History Characters / BerserkGuts

* DeconstructedCharacterArchetype: Guts embodies quite a lot of {{Shonen}} characteristics seen in many well-known characters in manga and anime. But what separates him from those characters is just how thorough an examination the story gives on those traits. His [[{{Determinator}} refusal to give up no matter the cost]] has more or less put his body through so much physical torture that the only thing keeping him from dying is dumb luck or sheer willpower. His [[ThePowerOfLove extreme devotion to his loved ones]] ''severely'' outweighs any concern for other people. His [[BloodKnight love of fighting]] is [[AxCrazy taken]] [[NominalHero to]] [[TheBerserker its]] [[OneManArmy logical]] [[HeroWithBadPublicity conclusion]]. And finally, his DarkAndTroubledPast, while having molded him into one of the most proficient warriors in-universe, has granted him ''WAY'' more baggage than he can emotionally handle.

* DetrimentalDetermination: At other times, his determination is more costly than it is a winning factor or a trait of admiration. It's most apparent during his earliest days as the Black Swordsman where he was so hellbent on killing Griffith that his actions and nature almost made just as much of a monster as the Apostles he routinely and remorselessly killed. It takes him reaffirming his romantic affection and protection of Casca and gaining a new group of companions after which Guts decides to alter his priorities to become a better person whilst keeping his determination intact.

* DefiledForever: Guts serves as a RareMaleExample for yet another part of his traumatic and shitty childhood.

* EmptyShell: Guts at first ''desperately'' tries to cope with life after the Eclipse, but despairs once he finally grasps the depth of the damage Griffith had inflicted upon his relationship with Casca. He then becomes so driven by sorrow that he even admits that literally the only thing keeping him from just giving up is his [[ThePowerOfHate burning hatred]]. It's only when Guts realizes that pursuing his revenge has led to him abandoning the only person capable of opening his heart to compassion and kindness that he completely turns around, and dedicates himself wholly to protecting Casca.

Guts' fate is tied to Griffith, his [[WeUsedToBeFriends best-friend]]-turned-ArchEnemy, and to [[ActionGirl Casca]], his love interest and fellow bearer of the Brand of Sacrifice who became like a child without speech or memories after the violation she suffered in the Eclipse. Even after consciously deciding to return to Casca's side so that he can [[FindTheCure find a cure]] for her condition, Guts struggles with the EnemyWithin called the Beast of Darkness that [[{{Tulpa}} grew out of]] his hatred for Griffith, which is trying to make him kill Casca and his companions so that he can devote himself to revenge. The stakes have grown even higher since he obtained the [[ArtifactOfDoom Berserker Armor]], which allows him to ignore pain and surpass the limits of his power, yet destroys his body and makes him vulnerable to the Beast's corruption. Guts' great external and internal struggles--of fighting monsters and his fate as well as [ThePowerOfHate hunting the man he hates]] and [[ThePowerOfLove protecting the woman he loves]]--are nothing short of heroic.

* AllMenArePerverts: Notably averted. Out of all the male characters in the series, he is among the very few for whom sex is only a tertiary motivation at best, and he remains staunchly faithful to his LoveInterest. He also scolds himself when he briefly thinks about having his way with Casca while she laid unconscious during one of their early missions.

Guts' fate is tied to Griffith, his [[WeUsedToBeFriends best-friend]]-turned-ArchEnemy, and to [[ActionGirl Casca]], his love interest and fellow bearer of the Brand of Sacrifice who became like a child without speech or memories after the violation she suffered in the Eclipse. Even after consciously deciding to return to Casca's side so that he can [[FindTheCure find a cure]] for her condition, Guts struggles with the EnemyWithin called the Beast of Darkness that [[{{Tulpa}} grew out of]] his hatred for Griffith, which is trying to make him kill Casca and his companions so that he can devote himself to revenge. The stakes have grown even higher since he obtained the [[ArtifactOfDoom Berserker Armor]], which allows him to ignore pain and surpass the limits of his power, yet destroys his body and makes him vulnerable to the Beast's corruption. Guts' great external and internal struggles--of fighting monsters and his fate, and of choosing between [[ThePowerOfHate hunting the man he hates]] and [[ThePowerOfLove protecting the woman he loves]]--are nothing short of heroic.

* NinetiesAntiHero: Guts, who debuted in 1989, has almost all the characteristics of a nineties anti-hero. He has a [[DarkAgeOfSupernames gritty but simple name]], is [[AnArmAndALeg missing an arm and an eye]], [[HeroicBuild has crazy muscles]] but [[CombatPragmatist relies on his lethal equipment instead of superpowers]], wears a black costume with lots of [[BadassBandolier bags and bandoliers]], is a badass with a DarkAndTroubledPast and [[DeadpanSnarker sarcasm]] to boot, and uses a ludicrous {{BFS}} as his main weapon. During the early Black Swordsman Arc he tells Puck that he doesn't care about anything except {{Revenge}}, considering any bystanders who get caught up in his vengeance as [[TheSocialDarwinist weaklings who didn't deserve to live]], and he [[ColdBloodedTorture brutally tortures]] any villains he defeats. Miura has even said that he based Guts' ImplacableMan vibe during the Black Swordsman Arc on 80s Hollywood action movie characters like [[Film/RoboCop1987 [=RoboCop=]]] and Film/TheTerminator--the same ones who had such an influence on the form the trope would take in TheNineties. In spite of all this Guts turns out to be something of an UnbuiltTrope example, or at least a more subtle one, as the state we first see him in is when he's at his very worst and pretending to be a jerk to hide from his pain. He goes through several shades of AntiHero through his CharacterDevelopment, but always has some redeeming qualities such as loyalty to his friends and sympathy for those who have suffered like he has.

* ActionDad: An ultimate badass and father to a weird, supernatural offspring that [[ThatThingIsNotMyChild he refuses to acknowledge as his child]].

* AdaptationalBadass: The ''Golden Age Arc'' film series elevates Guts' fighting prowess far beyond his depiction in the original manga. Case in point, in the film series he manages to defeat General Boscogne without the need for help from Zodd, [[spoiler:and during the Eclipse, manages to ''break through'' one of Griffith's [[DeflectorShield Deflector Shields]] through sheer willpower, much to [[DidntSeeThatComing the surprise of the Godhand]]. In the original manga, Guts couldn't even reach Griffith before being held down by a ton of Apostles, and in subsequent confrontations, is never even able to remain in close proximity to Griffith before getting stopped in his tracks]].

[[caption-width-right:300:''"Your life's on the line either way. The real question's whether you wanna risk it for your comrades or be just another pawn."'']]

* {{Expy}}:
** Miura states he partly modeled Guts' appearance on the actor Creator/RutgerHauer; the resemblance to Hauer mainly applies during the Black Swordsman Arc, before the ArtEvolution of Guts' face. Indeed, Guts has a lot in common with Hauer's character Etienne of Navarre from Film/{{Ladyhawke}}: Navarre used a huge sword and a crossbow; dressed in black with a badass cape; was on a quest for revenge against an evil man who called on demonic powers to curse him and his lover; was aflicted with his curse at night; and had a dangerous canine alter ego. Funnily enough, they've had completely opposite luck with solar eclipses: the eclipse that Guts experienced was the cause of most of his woes, but Navarre's was a miracle which broke the curse on him and Isabeau.
** His cool ImplacableMan vibe was based on '80s action movie characters like [=RoboCop=] and the Terminator.
** ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' was another inspiration for ''Berserk'', and Guts has some of Kenshiro in him. In either case you've got a powerful fighter with big muscles and dark, spiky hair, whose best friend betrayed him and gave him a distinctive scar; he's out to save his star-crossed love interest and settle the score, which involves walking the earth and killing bad guys with extremely gory techniques.
** Guts looks like another Tetsuo Hara character, namely Blue from Manga/CyberBlue; look at the black and white images and tell us he doesn't look like Guts.
** Elements from Guts' costume appear on the titular protagonist of Miura's 1985 manga ''Noa'', including a BadassCape and a prosthetic hand that turns into an ArmCannon. The difference is that Noa's whole ''body'' appears to be prosthetic instead of just the arm.

* TheBerserker: Guts has mastered the art of harnessing his rage into a focused state of mind during combat, blocking all other thoughts (such as fear) that could jeopardize his effectiveness, which then allows him to become a nigh-unstoppable {{Juggernaut}}. This fighting style has served him very well, especially when faced against the ruthless onslaught of an Apostle where even a tiny fraction of conscience/hesitation could spell his own doom and his Berserker Armor enhances this further by facilitating Guts' body to withstand past human limitations by numbing any wounds he would receive to keep fighting at his maximal potential. However it does come as a price (aside from not being aware that lethal wounds might have been received) in that his [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Beast of Darkness]] always threatening to take over which would cause him to start attacking everything, friend and foes alike in an berserker rage, until he's either dead or the last one standing on the battlefield. Also [[DeconstructedTrope deconstructed]] in that he acknowledges how much his battle-crazed moments possess a danger to innocents and the people close to him, a dilemma he wrestles with every day. He is such an example that he even provides the trope's main page's image.

* AdaptationalWimp: In the 2016 anime, Guts is caught by the Holy Iron Chain Knights the same way he was in the manga, but the harrowing fight against Rosine in the manga that left him too exhausted and injured to properly swing his sword when he fights the H.I.C.K.s is replaced with a less intense fight against skeletons, a possessed dead girl and a demonic tree. That gives him a shallow sword thrust in the abdomen and a tree root which pierces his side pretty deeply so that it bleeds while he's fighting the H.I.C.K.s, but considering how MadeOfIron he's supposed to be, it isn't as convincing as how Rosine repeatedly blew him off his feet, ran him through with her proboscis, and dropped him from hundreds of feet in the air, so that the show makes it look as though a lot less was needed to take him down.

** Continuing the trend of the 2016 show, unlike in the manga, Puck joins Guts only the night before his encounter with the Iron Chain Knights. It's less clear why Puck continues to follow Guts or why Guts tolerates him, since Puck hasn't had time to see past Guts' front, and Guts hasn't had time to warm up to him. It's also puzzling how Guts could have survived so many wounds or kept his sanity for two years without his company, since in the manga Puck's fairy dust saved him from death several times, and he acted as Guts' MoralityChain.

* UnknowinglyInLove: Because he didn't want to get in the way of Casca and Griffith, he refused to acknowledge his feelings for the former ([[HoYay and probably]] [[ThreesomeSubtext the latter]]) were more than friendship and wished the two happiness after he was gone.

* WorldsStrongestMan: Verging onto CharlesAtlasSuperpower. Guts isn't adept in magic, but he's clever, [[LightningBruiser deceptively fast]], and hits HARD with that Dragonslayer. In general, it seems less like the sword is actually particularly sharp, and more that it's sheer weight combined with a sharpened edge and Guts' own monstrous strength tears through whatever poor sap is on the receiving end of a swing with ease. This gets exaggerated upon donning the Berserker armor- a heavily wounded and debilitated Guts is able to smash the Corundum armor of Grunbeld's apostle form with some effort. For reference, Corundum is a 9 on the Mohs scale of hardness, just under ''diamond''. '''And he breaks it in one swing!''' If this is him when he's wounded, then Guts' true, uninhibited strength is something to be feared.

** Back in the Golden Age Griffith also had a free pass.

** After being stabbed by Slan of the Godhand, he has a wound ''on his soul'' that necessitates he wear the cursed Berserker Armor.
* WowingCthulhu: Apostles often view Guts with some measure of respect or awe, considering the fact that he's a Branded sacrifice who ''should'' have died during the Eclipse, [[NoOneShouldSurviveThat but didn't]]. Note that this respect doesn't really do Guts any favors, as the Apostles are still plenty willing to eat or otherwise horribly murder him, as they do.
* YoungerThanTheyLook: As of the Fantasia Arc Guts is only 24 years old, but with all of the stress of fighting throughout his life (and other traumatic ordeals), he looks more like a guy in his mid forties.

* GutturalGrowler: Compared to Creator/MarcDiraison and Creator/NobutoshiCanna, both who could really scream and growl when they wanted to but gave Guts more of a tenor baritone voice on the whole, Creator/KaijiTang and Creator/HiroakiIwanaga provides a much deeper voice which is fairly smooth during normal speech but becomes gritty and gravelly when he's angry.

!!! '''Adult Guts Voiced by:''' Creator/NobutoshiCanna (Japanese, ''Anime/Berserk1997'', ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheBerserkGutsRage'', and ''VideoGame/BerserkMillenniumFalconHenSeimaSenkiNoSho''), Creator/HiroakiIwanaga (Japanese, ''Anime/BerserkTheGoldenAgeArc'', ''Anime/Berserk2016'', and ''VideoGame/BerserkAndTheBandOfTheHawk''), Creator/MarcDiraison (English, ''Anime/Berserk1997'' & ''Anime/BerserkTheGoldenAgeArc''), Creator/KaijiTang (English, ''Anime/Berserk2016''), Creator/MichaelBell (English, ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheBerserkGutsRage''), Jordi Pineda (Spanish, ''Anime/Berserk1997''), Dani Albiac (Spanish, ''Anime/BerserkTheGoldenAgeArc'')\\

* ToxicFriendInfluence: Downplayed. Though Guts managed to bring out Griffith's better qualities, there were several times which Guts enabled Griffith's more underhanded actions. When Griffith asks Guts to assassinate Count Julius, Griffith notes it is a fundamentally different task compared to fighting on the battlefield and sincerely asks Guts if he can count on him. Guts tells Griffith not to sound so sentimental and just order him to do it like always. Then, after having killed the Queen of Midland, her conspirators, and the bandits they hired to kidnap the daughter of Minister Foss, Griffith outright asks Guts if he thought Griffith was cruel for having orchestrated such an underhanded scheme and leaving all the dangerous work to Guts. In response, Guts tells him that everything he did was just part of the path to his dream, and that doubting it was useless crap. A more subtle example is when Guts and Griffith are alone after Guts had just defeated Wyald. Guts asks Griffith to take his helmet off since they are alone, giving Griffith the chance to be vulnerable. But Griffith asks Guts to help put his armor on, wanting to pretend like nothing had changed. Instead of trying to convince Griffith not to show vulnerability or talking to him about what had happened, Guts helps Griffith ignore the reality of their situation, wasting their last moment together as friends. In all these situations, Guts unwittingly enables Griffith's worst qualities and stifle the few moments where Griffith could have grown and improved himself. There's a reason why the God Hand chose the memory of Guts encouraging him to follow the path of his dream to manipulate Griffith into sacrificing the Band of the Hawk. Had Guts been less complacent with Griffith's behavior, he could have helped steer Griffith on a better path.

* SociopathicHero: Well due to his general lack of regard for human suffering and occasional bloodlust in combat of course! He has also engaged in some ColdBloodedTorture of some particularly horrible enemies before killing them, with no purpose beyond making them suffer...[[KickTheSonOfABitch and we'd probably applaud him for it.]] Amusingly enough, this general trait is also [[PlayedForLaughs played up]] in the abridged series. That all being said though, he has mellowed out considerably nowadays, with his TrueCompanions and whatnot.

* DisappearedDad: We know what happened to his birth mother, [[ThePlague his adoptive mother,]] and [[AccidentalMurder his adoptive father]]... so where is Guts' real daddy at???

* DramaPreservingHandicap: The Berserker armor is incredibly powerful, but since it runs the risk of destroying Guts' sanity as well as a good amount of his other senses, he can't bank on it too often when fights get too tough. Plus, despite its raw power, there's still no chance of Guts ever catching up to Griffith in a fight.
* DramaticIrony: Guts wholeheartedly believed Griffith when the latter claimed to Charlotte that none of the Hawks were his equals, but never realized from how much Griffith allowed Guts to see his ugly side and confided in him that Griffith subconsciously prioritized him above even his dream. Guts tragically realizes this too late, right before the Eclipse starts.

* CombatPragmatist: From setting himself on fire to holding Dragonslayer in place with his teeth and metal arm, Guts will do whatever it takes to win in a fight no matter how underhanded or unconventional it may seem.