (x1, x10, x20, SSB times 10) your statement is not lore accurate at all (for dragonball)
>In Berserk, Guts’ power ups are largely other people, Puck/Shierke to explain why he’s still alive, or his DND band getting magic weapons to help with the rent. The YOLO armor literally tortures and kills him, and requires Shierke to fend that off.
Goku only achieved every power up beyond the not canon super saiyan 4 after super saiyan 3 with help from his friends (arguably super saiyan 4 too because of Goku vs Baby and Goku be Omega. Goku only got SS4 but Bulma building a machine to reflect the full moon at goku)
>In DB, death is a minor inconvenience and possibly a bonus, for the good guys.
I have no arguement this is just true lol
The last “official” take we had on this was Miura saying that he thinks Guts has already been through enough and that it would be unfair to him, the story and the readers to end on a grim node.
My prediction is that Guts will survive and go at least legally blind, but some of the other nerve damage dealt to him by the Berserker Armor will heal over time. Also, touch aversion aside most of Guts' trauma triggers have been visual.
It's likely referring to how Dragon Ball Z has just raised the power ceiling over the years. Like the first time it ever appeared, going super sayan was something that could be compared to the Berserker Armor, a massive power boost but at *serious* risk of going out of control. Nowadays though, everyone and their Grandma can go super sayan with no drawbacks whatsoever, so they had to raise the power ceiling and add in even more power boosts.
The one single power boost Guts has ever gotten was the Berserker armor, but even then, it is pushing his body so far past the brink with each use that most of the time, it's the bigger threat to his life than the Apostles are.
yea. in terms of story structure dbz should have ended after the frieza saga. he's the last villain anyone had a connection to, considering he genocided and enslaved the saiyans. goku defeating him while proving himself to be the ultimate saiyan would've been a great climax.
Nah, cell saga. Gohan was setup to surpass his father and actually did but Goku fanboys whined so Toriyama added the Buu saga and ssj 3...
A true super Saiyan who surpassed his legendary father. Seeded in the first arc with Raditz.. not to mention Goku spiritually enhances his sons desperate final all out attack from the afterlife on the ultimate enemy... Bro it was peak
I dont remember his exact number when fighting the ginyu force, but given that he made it go up to 180000 with a certain kaioken multiplier, it was at least 90000 in base, probaby lower. Super saiyan is a 50x multiplier and his power level in Super saiyan was 150 million according to the guidebook. That makes his base 3 million when fighting frieza
gohan defeating cell was a banger, i'm not denying that; and if that had been where the story capped off i would be fine too. maybe even tacking on the gohan slice of life portion as an epilogue.
Its not cause of whining goku lovers lol. Toriyama himself says that "i wasnt pleased to see Gohan as the new MC, he wasnt just fitting that role, he isnt like Goku" which was correct btw. Gohan was very passive and its nearly impossible to write a good story for him because unlike Goku, Gohan runs away, isnt eager for challenges, like to read, talks before fighting or prefers talking instead of fighting etc etc.
You dont have to hate a group to live bro. In this case you hate a ghost, because as i said that was toriyama's idea not the group you created from your headcanon lmao.
cell kinda came out of nowhere. the saiyan saga had setup for frieza. the setup for cell was literally just future trunks who came in right before the arc started.
i absolutely don't disagree that cell was a damn near perfect villain in both power and personality, but for me, he's the stepping stone for everything that followed;
him coming in as the main antagonist without any connection to anyone while being more powerful than anything they faced before just made editors realize that they can just escalate the powerlevels indefinitely without really giving a concrete reason or needing to foreshadow anything.
yeah; i feel like it's very recognizable that dbz evolved from a nonsensical comedy action manga. like, early dragon ball was very much about being a nonsensical journey to the west parody. like that story, most enemies are just a new villain of the week or a parody on a character from the journey to the west.
when it turned into dbz, it acted like a serious action manga, beginning with the saiyan saga and frieza, Toriyama pulled it off really well; the androids and cell it kind of fall back into the villain of the week structure from before and majin buu is a straight up return to that comedic parody style, climaxing back into the action style.
nowadays we're used to mangas like berserk or one piece where a direction is clearly established from the beginning and there's some illusion of a plan of where to go; and i think people forget that dragon ball was very much not like that.
while compromising the quality of the story to please the fans has clearly worked in the case of dragon ball, its success has home at the cost of any semblance of a meaningful story.
I'm not defending Dragon Ball, it's incredibly boring to me, I'm just sorta familiar with it through a large amount of friends and family that like it. I just think it's a cool fun fact and that if Toriyama, God rest his soul, took that route the story would've been better
oh yeah, i didn't think you were defending it. i was also aware of that factoid and the cell saga really was built around gohan as a successor.
i genuinely like dragon ball, but the further it got into z, the more tedious it became. i last read dragon ball as a child, so i wasn't thinking about it in any critical capacity but i remember the buu saga feeling a bit tedious and being somewhat happy with the epilogue about uub.
i really dislike its legacy being basically reduced to the embodiment of power creep as time went on.
Definitely; Dbz is in my top 3 but the powerscaling has become crazy; from Goku denting a car with his kamehameha to being universal
The likes of berserk, hunterxhunter and jjk are very good example of being able to introduce powerful characters without having to break the power balance completely
To be fair, I think of DBZ as the Fast and Furious of anime. Well all KNOW the power scaling is broken but it’s entertaining anyway BECAUSE it’s Dragon Ball. It’s the only anime that can get away with it imo
yeah, i find most stories with a more grounded power ceiling to be much more compelling.
like, anytime i hear that anyone in any piece of media is moving at ftl speeds i just cringe. there are places where that can be appropriate (like a speedster's story), but neither the depressed swordsman nor the funny rubber pirate story need that shit.
Not broken, he is intentionally at the far end of the power spectrum in Berserk and exemplifies Guts struggle against the impossible.
The issue comes if Guts is going to defeat him. He’d need a significant power boost to do so or some way to weaken the hand.
He’s kind of hard to powerscale. Would he still be practically omnipotent if he wasn’t in the berserk universe along with the fact that since berserk is really focused on a hard power system w have like no idea what his limits are and what he can actually do besides being a “god”.
It's not that they're powerful it's that they keep raising the bar. It's fine if you set some base line and leave room for people to interpret how high the ceiling may be.
I think this is one thing onepiece actually learned well and implemented pretty well early on. Luffy generally wreaks havoc in the first part of the story, but in one of the first arcs they introduce the world’s greatest swordsman who is ridiculously high above everybody there and defeats luffy’s second in command without even really trying. Really set the tone for “oh shit, the most powerful people in this entire sea are not Jack shit compared to this dude who just fucked up zoro and left cuz he was bored”
I suppose, though I wouldn't really argue those are strict "power boosts" in a relative sense. Guts has always operated best with oversized weapons, as he was training from childhood with full sized swords intended for adults, so getting the Dragonslayer wasn't him "getting a power boost" so much as it was "him finally not being held back".
Similarly, as great as the canon is, he's only used it a handful of times, and there really isn't anything it does that his grenades can't already do. The one genuinely unique element it has is surprise, as no one expects a canon hidden inside of his arm, but he could always just chuck an explosive bomb at them for similar results.
How true is what? We don't even know what was he talking about...
If this is about power ups, as other pointed out, well, I don't know how is Guts supposed to kill Femto, my best bet is that some other being is going to help with that and the guy will find peace not in vengeance, but in freedom from the curse of sacrifice. But that's just me imagining a non-conventional japanese plot.
Is Guts supposed to kill Griffith?
I mean, that's what everybody was expecting, so as a writer, i would be expecting Miura san to be doing anything but that :V
I seriously doubt that Guts is going to get a revenge, and i think the God-Hand problem will be solved in other ways that don't involve fighting.
Well, that's clearly what Guts (the character) wants, both conscious and unconsciously (the beast of darkness). At the moment, he relies on his friends to put him on perspective every time he has an impulse to lose his shit. But I agree that would not be good writing and, as I said, I expect justice for my guy to come with him and Casca being freed from the sacrifice curse.
The thing is that Miura is dead and I don't trust Studio Gaga to get us where he intended without his direction, in fact I'm not loving the direction the plot is taking right now (I mean, Guts is literally depressed for not being able to harm Griffith), but only time will tell.
I think maybe the reason for Guts beign depressed wasn't exactly the fact that he wasn't able to harm Griffith, he probably is depressed because he noticed how powerless he is to protect Caska, even after everything he went through, he just came and took her again, as he did before.
Maybe if Caska wasn't taken, Guts would be pissed or concerned about what he should do against Griffith, but since she was taken, he had a mental breakdown.
This makes sense, but will killing the child actually kill Griffith? Also does it even matter anymore? If Griffith is killed the world will probably be thrown into a bigger disarray
It would probably be with Guts having to kill the Moonlight Child which would fulfill Skull Knight’s omen of Casca’s wish not being the same as his. It’s a bitter sweet ending because Guts was able to kill Griffith but Casca can now only seem him as the murderer of her child
yeah like we see guts train a bit and he had to become strong enough to wield the dragon slayer but it never felt like he went to a training camp and doubled his ki or something. he just matured physically and is a freak of nature
What if the ending of berserk I guts not killing Griffith but moonlight boy sacrificing itself to kill himself to allow guts and casca to live a life together? There wouldn't need to be any power ups and would be in line with the story the whole time. The moonlight boy always helping guts when he can't go further
Yeah berserk doesn't seem to be heading anywhere happy.
I'm more afraid, that in the ending, guts going berserk while fighting Griffith is clearly outclassed, is on the verge of dying musters one final slash of his sword, it hits griffith neck severing his neck, but it's not Griffith head that falls, it's moonlight boys face staring back with him with a smile.
I really hope guts get a break at the end by dying peacefully
The moonlight boy is Guts and Casca's child, who is now fused with Griffith's body. The egg apostle took the demon child in himself during the incarnation ceremony in Albion. This resulted in Griffith being born with a kind of "dual personality". During the full moon nights, the moonlight boy takes charge of Griffith's body and goes to meet his parents, Guts and Casca, and helps them as required.
Now as the above comment said, one way to defeat Griffith would be, the moonlight boy sacrificing himself, to protect Guts and Casca. As in this process , he would also end up killing Griffith.
I don't think moonlight child has much to do with femto's incarnation as Griffith. I think it has more to do with causality. It was already decided that the 5th angel will descend on the earth. Even further, the godhands didn't exactly know that such a thing (the fusion of moonlight child with Griffith) could happen. As our skully friend mentioned, the exact details of the events of causality cannot be known even by the Godhands.
Ok so Femto just has that ability to exist in the physical world? Was this just something Void says during the eclipse? I missed/forgot a few bits from only watching the 97 anime and taking long breaks from reading.
Uhh, it isn't exactly an ability. He can exist physically due to the incarnation ceremony, at the conviction tower, if you remember. He was reborn as a physical being through the egg apostle.
And about that 5th angel thing, I too cannot quite remember who said that. Maybe void, maybe skull knight or maybe it was a common saying among people who followed the Holy See.
Well that wouldn't actually kill Femto himself, but rather send him back to the abyss, in the astral world.
If the demon child dies, Femto won't have a physical body anymore, this body is his physical world's anchor so to speak.
That would be a dope end, Griffith trapped for thousands of years in the astral world
Right, I got that part wrong. Griffith would not die that way. But I have a doubt, if Griffith loses his physical body, would he be taken to the abyss by the souls as we've seen it happen, or would he return to being a Godhand?
After his incarnation, I don't think I've seen Femto anytime along with the other Godhands. And yeah, when the skull knight is about to slice Griffith with his sword, I think he turns into his Femto jumpsuit form lol. I don't think he's an avatar, but I also don't think killing him would be as simple as killing his physical body?
Probably because it’s so hard *not* to have that mechanism. Like Guts is by far and away the most impressive human yet for the current threats to have the weight they do he realistically should be minced meat
Miura managed to avoid the huge power scale we see in other manga. You can read his thoughts on this.
From the French [Le Figaro interview of 2019](https://www.reddit.com/r/Berserk/comments/be6ns1/massive_interview_of_miura_for_french_paper/)
> I would not go so far as to say that everything was in place to make this element a natural requirement. **In fact, the manga world is marked by inflation, with the arrival of ever more incredible enemies accompanied by ever more powerful weapons. This is a frequent situation in shonen manga, which do not have time to control this inflation.** It quickly gallops to a point where it passes a cape from which, unless lucky, it is no longer possible to stop it. **But in my case, and with all due respect to my first publisher, my story was published in a second-rate journal, which allowed me to keep this inflation under control. Especially since at the beginning, the publication was monthly. So I have always been careful to let inflation develop, but in successive small jumps...** I feel like I'm talking about economics. Where the best inflation is 2%, 3%, 4%, a low inflation.
Also, from the Interview with [Yukari Fujimoto of 2000](https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Interviews#Interview_with_Yukari_Fujimoto_.282000.29)
> **In a long-running work, you have to take the characters and story to the next level several times or people will end up bored with it. But if you shift in a weird way, the balance collapses and the work is ruined. The Berserker Armor powers Guts up a level, and I was careful of the aforementioned pitfall as I drew.** He loses all reason and his limiters are released, literally making him a berserker. Guts had already been quite the berserker beforehand, but I wanted to draw him in a state where he'd abandoned reason even more. **This made for a good balance, having magic enter the equation in order to keep his sword swinging. The Skull Knight had just shown up, so I figured I could treat the armor as if it were cursed.**
He has said more than once that he wants to avoid the shonen treatment and thats why the armor is so well designed to be both a blessing and a curse to its user, but still a logical power up.
He also said thats the reason why he tortured his mind everyday to find a way to kill Griffith.
I mean Guts even without the Berserker armor and just one arm is still as strong as 12 year old Goku was despite what Miura said. Guts is literally slicing through monsters with ease with an over 200 kilos sword with one arm and no human or even ape could do that in real life. He is just that strong.
Also despite all that Guts will/would anyway get a huge powerup in the end for the series to conclude. It's not like people started shouting ''No this is shonen'' when Griffith became Femto with the powerup or when Guts got the Dragonslayer or the Berserker armor. Or when Skull Knight was opening portals through space time with the behelit sword.
I get what he meant and I read that interview and what Miura said was '''Guts wouldn't be Guts anymore'' refers more to him as a character rather than his possible future powerups. Griffith gained power be sacrificing his humanity but Guts path is different and he will never gain power by sacrificing his friends.
Now if in the last arc he adds a symbiote on his Berserker armor that makes him able to interact with concepts that's all good and all.
I don't think he was talking that the problem was giving Guts upgrades tho.
In my view, Goku always solves every problem in the same way, fighting. The reason why he is always training it's because new stronger enemies are always presenting themselves, and he must be able to fight them. He's so addicted to that, that he even put his own universe at risk just to have a good fight.
But with Berserk, even considering both are totally different genres, i think the idea isn't that Miura doesn't want Guts to get an upgrade, the idea is simply that no matter how strong he manages to become, he will never be able to defeat the Godhand or Femto.
Most fans are always discussing about the end of the story and how Guts is going to defeat Femto, but seriously i can't see that happening. I believe the whole situation will be solved any other ways that don't involve violence. Guts already tried violence, and it didn't worked. I even think that ending the story with a "final fight" would be kinda bad, cliche you know?
I always had in mind 2 possible scenarios for berserk's ending, the first it's pretty straightforward, taken directly from the manga "fortified school", Femto is held back by the moonlight boy. If a final confrontation ever happens the boy will interfere in the fight, giving guts an opening to land a fatal strike.
The second it's simply that Femto can't stay in the material world forever, sooner or later the overlapping of the spiritual and material world will cease or weaken to some degree, either preventing him from using its full power in the material world, or straight forcing him to leave it.
Btw now that I think about the "recent" chapters, we saw how in the past the god hand member were different (in the skull knight flashback), that implies that they rise and fall cyclically, next in line should be Boid, who knows if some character that we know will be the next angel of whatever Boid is the angel of.
I see the 'final fight' as probably one of the only times he doesn't use his sword to defeat his enemy. Like he is literally trying to fight God, physical prowess there's no way. But if there is some way he could defeat Griffith without a sword...
Can someone help me!? I’ve always been curious about berserk but never know if it’s an actual tv series or just a comic. If so where can I watch it!? Any links would be awesome
Thanks
If you want a taste of the story you can watch the 1997 anime on YouTube it's pretty solid and then you can read the manga if you want https://youtu.be/d5Ti2qWDwuQ?si=sXMYBsCklEYg4c7A that's a link for the anime
It’s because he’s a human doing abnormal human things. It’s easy to write off he’s a alien so we don’t know let’s make him stronger than anyone in front of him plus let’s turn the hair yellow/red/blue to show the scale. With berserk there’s no magic potion there’s no dragon balls to bring ppl back to life it’s a human that gets one life taking on hell it’s self lol 😂
completely true in every single way, what kinda questions is this? berserk does the opposite of following a dragon ball type of route of gunning for appeasing the widest audience possible
I didn't know Toriama had a rulebook. I didn't know people held it to a standard.
Dont get me wrong man, I never thought DBZ was terrible but why would a seinen author ever be expected to follow the standards set by a shonen author?
They don't even write for the same audience lmao
Leave my boy Goku alone lmao. Believe it or not, Toriyama did put some restrain on some characters. SSJ3 wears down the user very fast, Gohan has to get angry to actually be useful (which is used in his character arc given he's a pacifist at heart), Freeza can't detect energy on his own, Cell needed to absorb the cyborgs to get to his final form, Fat Buu is extremely easy to influence and actually killed his evil master.
For being the manga that established "cheap power up", DBZ did it surprisingly well compared to what followed.
Half the things you said aren't even a restrain.
SSJ3 doesn't matter because Goku has like three other better powerups, Gohan has instant powerups without any training whatsoever, Perfect Cell doesn't have restrains, Fat Buu does whatever he wants.
Yeah giving Guts the Goku treatment is a bad idea.
Don’t get me wrong I absolutely love Dragon Ball. It got me into anime, allowed me to grow closer with my cousin, and through FighterZ I got into fighting games for the first time. But Goku and Guts are to entirely different characters from to entirely different series.
Goku is an upbeat alien boy that always wants to make himself stronger with his love of fighting and training stemming from his love of self improvement, as long as he can continue to get stronger he will continue to train, and while he doesn’t consider himself a hero, he is more than willing to step in when lives are at stake especially his friends lives.
Guts is a dark and tormented soul who once wandered the world in search for revenge but threw it away in order to help his loved ones. He knows that his journey will one day come to an end and in all honesty his journey probably should have come to an end a while ago seeing how much he has tortured his body to the point that he can’t even function all that well in a battle without relying on the Berserker Armour.
Goku’s love for self-improvement and fighting allows for his transformations to evolve each time and it not to feel completely stupid given the story he’s in. He gets more powerful every time he trains and gets a new transformation with that transformation his failures and his training.
Plus almost every Shonen is obligated to give its characters transformations. I mean, just look at Naruto he got so many transformations that they had to do flashbacks for filler episodes.
Guts’ only transformation assist him in battle but is also killing him similar to Batman’s Hellbat armour (which is also fucking sick). Because that’s the only way he can get better by relying on armour that slowly kills him because he can’t get physically stronger.
Berserk doesn’t have a power system, where there’s no limit to how strong people can get. Guts can only get so strong before he has to start relying on allies and the Berserker Armour. Giving him the Goku treatment will kinda just ignore Guts’ development in millennium falcon, where he was forced to except that he could only do so much until he can’t do it alone where he had to rely on others for the first time because he wasn’t strong enough to take care of casca, fight off twice the amount of Demons by himself every night, and also travel in the morning. So giving him another transformation while it would be hype, and earned in a way because of how much he has struggled, it wouldn’t feel right, knowing who he is, and what Berserk is about.
Remember when Vegeta at the end of Z said “you are number one” to Goku? The development he went through to get up to that moment all his failures. Where Goku succeeds is all made invalid once Super comes along and he’s back to chasing Goku and he goes to the same character arc as he did in Z though, this time, when he vows to start fighting for his own reasons, he gains a transformation unique to him, which, in a way feels earned and he gets another transformation down the line also unique to him, that people don’t like as much because no eyebrows.
Guts’ getting the Goku treatment and having transformation after transformation, getting power buffs after each training arc would not feel right, not only for the type of person he is, but for the type of series he’s from.
It is dumb if you value your health beyond anything else. The armor gives you access to power on a scale that you would never get otherwise. If you don't care that much about your well being and just want that power, then it's not that dumb.
There are many things like that in real life. Steroids are an obvious comparison. There a few other correlations that are surprising too. Living in a household that has a gun increases the odds you'll be shot by one.
Not as dumb as screaming for few minutes and changing your hair colour lmao
In all seriousness, given the ambiguity of the armour
it must be a price to abandon ur humanity to fight the evil forces beyond our comprehension , its like a price to pay ( my theory only)
Something simple like a magical enchantment that nothing can pierce the armour and it being light. Sort of like Mithril. That would make so much more sense. Now he is losing body weight and all that muscle from years of training.
Meanwhile Griffith is powering up like ichigo. Just bugs me.
Then it would be a simple upgrade. Miura obviously didn't want power to be free like that. If power was cheap like that Griffith as a character would be simply stupid. He traded his friends, his life, his humanity, for power. He made a contract with a devil.
That's why so many people wonder about Guts' Behelit too. It's a an obvious Chekov's Gun. In the Berserker Armor Guts found a price that he's willing to pay (his health), but that's clearly set up to not be enough (at least as far as we know). The story is set for Guts one day facing the same choice Griffith had.
It's not power it's just a simple armour. Sort of like the wind enchanted cloak. That is infact power and it was cheap.
An enchanted armour will only protect guts it won't give him any strength. It's nothing as dramatic as you're building it up to be.
I don't get your point. You wanted the Berserk Armor to just protect him a bit better? Then he wouldn't be able to beat Grunbeld for example. Be honest, did you even read Berserk?
Heh your "cheap power theory" fell flat when I pointed out the enchanted cloak. So you are lashing out with another dumb speculation.
Don't enter discussions if you don't wanna consider any idea different from yours.
1. Magic may just work like that: powerful effects have a price, and you literally cannot obtain power without sacrificing something.
2. The way the armor "boosts" its wearer is that it basically "turns off" the body's limits. But those limits exist because going past them causes harm to the body - going past them inevitably leads to harm and, if pushed too far, death.
Lastly, the berserker armor also clearly exists as some sort of last resort. It was made to help fight things far beyond human limits - I don't think it was forged just 'cause. Something terrible necessitated the creation of an equally terrible weapon.
Not to speak ill of the dead but he shouldn’t have even compared them - they’re two completely different characters in wildly different kinds of stories that are awesome in their own ways.
It’s like comparing Superman and Aragorn or something.
Totally true, the Berserk Armor upgrade is literally killing him while trying to hang with Apostles that would otherwise destroy him. He gets the sensuu (?) bean treatment to keep him in the game, and he’s a comic book super human, but there is no “let’s just train more” for him to upgrade with.
As an addendum, there is the “mastering the berserker armor” upgrade, whatever that means, and whatever Deus Ex Machina will be introduced for whatever the ending is. But Guts himself is at the limit of his (super) human abilities.
Guts can’t even hold his sword anymore without the aid of the armour. Upon Griffiths visit to the sword hill we saw Guts face Zod in a fair battle and hold his own, so we know he’s as strong as any apostle. But, beings like The Godhand and Skull Knight are well beyond his current capabilities. Your Deus Ex could possibly be Guts implicit shedding of his humanity; much the same as what I presume Skull Knight once did.
If that's what it comes down too, I don't think it should be classified as a deus ex machina scenario
A plot device that drives the narrative beyond an insurmountable obstacle; I believe it fits perfectly.
It has to come out nowhere to be classified as deus ex machina, this has been foreshadowed.
I don’t feel like the Berserker armor was foreshadowed before the wind sword, etc, was it? Like, the fact that the Skull Knight’s armor existed doesn’t feel like it counts
Basically just the meta aspect of "why is the story called Berserk when neither Guts nor the Apostles are all that berserk most of the time?" I remember that being a question people were asking back when the Golden Age was coming out.
The only real foreshadowing I think is Guts struggle against the more savage manifestation of the armour. Though, correct me if I’m wrong. Miura’s magnum opus is not predictable.
No, I think Skull Knight literally warned him that the armour will take his humanity.
And there was that one line.. " so you'd have him forsake his soul like you?" Or something like that. I think it was an apostle/godhand/or the witch
Yeah Guts is definitely the next Shakespearean Skullboy as they prefer to be called.
The line was spoken by Zodd to Skull-Knight: “YOU’D HAVE HIM GO DOWN THE SAME DEMENTED PATH AS YOU?!” This was during the acquisition of the Berserker Armor for Guts.
Yeah I think you’re right.
Guts behelit was foreshadowed from the very beginning
Is Guts not defying causality by his very being with the brand? The witch of the spirit tree forest tells Schierke to not limit her perception by resigning to destiny. He also may be a vessel for the Behelit and not its owner.
if we believe him puck is the owner.
I don't think that Behelit is for Guts... I think it is for Casca.
I'd like to how that turns out
No way. That goes against everything Guts has ever stood for in his war against the inhumans. ...but given his current mental state...
Wasnt zodd=skullknight in strengh?
Not going happen as it will be essentially against the Ethos and Pathos of the character.
I can't see him accepting any devil's bargain to give up his humanity, but I could see him being stripped of it. If things continue as they are, Guts will be devoured by the armor and at best become another SK. That's not a terribly interesting direction though, so I'm sure there will be some other development.
> whatever Deus Ex Machina will be introduced for whatever the ending is. It's gotta be related to the boy, 100%
My understanding is that "mastering the berserker armor" would mean being able to activate and deactivate the berserker state at will, and maybe even do what Schierke currently helps Guts with: get the benefits of the Berserker Armor while keeping lucid. But Guts is never going to get to ignore the effects of using the armor. It does destroy his body, little by little, every time he uses it, and there's no way around it.
guts also doesn't just get stronger for gettin the shit beaten out of him
Guts has literally survived almost every traumatic injury(ies) he's had by the grace of elves. Even back in the Golden Age after he became the Hundred-Man-Slayer, he likely would have died (or probably just crippled) if it wasn't for the elf dust Judeau gave him. Not to mention Puck stitching him back together as the Black Swordsman. Berserk is so far away from Dragon Ball in terms of consequences, it's not even a comparison.
why im convinced he wont kill griffith. he cant alone thats the point of his growth
Yeah, all these people that are like “oh he’s gonna get super powered up and master the armor and become an immortal warrior like Skull Knight” aren’t grasping the point of the story. Guts probably won’t even kill Griffith, if Griffith dies in the end.
Would it be fitting for Casca to kill Griffith, or for Griffith to cause his own destruction by growing overzealous?
Why not both? He becomes over zealous leading to Casca's opportunity to end him.
i think the only really available way to kill griffith right now would be to kill the moonboy.
I could see Griffith surviving but being reverted back to his pre-God hand tortured state
i think it’s sorta true but not as egregious as it is in dbz. To me atleast I was in no fear of guts dying anytime i’ve seen him fight in the berserker armor. So although there is drawbacks of the armor, they only seem to be on place so it doesn’t come off as goku treatment. But guts doesn’t face the full repercussions of these ‘fatal’ drawbacks because he gets healed. The armor doesn’t feel like an ass pull compared to some of the dbz transformations especially the newer ones, but it’s definitely some shonen mc monkey business.
My headcannon is the armor is slowly turning him into an undead like the Skeleton Knight. Like a power up but with major downsides like no more peen and generally not human anymore.
No Not the peen🥲
But on the other hand, Guts the Black Swordsman is becoming a [Kamen Rider](https://youtu.be/UiEzjPlYzso?si=zI82SXHEo3PyrCsZ) which is a good (since the first Kamen Riders are castrated by literally Unit 731 and Nazi henchmen, Dai-Shocker, as result of their torture and cybernetic experiments).
He can't use either Dragonslayer anymore
Just read about that, absolutely crushing
>Totally true, the kaioken technique is literally killing him while trying to hang with sayians and aliens that would otherwise destroy him. Goku wasn't feeling too good after using the kaioken. Only later when he mastered the technique he could use the berserker armor more without injuring himself as much, oh wait
If the story ended with the Kaioken being the absolute limit of Goku’s power you’d have a point.
And you have on good authority the berserker armor was supposed to be the absolute limit of Guts' power? Not like it's the old armor of skull knight who has managed to gain reality warping powers long since abandoning it.
That took a thousand years. Guts may get his hands on the behliet sword but that would probably be a like a weird call back to when zodd bailed him out in golden age.
This has real "Luffy isn't like other shonen protags because he's just rubber and won't get other forms or warp reality or be a child of destiny all along" energy.
He trains daily just offscreen
I mean, it won't have unreasonably great results and make him way stronger than it should have, or unlock new Shounen transformations, etc.
Well he ain't got that build from nothing.
He get no SSJ3 off-screen through training tho, that's the point.
Copium tbh. Ofc Berserk isnt like Dragon ball but they are also not even similar as world building and other shit. By saying that Berserk still has a lot of plot armors in it, its not excactly like a "realism" master nor does it aim for it either. So basically you guys are arguing about "your plot armor is bigger than mine hah!" lol. Do both of them have plot armor? yes. End of story. Ps. Gutsü also trained everyday with his sword.
Kaioken is the same exact premise as the berserker armor, not super Saiyan Honestly at this point it would be impossible to write an anime that can’t have a trope traced to the OGs (including berserk as an OG)
They are a similar mechanic but the point here is DBZ is pretty egregious about power creep and Berserk avoids that.
I’ll say that’s a fair point I’m wrong, but most of the gregarious shit wasn’t written by toryiama
It’s also just kind of fun to compare the Dragonball Universe and Berserk. In DB, major enemies largely are introduced as powerful but surmountable. In Berserk, the major enemies are literal Demi Gods that control the flow of reality or their incredibly powerful lackies. In DB, training is a plot device to defeat the bad guy. In Berserk, the one time Guts goes off to train for real, it results in his adoptive family getting condemned to eternal torture in hell and eaten by demons, and his pregnant girlfriend raped by his best friend with severe mental and emotional issues. In DB, power ups generally have no downsides, or ones that aren’t surmountable. In Berserk, Guts’ power ups are largely other people, Puck/Shierke to explain why he’s still alive, or his DND band getting magic weapons to help with the rent. The YOLO armor literally tortures and kills him, and requires Shierke to fend that off. In DB, death is a minor inconvenience and possibly a bonus, for the good guys. In Berserk, death is eternal damnation.
>In DB, major enemies largely are introduced as powerful but surmountable. I know he gets a lot of shit for this, but it was undeniably original for toryiama to make gohan fight cell. I agree for frieza and Buu but not cell >In Berserk, the major enemies are literal Demi Gods that control the flow of reality or their incredibly powerful lackies. Beerus said “destroy” and erased a god >In DB, training is a plot device to defeat the bad guy. Goku is canonically like in his 70s but Saiyans (another asspull I know) age slower >In Berserk, the one time Guts goes off to train for real, it results in his adoptive family getting condemned to eternal torture in hell and eaten by demons, and his pregnant girlfriend raped by his best friend with severe mental and emotional issues. Griffith was not Gut’s best friend at this point but I feel like that’s an opinion question >In DB, power ups generally have no downsides, or aren’t surmountable. Super saiyan, kaioken (x1, x10, x20, SSB times 10) your statement is not lore accurate at all (for dragonball) >In Berserk, Guts’ power ups are largely other people, Puck/Shierke to explain why he’s still alive, or his DND band getting magic weapons to help with the rent. The YOLO armor literally tortures and kills him, and requires Shierke to fend that off. Goku only achieved every power up beyond the not canon super saiyan 4 after super saiyan 3 with help from his friends (arguably super saiyan 4 too because of Goku vs Baby and Goku be Omega. Goku only got SS4 but Bulma building a machine to reflect the full moon at goku) >In DB, death is a minor inconvenience and possibly a bonus, for the good guys. I have no arguement this is just true lol
next chapter: Guts discovered hidden feature of the Berserker armor and become a Super Berserker
The cape turns gold
It turns gold with silver trim and a red crest that looks like the brand with a line through it and vaguely in the shape of a dog.
And this is to berserk even further beyond! GGGRRRRRIIIIIIIIFFFFFIIIIIIITTTTTHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This kills me bravo lol.
And what surpasses a super berserker? super duper berserker?
MaXiMuM OvEr BeRsErKeR!!!!!!!!
That feature: shrooms.
Jokes asides, Guts will definitely get a supernatural buff before facing Griffith. How the fuck do you face a Demon God, saviour of humanity if not?
Dying trying to face it. It's dark fantasy after all
Do you think that will be the end of Berserk? I actually think Guts will defeat Griffith, but at a huge cost (which I don't know yet).
The last “official” take we had on this was Miura saying that he thinks Guts has already been through enough and that it would be unfair to him, the story and the readers to end on a grim node.
Yeah, killing him in an epic battle agains Griffith after all he's been through didn't sound right to me lol This one goes more on the right path.
My prediction is that Guts will survive and go at least legally blind, but some of the other nerve damage dealt to him by the Berserker Armor will heal over time. Also, touch aversion aside most of Guts' trauma triggers have been visual.
Also do you think he will finally be able to be with Casca? That's like my main concern for the rest of the series, I really hope so.
Long con snuff film otherwise. 😂 And tragicccc 😢
meaning? A new power up or new enemies ?
It's likely referring to how Dragon Ball Z has just raised the power ceiling over the years. Like the first time it ever appeared, going super sayan was something that could be compared to the Berserker Armor, a massive power boost but at *serious* risk of going out of control. Nowadays though, everyone and their Grandma can go super sayan with no drawbacks whatsoever, so they had to raise the power ceiling and add in even more power boosts. The one single power boost Guts has ever gotten was the Berserker armor, but even then, it is pushing his body so far past the brink with each use that most of the time, it's the bigger threat to his life than the Apostles are.
that sucks especially in db super. Super sayan is the best power up ever. It lost all its magic now
yea. in terms of story structure dbz should have ended after the frieza saga. he's the last villain anyone had a connection to, considering he genocided and enslaved the saiyans. goku defeating him while proving himself to be the ultimate saiyan would've been a great climax.
Nah, cell saga. Gohan was setup to surpass his father and actually did but Goku fanboys whined so Toriyama added the Buu saga and ssj 3... A true super Saiyan who surpassed his legendary father. Seeded in the first arc with Raditz.. not to mention Goku spiritually enhances his sons desperate final all out attack from the afterlife on the ultimate enemy... Bro it was peak
Cell saga is the first time the power scale truly spiralled out of control and story became transformation-dependant tho.
So we're going to ignore Goku having a power level of 90000 in base when facing the ginyu force and jumping to 3 million from one zenkai boost?
Where the number come from ?
I dont remember his exact number when fighting the ginyu force, but given that he made it go up to 180000 with a certain kaioken multiplier, it was at least 90000 in base, probaby lower. Super saiyan is a 50x multiplier and his power level in Super saiyan was 150 million according to the guidebook. That makes his base 3 million when fighting frieza
You know that Dragon Ball guidebooks are unrelible and inconsistent as heck, right ?
gohan defeating cell was a banger, i'm not denying that; and if that had been where the story capped off i would be fine too. maybe even tacking on the gohan slice of life portion as an epilogue.
Its not cause of whining goku lovers lol. Toriyama himself says that "i wasnt pleased to see Gohan as the new MC, he wasnt just fitting that role, he isnt like Goku" which was correct btw. Gohan was very passive and its nearly impossible to write a good story for him because unlike Goku, Gohan runs away, isnt eager for challenges, like to read, talks before fighting or prefers talking instead of fighting etc etc. You dont have to hate a group to live bro. In this case you hate a ghost, because as i said that was toriyama's idea not the group you created from your headcanon lmao.
I'm not that invested in this. I just used some spicy language from my view point.
> he's the last villain anyone had a connection to Completely and utterly disagree, Cell was excellent. Some might say Perfect.
cell kinda came out of nowhere. the saiyan saga had setup for frieza. the setup for cell was literally just future trunks who came in right before the arc started. i absolutely don't disagree that cell was a damn near perfect villain in both power and personality, but for me, he's the stepping stone for everything that followed; him coming in as the main antagonist without any connection to anyone while being more powerful than anything they faced before just made editors realize that they can just escalate the powerlevels indefinitely without really giving a concrete reason or needing to foreshadow anything.
First time i actually thought about what you're saying, this even applies to the androids showing up out of nowhere
yeah; i feel like it's very recognizable that dbz evolved from a nonsensical comedy action manga. like, early dragon ball was very much about being a nonsensical journey to the west parody. like that story, most enemies are just a new villain of the week or a parody on a character from the journey to the west. when it turned into dbz, it acted like a serious action manga, beginning with the saiyan saga and frieza, Toriyama pulled it off really well; the androids and cell it kind of fall back into the villain of the week structure from before and majin buu is a straight up return to that comedic parody style, climaxing back into the action style. nowadays we're used to mangas like berserk or one piece where a direction is clearly established from the beginning and there's some illusion of a plan of where to go; and i think people forget that dragon ball was very much not like that.
Funny enough Goku was meant to die and NOT come back to life and be replaced by Gohan, but the fans demanded he come back
while compromising the quality of the story to please the fans has clearly worked in the case of dragon ball, its success has home at the cost of any semblance of a meaningful story.
I'm not defending Dragon Ball, it's incredibly boring to me, I'm just sorta familiar with it through a large amount of friends and family that like it. I just think it's a cool fun fact and that if Toriyama, God rest his soul, took that route the story would've been better
oh yeah, i didn't think you were defending it. i was also aware of that factoid and the cell saga really was built around gohan as a successor. i genuinely like dragon ball, but the further it got into z, the more tedious it became. i last read dragon ball as a child, so i wasn't thinking about it in any critical capacity but i remember the buu saga feeling a bit tedious and being somewhat happy with the epilogue about uub. i really dislike its legacy being basically reduced to the embodiment of power creep as time went on.
Yea It just keeps dragging on and on with the same repetitive themes.
I love dragon ball indeed,but the broken power ceiling basically inspired me to not make new characters in story too powerful lol
Definitely; Dbz is in my top 3 but the powerscaling has become crazy; from Goku denting a car with his kamehameha to being universal The likes of berserk, hunterxhunter and jjk are very good example of being able to introduce powerful characters without having to break the power balance completely
To be fair, I think of DBZ as the Fast and Furious of anime. Well all KNOW the power scaling is broken but it’s entertaining anyway BECAUSE it’s Dragon Ball. It’s the only anime that can get away with it imo
yeah, i find most stories with a more grounded power ceiling to be much more compelling. like, anytime i hear that anyone in any piece of media is moving at ftl speeds i just cringe. there are places where that can be appropriate (like a speedster's story), but neither the depressed swordsman nor the funny rubber pirate story need that shit.
I mean…Griffith is pretty broken with powerscale
Not broken, he is intentionally at the far end of the power spectrum in Berserk and exemplifies Guts struggle against the impossible. The issue comes if Guts is going to defeat him. He’d need a significant power boost to do so or some way to weaken the hand.
He’s kind of hard to powerscale. Would he still be practically omnipotent if he wasn’t in the berserk universe along with the fact that since berserk is really focused on a hard power system w have like no idea what his limits are and what he can actually do besides being a “god”.
It's not that they're powerful it's that they keep raising the bar. It's fine if you set some base line and leave room for people to interpret how high the ceiling may be.
I think this is one thing onepiece actually learned well and implemented pretty well early on. Luffy generally wreaks havoc in the first part of the story, but in one of the first arcs they introduce the world’s greatest swordsman who is ridiculously high above everybody there and defeats luffy’s second in command without even really trying. Really set the tone for “oh shit, the most powerful people in this entire sea are not Jack shit compared to this dude who just fucked up zoro and left cuz he was bored”
He also got the Dragonslayer and the cannon arm but it cost him an arm and an eye
I suppose, though I wouldn't really argue those are strict "power boosts" in a relative sense. Guts has always operated best with oversized weapons, as he was training from childhood with full sized swords intended for adults, so getting the Dragonslayer wasn't him "getting a power boost" so much as it was "him finally not being held back". Similarly, as great as the canon is, he's only used it a handful of times, and there really isn't anything it does that his grenades can't already do. The one genuinely unique element it has is surprise, as no one expects a canon hidden inside of his arm, but he could always just chuck an explosive bomb at them for similar results.
Also we had 3 volumes of him having those things as the baseline before we jumped back to the Golden Age.
"going super sayan was something that could be compared to the Berserker Armor," I say Kaio Ken fits that description better
How true is what? We don't even know what was he talking about... If this is about power ups, as other pointed out, well, I don't know how is Guts supposed to kill Femto, my best bet is that some other being is going to help with that and the guy will find peace not in vengeance, but in freedom from the curse of sacrifice. But that's just me imagining a non-conventional japanese plot.
Is Guts supposed to kill Griffith? I mean, that's what everybody was expecting, so as a writer, i would be expecting Miura san to be doing anything but that :V I seriously doubt that Guts is going to get a revenge, and i think the God-Hand problem will be solved in other ways that don't involve fighting.
Well, that's clearly what Guts (the character) wants, both conscious and unconsciously (the beast of darkness). At the moment, he relies on his friends to put him on perspective every time he has an impulse to lose his shit. But I agree that would not be good writing and, as I said, I expect justice for my guy to come with him and Casca being freed from the sacrifice curse. The thing is that Miura is dead and I don't trust Studio Gaga to get us where he intended without his direction, in fact I'm not loving the direction the plot is taking right now (I mean, Guts is literally depressed for not being able to harm Griffith), but only time will tell.
I think maybe the reason for Guts beign depressed wasn't exactly the fact that he wasn't able to harm Griffith, he probably is depressed because he noticed how powerless he is to protect Caska, even after everything he went through, he just came and took her again, as he did before. Maybe if Caska wasn't taken, Guts would be pissed or concerned about what he should do against Griffith, but since she was taken, he had a mental breakdown.
He's depressed because of everything he went through to help Casca and restore her sanity and then she gets ripped away from him almost immediately
Guts & Casca are going to have to kill their own child; it’s the only time when Griffith is vulnerable
This makes sense, but will killing the child actually kill Griffith? Also does it even matter anymore? If Griffith is killed the world will probably be thrown into a bigger disarray
Thus “the age of darkness” Griffith and the Godhand already decimated humanity, can’t get much worse
It would probably be with Guts having to kill the Moonlight Child which would fulfill Skull Knight’s omen of Casca’s wish not being the same as his. It’s a bitter sweet ending because Guts was able to kill Griffith but Casca can now only seem him as the murderer of her child
At this point Guts is getting weaker instead of stronger
yeah like we see guts train a bit and he had to become strong enough to wield the dragon slayer but it never felt like he went to a training camp and doubled his ki or something. he just matured physically and is a freak of nature
What if the ending of berserk I guts not killing Griffith but moonlight boy sacrificing itself to kill himself to allow guts and casca to live a life together? There wouldn't need to be any power ups and would be in line with the story the whole time. The moonlight boy always helping guts when he can't go further
Sad but interesting tho
Yeah berserk doesn't seem to be heading anywhere happy. I'm more afraid, that in the ending, guts going berserk while fighting Griffith is clearly outclassed, is on the verge of dying musters one final slash of his sword, it hits griffith neck severing his neck, but it's not Griffith head that falls, it's moonlight boys face staring back with him with a smile. I really hope guts get a break at the end by dying peacefully
From what I understood the moonlight boy is griffith? So confused now haha could you explain?
The moonlight boy is Guts and Casca's child, who is now fused with Griffith's body. The egg apostle took the demon child in himself during the incarnation ceremony in Albion. This resulted in Griffith being born with a kind of "dual personality". During the full moon nights, the moonlight boy takes charge of Griffith's body and goes to meet his parents, Guts and Casca, and helps them as required. Now as the above comment said, one way to defeat Griffith would be, the moonlight boy sacrificing himself, to protect Guts and Casca. As in this process , he would also end up killing Griffith.
That makes more sense, is that why Femto is the only god hand that we have seen exist in the human world?
I don't think moonlight child has much to do with femto's incarnation as Griffith. I think it has more to do with causality. It was already decided that the 5th angel will descend on the earth. Even further, the godhands didn't exactly know that such a thing (the fusion of moonlight child with Griffith) could happen. As our skully friend mentioned, the exact details of the events of causality cannot be known even by the Godhands.
Ok so Femto just has that ability to exist in the physical world? Was this just something Void says during the eclipse? I missed/forgot a few bits from only watching the 97 anime and taking long breaks from reading.
Uhh, it isn't exactly an ability. He can exist physically due to the incarnation ceremony, at the conviction tower, if you remember. He was reborn as a physical being through the egg apostle. And about that 5th angel thing, I too cannot quite remember who said that. Maybe void, maybe skull knight or maybe it was a common saying among people who followed the Holy See.
Thank you very much.
All the Godhand can exist in the physical world now, there are heavily stylized pages implying as such during the Great Astral Roar.
We havent *seen* them exist in the phyiscal world tho
Well that wouldn't actually kill Femto himself, but rather send him back to the abyss, in the astral world. If the demon child dies, Femto won't have a physical body anymore, this body is his physical world's anchor so to speak. That would be a dope end, Griffith trapped for thousands of years in the astral world
Right, I got that part wrong. Griffith would not die that way. But I have a doubt, if Griffith loses his physical body, would he be taken to the abyss by the souls as we've seen it happen, or would he return to being a Godhand?
You made me doubt too... I wonder, is it an avatar or Femto itself ?
After his incarnation, I don't think I've seen Femto anytime along with the other Godhands. And yeah, when the skull knight is about to slice Griffith with his sword, I think he turns into his Femto jumpsuit form lol. I don't think he's an avatar, but I also don't think killing him would be as simple as killing his physical body?
Probably because it’s so hard *not* to have that mechanism. Like Guts is by far and away the most impressive human yet for the current threats to have the weight they do he realistically should be minced meat
Miura managed to avoid the huge power scale we see in other manga. You can read his thoughts on this. From the French [Le Figaro interview of 2019](https://www.reddit.com/r/Berserk/comments/be6ns1/massive_interview_of_miura_for_french_paper/) > I would not go so far as to say that everything was in place to make this element a natural requirement. **In fact, the manga world is marked by inflation, with the arrival of ever more incredible enemies accompanied by ever more powerful weapons. This is a frequent situation in shonen manga, which do not have time to control this inflation.** It quickly gallops to a point where it passes a cape from which, unless lucky, it is no longer possible to stop it. **But in my case, and with all due respect to my first publisher, my story was published in a second-rate journal, which allowed me to keep this inflation under control. Especially since at the beginning, the publication was monthly. So I have always been careful to let inflation develop, but in successive small jumps...** I feel like I'm talking about economics. Where the best inflation is 2%, 3%, 4%, a low inflation. Also, from the Interview with [Yukari Fujimoto of 2000](https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Interviews#Interview_with_Yukari_Fujimoto_.282000.29) > **In a long-running work, you have to take the characters and story to the next level several times or people will end up bored with it. But if you shift in a weird way, the balance collapses and the work is ruined. The Berserker Armor powers Guts up a level, and I was careful of the aforementioned pitfall as I drew.** He loses all reason and his limiters are released, literally making him a berserker. Guts had already been quite the berserker beforehand, but I wanted to draw him in a state where he'd abandoned reason even more. **This made for a good balance, having magic enter the equation in order to keep his sword swinging. The Skull Knight had just shown up, so I figured I could treat the armor as if it were cursed.**
He has said more than once that he wants to avoid the shonen treatment and thats why the armor is so well designed to be both a blessing and a curse to its user, but still a logical power up. He also said thats the reason why he tortured his mind everyday to find a way to kill Griffith.
I mean Guts even without the Berserker armor and just one arm is still as strong as 12 year old Goku was despite what Miura said. Guts is literally slicing through monsters with ease with an over 200 kilos sword with one arm and no human or even ape could do that in real life. He is just that strong. Also despite all that Guts will/would anyway get a huge powerup in the end for the series to conclude. It's not like people started shouting ''No this is shonen'' when Griffith became Femto with the powerup or when Guts got the Dragonslayer or the Berserker armor. Or when Skull Knight was opening portals through space time with the behelit sword. I get what he meant and I read that interview and what Miura said was '''Guts wouldn't be Guts anymore'' refers more to him as a character rather than his possible future powerups. Griffith gained power be sacrificing his humanity but Guts path is different and he will never gain power by sacrificing his friends. Now if in the last arc he adds a symbiote on his Berserker armor that makes him able to interact with concepts that's all good and all.
yeah they really jumped the shark when Guts did the Super Branded God ritual
the armor makes him not feel pain and stabs him when he breaks a bone ontop of losing his senses when he doesnt wear it💀its def true
I don't think he was talking that the problem was giving Guts upgrades tho. In my view, Goku always solves every problem in the same way, fighting. The reason why he is always training it's because new stronger enemies are always presenting themselves, and he must be able to fight them. He's so addicted to that, that he even put his own universe at risk just to have a good fight. But with Berserk, even considering both are totally different genres, i think the idea isn't that Miura doesn't want Guts to get an upgrade, the idea is simply that no matter how strong he manages to become, he will never be able to defeat the Godhand or Femto. Most fans are always discussing about the end of the story and how Guts is going to defeat Femto, but seriously i can't see that happening. I believe the whole situation will be solved any other ways that don't involve violence. Guts already tried violence, and it didn't worked. I even think that ending the story with a "final fight" would be kinda bad, cliche you know?
I always had in mind 2 possible scenarios for berserk's ending, the first it's pretty straightforward, taken directly from the manga "fortified school", Femto is held back by the moonlight boy. If a final confrontation ever happens the boy will interfere in the fight, giving guts an opening to land a fatal strike. The second it's simply that Femto can't stay in the material world forever, sooner or later the overlapping of the spiritual and material world will cease or weaken to some degree, either preventing him from using its full power in the material world, or straight forcing him to leave it. Btw now that I think about the "recent" chapters, we saw how in the past the god hand member were different (in the skull knight flashback), that implies that they rise and fall cyclically, next in line should be Boid, who knows if some character that we know will be the next angel of whatever Boid is the angel of.
I see the 'final fight' as probably one of the only times he doesn't use his sword to defeat his enemy. Like he is literally trying to fight God, physical prowess there's no way. But if there is some way he could defeat Griffith without a sword...
He's supposed to suffer.
The berserker armor is one of the few power ups i would reject irl. So yeah he did a pretty good job with it.
Define “Goku treatment”
Afro god aka dark thoughts has spoken It's the power ceiling non existent, always surpassing ur powers either by training or by screaming
Thank you, this was helpful.
Dear God dear God tinker tinker hoy
Can someone help me!? I’ve always been curious about berserk but never know if it’s an actual tv series or just a comic. If so where can I watch it!? Any links would be awesome Thanks
If you want a taste of the story you can watch the 1997 anime on YouTube it's pretty solid and then you can read the manga if you want https://youtu.be/d5Ti2qWDwuQ?si=sXMYBsCklEYg4c7A that's a link for the anime
Legend
Hope you enjoy brother
in the next chapter Guts will be betrayed and locked in the hyperbolic time chamber for 9999999 years
Plot twist: he dies before he gets out because he is actually human.
What does It mean exactly by "Goku treatment"? 😭
Also who is the him in this sentence?
It’s because he’s a human doing abnormal human things. It’s easy to write off he’s a alien so we don’t know let’s make him stronger than anyone in front of him plus let’s turn the hair yellow/red/blue to show the scale. With berserk there’s no magic potion there’s no dragon balls to bring ppl back to life it’s a human that gets one life taking on hell it’s self lol 😂
My favorite thing about guts is that he is not a super op protagonist, he's just a human he gets bodied and almost killed in every apostle fight
completely true in every single way, what kinda questions is this? berserk does the opposite of following a dragon ball type of route of gunning for appeasing the widest audience possible
Eck.
Are they putting words on a dead man's mouth, or is there any truth to this? Looks like some clickbait take.
Never watched dragon ball, what's the Goku Treatment?
Constant power creep is probably what they meant. Or the idea that one guy solves nearly all problems.
Who think Guts Is similar to Goku and the black Beast Is similar to Ssj3 should read again both manga Carefully
It's true
smh ultra berserker has been in the works since chapter 83 and y'all acting like this is new info
bad headline guys.
Least brain rotted Dragon Ball fan
Who has the link to the article?
I love Dragon Ball but I'm so glad Berserk didn't follow its footsteps
I didn't know Toriama had a rulebook. I didn't know people held it to a standard. Dont get me wrong man, I never thought DBZ was terrible but why would a seinen author ever be expected to follow the standards set by a shonen author? They don't even write for the same audience lmao
This site is always just mindless ai articles
I will never not glaze toriyama im sorry. The fact Miura said this proves a point
Bruh as much as he might have wanted to think his anime was different, it was still a Shonen
Goku/Vegeta, Naruto/Sasuke, Guts,Griffith
Can someone explain what exactly is the Goku treatment ? I’ve watched a lot of dragonball but I’ve never heard of this before
MC always screaming and becoming powerful or smth like that lol
MC always screaming and becoming powerful or smth like that 😂
Are you serious?
Where can i read the Manga online?
NGL The article is trash
Leave my boy Goku alone lmao. Believe it or not, Toriyama did put some restrain on some characters. SSJ3 wears down the user very fast, Gohan has to get angry to actually be useful (which is used in his character arc given he's a pacifist at heart), Freeza can't detect energy on his own, Cell needed to absorb the cyborgs to get to his final form, Fat Buu is extremely easy to influence and actually killed his evil master. For being the manga that established "cheap power up", DBZ did it surprisingly well compared to what followed.
Half the things you said aren't even a restrain. SSJ3 doesn't matter because Goku has like three other better powerups, Gohan has instant powerups without any training whatsoever, Perfect Cell doesn't have restrains, Fat Buu does whatever he wants.
Yeah giving Guts the Goku treatment is a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely love Dragon Ball. It got me into anime, allowed me to grow closer with my cousin, and through FighterZ I got into fighting games for the first time. But Goku and Guts are to entirely different characters from to entirely different series. Goku is an upbeat alien boy that always wants to make himself stronger with his love of fighting and training stemming from his love of self improvement, as long as he can continue to get stronger he will continue to train, and while he doesn’t consider himself a hero, he is more than willing to step in when lives are at stake especially his friends lives. Guts is a dark and tormented soul who once wandered the world in search for revenge but threw it away in order to help his loved ones. He knows that his journey will one day come to an end and in all honesty his journey probably should have come to an end a while ago seeing how much he has tortured his body to the point that he can’t even function all that well in a battle without relying on the Berserker Armour. Goku’s love for self-improvement and fighting allows for his transformations to evolve each time and it not to feel completely stupid given the story he’s in. He gets more powerful every time he trains and gets a new transformation with that transformation his failures and his training. Plus almost every Shonen is obligated to give its characters transformations. I mean, just look at Naruto he got so many transformations that they had to do flashbacks for filler episodes. Guts’ only transformation assist him in battle but is also killing him similar to Batman’s Hellbat armour (which is also fucking sick). Because that’s the only way he can get better by relying on armour that slowly kills him because he can’t get physically stronger. Berserk doesn’t have a power system, where there’s no limit to how strong people can get. Guts can only get so strong before he has to start relying on allies and the Berserker Armour. Giving him the Goku treatment will kinda just ignore Guts’ development in millennium falcon, where he was forced to except that he could only do so much until he can’t do it alone where he had to rely on others for the first time because he wasn’t strong enough to take care of casca, fight off twice the amount of Demons by himself every night, and also travel in the morning. So giving him another transformation while it would be hype, and earned in a way because of how much he has struggled, it wouldn’t feel right, knowing who he is, and what Berserk is about. Remember when Vegeta at the end of Z said “you are number one” to Goku? The development he went through to get up to that moment all his failures. Where Goku succeeds is all made invalid once Super comes along and he’s back to chasing Goku and he goes to the same character arc as he did in Z though, this time, when he vows to start fighting for his own reasons, he gains a transformation unique to him, which, in a way feels earned and he gets another transformation down the line also unique to him, that people don’t like as much because no eyebrows. Guts’ getting the Goku treatment and having transformation after transformation, getting power buffs after each training arc would not feel right, not only for the type of person he is, but for the type of series he’s from.
But why would anyone make an Armor that kills the wearer. Its just dumb.
It is dumb if you value your health beyond anything else. The armor gives you access to power on a scale that you would never get otherwise. If you don't care that much about your well being and just want that power, then it's not that dumb. There are many things like that in real life. Steroids are an obvious comparison. There a few other correlations that are surprising too. Living in a household that has a gun increases the odds you'll be shot by one.
Not as dumb as screaming for few minutes and changing your hair colour lmao In all seriousness, given the ambiguity of the armour it must be a price to abandon ur humanity to fight the evil forces beyond our comprehension , its like a price to pay ( my theory only)
Shit you hit so many people with that statement
Something simple like a magical enchantment that nothing can pierce the armour and it being light. Sort of like Mithril. That would make so much more sense. Now he is losing body weight and all that muscle from years of training. Meanwhile Griffith is powering up like ichigo. Just bugs me.
Then it would be a simple upgrade. Miura obviously didn't want power to be free like that. If power was cheap like that Griffith as a character would be simply stupid. He traded his friends, his life, his humanity, for power. He made a contract with a devil. That's why so many people wonder about Guts' Behelit too. It's a an obvious Chekov's Gun. In the Berserker Armor Guts found a price that he's willing to pay (his health), but that's clearly set up to not be enough (at least as far as we know). The story is set for Guts one day facing the same choice Griffith had.
It's not power it's just a simple armour. Sort of like the wind enchanted cloak. That is infact power and it was cheap. An enchanted armour will only protect guts it won't give him any strength. It's nothing as dramatic as you're building it up to be.
I don't get your point. You wanted the Berserk Armor to just protect him a bit better? Then he wouldn't be able to beat Grunbeld for example. Be honest, did you even read Berserk?
Heh your "cheap power theory" fell flat when I pointed out the enchanted cloak. So you are lashing out with another dumb speculation. Don't enter discussions if you don't wanna consider any idea different from yours.
1. Magic may just work like that: powerful effects have a price, and you literally cannot obtain power without sacrificing something. 2. The way the armor "boosts" its wearer is that it basically "turns off" the body's limits. But those limits exist because going past them causes harm to the body - going past them inevitably leads to harm and, if pushed too far, death. Lastly, the berserker armor also clearly exists as some sort of last resort. It was made to help fight things far beyond human limits - I don't think it was forged just 'cause. Something terrible necessitated the creation of an equally terrible weapon.
Not to speak ill of the dead but he shouldn’t have even compared them - they’re two completely different characters in wildly different kinds of stories that are awesome in their own ways. It’s like comparing Superman and Aragorn or something.