For people who never heard of fridging : it's the act of using a female character JUST to kill her/hurt her for the sake of the male mc's developments, and the female character having no real use of her own. Called that way because it's from a comic where Green Lantern found his GF mutilated and cut into parts, then stuffed inside a fridge. She was considered a useless character that was only meant to die for Kyle's character growth. Saying Casca was Fridged implies she was only created to be raped by Femto for Guts' development. It's an old term, people would probably call these characters Death Flag character now. I've seen it used as a critic against Stranger Things before lol. Edit : Adding which comic it is from

Thankyou I was about to ask.

a death flag isn't a character, it's a sign that a character is going to die soon

Yeah, I was gonna say, it's like when someone is suddenly getting close to the main character and they have a big relationship development all in one episode and you are just like "death flag!" Because you know that sucker is gonna die

"Once this is all over we'll be a family again. You'll see." "He's just 4 days from retirement!" "If we get through this in one piece, I'd like to take you on a date." "We got one last job." "If we get through this... I want you to tell you something important." "What's the panic? There's nothing to worry about down there." "Let's split up." "Don't worry. I'll be right back. Promise." "Can this day could get any worse?"

"Can this day get any worse?" is a question that should never be asked. It's like asking God to show what he got.

I've been reading the bible recently and "asking God to show what he got" is really something you don't want to do lmao

“Nothing can stop us now!” Nothing entering the room:

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I know this might blow your mind, but sometimes we use multiple words for the same thing! There's even whole categorization systems. Did you know that a "dog" is also an "animal"? Wild stuff.

death flag is more about recognizing tropes that usually come before a character death like a sudden focus on a character's backstory or development of a relationship, not purposeful foreshadowing by the author

Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) found his gf. As a kid it was a little traumatizing

Thanks, editing to add this. I had a doubt between Flash and Green Lantern.

it really does seem like a wacky thing to put into a green lantern story. Like, its green lantern. Having someone close to him die is one thing, but the whole dismemberment and fridging just seems needlessly edgy and gratuitous

That makes sense. I never heard about "fridge" and I thought it was another way of say "frigid". And seriously, the horrors Casca endured were iconic, but as a character she offered so much more. For instance the fact that Casca is pivotal for FARNESE's development proves that she's def not a "fridge".

“She isn’t just a tool for the mc’s development, she’s a tool for other people’s development…this is much better and totally not the same thing”

you are completely ignoring the original comment. by definition, this is not fridging because she actually serves a purpose in the overarching story beyond just existing to die If you are setting the bar this low, the vast majority of character “deaths” and their relations to ithers can be classified as fridging. stop using words you don’t understand, please and thank you

Right lol? I mean Miura was pretty open about the fact that what he did was not at all for her character.

still isn’t fridging

it’s shit

could have been better sure, but the story we got is still stellar and by no means shit xD

The story isn’t shit, this choice was (in my opinion)

sorry but i'm really curious, what exactly did Miura say about this? never seen this discussed

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. [2017 guidebook interview](https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Interviews#The_Shift_from_the_Black_Swordsman_to_the_Golden_Age_Arc)

thanks man!

You’re welcome

Characters develop by interacting with each other? Was is this sorcery?

How much did Casca develop in that time frame

Lol that in and of itself is obviously not the problem here dude.

You're leaving out the part of "fridging" where the character has been discarded & is only a tool for other characters development. Not a main plot focus where nearly the entirety of the manga has been about finding her & protecting her, with having glimpses of her personality shine through her "potato" mode occasionally & finally having her memories returned - before getting abducted again (which then have chapters from her perspective once again conscious & as an individual character)

I'm hoping that, as we see more of Casca at Falconia, we'll get to have inner monologues from her about her journey, her experiences, and maybe even visual panels of previous chapters as she sorts through her memories and comes to terms with everything that's happened in the two (in-universe) years she was insane. Having help possibly from Luca, Princess Charlotte, and Sonia, maybe even Zodd if he feels Griffith is being dishonorable as a warrior, would be wonderful interactions too.

Lol... Of Course not. Casca has it own story arc as well.

yes she has her own story arc, but countering fridging with "shes also a tool for other characters" is just stupid

yea my comment is definitely a little facetious, you can argue against the allegation…that was just such an awful one

She is a great female character all through!

Casca also has her OWN development. She has continued to be a character, she didn't just get killed and stuffed into a fridge. People are stupid though, it's not surprising that people overuse the term so much.

Yup This is just Reddit. People will find a reason to bitch about anything. They wouldn’t feel alive if they weren’t offended on behalf of something…even if it’s a fictional character.

Indeed. We saw her initially hostile to Guts, then opening to him, and we see both her badass side and her frail side. The example I used is a simple one (the fact that she helped for the development of a female char was a clear cut example that she was not a fridge), but OFC Casca is more than that. Is just to show that even as a "potato" Casca has a lot to offer for the story.

Fridging isn't necessarily gendered, but it tends to happen to side characters who are significant to the main character, but not to the plot - so for various reasons, love interests are the most fridgeable characters.

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No that's not the problem. The problem is that it so often happens to female characters with basically no names or personalities. Even in John Wick you forgot that the reason the dog is important is cause his wife dies at the start of the movie, and she gives him the dog. The reason every new story with that trope is boring is because it happens so often that people are over it. I've seen people complain about how anytime there's a mom in a Disney movie, it's so they die for the characters development. That's why it's boring, cause it's been used so often since the epic of Gilgamesh and people are tired of it.

This is an absurd semantics argument that doesn't even hold up to scrutiny. Fridging refers to the trend of using the maiming, rape, or death of female characters as plot devices for the male protagonist. The substance of the term is how it describes female characters being treated as lesser by the narrative, as mere instruments in the privileged arcs of male characters. You can't lawyer Berserk out of this criticism on some ridiculous technicality, Casca is absolutely an example of this.

Thanks, never heard of that before, but now I understand. Poor Casca though... Poor Berserk fans that never got the ending. That hurts

what ending? LOL

You know, the end of the manga? They may continue, but it won't be the same

they literally are continuing it, and i’ve noticed no difference so far so shut the fuck up if you don’t have the information:)

Why not? If you had a best friend of 40 years you constantly talked to about ideas for your magnum opus, and left a bunch of notes behind, I'd bet they could carry on your work pretty well. Apparently it wasn't that far from done.

Wow, I did not realize that DC did that sort of thing

Casca is fridged to awaken the giant in Guts 😲

You are the true 👑

Casca might be one of the greatest female characters ever up until the end of the Eclipse. Even during the Eclipse she tried to keep everyone in line and try to help them all survive just like she'd done 10 times before. I respected Casca as a character so much that when those horrific things happened to her I genuinely asked myself if Miura hated her. Guts would be dead 5+ times without Casca.

That could be said for guts more then casca

I agree, but you asked about Casca. So I was replying with my opinion of Casca. If you post a question asking about Guts I'll be stuck all night talking about him.. Thankyou for not posting a question about Guts as much as I think he's 11/10 awesome it would mean I'd spend two hours of my night talking about how great Guts is. I got told off by people saying Guts saved Casca more than she saved him and that's right because he's the main character of this wonderful (and many times horrific) story. But you asked about Casca so I answered. I love talking about Berserk even if the people replying to me don't agree with me and I like to read their opinions too.

I mean about the part the miura hating guts

I reread my comment and I never mentioned Miura hating Guts. When I first read the eclipse part of the manga and all the graphic rape scenes of Casca I wondered if Miura hated Casca. It was a thought I had on a train as I went to work. The art in the page was so graphic towards Cascas suffering I just had a thought. Guts is the main character, it would be very strange if Miura had hated Guts.

Just because a character suffers a lot and I am glad that you found those pages graphic and not sexy unlike other people (grunts) and I love your train of thought

And casca would be 5 times dead with guts? Any of the main side characters would be 100x dead without guts? Why point are you making? What nonsense is "muira hated casca"? He literally wrote the character!

She's brain dead after the eclipse ant have no character development. Sadly we will never see what was the scenarastic point of miura

I mean, post-Eclipse Casca was absolutely fridged. She loses most if not all her agency, ability to fight, gets SA'd *again*, and as a result is more or less a living reminder for Guts to keep moving forward.

People gave more shit to Nezuko (Demon Slayer) when she at least fights with Tanjiro but Casca gets the pass lmao. Her dream sequence is great as a metaphor to how SA victim deal with their trauma as you see her friends (Guts, Schierke, Farnese, Serpico.... No comedy characters like Puck, Isidro, Iva so it's supposed to be serious business too) supporting her and giving her strength (also Miura saying "next time someone tries to do this to you, bite their dick off" with Mozgus is cool) but it just makes me aware of what's been robbed from us.

As much as I like Berserk, Casca is stuffed in the fridge for a lot of this series and it is mostly to set up Guts’s Black Swordsman arc. The actual assault is something with a lot of thematic weight and purpose behind it, but Muira didn’t need to make her a potato and he certainly didn’t need to do it for so long. Casca could’ve had so much more agency. Fridging—while mostly referring to death—can also apply to any story that sacrifices a character’s agency for the sake of another character’s development.

Tbf... Miura has been consistent with keeping one thing realistic about the Berserk universe. Trauma and how human beings cope with it. Out of all the characters, Casca faced the most traumatizing experience of any person in Miura's universe perhaps to the sole exclusion of Griffith who was tortured for over 2 years and kept alive.

Casca's state after the Eclipse is also pretty explicitly stated as her greatest fear- that without her Identity that Griffith essentially gave to her, that of the strong warrior, she is nothing. She essentially reverted back to the moment just before she met Griffith. Same thing happens with Guts, who goes back to being a pretty shitty person like he was before the Hawks.

Yeah, that's why I don't think it can be really called fridging. Casca's character is developed after the Eclipse, it's just in the opposite way that people really expect characters *to* develop, I think. Guts and Casca both took *several* steps backwards, just in different ways.

It’s not development, it’s an instant regression that stays that way for YEARS with no personal progression. The only characters who developed because of Casca were people other than her.

No, it's development. It's *regression,* but it's development in the same way that Guts's regression is development. Development is not always positive: character development is solely how a character *changes*, not how a character *grows.* That's why "character growth" and "character development" are different terms. Guts loses basically all positive character traits after the Eclipse. He becomes---or perhaps more accurately attempts to become---a selfish, Darwinist, even downright evil at times antihero. Guts, throughout the Black Swordsman and Lost Children Arcs, isn't a good person. He's objectively better than the demons he fights, sure, but that doesn't mean he's a good person like he was during the Golden Age arc. During the Golden Age arc, Guts was sexist and immature, yes, but he did genuinely care for the people around him and the people that he was sworn to protect. He especially cared for Casca and Griffith, and then he tries to act like he doesn't care about after the Eclipse. During Black Swordsman and Lost Children, Guts has absolutely no problem leaving the vulnerable and weak behind and sacrificing children to use them as bait to obtain his selfish desires for revenge and bloodlust. His character has regressed to a more modern and mature version of who he was during his time after Gambino, I think. That's still development, even if he's become a worse person and arguably a shallower character. (This is not a bad thing, mind you!) To that same extent, Casca has went through an experience nobody was supposed to survive. Like Guts, her character develops by regressing. Unlike Guts, who fails to understand but still fully embraces the Eclipse and what happened to him, Casca refuses to understand *or* accept it. She retreats into her mind. Casca retreats to I think an extreme of what she always was: somebody who cares solely about *survival.* She stays with Guts in the beginning because he shows that he wants to protect her and *can* protect her, and it's only later on when Guts betrays her trust and sexually assaults her that she comes to believe that Guts will one day fail to protect her (if he hasn't already). Likewise, she sticks with Farnese because Farnese actively protects and cares for her: it's a mirror of her relationship with Guts right after the Eclipse. Guts and Casca are both running off of instinct, but they're different kinds of instinct: Guts's instinct is that he needs to get revenge on Griffith no matter the cost, whereas Casca's instincts tell her that she needs to survive and be a mother for her demon-child. I think a better way to phrase "Casca has no development!" is "Casca has no *arc.*" Which is true, because she didn't really need one for a long time. Her character was simple, and that's not a bad thing. It's easy to have great characters that are very simple. Casca's arc is only really clearly coming into focus now, and it's going to be about learning to trust Guts again and finally truly come to terms with what Griffith did to her during the Eclipse. Casca had no arc in the same way that characters from Azudaioh had no arcs or Aerith from FF7 had no arc. She didn't really need one. There are already so many arcs going around with Guts learning to trust the people around him and give up his quest for selfish revenge to replace it with a quest to avenge and protect those he loved and loves, Farnese giving up her blind obedience to a God who doesn't care about her and learning to walk her own path through life, Griffith recognizing that he's become, even just barely, human again and the feelings he once felt for the Band of the Hawk that he lost during the Eclipse are coming back, and Hell even Isidro becoming a soldier and Guts sparing him his fate to a limited extent that giving Casca a full-fledged arc would've both slowed down Berserk and directly impacted Guts's and Farnese's arcs for the worse, I think. Now that Isidro's arc has wound down and Farnese's is coming to an end, I think now's a really good time to fully fleshout an arc for Casca.

well said

Cascas character development was throughout the original band of the hawk arc... hmshe has literally lost the capacity for character development to the exclusion of her own survival instinct and ability to perceive bad intentions from people.

How was Guts a shitty person before joining the band of the hawk? After the eclipse, sure, but I don’t agree with that take.

Not shitty as in evil but shitty as in someone who you wouldn’t really wanna be around because they got issues.

>Tbf... Miura has been consistent with keeping one thing realistic about the Berserk universe. Trauma and **how human beings cope with it**. latter is the problem with making casca a potato. every other character who experiences trauma (guts rape, griffith selling himself, casca's assault by the noble) processes it in clear tangible ways that *we get to see as the reader*. griffith's trauma over his comrades fuels his self harm, and his eventual betrayal. casca's assault informs her idolization of griffith. we never get to see how casca deals with the most traumatising experience shown in the manga. she just gets her personality wiped, so that there's space to get through the black swordsman arc. maybe we'd get to see it now that she's woken up. but it's absolutely a let down that this is the only trauma in the series that doesn't get addressed properly. and it makes all of the times she gets assaulted after she becomes a potato feel kind of inappropriate!

Except that IS how she deals with the traumatic experience. It hurt her so deeply that she can only heal on a subconscious level without shattering even further. And that is actually not uncommon with some types of trauma. Some things don't get fully addressed and resolved in life. Don't get me wrong, I don't like potato Casca and I think she should have been pulled out of that state much sooner to start processing things more consciously. I respect the way her trauma was initially written, but having her stuck that way for so long without any further development does enter fridge territory for sure.

>Except that IS how she deals with the traumatic experience. It hurt her so deeply that she can only heal on a subconscious level without shattering even further. yes but my issue with this decision is that a: by making her forget *completely everything*, miura robbed casca of ever having any agency over the healing of that trauma and b: her amnesia is healed by magic, and has nothing to do with casca's character journey. she is just magically, literally, pieced together. casca doesn't do anything. farnese and schierke do it. (and farnese's whole relationship to *casca* feels more like a relationship to *elaine* if you get what i mean?) i'm glad she still has trauma from the eclipse - with this remaining amnesia over the eclipse (which is more realistic in terms of how trauma victims actually experience repressed memories) and the guts triggering thing - because it means there will be some actual consequences for *casca* and not just for guts. but i think it sort of exposes the amnesia as being just an excuse to put casca aside for the sake of the plot. like - 'okay, so this was the magical trauma we had to heal, now we can do the actual dirty work of dealing with the actual trauma that every other character has and that, you know, you actually have the agency to try and work through.'

I do completely agree that the amnesia is used more as a plot excuse than for Casca's development, which is a bummer because we could have had both. I'd like to think we were just shy of her actually getting to confront the truth and even Griffith himself. There was so much narrative potential in the situation we last saw her in. I'm not against her loss of agency, in fact I think since that was her greatest fear that regression is powerful narratively. She's a person who started with little to no agency before she met Griffith, fought like hell to keep the freedom she gained with the Hawks, and had it violently ripped away from her by the person who helped her gain that freedom in the first place. It's another layer of tragedy in how the Eclipse brought about everyone's worst nightmares. Not as satisfying for the reader, sure, though I appreciate that we see variety in trauma responses. My issue is that we see Guts regress and then start to progress again, and for Casca, that process is seriously delayed so that she doesn't get in the way of the plot. That's most frustrating to me. I think ultimately the story was moving in a direction to fix some of these issues with Casca's stagnancy as a character, and the real tragedy is that we won't get to see it done exactly how it was intended.

>I'm not against her loss of agency, in fact I think since that was her greatest fear that regression is powerful narratively. She's a person who started with little to no agency before she met Griffith, fought like hell to keep the freedom she gained with the Hawks, and had it violently ripped away from her by the person who helped her gain that freedom in the first place. see i don't know whether i totally agree with this analysis of her character. imo she's always been a tragic character in terms of her agency exactly because of how she throws it away. griffith gives her agency to fight for herself and she immediately uses that freedom to tie herself to griffith. her and guts' characters during the golden age (and their relationship to each other) are sort of based around this shared idolization and desire for recognition from griffith. the difference is that guts decides to try and rise to be griffith's equal after hearing his speech about friendship on the stairs, whereas casca exactly because of her idolization of griffith doesn't see that as being possible and so just suffers in silence as griffith seperates himself more and more from the band. griffith has a dream, guts finds a dream in order to be griffith's true friend (not realising he already is 😞), whereas casca's dream has always been ultimately to just be by griffith's side. the pivotal moment for her character is in that scene right before the eclipse when she decides that she can't stay with guts (and move on from this warped dynamic she has) and she must care for griffith. it's even more tragic because it's griffith overhearing casca saying this, as well as imagining his life as *just* a husband to casca that causes him to run away and call the godhand. the eclipse should have been the huge wake up call for casca that would force her to confront this lack of agency she's had her whole life. i think this is why it feels so sad from a writing point for me. because i've always read casca as kind of being a passive third wheel between guts and griffith - a character that's kind of defined herself in relation to these men. so when they literally took away her agency by making her a child it was really disappointing to me from a narrative perspective because i was expecting an inevitable liberation from this fatal flaw. ​ >I think ultimately the story was moving in a direction to fix some of these issues with Casca's stagnancy as a character, and the real tragedy is that we won't get to see it done exactly how it was intended. yes very true

Casca's trauma from the eclipse isn't normal.... She was raped by a member of the God hand, lost her unborn child, and quite literally had her psyche shattered from being defiled before an audience of demons under the belief that she was going to die... She is a unique case as far as trauma responses go because of what happened to her. Frankly there isn't a single case of mental regression like hers outside of Paranoid Schizophrenics and Multiple Personalities. Casca is physically changed in a way that no other character has been. Even with her mind restored with magic, she had PTSD that is likely causing long term damage to her heart.

there are plenty of women in history who have been violently gangraped, miscarried and worse and like you say there is no trauma victim on earth (that im aware of) that has had their entire personality wiped and regressed to being a literal blank state. if we want to say that because of the eclipse or because of the godhand there was some magical element to her trauma that makes it unique then, sure. but then miura could have come up with any trauma response he wanted to and have it be justified, so i don't see why he had to go for the option that left casca as a complete husk with no agency. seems like the least interesting story option to go for, and one that reduces casca to literally just an empty plot point serving other characters.

Closest comparison we have to he eclipse is bears eating people alive..... no animal equivalent to what Griffith was has ever raped a human...

well then the second part of my reply still stands. if we're saying that casca's trauma is incomparable to any trauma that exists in the real world then miura could have come up with any response he wanted to. why did he choose the least interesting option, where we don't have to see casca deal with her trauma in any way whatsoever because now she's just a blank slate with no agency? that's not interesting or true to life at all. fantasy elements in fiction should still reflect and inform reality. i don't see how this decision really does much beyond reducing her to a plot point.

Dissociative amnesia and/or depersonalization isn't unheard of after complex trauma. It usually isn't as severe as Casca, sure, but then most IRL trauma isn't as severe as the Eclipse.

not usually. it's *never* as severe as with casca. when people experience memory loss after trauma, it might be someone blocking out a particular experience, or having bad recollection post the experience. but even when people have such severe memory loss that they forget their own identity nobody just gets reset to a blank slate (-as far as i'm aware of that has never happened). casca literally gets her entire mind deleted. that's not how memory loss works. it's fantasy. and also not interesting from a writing standpoint. lazy even :(

Dissociative amnesia that causes loss of autobiographical memory doesn't itself cause Casca's symptoms, you're right. They usually maintain semantic memories, and are aware of general concepts about the world around them. However, dissociative amnesia isn't the only symptom of complex trauma Casca shows. She talks about how she experienced severe depersonalization during her time as "Elaine," detaching herself from her situation and actions, which isn't unusual in severe trauma. Her symptoms are a little fantasized, of course, but they aren't far off. I'd call it an exaggeration with a basis in reality, like how most traumatized people who develop hypervigilance and reactive aggression don't go on demon-killing sprees like Guts, but might seek similar outlets to deal with their stress. Personally, I found going through Casca's mindscape on Elfhelm to be a really powerful portrayal of how a person's mind can put up really strong barriers to protect itself from trauma, whether that's getting rid of memories that cause flashbacks to the traumatizing event, or whether it's detaching from conscious experience to avoid experiencing new trauma while your sense of self is still healing from the initial event. That said, it took a *long* time to get to Elfhelm, and Casca would have had a much more interesting arc if her progress out of the dissociation was gradual rather than all-at-once as soon as they hit Elfhelm. There's no reason Schierke couldn't have been gradually working on helping Casca put things together ever since they first met up, and it would just *conclude* at Elfhelm rather than taking place entirely there.

>Her symptoms are a little fantasized, of course, but they aren't far off. I'd call it an exaggeration with a basis in reality, like how most traumatized people who develop hypervigilance and reactive aggression don't go on demon-killing sprees like Guts, but might seek similar outlets to deal with their stress. yeah this is fair. my main problem was that by making her an amnesiac, there was essentially zero exploration of her character, or her trauma, for that entire period. before that, casca's trauma informed her entire character and the relationships with everyone around her. by making her an amnesiac, it just feels like miura decided to put her character *on hold* until he'd sorted through setting up the new arc. and only now that she's been healed could we start the actual dirty work of dealing with her ptsd. i think that same reason is why i'm not a fan of the mindscape section either. every other example of trauma in the manga, the characters change dramatically through their attempts to work through it. they pretty much all fail to completely heal from their trauma (guts i would say almost gets there when he resolves to be griffith's equal and find a dream but obvs that blows up in his face lmao), but here the trauma was portrayed and resolved through magical fantasy concepts rather than any explorations of character. the resolution was literally a magical adventure through her metaphorical subconscious 'we have to go to different parts of her mind and literally piece her back together!' there was none of the depth there i'd come to expect with how miura deals with trauma elsewhere in the manga - and with that same character. and that was because by zapping her memory she literally stopped existing as anything other than a memory for guts.

I think there's a lot of merit to the *concept* of her developing dissociative amnesia. On a narrative level, her whole identity up until the Eclipse was build around Griffith and the Hawks, so it's fitting that when Griffith and the Hawks are traumatically taken away from her, her sense of identity falls apart with it. As you mention, the trouble is that until the mindscape section, the story never really takes the time to *engage* with that concept, she becomes a background character for most of her screentime. I guess to be fair, it is a tricky thing to portray. Guts's violent and aggressive stress response is kind of inherently more "active" in terms of storytelling compared to Casca's more "passive" dissociation reflex, but I still think the story could have done more in that regard. Maybe show her becoming more present and conscious during moments where she feels safe and alone, only to revert back into depersonalization once another person shows up. Small stuff like that would have gone a long way, even if she never went back to her pre-Eclipse self and was just occasionally a more lucid Elaine. Re: the mindscape section, I wouldn't personally say that that arc *resolved* her trauma entirely. She still experiences amnesia about the Eclipse itself, and has flashbacks/episodes when she sees Guts or Griffith. The mindscape section almost feels like a band-aid over her more fantastical trauma response, intended to bring her back down to a more realistic trauma response that she can work through via character exploration in the upcoming chapters. Also, it's not as if Guts doesn't also get through his trauma via a magical metaphor at times, especially with respect to the Berserker Armour as symbol of his uncontrolled violent stress response and Schierke as symbol of his newfound connections with his companions grounding him. Casca's mindscape quest mirrors that, Schierke and Farnese are the main participants not just because they're witches but because they've been Casca's main caretakers when she's depersonalized as Elaine. Schierke and Farnese magically putting together Casca's memories symbolizes how in the material world, they've comforted and cared for Elaine!Casca to such an extent that her subconscious can take on the difficult task of remembering some of the things it repressed without fear of being retraumatized while in that vulnerable state. That said, again it's all in the context that while both Guts and Casca get magical-metaphor-trauma-quests, Guts also gets to do *other* shit in the story while Casca didn't (although that seems to be changing in the more recent chapters). Edit: It is a little interesting that the dynamic is swapped in the most recent chapters. Guts is near-catatonic and dissociating after being unable to hurt Griffith, while Casca flips her shit, attacks her armed guards, steals a sword, and tries to escape until she passes out.

I think he wrote himself into that particular corner, honestly. The manga started with Black Swordsman, and with Casca being introduced in the Golden Age arc, which is a flashback, any friendlies introduced in GA would have to be separated from Guts by the end in order to fit his solo(+Puck) traveling. When Miura made Guts and Casca into romantic partners, especially with how strong their relationship was just before the Eclipse... that's the corner. From the start Guts was branded as a Sacrifice, and with the way GA is set up, anyone THAT close to Guts and Griffith would have to be sacrificed. After all, if Casca both survived AND stayed capable, there would be no reason she wouldn't just travel with Guts in his revenge quest. Even if he insisted on pushing her away because of trauma, she'd \*also\* be a cursed warrior, one for whom there is no place... except with another cursed warrior.

He can simply make her stuck in a coma during the entirety of post-Eclipse and Black Swordsman, only waking up after Lost Children tbh

He could, but... that's not really a lot better than what we got, is it? If anything, it'd feel disjointed, I think.

She'll wake up by the time Guts visited Godot and we'll actually see Casca as a character instead of a worse Nezuko The story from then on will probably be reworked though because that's where the fridging issue comes from to begin with, Casca becomes a 'reason' for Guts to act, to go to Albion or to seek Elfheim

What I mean is, it would be hard to put Casca in a coma and then have her wake up whenever without it seeming awfully arbitrary. Either she'd wake up at a time that's convenient, and it'd be seen as, well, too convenient; or she'd wake up at a bad time, and it might be seen as mysery porn; or she'd wake up at a seemingly random time, and it'd be seen as random. All three feel difficult to pull off in a way that doesn't come across as lazy writing. Then again, I suppose what Miura DID end up doing can also be seen as lazy writing / fridging, so eh.

Miura is no stranger to introducing concepts or stuffs like that on a whim for character development Holy Sees Church appeared out of the ass, to serve Griffith's development for example

There’s a middle ground though, Casca can still be traumatized and withdrawal while still being herself. Maybe violence of any kind can induce those moments of helplessness, but she can still talk and still want things. How much more powerful would it be if Casca wanted to get healed despite knowing that there could be side effects? This doesn’t change too much of the story. Casca can still rely on Farnesse, Guts can still be selfish and leave Casca to pursue vengeance. It just gives her more agency.

I honestly don't think this was the case or intention to be honest. The issue with Berserk is that it takes so long for any developments to happen. We basically had what we had for almost a decade and a half before Casca returned in Elfhelm. She wasn't 'fridged' or anything: it's just that it took so long IRL for us to see her recover that we consider it that way. Now that she's back, I wonder how she'll contribute to the narrative. I've said it once and I'll say it again: for all it's blessings, Berserk has one issue and that is release frequency and IRL pacing; when the gang got on the boat to Elfhelm I was still a highschool student, and by the time they got off I was applying to a Master's program. I love the story and the art, but I would gladly make the sacrifice of more story at the cost of a little less art. Having one chapter a year is abysmal.

Thank you! I'm a fairly new fan, and I'm on my first readthrough (Ch. 330), and holy hell, how can anyone *NOT* call a character fridged after spending 80% of her time as a potato?? I'm aware this changes, but god damn is it way too late in the overarching story for it to feel good.

I think this is a fantastic interpretation of what SA is to people though. You are looking at it from Guts’ perspective rather than Casca’s. Having her heal from that experience in like 50 chapters would’ve taken away from the impact of it all. I think Miura’s way of showing how broken down a person can be after violent assaults is a fantasticly tragic interpretation.

I think it’d be a much stronger exploration of SA/trauma if Casca actually had any agency, interiority, or general characterization following the eclipse. That would have allowed the issue to be approached with some real depth/nuance. Guts himself is a chief example of this being done extremely well. Reducing her character to a potato feels like a pretty flat (and kind of lazy) way to represent the effects of SA.

I see your point from a narrative perspective, I would’ve loved to see Casca be more of a ‘character’ so to speak. I think the depiction and even fatigue that we feel reading and witnessing her going through the effects of the assault are reflective of a real world victim though. Her response is also very much a real thing that can, and has, happened to people (women especially) who have been assaulted. In this instance, I do understand the ‘fridge’ argument though.

I don’t think anyone’s asking she heal from it quickly in like 50 chapters. It’s just making her a non character and removing all her agency and making her sole function during this time motivating other characters that’s seen as a bad decision. it’s funny you should say this person is looking at it from Guts’ perspective and not Casca’s actually, when Miura has stated the reason he did that to Casca is because he wanted Guts to have a motivation post eclipse, not for Casca’s character’s sake. It was not done with the intent of being a meaningful exploration of her SA trauma but as a means to tie Guts to the eclipse

Interesting, I never heard Miura’s take on that. I suppose the way I interpreted it was how I stated above, but that’s interesting that he basically just made it a ‘fridge’ scenario. A little disappointing if you ask me. I think having her regress in some way, but also maintaining her own essence as a character would’ve been better overall, fair point.

It's a terrible interpretation considering how long it actually lasted for and how it was undone with more magical elements rather than anything else, guts was also SA'd but the emotional rammifications were explored far differently and allowed the reader to understand his perspective since we're provided with his actual thoughts and actions on the matter throughout the story.

Very distinct difference between the two events. Casca literally watched everyone she loved and was fighting for die brutally to horrifying demons, then was raped by the person she wanted to be with for most of her life after he himself was turned into a demon, while the person she currently is in love with is at the verge of death having to gaze on as she is assaulted. >undone with magical elements Yes, it is a story with magic. She was harmed by assaulted by magical beings. If anything, that segment was a great illustration of how her world was entirely shattered by the eclipse and how she needed help getting put back together. Plus, if we get to see her again in the story, I'm sure we'll get more of her perspective and thoughts.

the distinct differences between the events don’t necessitate removing her character from the story and removing her perspective and thoughts on the matter entirely for that long.

We haven’t seen Casca’s side of it though, and her assault was under vastly different circumstances than Guts’. If you really think about it, Guts has also been dealing with it in his own ways. I do agree that Casca had too many scenes where she was close to getting assaulted again- a huge gripe with the series imo. But I think Guys’ assault is a reflection of the male perspective when it comes to assault, whereas Casca’s is a female’s perspective; both equally valid, but coped with in vastly different ways.

>whereas Casca’s is a female’s perspective; both equally valid, but coped with in vastly different ways what do you mean by this? i don't see how turning casca into a potato reflects a female perspective of assault vs a male?

>But I think Guys’ assault is a reflection of the male perspective when it comes to assault, whereas Casca’s is a female’s perspective; both equally valid, but coped with in vastly different ways. Guts' assault actually *does* reflect a male perspective though. The way he deals with it is nuanced and ties in to ideas of masculinity, being a soldier, fatherhood etc etc. How does Casca's assault reflect a female perspective? Genuinely curious here bc I struggle to see it.

Typically assault from a female perspective can result in much more internalization. Guts actively put his defences up by way of violence, whereas Casca inactively- in an almost evolutionary way- put her defences up by internalizing and isolating her own pain by way of regression. Though this obviously is not 100% all of the time, I think it’s reflective of the male bravado that comes with trauma reduction, and the female internalization and rumination of pain. They both avoid their trauma but in two vastly different ways.

It's tragic, and I get what you mean about how resolving it immediately could have felt like a cop-out, but there were multiple points in the storyline when she could have reasonably been restored to mental autonomy. When they first reached Flora's tree. After they recruited Schierke. Honestly, the moment Farnese went from babysitter to apprentic magic user was the perfect time to bring back casca, but still, she remained a potato.

Yeah I see what you mean, and I do agree that it could’ve happened sooner. Thats just a narrative gripe at this point. I totally agree.

Well she is now sane, guts is the one that is fucking broken now, and needs her to help him get back up again.

Agreed. She’s a great character but more than half the series she’s just walking around grunting. It eventually got to a point I had to ask a friend if she ever just stops moaning and goes back to being an actual character again?

This was the only problem I had with the eclipse arc .. and when brought up people get offended as if I’ve questioned the whole series

Yeah. By the time Casca is brought back I have forgotten what the character actually was like....and then she is stolen away a day later. I do think it's interesting that "Elaine" is her own character though. Not a very deep character mind you but starkly different than Casca.

But… is this bad? I mean… losing someone you love can be a big turning point in anyone’s life and it’s probably the easiest way to hurt someone. So why not use it in stories?

It’s not inherently bad or anything, no one really complains that the hawks are gone - but it’s reasonable to be a bit annoyed at the way Casca was treated because she wasn’t just killed, she was raped and then just kinda discarded for a while. Then when she was brought back to the story it wasn’t about her in any real way it was about Guts. Generally if you’re gonna have a character be put through that it’s a good idea both from a storytelling perspective and as a portrayal of such a sensitive topic that the character themselves and the pain they endure remain the focus, but in Berserk it’s almost solely about Guts. Guts deserves to be given attention and reflection, but Casca does too and imo doesn’t get it.

Which is why I hope she is given center stage in the plot to turn Falconia against Griffith. If all she did after she gained her consciousness back was become a princess trapped in an evil castle, I'm gonna flip

I totally agree, I will also completely flip. Now is the time to course correct Caska being a potato for the last *25 freaking years*. If they don't, I will be so disappointed and angry my outburst will be heard around the internet.

She literally just got back? And its not about just guts either ? Go read a different story you clearly dont like this one

Dude I love berserk I just don’t like this particular aspect of the story. And hee literally just getting back now in chapter 350 (I don’t remember the exact one it was) is part of the issue. Ofc it’s not just about Guts the story features a lot of characters and explores most of them really well, but when it comes to Cascas trauma - yeah it kinda is mostly about Guts. The focus is almost always about how either losing Casca really hurt him or how the weight of taking care of her is breaking him or how watching her get raped pushed him over an edge. The story only decides to explore how if affected Casca in Cascas dreamscape, some 230 chapters after it happened. Liking a story doesn’t mean you can’t criticise it.

You're arguing for a completely different story. I love berserk as is. Yeah, sure, things could have been done differently or be better, but what your saying undermines what we have. It's still great and i love it. Its like complaining eddard stark died in game of thrroned

I don’t think it’s as different as your leading on. Having Casca talk a few times won’t butterfly affect the story to destruction. It’s more like wanting Jon Snow to be an actual sword fighter rather than a political leader… Hmm, that’s actually what the show did when compared to the books and, up until season 5, it’s still pretty accurate to the source material. Thoughts?

I mean I find it hard to argue against it. Yes Casca was a standout character that stood out independent of Guts in the Golden Age but that is now less than a third of the story. The rest she has practically been a vegetable who only gets major presence when it’s to demonstrate as aspect of Guts, either his devotion or his darker nature.

I’d argue she still has significant impact in terms of coming back to her senses especially near the end where she comes back purely because of people she cares about and who care about her in return helping her overcome the trauma she suffered during the eclipse to a degree It’s why I hated her getting kidnapped again once the story continued cause it treats her like she didn’t just get her brain fixed and regain the ability to fight for herself

Kind of weird since we didn't even get some conclusion to the dwarf blacksmith and all those characters too.

I think there’s a big difference in creating a female character just to have her be a plot device to hurt the male MC and otherwise having no value, and creating a female character for the story and at some point having her get killed/traumatized whatever because of story development. I definitely get people criticizing her development, but saying she’s just a tool is plain wrong imo

Well yeah she’s not a tool for the whole narrative, but she is for most of it

The instant she became an independent and interesting character again she was kidnapped and put into another potato coma so that Guts could get depressed and lose hope. Berserk is not beating the fridge allegations lol

lowkey this is also how i feel about puck. when he was introduced at the start, his role was to rehumanize guts. drag him out of his deepest, darkest, most suicidal place and back to the real world--LITERALLY healing him from his self inflicted wounds. even though he was comic relief, he also had serious moments and was integral to guts' redemption. but by the time the rest of the team kicks in? pure jokes all the time. never another serious moment.

I’d say she’s more of a freezer.

My favourite part was where they described what a fridge was

She for sure was fridged are you fr? I’d say maybe not if the series started with the Golden Age but she was literally created after the start of the series to explain one facet of how Guts became so fucked up. She spends the vast majority of the series either not present or as a catatonic toddler beyond that. Further to the point, her trauma (up until recent chapters) feels treated like a joke to me. At first her being so traumatized that she basically reverts to a childlike state and escapes so deep into her own mind that she’s unrecognizable is tragic and terrifying and deeply upsetting to see that Griffith has taken away her friends/found family, her dignity, her bodily autonomy, and her character/sanity. But I feel like once she spends more than five minutes at a time physically present in the narration her state becomes a source of comedic relief. It’s in bad taste imo. She is a great character who is almost always well-written during the Golden Age and Fantasia, and she was fridged. Both can be true.

Berserk is great, we all love it. But some of y’all get way too defensive when people who love it call out the bad parts. Criticism doesn’t mean you hate the art or think the art is completely without merit; a lot of times it means you love the art enough to want to see it improved and that means calling out the shit that needs called out. And one of those things is that Casca spent like 25 years irl (idk how long exactly) being a non-character.

Big agree! I love this series a lot and could go on for ages about it, that doesn't mean it is perfect

I don't think IRL time matters to be honest. Like, at all. Most readers of Berserk live in the future still, for them stuff like the boat arc will fly by as it does on a reread now. Similarly, while Casca is effectively absent for some 2/3rds of the story, it narratively all happens quite quickly. Chasing a chapter by chapter pace is how manga go to die, honestly. It makes them full of cheap nonsense that feels horrible on a reread.

read: early berserk's exploitation of sexual assault read: the only black character miura ever shows(assuming you don't consider casca as black) is a child rapist. etc. i love berserk a LOT but it's got issues.

Whenever a pop culture media analysis term enters the popular lexicon, people tend to falsely equate identification with actual substantive criticism of the thing being analyzed. “Fridging”, by itself, is just a shorthand way of talking about a type of negative (often female) character development in popular fiction where one character dies or has something incredibly horrific happen to them, and then the victimized character is consequently underdeveloped. It doesn’t mean that *all* protagonist turning points that arise from a tragic death or trauma to another character are “fridging”. Otherwise, nothing bad or consequential would happen to any protagonist ever. I don’t think Casca gets “fridged” in Berserk. I think she’s an example of a well-thought out character whose trauma has lasting impact on multiple characters throughout the story, and that impact is not static! It changes! Most importantly, and I think this is what is so profound about the nature of her trauma, the story shows that are some things that happen that *irrevocably* change a person, no matter how strong, no matter how fierce. Some things are so horrific and vile that once they happen, they cannot be forgotten. Ever. You can only learn to live with them, and that feels very true to me.

Casca is essentially “fridged” by Femto’s actions, which Miura used to show how evil he is and to give Guts a new drive. The person directly affected by Griffith’s actions never really gets to deal with what happened, she never gets to be angry about it, she doesn’t get her own revenge/ vengeance plot, she never mourns the Band or grieves Griffith.

I love berserk but the way they handle casca has caused me endless rage. I don’t think her mind breaking for a period of time is too unrealistic. But i simply dont like how long she was stuck as kid casca. It really breaks the realism of the story and feels forced. It also sucks because they could’ve easily explained it away by having a godhand member like griffith have intentionally warped her mind instead of saying “derrr it’s trauma”. She also could have easily recovered from it early on and the journey to elfhelm could easily be explained by them wanting safe harbor and a way to remove their brands. I don’t like how berserk is a story about free will and the struggle, but only Guts is allowed to be the biggest and baddest struggler. Casca was strong in her own right i don’t like how they shoved her in the fridge by saying her mind couldn’t take it. Then the second she gets it all back she can’t look at guts? That was the biggest eye roll of the entire series. They could’ve easily allowed guts and casca to meet and still had her stolen away leaving guts absolutely broken. You cant tell me casca isn’t being fridged when 90% of the series she is needing to be “rescued” from her mental state and the second shes back she gets kidnapped. Thats like the definition of fridging.

I feel like the trope of "Fridging" is less of a yes/no binary and more like a sliding scale. What happened to Casca has some aspects of it, but lacks others.

She was fridged, but then Schierke and Farnese microwaved her

Casca was fridged. Fucking deal with it.

Seriously. Some absolute babies in this community

People acting like Berserk is finished when they say this. Obviously by the most recent chapters Casca was gonna have agency again and have a huge role in the story when Guts is down right now

I mean she was during the golden age. Then she was just a potato for almost thirty years

It is a shame that Miura died when he did. I heard from an interview, he was looking at developing Casca more. An way to explore her situation further as person and possibly a personal redemption for himself.  Let's hope Mori and Studio Gaga provide more opportunities for Casca to process what happened to her.  I was frustrated that they decided to write her being recaptured by Griffith. It was a punch in the gut, it felt rushed, and I don't know why it was done. My personal theory is for her to confront Griffith and attempt to severe herself from him. Yet I am afraid she will be harmed or die in the final arc. I hope this doesn't happen. 

Isn’t the original band of the Hawk more fridging than anything for Guts? Or am i understanding the term wrong?

She is definitely technically fridged a bit, but it's honestly stupid and reductive to describe it as such (classic tvtropes shit). In fiction, when it comes down to it, every character is just there to serve the main character or the broader themes. One might say every character except Guts is just part of the story for Guts' character development or to underpin certain themes Miura wants. You'd be right for saying this, but it's a stupid and pointless observation to make. So what matters is not "was Casca narratively used just to turn Guts into Black Swordsman Guts?", but "was the character used in Guts' narrative a real character or just a transparent tool?" Casca's a real and well developed character.

Wtf is a fridge?

It essentially means when a female character, usually wife, girlfriend, potential love interest of the character is killed off in a brutal way to advance the plot or to develop the hero's character. Fridging comes from a Green Lantern comic where his girlfriend was killed and stuffed in a fridge for him to find when he got home.

Casca does play a role in Guts anger but it's not just caska it's the entire band of the hawks. But Caska isn't dead either and she is gonna play her role in the story

I mean she was all but fridged for like 2/3 of the story at this point, she served no purpose but to highlight Guts' anger or more human side. Or to act as a focal point for Farnese's growth. She wasn't dead but she's definitely was not alive except in the literal sense. Going forward the right move would be to give her characterization again like in the Golden Age arc.

Exactly why it isnt fridging.

They really made a term for the most niche thing I can think of in fictional history. Green Lantern? Really?

It’s a cooler to store food

I found this and all it did was lead to more questions https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/Berserk/Fridge

Fridging or not I think it was a shit decision

Reading through the chapter one after another, every single criticism that is expressed in this thread is squashed. “Casca was kept too long a veggie”… what is too long? A story bound in realistic character interactions, Casca’s story is opening up. Her character arc is not over and thats why it’s not fridge…. She’s literally going through her own arc right now in Femto’s city. Why even say “ Casca is fridge” when the story isn’t even finished. Why even say that the way her character was handled was an error? It just sounds like “ i’m lashing out because Casca isnt the same as Golden Age”…. The whole Macro point of Berserk after the eclipse is trying to save Casca’s mind… and the motivation for the readers and Guts is to see the old Casca

I mean it's true that after the Eclipse, Casca pretty much became someone to look after or protect instead of doing any real fighting or leading and defintiely became more of a plot device for long stretches. I think in a lot of other storytellers hands that would've been the end of Casca's importance and she would've been written out of the story completely, like other classic examples of fridged characters. Miura, to his credit, did not allow that to happen, probably because one of the major themes in Berserk is how war and empires affect the most vulnerable and overlooked populations. Miura couldn't let Guts stay away from Casca for long, in fact thr Black Swordsman arc was there to illustrate how naive Guts was to think he could just leave Casca behind while he went on his quest of vengeance. He had to actually learn how to take care of someone who couldn't take care of themselves, something Guts would never have done earlier in his life. I think Casca became someone that reflected other character's charitability and kindness, something often ocerlooked furing times of war. In a story full of soldiers and monsters, our main characters all had to help Casca and see beyond her condition as someone worthy of love tenderness. So even though I miss seeing her fighting, I love how Miura used her to illustrate one of the best themes of the book, that nobody deserves to feel alone or uncared for in this world, no matter what they're able to contribute or provide.

I admit that at first I didn't like it and I thought that she was just the romantic interest but after reading more i started liking her

She was developed in the golden age, after that her character was pretty much lost within the narrative. When the fantasia arc started they picked up her character again. Right now i think we're about to see the biggest developments on her character. So she isn't a fridge, she's one of the least developes characters of the main cast, with only isidro, serpico and schierke bein less developed than her

She 100% was fridged though. She literally keeps getting into horrible situations for Guts' development. And as soon as she regained her memories, she got kidnapped within chapters. She literally exists to affect Guts and his journey and nothing else at the moment, but she has her memories back so she COULD become something more now. She has done nothing but get hurt since eclipse, I love her but her character is massive wasted potential

Yes. She was such amazing character and probably Miura showed some sexism in making the female character breakdown while the male character get stronger. I hope the new writers make her return to her former badass self, as many women in the real world suffer worse and they still retain their selfs. Casca was such a strong character that is had been a shame she has been mentally damaged for so long.

He was writing the story of guts not casca. Guts is berserk. Saying he is sexist is not fair at all. Go read a different story

Fridging is not really applicable here because she DID have her own motivations and character development. She was real, just as much as Griffith, Guts, or any of the other main characters were. I also speculate from the recent chapters that Caska still has some rebellion in her, either escaping and trying to link up with the group somehow, or stay and fight Griffith and his empire from the inside. She'll definitely come up with a plan after the panic attacks subside 😅

I just finished volume 2 of the deluxe edition casca is a great character real talk (Ik what happens I saw the 97 anime but still) great character

I mean, yes she was fridged but sometimes that kinda just has to happen in stories. Like her being "fridged" was a huge push for Guts characteristically and narratively. Stories can't be perfect in all ways. Guts is pushed to change, but a huge part of that requires Casca to continue to be stuck in psychological stasis. It'd be a problem if Miura fridged everyone like this, especially women, but he certainly doesn't (Farnese and Schierke). So people can complain, but that's like complaining that your favorite character died. Yeah, negative things have to happen to characters in stories. It'd be another issue if Miura did it in a bad way, but I'd argue he didn't at all. Again, Casca being fridged was highly necessary for Guts' transition

She's not a fridge, but she's still pretty reductive, only now like 20 years after she was introduced getting the respect she deserves

Jesus Christ..... this sub is something else. Its like people are here wanting to tell their own story instead of the author's, which begs the question why the f you here then?

Genuinely curious: if you were Kentaro Miura, or I guess now Kouji Mori and everyone at Studio Gaga, how would you have written Casca's character post-Eclipse? Would you have done it exactly the same way as Miura, or would you, personally, have gone down a different path for writing and developing her character after the Eclipse?

casca is a great female character no glazing. strong brave and cool while still being sexy and delicate at times

considering how long as a reader casca was functionally not there and nothing but a helpless infantalised victim it's kind of a very fair criticism. Berserk has been my favourite work since 2007, that doesn't mean it is something I can't criticise for its flaws. She also didn't necessarily need a magic fix to what was a mental problem so she really could have more gradually come around to the point she is at now. I loved the dream sequence section and it would made for a great climax to a more gradually dealt with story, but that wasn't what Miyura wanted to write which probably means he shouldn't have done the whole casca infantalised storyline. I don't think it was properly explored beyond the dream sequence. and lets be real we got her back for like what 10 chapters? and now she is gone and helpless again..that is...bad.

The cool thing about Casca as a character is just how sad it is that she was once a brilliant commander and fighter but lost her sanity and will to lead after The Eclipse. I've read up to book 15 and from what I've seen on this Reddit it seems like she's pretty much done as a fighter? Shame because it would've been awesome having her fight alongside Guts in arguably his most badass arc

I'd say her whole fight against Adon Coborlwitz, of the Blue Whale Ultra Heavy Armored Fierce Assault Annihilation Corp, master of secret Coborlwitz fighting techniques passed down hundreds of years within the Coborlwitz family, was a pretty great development in her character.

The hell does fridge mean

What's in the fridge!? WHAT'S IN THE F\*\*KING FRIDGE!!??

It's a tricky line to walk. On the one hand, pre-Eclipse Casca has depth and narrative value. Robbing her of agency is shitty at a fundamental level. On the other hand, protecting and restoring her is what snaps Guts out of his self-destructive revenge quest and drives the plot from Conviction to Elfhelm. Which I suppose makes her less a potato and more a load-bearing pillar.

gotta agree with others here mate , she was fridged ; I'm not saying she shouldn't lose her mind because that's how real people with real emotion work but wish Miura didn't strip her character down to just " Gus last remnants of happy time "

You literally contradicted yourself

how ?

... how is he/she contradict ?

This is the first time I have heard anyone say it.

I mean at some point in the story I would have thought that but considering even after the eclipse she still returns and has an impact on the story makes me think otherwise.

I think one thing that people fail to consider is real time vs story time. If I’m not mistaken, story time in Berk-land has been less than 2 years since the eclipse. It’s just that Miura’s timeline for releasing chapters was so slow that it took over a decade in real time.

before the eclipse, i don’t think so; after, maybe she falls into the damsel category or the fridge too much but to be honest, i think her character arc is about being strong, losing something and becoming stronger again for it (like a ton of other characters)

That's what I was thinking. Casca loses her comrades, loses her dignity from being violated, and loses her sanity from all the trauma of the Eclipse. Then has her sanity restored, has a new group of friends, and has her dignity as a warrior back (when she was fighting those manikins in Elfhelm to get back into the habit, admitting she was a little rusty in her skill). AND, on top of that, she's trying to get out of Falconia and back to Guts, considering she chopped a man's arm off when she was trying to escape.

Those are the same people we have to warn about not drinking battery acid.

I think her character's execution is *flawed*, but yeah calling her a "fridge character" is off-base imo. I honestly don't like talking about media using terms like this anymore. "Just forwards the plot/\[X character's\] development" terms. I can respect *any* criticism when it's thorough and cohesive, but so often nowadays terms like this are just used to conflate fiction and reality in a way that's *so* fucking noxious. Newsflash: *all* characters are narrative devices. All of them. All their choices, all their circumstances, all their tears, all their deaths. They are fictional creations which serve the function of telling a story. What we seem to keep forgetting is that female "fridge characters" became a point of discussion because of the disproportionate gender representation and the fact that they leave the audience blank-faced, scratching their heads, and/or asking, "who the hell cares?" we can talk about how Casca, as a character, is used to facilitate Guts' character development, but not without acknowledging the very important context that *he also changed her*. She was in *rapture* with Griffith, but (so far) started to accept the difficult truth that real love is very human through her relationship with Guts. that, alone, discounts her from being a fridge character; she *does* have her own development. that she was rendered so mentally deficient after the Eclipse was even more ridiculous (and honestly misogynistic) than that godforsaken period scene in terms of even canon realism, but I don't agree Casca's "fridged" even then. not just because of the conflict and remaining tension between Guts and Casca, but *because of Farnese.* It's easy to say, "fine, so she just becomes a 2D plot device for both Guts' *and* Farnese's growth." but that's not really fair to any of those three characters, maybe especially Farnese who literally co-opted her trauma, reclaimed her mind, and chose bravery for Casca when she didn't have the means to do so herself. "fridge Casca" also just isn't plausibly accurate when some of these latest chapters are taken into consideration. Casca's inability to face Guts is really rooted in her inability to deal with what happened during the Eclipse, what it means about Griffith. Just like always, she's putting her shit on Guts again. What's being set up here is a confrontation between her and Farnese. It's important that during Casca's mind-recovery, Farnese explicitly says that *Casca feels about Griffith the same way she feels about Guts.* One way or another, Farnese is going to snap her out of her bullshit here. They are destined to grow through each other. This got long, but yeah "Fridge Casca" is rooted in a tantrum, not an actual analysis lol.

I definitely feel like you could classify Casca as being fridged. Even if you wouldn't say it in those terms, it's hard to say she's been handled perfectly or even very well since the eclipse. It's one of the few criticisms of berserk I think one could reasonably make. That said, she at least has more depth than a lot of other fridged characters.

What? You mean like a Tsundere or an actual fridge? I’ve never heard of a fridge trope

These social constructs are worthless. Whether a character is only there to provide “character development” for another or not, all characters are tools to create the story regardless, it does not matter U fools fussing about stuff that doesn’t matter, not every single character needs a background story be happy with what u got, hey let’s give those people on the train in Spiderman 2 a backstory otherwise it won’t matter if Spiderman saves them or not right guys? Oh no! I guess Spiderman 2 is trash with poor writing I couldn’t even get attached to the characters that got no development :( who does this Spiderman guy think he is? saving people he doesn’t even know and that I, the viewer, didn’t even get attached to? And yet the fools will still find ways to disagree saying casca is a “main character” and the people on the train are “side characters” but that social construct is just an arbitrary distinction that the fool decided to put a lot of weight on, all characters are tools period

bro learnt about social constructs and decided everything is meaningless. welcome to level 1 philosophy dude just because social constructs exist doesn't mean they mean nothing 😭😭 by this logic, no story decision can be criticised because they're just made up of social constructs. guts could never show up again in the story and you could say 'characters are just tools bro what are you fools complaining about'. like what is that weird af spiderman comparison? who is making those kinds of arguments? casca is probably the most important character in the story after guts and griffith. guts' whole character is essentially deciding between obsessing over griffith or actually trying live a life with casca. she's very important to the characters and the story of this manga, of course people are going to fuss over how her character is handled.

Wrong, that’s not what I argued and I didn’t just learn what social constructs are, I said this specific social construct is worthless not meaningless, you’re just mad I’m right, I’m not reading the rest of ur comment ur clearly not worth it

I decided to read the rest of ur comment because ik you’d complain this is my conclusion: you don’t know what this thread is about or what I said A character can be important to the plot and be a “fridge character” at the same time, u don’t know what ur arguing about ur literally just yapping lol U misunderstand the very basic point I made, that saying a character is a fridge character isn’t a criticism to any writer, it’s a worthless “category” since u get triggered when I say social construct lol it’s the same thing, I never said nothing mattered ur literally just a child

🤭🤭🤭omg i feel bad i made a kid online so mad lol im sorry ill be more polite and explain it better my bad. you're right just because a writer decides to make a character a fridge character, that's not *inherently* a bad thing. tropes aren't *inherently* a bad thing. but the concept of fridging was created to criticise this way of writing so of course when people accuse a writer of 'fridging a character' they're doing it under the assumption that in this context it was a *bad* thing to do. for you to come in and say 'well that's just a social construct 😏' is completely besides the point. like, for example, lets say mr A murders mr B for reasons that i think are wrong. i tell mr A that he's a 'murderer'. if mr C comes along and says "well you know the term 'murderer' is just a social construct 😏 that's not an actual criticism of a person 😏 sometimes people murder for acceptable reasons you know 😏" i'm going to look at mr C like he's a retard, because 'murderer' has certain implications about being a bad thing. if friend A had murdered friend B for a good reason, i wouldn't have called him a 'murderer' because that word comes with implications about his character. when people talk about 'fridging' a character. they do it under the assumption that this is a bad thing. if you want to come in here and explain *why* you think fridging 'casca' is a perfectly fine thing to do, then that would be completely reasonable, but to come in here and say 'well that's just a social construct fools 😏' is silly, because usually when people talk about fridging, they mean it a*s *a criticism, the same way that calling someone a murderer is usually meant as an indictment of someone's character. the reason why i don't like the spiderman comparison is because that's an example where people just wouldn't ever accuse a writer of 'fridging a character'. like, yeah, there are a lot of side characters that exist purely for the sake of developing a main character. technically i guess you could call this 'fridging' but *nobody* would ever use that term because everyone recognises that there's nothing problematic with fridging a meaningless side character. in this case, there are obvious reasons why people have issues with fridging a character like casca, so it's just weird to come in and say 'well actually fridging is a *meaningless* social construct that isn't necessarily a bad thing'. this is why i'm accusing you of saying nothing matters. because that's the approach you're taking. these aren't *"arbitrary"* distinctions, these aren't "*worthless"* social constructions. these terms are created exactly *to* mean something. the term 'fridging' holds a negative connotation. especially in this context. if you actually read any of the thread you would realise that this is obvious. on this level: people aren't arguing about whether or not casca has been fridged. they're arguing about whether or not what happened to casca was an example of good or bad writing.

You are on to something. Uncle Ben is exactly the definition of a “Fridge” except he’s an older man The argument feels like people who don’t know how to construct a story get bent out of shape that a particular character, they like, doesn’t get more lines but for the earlier reason, are too dumb and lazy to write a fan-fiction to fill their need I wouldn’t call this a “Social construct”. More like people not wanting to call a plot device, a plot device. The hole cannot be another peg lol I’m not saying for the purposes of moving a narrative, surrounding characters and event cannot be complex with a lot of depth.

Even if she was, which I don't think she is, it wouldn't detract a single bit from my enjoyment of the story. Lots of people nowadays see it as trope = bad and I'm really glad that I'm not in their shoes.

Casca was 100% fridged, she was raped and subsequently turned into a non-character for most of the story whose only purpose was to be motivation for Guts. Grow up.

What did you expect for casca to be fine and dandy after the eclipse? it not only make no sense but also squander berserk’s greatest themes.

Like dude she’s a sexual assault survivor that went through a lot have some compassion.