Specualting on the God Hand's end Goal: A short thread

This thread will just be touching on the main points from this post by a SK net admin. If you're fairly knowledgeable on the series I'd highly recommend reading this in full. Let us begin with answering the basics here first https://www.skullknight.net/forum/index.php?threads/the-idea-of-evil%E2%80%99s-grand-plan.15786/#post-256743

What is the Idea of Evil?

-The Idea of Evil or also known as God in the Berserk universe is a primal entity residing in the Abyss. It acts through the agent of Causality manipulating events long before they happen to get it's desired result. It's born from human desires.

But isn't chapter 83 not canon? How do we know it still exists?

- Yes technically chapter 83 isn't canon but we know it exists. It's hinted at multiple times throughout the manga but the most damming evidence is the last page of chapter 82 where it's shown in a two page spread.

What are the God Hand?

- The God Hand are supernatural Astral beings who carry out the plans of the Idea of Evil. Just like the five fingers in a palm, each member has their goals but they all converge into a single common result desired by the IOE.

Does Free will exist in Berserk? What's with the causality stuff?

-Yes Free will exists in Berserk. Flora pointed out that Humans do have a choice in which path they will take but Causality basically narrows that down significantly for the IOE's goals. Count is a perfect example

Are Causality and Fate the same thing?

- No. This is one of the biggest misconceptions throughout most of the readerbase. Fate is absolute whereas casuality is just the law of cause and effect. Main difference being the events take place in a chain reaction one after the another

What's the deal with the astral world?

- The Berserk world is split up on three different sections. The Physical world is where humans live. The Astral world is where creatures like elves and dragons live with multiple layers within itself. The world of Idea is where the IOE is.

What happened on top of Ganishka?

- Basically Ganishka travelled deep into the astral world and absorbed as much power as he could with the help of an artificial behelit. When he returned, his physical body expanded immensely in size to hold all the energy he had absorbed. (1/2)

As the Skull Knight tried to stop Femto, his sword strike is used to cut open Ganishka inside out and like an over bloated balloon, all the energy erupts out into the world. The explosion results in both the physical and astral worlds being merged. (2/2)

Now that we are done establishing all the main elements here's the speculative part of this thread.

The God Hand's main Goal is to eliminate all the astral creatures and rebuild the world to perfection as they desire where free will doesn't exist for anyone. What does this mean?

In chapter 358, we are shown a glimpse of this bigger plan when Griffith and the new hawks kill astral creatures for territorial expansion. People might think it's just humans defending themselves but remember, this is literally a situation caused by the God Hand themselves.

But why the astral creatures? What do they have to do with Causality?

- To put it simply, the God Hand and IOE can only govern Human fate. Creatures like elves and trolls are beyond their control. Think of everytime puck has affected Gut's life or even saved him before.(1/2)

Beyond just that, They can provoke people’s minds and give them ideas or even inspire them in ways that the God Hand do not desire.These creatures are tied to human imagination and creativity, and their disappearance would impoverish mankind as a whole (2/2)

This is where one of the Berserk's fundamental conflict emerges between the magicians and the bad guys. Magicians see astral creatures differently and use different methods to keep them in check. See how the Enoch village journey concludes with schierke sealing off the cave(1/2)

Magicians just like astral creatures are a threat to the God Hand's plans more or less for the same reasons.

They know about how the world works and encourage venturing into the unknown discovering more of yourself. Farnese's character arc is a perfect example of this. (2/2)

To summarize everything neatly, The God Hand are creating a new world from scratch. A world where Free will is non existent and people only feel emotions that they can govern basically an endless cycle of Life and death. The first step on that goal is killing the astral beings.

Thanks for reading! Here are some fun facts about the God Hand:

-All the members are named after books except Femto.
- In 2012, Miura said that was he writing a God Hand focused story and we'll be seeing it "soon".
-"Void is the key to their plans"- Miura