I Need You, And I Never Need Anyone.

What does Kentaro Miura have to say about Casca?

I think, due to fandom's general preferences towards Guts and Griffith, there's been much more discussion of the relevant Kentaro Miura quotes about their characters and relationship. There also appears to be more translation effort made towards the parts of the interviews centered on Guts. This also means that a lot of discussion of Casca and her place in the narrative is filtered through the idea that he has had very little to say about her over the years.

While I do wish that Miura had more to say about her, and about her path in the narrative, he certainly hasn't been completely silent. I wanted to compile as many quotes directly from Kentaro Miura about Casca as possible in one place for anyone to refer to. I also wanted to provide my 2 cents on some of them, though with the disclaimer that neither I nor anyone reading a quote or soundbite can know they're fully correct about his meaning. After all, no one reading these quotes in an article or magazine knew Miura personally, myself included.

Most of these you can find translated on the Berserk fanwiki. I've linked to them all.

Cheating a bit by not including that quote from the 1996 fanmagazine that caused such an uproar a while back, where Miura said he thought Casca might feel pleasure during rape if the perpetrator was Griffith. TBT to that hot mess. I'm not including it bc it's a third party source from someone not particularly close to Miura and also because I've already discussed it in depth here.

So, moving on...

The source for this first quote is a bit... Tricky. It's not that I don't believe it exists, but because most of this is being done through fan translations, it's hard to provide a direct link. This one I've found which is apparently from an interview in 1996, but the only sourcing I've found is kojion on twitter and this reddit post. I think this might be from the Berserk Illustrations File interview from 1996, but if it is, then it's clear that interview has only been partially translated. I guess the translator wasn't interested in the parts involving Casca. Lol. Below is the translation from the reddit post:

Miura: I have never been in love. In the past I have only dated a woman I didn't like twice. I have never had a first love. I have never been in love. My image of women is made up of my sister and stories from my best friend who loves women very much. In the case of Casca, rather than portraying a woman, she’s a character made up of a collection of my own complexes and weaknesses. So I am not good at real women. I have a longing for love itself. But I have no time; there are only 24 hours in a day.

Interview with Yukari Fujimoto in 2000. Yukari Fujimoto is a feminist cultural critic/women's studies professor at Meiji University in Tokyo, which I always found very interesting.

Interviewer: Getting back to the topic of planning Berserk, though, there's a long flashback arc that starts in volume three, showing things like Guts' youth and leading up to the Eclipse. Did you at least have parts of that long story in mind when you started drawing, or did you just make it up as you went?

Miura: Back then it was more like I was making it up as I went, I'd say. I actually hadn't planned for Guts and Casca to get together, you know – it just occurred to me partway through that it'd be more dramatic that way. As I remember it now, all I'd really decided at the time was that there'd be about five characters, and I'd make them similar to five of my friends.

Interviewer: I see – so those five friends are the base models for the characters.

Miura: Pretty much. The only difference is, there aren't any Griffiths or Guts in our group. There really was a guy similar to Judeau. We had a Corkus too, and a Rickert. There's no Casca, though, since it was a group of guys. And then Pippin is me, in terms of physical appearance.

[...]

Miura: Yeah. It's sort of been vacillating back and forth up until now, but now Griffith is going to come to terms with having become a demon. I basically see it as the beginning of the relationship between the two of them having become adults. And also, the demon child that Casca gave birth to is going to become something of a key point – despite the fact that I didn't even plan for it to be Casca's baby when I first drew it.

Interviewer: Really?

Miura: I didn't even have Casca in mind at the time.

Interviewer: Ah, right. That means it wasn't supposed to be a fetus at the start, then. And I guess there was no plan to have Guts lose his eye and arm the way he did, either...

Miura: None at all. That part was left open. Basically, I had planned that he'd have it done to him somehow by Griffith, and then a love story came into the picture, and taking that to its extreme just happened to fit together nicely with the climax. It's not as though I had it planned from the start. And now it turns out that the demon child is similarly going to snap very usefully into place.

My own commentary: This interview is the source of a claim that I've seen around a lot, which is that Casca was an ad-hoc addition and that therefore undermine any importance she might have to the narrative. However, my personal interpretation is simply that these quotes exist to show how the general plot structure of Berserk came to be in Miura's mind, and how he sort of... made shit up as he went along. I think there are two ways to take "I actually hadn't planned for Guts and Casca to get together, you know – it just occurred to me partway through that it'd be more dramatic that way." Firstly, the way I've usually seen it, that Casca was added in thoughtlessly with no regard for her character just to be a tool for Guts and Griffith's stories. That's partly true, but I think additionally this indicates that Miura elevated Casca's narrative importance in order to create a better and more dramatic story. It's also easy to extrapolate Miura's love of shoujo manga to this point here, considering how shoujo's focus is so often the drama and tragedy of romantic love.

This next quote is another kojion/reddit combo, with kojion claiming its from 2013.

Miura: I had the idea that the medieval European period was a very male-dominated world. And I wanted to depict a girl who was working very hard in such a world. The female characters in Berserk are drawn with the hope that women of the same gender will like them. Female characters drawn by men tend to be somewhat convenient for men. I wanted to avoid that, so I drew them in a way that was not disrespectful to women, because this is a story about a male-dominated world.

[I initially had a picture of one of those gold star "you tried" memes here but then I felt bad about it lol. Honestly I can't help but feel some affection for Miura here for saying this, though there's a conflicting element here too, that he genuinely didn't consider that drawing so much explicit sexual violence might also be considered disrespectful to women (even though he's pretty obviously talking about outfits here). I also think that over-exaggerating Miura's views on women, making them seem worse than what they are is often done only in service of sidelining the women he has written, and written well in my opinion.]

Berserk Official Guidebook Interview, 2017

Interviewer: You put so much emotion into those characters, and when the Eclipse happens, they're all gone. That must have left some scars on you as the artist.

Miura: I was emotionally invested in each character, so I felt more depressed than scarred. And the story went way down in popularity with the readers around the time of the Eclipse [laugh]. Many readers were furious that I'd do such a thing to the characters they liked. My editor at the time was concerned but also of the opinion that we'd just have to follow it through to the end. The point I had to pay attention to was making sure the flow of the story wasn't completely severed with the Eclipse. That's why I spared Casca. If she had died and the serialization had continued for a long time, I feared the reason for revenge would become something of the past; and if Guts were to establish new relationships, then his incentive would waver. It may seem calculating and unpleasant, but it's because Casca's by his side that he can never forget the Eclipse.

My own commentary: this again shows the interplay between Casca as a plot device and Casca as inherently narratively necessary. Interestingly, this particular translation has it be slightly vague whether Casca's survival is to keep the memory of the eclipse alive for Guts or for the readers themselves. It seems to me that there's a little bit of both in this decision. Also of note - this interview was done in 2017. By this point, Miura must have had a decently clear picture of what he intended to do with Casca's revival. I think this interview would have implied something very different if it had been done during conviction arc or just post golden age.

[...]

Interviewer: After that, Griffith was resurrected and Guts picked up some travelling companions. One of them is Farnese. How did you go about creating her?

Miura: I imagined Farnese as the second heroine after Casca, but I had a little trouble. I simply crammed my own tastes into Casca to create her character. She's loaded with what I considered ideal: a warrior woman, dark brown, strong but with a womanly side [laugh]. When it came time to make a new heroine, I couldn't use the same method as with Casca. So I thought I might as well make a heroine with whom female readers could sympathize. Mori is popular with girls, so I asked for his opinion as I pondered. The concept was "a female office worker who's been in society for a year or two, may or may not be accustomed to her job yet, and is ill at ease in a masculine society" [laugh]. She's doing her best with a band of knights in a masculine society, but she's unsociable since she can't seem to fit in with those around her; and her frustration is moving in a sexual direction, although half of it includes my own delusions [laugh]. In the face of Mozgus' intense impact, such an ungrounded woman is sure to get hung up on religion. In other words, "an office lady who's caught up in a dangerous new religion." That's Farnese [laugh].

Interviewer: How about Serpico?

Miura: Serpico is those female readers' "dream". My intuition was that he's the kind of man they would want to have around. To be frank, he's André from The Rose of Versailles. For a woman exhausted by society, he sees to her needs and considers her before all else. I thought this might be a woman's everlasting dream. To take it further, I think there are three dream men that a woman has. Someone like Serpico who sticks close by, a prince on a lofty peak for whom she longs, and someone wealthy and down-to-earth who will come and woo her. And I recently saw the stage production of Onna Kaizoku Bianca – based on Glass Mask by Suzue Miuchi. In it, those three types of men show up around the heroine. I realized, oh, the same thing's happened by coincidence in Berserk [laugh]! Farnese has Serpico close by, Guts to long for, and Roderick the rich guy. That's all three present and accounted for!

Interviewer: Conversely, Guts has three heroines in Casca, Farnese, and Schierke.

Miura: Maybe it's just a good balance to have three members of the opposite sex around. Although it's a coincidence here, too [laugh].

I don't have anything really to say here lol I just think Miura's gender commentary is so funny. It reminds me a little of the way Terry Pratchett comments on dynamics between men and women in his books. I guess both of them are men who got their start in the 80s and continued writing into the 2010s where the treatment of women in fantasy became far more a part of the public consciousness, and it seems both of them tried to alter their writing accordingly. Up to the reader to what extent they succeeded though.

Kojion/reddit from 2017, apparently - is this possibly from the Berserk Official Guidebook interview as well?? Or did he do a second interview in 2017 that isn't listed anywhere?

Miura: In regards to Berserk’s Guts, Griffith is a character who draws out impatience, fighting spirit and loneliness, Puck is “relaxation, laughter and a “seriousness crusher”“, the current Casca is “a character who draws out feelings of guilt, uneasiness and pity”. By arranging the characters with the intention to pull a certain something about Guts to the surface, he becomes a multifaceted protagonist.

My commentary: Guts has complicated feelings on both Griffith and Casca due to the trauma of the eclipse. Just as Casca still associates Guts with her trauma, Guts too associates Casca with his. If his feelings towards Griffith were solely anger and his feelings towards Casca were solely caring that would be a much less interesting story. This quote is very frank about how Guts and Casca's relationship stands currently; it says nothing about its eventual outcome in the manga. It also says nothing about Miura's feelings towards Casca, or makes any comment on her importance to the narrative.

Interview with Comics Natalie in 2019

--So does that mean love is an important theme in "Duruanki"?

That's true. When I chose this androgynous character as the main character, I knew I had to depict a love story properly. I haven't been able to do that properly in "Berserk" yet, so I'm a little nervous and unsure of my chances.

-- Eh, what about the relationship between Guts and Casca...?

Even though they look like that, it's like the stage before they get to love is still going on forever (laughs).

My commentary: I already said a bit about this in previous posts. In my view, this is saying that Guts and Casca were beginning a relationship and in the beginning stages of falling in love prior to the eclipse. Then, of course, the eclipse happened, and it destroyed their budding relationship completely. Their relationship currently is defined by the tragedy of what could have been. I again think it's Miura taking a very realistic view of Guts and Casca's relationship as it stands currently, but it says nothing about how it will eventually end up, good or bad.

-- In the latest volume 40 of "Berserk," Casca finally regains consciousness. I'm sure there are many fans who have been waiting for this.

I'm also deeply moved. However, things get tougher for Casca from here on out. For Casca to truly recover, she must analyze and understand her experiences and resolve them herself. She must face what Griffith did and the monsters.

--So this is a necessary process for Casca to truly recover. I think there was also a route where Casca would fully recover once she regains consciousness, but Berserk doesn't let its characters take the easy way out. I think Miura-san also needs to be prepared.

It's a story about humans, so it's bound to be like that. If you don't do it properly, like what a human would do if this situation occurred, it won't be a compelling story.

My commentary: You've all seen this quote before lol. Well, this is the source. It's part of a larger interview about the future of Berserk and Duranki, and just a quick note that this version is from me using google translate on the Japanese website. There was a blog that translated part of it, in particular the above quote that "Casca must face what Griffith did", that now redirects to a 404 link because of course it does. It's up on the wayback machine here.

Now I have various undated quotes, most of which come from kojion and were compiled on reddit.

"I didn't want to make a sexy female warrior, which is often the case in fantasy films, although the idea of a female warrior is nothing new. But now I am not so particular. I am not restricted by the form of a female warrior, but am trying to depict her as a human being." (kojion alt source)

"Miura took on the apostle; I'm going to kill all the humans, I'm gonna mess them up. Mr. Miura has been working for months. Mr. Miura kept on drawing and Finally, he messed up Casca And then Mr. Miura, who had painted it all over After this, he actually suffer from depression." (kojion alt source)

"I want today's readers to experience what once shocked me when I read the manga. Last month, Mr. Mori revealed the scene in the Eclipse chapter where Casca is raped by Griffith. He was inspired by a manga published by Go Nagai in 1979. In this manga, the woman he loves is raped by a demon in front of the main character. Mr. Miura arranged and expressed this scene." (kojion alt source)

This is apparently a panel from that particular manga, btw. No explicit sexual assault, though there is clear implication.

One last third party quote, this time not directly about Casca, but about writing women on the whole. It's from this cute interview made into a comic by the interviewer:

It echoes a sentiment he's expressed in other interviews, that Miura himself doesn't feel like he understands the female mindset so he asks people he assumes know better - in this case Kouji Mori, his friend who is heading Berserk's continuation, and Chica Umino, another mangaka who was close friends with Miura.

Miura's such a mess of contradictions when it comes to women and his female characters. One of his most well known interviews is with a feminist cultural critic. He has said multiple times he's terrible at writing women. He thought deeply about writing Casca not just as a male fantasy. He literally designed her with all the traits he thought were sexy. He wrote a 20 page rape scene with Casca and then fell into a deep depression after.

What can you even say lmao.

touch-starvation needs to be written with emphasis on the starving part. you are hungry to be touched. so hungry that even the very taste of it makes you nauseous. it has been long since anything has ever touched you, ever fed you - that your body has grown more used to that gnawing emptiness more than anything else. it's better for you to be held, to eat but it makes you sick to try. you know

Live Laugh Love cause I can't Obliterate, Offend, or Off myself

Let's Talk About How Book 3 Ruined Aang

If you've seen any of my prior ATLA posts, you know that I don't hate Aang. In fact, I quite liked him in Books 1 and 2. He was flawed, as all characters should be, but the show didn't shy away from those flaws or justify them. He was called out for burning Katara and rushing his firebending, Sokka and Katara were rightfully upset when he hid Hakoda's letter, he willingly owns up to the fact that his actions helped drive Toph away, and his entire arc after losing Appa and finding hope again in The Serpent's Path was beautifully done.

(Hell, even in The Great Divide Katara says what Aang did was wrong and he agrees. It's played for comedy, but the show still makes the effort to point out that what he did wasn't the right thing to do. You're just meant to understand that he was fed up and acted off of that)

Those flaws and mistakes were addressed and improved upon and helped Aang to grow as a character.

But for some reason, that aspect of Aang's character was completely flipped in Book 3.

The best examples of this are in both TDBS and EIP. Both the show and the fandom are too quick to brush off that Aang kissed Katara twice without her consent, one of which after she explicitly said she was confused about her feelings.

(And yes, she is angry in response and Aang calls himself an idiot. But after this, it isn't really addressed. They go on like nothing happened for the rest of the episode. Aang's lamentation comes from screwing things up with her romantically, not that he violated boundaries)

The show never really addressed why what he did was wrong. Not only because he wasn't given consent, but also because both times he isn't thinking about what Katara wants. In both instances, Aang is only thinking about himself and his feelings. This is something that persists through a lot of the third book. And by Sozin's Comet it ultimately ruins any character development he had built up in the second book.

One thing I feel was completely disregarded was the concept of having to let go of Katara in order to master the Avatar State.

For me, the implication wasn't that he had to give up love or happiness necessarily. He was emotionally attached to and reliant on Katara, to the point where she was needed to stop him from hurting everyone around him and himself. This is obviously detrimental to his functionality as the Avatar. And the point of him "letting her go" wasn't that he had to stop caring about her, it was that his emotional dependency on her was stopping him from being the Avatar he needed to be and that was what needed to be fixed. I don't even think it's about the Avatar State itself, it's about being able to keep your emotions and duty as the Avatar separate.

(If you look at Roku, he loved and had a wife. It wasn't his love for her that messed everything up, it was his attachment to Sozin. He wasn't able to let Sozin go and not only did he lose his life for it, the world suffered for it. It's the unhealthy attachments that seem to be detrimental, not love itself)

And Aang realizes that in the catacombs, which is how he's able to easily enter the Avatar State and seemingly control it. He let Katara go.

So then why does it seem like his attachment to Katara is not only stronger, but worse in mannerism? He liked Katara in Books 1 and 2- obviously- but he was never overly jealous of Jet or Haru. He only makes one harmless comment in Book 2 when Sokka suggests Katara kiss Jet.

But suddenly he's insanely jealous of Zuko (to the point of getting frustrated with Katara over it), off the basis of the actions of actors in a clearly misrepresentative play. Katara showed a lot more interest in Jet and Aang was completely fine with it.

(Speaking of EIP, Aang's reaction to being played by a woman was interesting. He wore a flower crown in The Cave of Two Lovers. He wove Katara a flower necklace. He wore Kyoshi's clothes and makeup and made a funny girl voice. He willingly responded to Twinkle Toes and had no issue being called that. And for some reason he's genuinely upset about being played by a woman? Aang in Books 1 and 2 would have laughed and enjoyed the show like Toph did. His aversion to feminity felt vastly out of character)

I guess my point is, why did that change? Why was Aang letting go of Katara suddenly irrelevant to the Avatar State? It felt like him letting go was supposed to be a major part of his development. Why did that stop?

Myself and many others have talked about The Southern Raiders. The jist of my thought process about it is his assumption that he knew what was best for Katara. And the episode doesn't really call out why he was wrong. Maybe sparing Yon Rha was better for Katara, maybe it wasn't (the only one who's allowed to make that choice is her). Pushing forgiveness? That was wrong. But the episode has Zuko say that Aang was right when the course of action Katara took wasn't what Aang suggested.

Katara's lesson here was that killing him wouldn't bring back her mother or mend the pain she was going through and that Yon Rha wasn't worth the effort. That's what she realizes. Not that she needed to embrace forgiveness. How could she ever forgive that? The episode saying Aang was right wasn't true. Yes she forgives Zuko, but that wasn't what Aang was talking about. He was specifically talking about Yon Rha.

And that was wrong. Aang can choose the path of forgiveness, that's fine. That's his choice. But dismissing Katara's trauma in favor of his morals and upbringing wasn't okay.

I know it sounds like this is just bashing Kataang. But it's not simply because I don't like Kataang, in my opinion it brings down Aang's character too, not just Katara's. But let's steer away from Kataang and Katara for a minute.

The one thing that solidifies Aang's character being ruined in Book 3 for me is the fact that he- at the end of the story- does the same thing he did in the beginning.

He runs away when things get hard.

Aang couldn't make the choice between his duty and his morals. So he ran. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but subconsciously he wanted an out. And this is really disappointing when one of the things he was firm about in Book 2 was not running anymore. His character went backwards here and that's not even getting into the real issue in Sozin's Comet.

There's been contention about the Lion Turtle intervention. For many- including myself- it's very deus ex machina to save Aang from having to make a hard decision. And that in turn doesn't reflect kindly on his character.

Everyone- Sokka, Zuko, Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen (who was another Airbender and was raised with the same beliefs he was and would understand which was the whole point of him talking to her)- told him he had to kill Ozai. They all told him it was the only way. And he refused to listen to any of them, rotating through his past lives until he was given the answer he wanted.

And before anyone says that I'm bashing Aang for following his culture, I'm not. Ending the war peacefully, in my opinion, wasn't the problem. In a way, I think it allowed the world to heal properly. However, that doesn't make up for the fact that Aang refused to make a choice and face the consequences of that choice. Instead, he's given an out at the very last second.

Even if he couldn't kill Ozai and someone else had to deliver the final blow, that would have been better than the Lion Turtle showing up and giving him a power no one's ever had before. It would have been a good compromise, he doesn't have to have blood directly on his hands but what needs to be done needs to still get done. It would also show that being the Avatar isn't a burden he has to bear alone. That when things get hard, he can't run away but he can rely on the people closest to him to help him through hard decisions.

All these issues aren't necessarily a problem with Aang. Aang prior to Book 3 didn't have most of these problems. This is a problem with the way he was handled

“War ate a girl and spat out a woman.”

— Excerpt from Myth Untold // L.H.Z

ekko's va, reed shannon rightfully calling out caitlyn for literally gassing the undercity, exercising police brutality, and not even taking accountability or apologizing for any of the oppression and violence she did against zaunites

and in turn, the arcane fandom calls him and ekko "monkeys" and other racially motivated names and slurs

hey. don't cry. how the gentle wind beckons through the leaves as autumn colors fall. okay?

I find your lack of whimsy disturbing

Origins of Astonishment (circa, 1997). Digital-medium