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"The Castle" is episode 77 of the Berserk manga series.

Synopsis[]

As the Band of the Falcon members watch, Guts begins to slowly climb up the massive arm with only his dagger to use as a handhold to reach Griffith, who is sitting in the palm. Griffith gazes up at the God Hand, who each occupy a finger. The leader asks Griffith, unable to physically answer, if he fears them or the future he has as one of them.

The smallest God Hand swoops down toward Griffith and tells the human that he first needs to see into his past for an introspective of his true self. Finding him as a child running through the streets of the city of his childhood, Griffith hears church bells yet is confused by the utter lack of people around him. He decides to head to the big castle on his own. He runs through the city as the bell tolls, but stops when he realizes he's lost. He finds an old woman, a wool spinner, whom he asks for directions to the castle. She provides the boy with the directions, yelling after him that his friends are waiting for him there.

As Griffith runs deeper into the alleyway that gradually becomes pitch black, he wanders around until he finds himself stepping on something: an enormous pile of rotting corpses. He panics and tries to get away, but he falls flat onto them, covering himself with their blood. As he screams in horror, the wool spinner appears behind him, asking what he is crying about. Griffith angrily questions the woman why she led him down the path with so many dead bodies, only to be told that it is only way to get to the castle he so desperately wanted to reach before directing him to another boy his age standing on the corpses.

MeetingTheBoyAgain

In a vision, Griffith meets with the boy member who died.

Griffith recognizes the boy as the young Band of the Falcon member who died, declining the wishes of the boy and others to come with him to the castle as they are already dead. Griffith collapses to his knees, apologizing to the deceased band members as the wool spinner scolds him for denying his friends' request despite the fact that he is the reason that they are dead. She points to the distant image of the castle, saying that had Griffith never set his sights on it, the mercenaries and many others would had never needed to die.

Griffith tells her that he never forced them to come along with him, but she quickly retorts that the path to his dream is paved in their deaths. She also points to steady ramp formed from the corpses form that barely reaches up to the bright castle shining in the sky, telling Griffith that he needs more bodies to reach his dream. His silence prompts her to tell him that should he give up on his dream to prevent more deaths, he will become a corpse himself. He suddenly realizes that his hands and legs are decaying.

She angrily asks why he could not be content with simply looking at the castle from afar, but he does not know how to answer. Griffith comes to terms that he willingly knew the consequences of his dream would lead to his comrades' deaths. He hears a voice in the distance. and through the fog, he sees Guts. Guts smiles and asks whether the bodies are a part of the path to Griffith's dream. The wool spinner tells Griffith that if he keeps piling bodies, he will not become one himself. Griffith decides that it is too late for regret and that the only way to go is forward. He bends down to pick up the body of the now-dead child and carries it to the top of the ramp of corpses, admitting that he knew people would die yet cannot atone for the pain he caused at the cost of his dream. The vision ends.

Appearances[]

  1. Corkus
  2. Judeau
  3. Pippin
  4. Casca
  5. Guts
  6. Void
  7. Ubik
  8. Griffith

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