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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | I am the great emperor of the Kushan Empire. I control the vastest territory in the world. I will not relinquish it. Even if it is smeared with blood and defiled, this world belongs to me. I will reign over this unclean world as a demon king... And rebel against god. | „ |
| ~ Emperor Ganishka going against God Hand. |
Emperor Ganishka (in Japanese: ガニシュカ) is a major antagonist in the Berserk series, serving as the main antagonist of the "Falcon of the Millennium Empire" arc and a posthumous antagonist for the remainder of the series.
He was the tyrannical head of the Kushan Empire, as well as one of the few Apostles to oppose the God Hand. Behind his horrid monstrosity and bloodlust lies a deeply disturbed and even troubled individual whose life had been a terrible struggle for survival, which was wrought with distrust, treachery, bloodshed, manipulation, violence, and purge.
He was voiced by Tesshō Genda in Japanese, who also voiced VIRM in Darling in the Franxx and General Yamazaki in Live A Live.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- After his mother tried to kill him when he was six with poisoned wine so his younger brother could become the next heir, Ganishka killed his entirely innocent younger brother as revenge. This drove his mother into enough grief to kill herself. From that point on, Ganishka became more and more evil as he was hardened by the constant backstabbing within the Kushan court.
- To become the Emperor himself, he engineered an assassination where his father's elephant went chaotic after being struck by a poisoned dart. He later killed the assassin to keep the murder a secret.
- While he has a terrible past as mentioned above, none of it is used to justify his horrible crimes, since his mother might have been right to have him assassinated due to the evil already being in his heart.
- He used war as an excuse to protect himself from danger, hoping to conquer the entire world to ensure his safety.
- Despite marrying as per tradition, he purposely abandoned his wife and son to focus on his wars out of his fear of the idea of mother and child (due to his history with his mother).
- When Ganishka's son attempted to kill him out of frustration of his father's paranoia, he used a Beherit to become a demonic Apostle and sacrifice his son so he wouldn't die.
- It's also possible that he had his wife executed afterwards, since the wife wasn't seen after her husband became an Apostle.
- He committed mass ethnic cleansing, even on his own land. On one occasion, he forced the female prisoners to watch as their male friends and families were buried in a pit covered with oil and then burned alive despite their pleas. He then had the females raped to produce for him a future army.
- He captured the populations of his enemies, having them tortured, enslaved, or drafted into his army to serve as cannon fodder.
- Even other demonic apostles are not safe from his cruelty, as he captured hundreds of them and then stitched their still-living bodies together to make a Man-Made Beherit.
- Ganishka used the Man-Made Beherit by having thousands of pregnant women, impregnated by his soldiers, bathe in it, mutating their unborn babies into the half-human half-demon, Dakas, who burst out of their mothers' stomachs.
- The rapidly maturing Daka are taught to consume human flesh and serve Ganishka as terror troops, kept in line with mind control.
- Ganishka corrupts animals with his demonic powers to turn them into Pishacha, human/animal abominations, to serve in his army.
- He mind-controls his troops to commit suicide to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
- After capturing Midland, he held Princess Charlotte against her will and attempted to rape her just to conceive a child with her, supposedly to solidify his rule over Midland. His thoughts reveal that this is also for entertainment.
- After capturing Midland, he has many of its people killed in agonizing ways, such as being slowly lowered into a pit of starving crocodiles for Ganishka's amusement.
- Midland's capital, Wyndham, was turned into a city of demons: fog was everywhere, cadavers were impaled or hung on rooftops, art was defaced, and body parts littered the city.
- He tried to manipulate and convince Guts to join his side, and tried to kill him once the latter refused.
- He has himself exposed to the Man-Made Beherit to obtain complete immortality and become more powerful than the God Hand, reincarnating him into Shiva.
- His last moments, where he felt lonely and terrified, desperately eager for someone talking to him, and shed into tears after he saw the light and warmth of Griffith, are portrayed as somewhat sympathetic. However, considering his sadness only comes from of his paranoia instead of feeling any remorse for his crimes, he is still beyond redemption and is not sympathetic at all.
- Even after his death, Shiva causes chaos in the world after becoming the World Spiral Tree by undermining the balance between reality and fantasy.
Trivia[]
- Emperor Ganishka is a rare case of a Pure Evil villain given a sympathetic death but still qualifies due to being an aspect of him as opposed to himself.
External Links[]
- Emperor Ganishka on the Villains Wiki
- Emperor Ganishka on the Berserk Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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The God Hand Apostles Prototype Fanon | ||