this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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I don't think picturing abuse is inherently creepy. The things both guts and Griffith go through don't seem like creep-things to me, but more an attempt at giving some psychological depth to his characters. Comparing how those scenes are depicted and treated by the characters to how the Wyalds scenes are, kind of shows the difference in the acts in my eyes.
The other stuff though definitely has inherent creep shit in it. I've completely memory-holed lost children, I just remember them killing each other, but I know it's bad.
R*pe horse and the trolls are all pre lost children. That arc is, as far as I recall, the end of it. After that Miura seems to mature - but then I don't remember the teenage girl being sexualised.
I think there is room for stories with sexual violence in them without them being inherently damning of the author, but Miura is really walking on the edge - and that's being charitable.
There's some stuff where I feel like it makes sense, but then that's right next to stuff that just seems like kink shit (the lady who self-flagellates and all the bishop torture porn) and it being there taints the other stuff. It's weird, I don't know if it's cope or if there is a good argument about it. I should reread berserk to figure out my feelings
I hate when people say this. Yes, obviously that's true, and I gave two examples with the abuse of Guts as a kid and Griffith by that Duke. They are both clearly depicted from a standpoint of the abuse not appealing to the viewer, as far as I remember. I would prefer if you not require me to explain how the staging and what is shown and what isn't distinguishes these things, besides of course that almost none of what Griffith suffered was actually shown.
I think the molestations committed by Griffith are both depicted very differently, and Casca's r*** is especially pornified. The fact that it has negative emotional salience narratively does not change it anymore than it does for the trolls.
It is. That doesn't make you a bad person or whatever, it just is cope. It's very understandable, since Berserk has many interesting and emotionally compelling elements, so there can easily be an intense desire to have an [over]charitable reading, but we should try to be critical about these things.
Let us use this as an opportunity to establish you've got some real holes in your memory then (just as I had chronology mixed up). Just skim 311 and the next couple of chapters. It's not ambiguous or borderline in any way.
Yes, I was just trying to continue the conversation and give my point of view. I hate how communication on this site is so all-or-nothing. If I hadn't written that, then it would be incredibly likely that the assumption was that I did think that. I write it and then the assumption is I meant you meant something else. I get so tired of this.
Or maybe it isn't. As I said, I will have to reread it to figure it out.
We could also use it as an opportunity to look at the four other times I wrote about not remembering it super well. Seriously this whole response of yours is incredibly condescending, fuck off with that attitude.
On the first point, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me considering so many people do awful apologetics saying exactly the same things, including on this fucking site full of "communists" who want to get defensive over eroticized sexual violence because they happen to like it (and/or just because they are extremely media illiterate). I apologize for communicating poorly, I just find it upsetting how people do that all the time and overgeneralized to you.
Thank you, I'm sorry for assuming you were being mean rather than just reacting basically like I just did to you.
Yeah it sucks.
It's something about Berserk I've always found hard to figure out or square or whatever. I'm used to media that sexualises assault to do it with every instance it shows, but then that doesn't happen in Berserk - Or at least it doesn't feel like it to me (the situations you brought up). It's really weird to me that the author is able to understand how it can be depicted and what it means and so on, but then in the very next page just make some goonermaterial. I'm used to creeps being creepy whenever they can, not just some of the time.
What do you make of it?
I had to look up the r*pe horse because genuinely wtf did you mean by that. Haven't got there yet.