Iconic Hero-Villain Duos: Guts and Griffith

There are many types of conflicts in fiction. Man vs. nature, man vs. self, but the most iconic is always man vs. man. Good vs. evil, the common hero-villain matchup.  A hero is nothing without a villain to face, but what if the line between good and evil is more difficult to see? A perfect example of this moral dilemma is the rivalry between Guts and Griffith in Kentaro Miura’s manga: Berserk. To fist explain, let’s introduce the two characters.

The story takes place in a medieval fantasy land, in which the countries of Midland and Chuder are at war. The protagonist is Guts, who was retrieved from the corpse of his hanging mother by a small mercenary band. He trained as a fighter, but was constantly beaten by his foster father Gambino, who also sold a young Guts to be raped by another member of the band.  After he killed Gambino, Guts became a wandering mercenary, wielding a massive sword. He shut off relationships with other people after his traumatic past, until he meets Griffith, leader of the Band of the Hawk.

Griffith was born into peasantry. As a small boy, he received a mystical red necklace known as the Crimson Behelit. He was told by a fortune teller that one day he would have his own kingdom. Griffith started the mercenary band, the Band of the Hawk who fought for Midland. However, with the Behelit around his neck, Griffith was destined for other things.

When the men first meet, they battle twice, with Guts being forced to join the Band of the Hawk. Over the next few years, they become the greatest of friends, Guts being the first man to ever make Griffith doubt his ambitions. They become a legendary band of mercenaries. Griffith even falls in love with the princess of Midland, part of his plan to become king of Midland despite being born a peasant.  While Guts comes to love Casca, a female warrior from the same mercenary band, despite their disdain for eachother upon meeting.

While Guts still deeply cherished his friendship with his leader, Griffith. He wishes to become an equal, rather than a subordinate. Guts attempts to leave the band temporarily, to go on a journey of self-discovery and training. To discover himself and then return stronger. Griffith will not allow this, stating that he needs Guts. They fight yet again, witch Guts completely defeating his friend, and disappearing off into the snow.

While Guts leaves on a year-long journey of self-discovery, Griffith is completely broken, feeling betrayed. He sneaks into the room of Princess Charlotte, where he beds her. When the king finds out about this, Griffith is starved and tortured to the extreme, being slowly turned into a vegetable while Guts and the Band of the Hawk are hunted like fugitives. That is, until they rescue him.

Griffith's Behelit reacts to his blood, and it causes a demonic eclipse, the events that set up the entirety of the story, and pit together two former friends.

Griffith realizes his true destiny here, ascending to his throne as a member of one of the five God Hand, a group of dark angels. Griffith sacrifices the entire Band of the Hawk to become teh Wings of Darkness: Femto. As Femto, Griffith has everyone Guts has ever known and loved eaten by 

grotesque demons.Griffith also forces Guts to cut his own arm off while he rapes his lover Casca right in front of his eyes, leaving her mind broken from the shock of it all. Luckily, Guts an Casca are saved by the mysterious Skull Knight, but not before both of them are marked with the brand of sacrifice, a mark on their bodies that causes demons to hunt for both Guts and Casca whenever night falls.

This is where the story of Berserk truly begins. Guts, with his prosthetic arm and gigantic sword, is now on a quest for revenge against the man who destroyed the lives of Guts, Casca, and everyone they ever loved. Guts and Griffith have an incredible duality and dynamic against eachother. While Guts is deep in mud, blood, and the entrails of various demons in an attempt to hunt down Griffith and return Casca to normal, Griffith is fulfilling his dream of having his very own kingdom.

Griffith forms the Neo Band of the Hawk, a mercenary band made of various demons with the utmost loyalty to him. Their goal is to eliminate wars from the world and save the people of Midland, with Griffith as king. He saves the world from an evil emperor and is generally hailed as a messiah but all of his subjects, marrying Princess Charlotte as well. Guts is a brutal slayer, known as the Black Swordsman, while Griffith is the savior of the world, the Falcon of Light.

Guts and Griffith have an extremely blurry line of good and evil separating them. Not only are the polar opposites physically, Guts being black with a massive, impractical greatsword, while Griffith is snow white, with an elegant sabre, Guts looks like a villain, and Griffith the hero. That is how the average population of their world views them as well. Griffith is a hero to the common man, and Guts is the only man who knows the truth about his adversary. Guts is a hero who is fighting against possibly the most powerful man on the planet. A mortal man with nothing but pure willpower and a giant sword against the so-called savior of the world with unparalleled amounts of secret demonic power and an entire country standing behind him.

These two characters are opposites in every way, making it hard at times to discern if Griffith is truly a villain anymore, or if Guts will even continue to hunt for his adversary. Griffith is a man that seems completely untouchable by any human, making the readers really wonder where the story could go. Berserk is a story that is still going to this day and any kind of ending is possible.