Should we be stating

should we be stating

Griffith did literally nothing wrong

Or

Griffith did literally nothing evil?

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He did, he sacrificed his crew; however brought order to the fictional world of Berserk.
Guts´suffering is why this argument is difficult, and makes the plot of Berserk interesting and "deep."

>gutsfags

Once the idea of evil is established, any culpability you may think Griffith may have had goes out the window.

What guts himself is seeking is the power to do what the gods already do, which is to change fate itself. The crimson behelit, once it fell into Griffiths hands plays out similar to how guts existence around people he meets demonstrably changes their fates.

The crimson behelit is at the very least, more able to influence fate than guts is, so it's demonstrably quite powerful.

The eclipse came when Griffith was at his lowest point, where it seemed like this was the only way out. The band had lost the vast majority of its members already, and as a leader he saw no way out, he was crippled, mute, on the brink of death after a year of diabolical torture.

Griffith may have done something evil
Griffith did nothing wrong

Never seen this. Give me the basic gestalt.

>What guts himself is seeking is the power to do what the gods already do, which is to change fate itself.
Nothing wrong here.

Donovan did nothing wrong. If he didn't rape Guts, he wouldn't have become the man he is now. Who's the only hope of the world against Griffith. Plus he was just paying for sex.

>godlike being in a dimension above you can manipulate fate
>guts tries to escape this
>by changing his fate

Two sides of same coin m8

I swear people who defend Griffith are just a troll. He want to be a king to fix the world yet he sacrificed all his loyal band to fuck the world even further by creating the Eye of Terror enabling Demons to invade the world. He make lot of fucked up thing that make no sense like fucking the princess and raping Casca.

Even though the first one is obviously the most popular, I think saying he did nothing evil is more accurate. This is because "wrong" has a lot of definitions, and the mistakes he did (like getting caught fucking Charlottes) could be interpreted as wrong.
>He want to be a king to fix the world yet he sacrificed all his loyal band
This has to be put into context. It was a wrong thing to do, but it's understandable when you consider everything he went through in the past year. He was horribly tortured and permanently maimed, his band was destroyed and considering leaving him, etc... And then there's also the fact that the God Hand lied to him and even said that the band would forgive him for doing that.

>to fuck the world even further by creating the Eye of Terror enabling Demons to invade the world. He make lot of fucked up thing that make no sense like fucking the princess and raping Casca.
Don't confuse Griffith and Femto. Keep in mind that transforming through a behelit is such a personality-changing experience that you might as well be considered a different person. This is proven by all those who used one. Griffith wouldn't have done any of those things if he had been in his normal, healthy state.

Most people who first read Berserk assume that Griffith was always an evil person, but Miura made it obvious by placing hints everywhere that he was actually a really good guy before the Eclipse.

Not to mention he's basically god-emperor of the world now, so betraying his friends seems to have worked out for him.

But Griffith did nothing wrong. Everyone loves him. Even Guts loves him deep down inside.

When did he ever say he wanted to fix the world?

Griffith was evil, not wrong.

>Griffith was evil, not wrong.
Sorry, but that's just your opinion, and your opinion is wrong. Femto is evil, but Griffith wasn't.

Did Griffith really need to kill the Band of the Hawk and rape Caska.

I forgot.

Anyone who thinks Griffith is no less evil than the Kushan are idiots though.

Femto is Griffith.

It's technically the same consciousness, but they have very different personalities, to the point where blaming what Femto does on Griffith is dishonest.

Femto is literally Griffith. It's not blaming a separate person.

The insanity defence exists for a reason. It's be pretty hard to put Griffith away for femtos crimes

Not really.It's an established fact that transforming using a behelit changes your personality. Notably, all of them lost empathy. Griffith was actually a really sensitive and caring guy. He just did his best to hide it because he wanted to project an image of himself as an emotionless and confident leader.

It's dishonest to imply Femto is a separate person from Griffith. They're the same person. Griffith made the choice to become Femto. If you try to say why it's not Griffith's fault, what you are really doing is justifying his choice.

>Griffith made the choice to become Femto.
Griffith wasn't told that transforming would permanently alter his personality. He was just told that he would be able to realize his dream. And again, he was lied to during that encounter.

>they should forgive you, even if they are now crushed by despair

Dude wants to rule his own kingdom, his vision has a bunch of mercenaries follow him and they form a brotherhood. In the end he is tortured and rendered practically a vegetable and proceeds to sacrifice his brotherhood to demons to gain powers and become a dark God, also rapes his vice captian girl that was immensely loyal to him, in front of his best friend and the girls lover. Is he justified is the question

>brought order to the fictional world of Berserk
He nuked the world and made his city the only safe place to live.

He made the choice to sacrifice and betray the Hawks. It's been a central theme of the entire manga that it's that action in which you give up your humanity. You are completely misinterpreting what is meant by they should forgive you. What was meant that they would forgive him, or to get the meaning across in English, accept him, for being a cripple who clearly would not lead the Hawks back to glory. He was being told that he was sacrificing people that would accept him as he was, that he had a choice. Read Sartre on transcendental radical freedom, and how people lie to themselves about having no choice. Because that is clearly what is going on, but people like you believe that he truly had no choice and are literally arguing he bears no responsibility for his actions.

Breaking down that page

>And now, your back alley path has been interrupted
Essentially saying he is now faced with a fork in the road, he has a choice, a choice to escape a predetermined walls and horrible and pathetic fate that is the alley.

>but behold
There's a cost to changing fate

>Those who've flown with you, The Hawk's wings, The Feathers
The subject

>Even as they shake with fear, they gaze up at you with clear eyes
Fear is often said to bring out people's true nature, and their true nature it to look up to Griffith, despite his sorry state.

>The ones left to you, at the end of your blood soaked journey
These are people who have stuck with him through thick and thin

>They should forgive you, even if they are now crushed by despair
They're devastated by the fact you're not the man you once were, the man they were expecting to rescue, but they'll get over it and accept you.

>They should welcome you warmly, then you can go on living, commit your wounded self yo them
If you entrust yourself to them, they will not abandon you, they will care for you

>bury everything, in exchange for the past
It's these people, and that future, you are trading, you have a choice, and you choose to sacrifice them

I'm sorry you completely misunderstood what forgive meant in this context, because it's much more philosophically interesting (read edgy) if you weren't so dense.

I didn't say that he truly had no choice. I'm just saying that it was an understandable choice when you put things in context. He suffered for an entire year more than anyone else in Berserk and he was crippled for life, with no possibility of realizing his obsessive dream, or even of taking care of himself at all. He was humiliated in front of everyone, too. Then to add to everything, there's the whole Eclipse, God Hand and demon thing that was terrifying to everyone. He was under a gigantic amount of stress. Yes, it was wrong to sacrifice the band, but I don't think that his entire character should be judged on one little moment in the manga. He had a story before the Eclipse, too, and he acted differently.
Fine, I admit I misunderstood that page. That doesn't mean that I'm dense. It was just confusing and English isn't my native language either.

>I didn't say that he truly had no choice. I'm just saying that it was an understandable choice when you put things in context. He suffered for an entire year more than anyone else in Berserk and he was crippled for life, with no possibility of realizing his obsessive dream, or even of taking care of himself at all. He was humiliated in front of everyone, too. Then to add to everything, there's the whole Eclipse, God Hand and demon thing that was terrifying to everyone. He was under a gigantic amount of stress. Yes, it was wrong to sacrifice the band, but I don't think that his entire character should be judged on one little moment in the manga. He had a story before the Eclipse, too, and he acted differently.
Which is why he is evil, not wrong.

>He had a story before the Eclipse, too, and he acted differently.
And unfortunately you seemed to have missed his character development. That was soul searching, he was looking for his true self. He had a soft spot for Griffith and couldn't accept it and cast it away. It can be argued that his betrayal started there. Even in such a good position, something about it did not sit right with him. He had an underlying or dominant nature that superseded his compassion.

An evil person can be compassionate, compassion does not make a person not evil, unless you have a hilariously shallow comic book understanding of evil. If you give a person no reason to do evil, they they may very well end up acting and being a decent person. If you give them the opportunity to do evil and get away with it, their underlying nature may make them do it.

And really, Griffith didn't even need to do the stuff he did. He realized he needed to rearrange his priorities. Being a decent compassionate human being was fine when it didn't conflict with his agenda. When Griffith left, they were at odds with each other, and he had difficulty trying to reconcile them. He ultimately chose to abandon the compassion he had for the Hawks.

I remember this girl wrote an essay defending Griffith and that he actually romantically loved guts.

Found it
twilightvisions.com/griffith.htm

>Which is why he is evil, not wrong.
No, he wasn't. It was just a moment of weakness due to stress and pressure. Under normal conditions, Griffith would have never sacrificed the band.

>He had a soft spot for Griffith and couldn't accept it and cast it away. It can be argued that his betrayal started there.
I assume you mean he had a soft spot for Guts. He did, but he didn't cast it away. He expressed it until the very end. As for betrayal, it's Guts who betrayed Griffith first by trying to desert from his army without permission.

>Even in such a good position, something about it did not sit right with him. He had an underlying or dominant nature that superseded his compassion.
What do you mean? He treated Guts completely well until Guts betrayed him, which made him rightfully mad.

>An evil person can be compassionate, compassion does not make a person not evil, unless you have a hilariously shallow comic book understanding of evil. If you give a person no reason to do evil, they they may very well end up acting and being a decent person. If you give them the opportunity to do evil and get away with it, their underlying nature may make them do it.
Nobody said otherwise. I'm just saying good people can do wrong things as well in certain circumstances.

>And really, Griffith didn't even need to do the stuff he did.
What stuff?

Did he need to rape Casca infront of Guts and make him watch though?

>No, he wasn't. It was just a moment of weakness due to stress and pressure. Under normal conditions, Griffith would have never sacrificed the band.
It wasn't a single moment of weakness. It was a tipping point, but don't pretend like it wasn't in his nature. He was permanently crippled. You mean under the conditions where he wasn't a cripple he wouldn't have sacrificed them.

Since you are an anime connoisseur, this is like saying, if Light Yagami never got death note, he wouldn't have murdered anyone. But the fact is that he did have the death note, and given the fact he had the death note, he murdered people.

>I assume you mean he had a soft spot for Guts. He did, but he didn't cast it away. He expressed it until the very end. As for betrayal, it's Guts who betrayed Griffith first by trying to desert from his army without permission.
It's was a glorified mercenary band. How would you justify forcing Guts to stay? There is no very end.

>What do you mean? He treated Guts completely well until Guts betrayed him, which made him rightfully mad.
Sleeping with princesses has nothing to do with treating Guts right or not.

>Nobody said otherwise. I'm just saying good people can do wrong things as well in certain circumstances.
Then they're not good people. This is what people who would do evil given the chance tell themselves. Either you believe morality is based on actions, and if you don't do evil you aren't evil, or you believe evil is an intrinsic state of being, and evil people just hide their evilness when they have no opportunity to do evil. Either way, when you act on your evil nature, you consummate your evilness. By all means you are evil unless you are amoral.

Good and evil isn't a binary, it's not even a spectrum. You're not either good or evil. Neutral isn't in the middle of the spectrum. You have have both evil and good aspects.

>What stuff?
The entire self destructive arc where he crashed and burned everything he worked for.

Yes. The sacrifice isn't just a Faustian deal with the devil. It is supposed to be an act that debases your soul. You don't come out of the deal regretting the sacrifice itself, most of the time they regret, they regret the position is has put them in. The sacrifice comes from being true to that part of themselves, which is what makes them inhuman and turns them into demons. It's absolutely essential for Femto to satisfy his own ego at the expense of those he once cared about. That is the very essence of the sacrifice ritual in Berserk.

>It wasn't a single moment of weakness. It was a tipping point, but don't pretend like it wasn't in his nature.
It was a moment of weakness and it wasn't in his nature. Griffith spent the entire Golden Age arc sacrificing himself for others (whoring himself out so less of his soldiers would have to die, and repeatedly risking his life to save Guts).

>He was permanently crippled. You mean under the conditions where he wasn't a cripple he wouldn't have sacrificed them.
Right, but not only being crippled. I mean EVERYTHING that happened and kept happening.

>Since you are an anime connoisseur, this is like saying, if Light Yagami never got death note, he wouldn't have murdered anyone.
I don't consider myself an anime connoisseur and I haven't watched Death Note. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, as far as I know, Light didn't go through an extremely traumatic process like Griffith did.

>It's was a glorified mercenary band. How would you justify forcing Guts to stay? There is no very end.
No, it wasn't anymore. They were officially soldiers of Midland under Griffith, who had become a count and general. Anyway, even if that wouldn't have been the case, Griffith and Guts still did a special deal together, so Guts deserting would have been wrong.

>Sleeping with princesses has nothing to do with treating Guts right or not.
I didn't know you were talking about that since you're being very vague. Sleeping with Charlotte was wrong from the perspective of the King and of the law, and it was wrong to do it, but Charlotte loved it, so don't try to pass it off as him lacking compassion. He didn't rape her.

>Then they're not good people. This is what people who would do evil given the chance tell themselves.
>Good and evil isn't a binary, it's not even a spectrum. You're not either good or evil. Neutral isn't in the middle of the spectrum. You have have both evil and good aspects.
Then according to that logic, anybody who ever does a single evil act in their life is evil. That's stupid. Nobody has ever been perfectly good or evil. I believe that good and evil is a spectrum, and that your actions should determine where you are on it. Griffith's good actions overwhelm his evil ones.

>The entire self destructive arc where he crashed and burned everything he worked for.
Yeah, he made a lot of mistakes, nobody said otherwise. Guts didn't need to leave either. He even ended up regretting it.


By the way, I have to go to bed now. I'll be back later and reply to anyone talking to me.

That shows pragmatism, not sensitivity.

Griffith is all about control. When he lost control over Guts, he went apeshit and went to fuck the princess.

He might even have not use the Red Behelit at that point if he wouldn't have seen Guts and Casca being a couple, which made him realize he lost control over Casca too.

>I assume you mean he had a soft spot for Guts. He did, but he didn't cast it away. He expressed it until the very end. As for betrayal, it's Guts who betrayed Griffith first by trying to desert from his army without permission.
Wasn't the deal made through Griffith beating Guts in a duel, which made them make a "contract" of Guts joining Band of the Hawk for the specific time, when they will duel again, and if Guts will win (which he did), he can leave?

>It was a moment of weakness and it wasn't in his nature.
Yes it was. It's like you were in denial about the chapters about his past and his crisis after Guts left and about what he actually wanted.

>Griffith spent the entire Golden Age arc sacrificing himself for others (whoring himself out so less of his soldiers would have to die, and repeatedly risking his life to save Guts).
He didn't do it for the soldiers. He did it for himself. He risked his life to save Guts, what's your point? There was a part of him that needed and wanted Guts. That's why he was so upset when Guts left, otherwise he would have had that trope where sometimes you have to let go of the people you love.

>Right, but not only being crippled. I mean EVERYTHING that happened and kept happening.
Meaning it wasn't just a single moment. And he got himself into that mess.

>I don't consider myself an anime connoisseur and I haven't watched Death Note. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, as far as I know, Light didn't go through an extremely traumatic process like Griffith did.
Just because something is transformative doesn't mean you stop being you. Where you the same "person" before adolescence? The childhood you is still you.

>No, it wasn't anymore. They were officially soldiers of Midland under Griffith, who had become a count and general.
Yes it was. That's why all the knights hated them. These things aren't even that subtle. Do you know what the word "glorified" means?

>Anyway, even if that wouldn't have been the case, Griffith and Guts still did a special deal together, so Guts deserting would have been wrong.
Guts is his own person.

>Sleeping with Charlotte was wrong from the perspective of the King and of the law, and it was wrong to do it, but Charlotte loved it, so don't try to pass it off as him lacking compassion. He didn't rape her.
You're completely missing the point. He ruined everything he worked for. It's not about rape or "wrong"

>Then according to that logic, anybody who ever does a single evil act in their life is evil.
Yes.

>That's stupid.
No it's not.

>Nobody has ever been perfectly good or evil.
What's stupid and simplistic is having this binary dichotomy where people are either good or evil, or neutral is they fall exactly on the midpoint.

>I believe that good and evil is a spectrum
It's not. You could have a hermit who fucks off in the wood and doesn't bother anyone and is true neutral. You could have a conqueror who massacres his enemies and civilians in the most ruthless ways imaginable, but cares for his family, metes out justice and brings prosperity for his citizens. They don't cancel each other out. The hermit is neither good nor evil because he does neither good nor evil. The warlord has both good and evil aspects simultaneously.

> that your actions should determine where you are on it.
Then Griffith was a dick for sacrificing the Hawks and trying to get his dick wet when he knew better.

>Griffith's good actions overwhelm his evil ones.
No they don't. You only say this because you pretend Femto isn't Griffith. Griffith still made the choices he made before he became Femto. You misunderstand showing a sympathetic portrayal of Berserk's "literally Hitler" character as him being a good person. Yes, Hitler also was human and did some things that were not the Holocaust too.

>Yeah, he made a lot of mistakes, nobody said otherwise.
Seems to be working out for Femto

>Guts didn't need to leave either.
Define need

>He even ended up regretting it.
So what? You expect people to have future vision?

He should really be reading LoTR, because he wants a story about the fight between good and evil. Berserk from the start has always been morally ambiguous (read edgy)