Anakin Skywalker vs Griffith (Berserk) Debate ‘CAN DESTINY CORRUPT A MAN?’

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:01][music] >> I know what you did. The eclipse, your comrades, the people who bled for you, who followed you through years of war, who loved you enough to break you out of a dungeon when you were nothing but a broken body. You sacrificed them, all of them, fed them to demons so you could become this. You choked your pregnant wife because she questioned your choices.

[00:00:33]You cut down children in the Jedi Temple because your new master required proof of loyalty.

[00:00:41]You stood over your mentor, the man who raised you, and left him burning on a riverbank because he represented the life you were abandoning.

[00:00:54]You may not have fed them to demons, [music] Anakin, but you sacrificed them all the same. I was trying to save Padme. Everything I did, every line I crossed was to keep her alive.

[00:01:07]The visions showed me her death. I couldn't accept it. The dark side promised power over death itself. Yes, I did terrible things, but they were for her, to protect her, not to purchase a crown, not to become a god. I was desperate. You weighed your children's future against Palpatine's [music] promises and bet on the Sith.

[00:01:26]Every choice you made was a transaction.

[00:01:30]Love doesn't excuse [music] that. It just explains the currency.

[00:01:35]I traded my soldiers for a kingdom.

[00:01:39]You traded your soul for a woman who died anyway. She died because of me, because of what I became. My attempts to save her were what killed her. I see that now.

[00:01:50]The irony isn't lost on me, but there's a difference between failing someone you loved and deliberately feeding them to monsters. Casca trusted you. Guts would have died for you. They were your family and you watched demons tear them apart while you transformed into something inhuman. You felt nothing.

[00:02:06]Congratulations.

[00:02:08]The children are still dead.

[00:02:11]Your feelings are a luxury you grant yourself.

[00:02:16]A way to believe you're different from me when the body count tells the same story.

[00:02:23]I felt nothing >> [music] >> because feeling would have stopped me and my dream was more important [music] than my feelings.

[00:02:33]You felt everything and did it anyway.

[00:02:37]Which of us is the greater monster? You, without question.

[00:02:42]Because you had a choice that wasn't born from fear.

[00:02:45]The God Hand offered you the sacrifice.

[00:02:47]You could have refused. You could have died human. Instead, you chose godhood and paid for it with everyone who ever believed in you.

[00:02:53]I was manipulated by Palpatine from childhood, groomed, broken down and rebuilt into what he needed. My fall was engineered by someone else.

[00:03:02]The [music] behelit was given to me in childhood.

[00:03:06]The prophecy of the hawk of light predated my birth by centuries.

[00:03:13]You speak of manipulation as though it exonerates you.

[00:03:18]But the Jedi manipulated you, too.

[00:03:22]Took you from your mother.

[00:03:24]Forbade attachment while demanding loyalty.

[00:03:28]Both of us were shaped by forces larger than ourselves.

[00:03:34]We simply responded differently when those forces [music] demanded payment.

[00:03:41]The Jedi were flawed, arrogant. They couldn't see what Palpatine was doing because they couldn't see past their own dogma, but they weren't evil. They wanted peace, balance, a galaxy where people could live without fear.

[00:03:53]What do you want, Griffith? What's the dream that was worth a thousand screaming deaths? A kingdom? A throne? A place where I could stand [music] at the top and see exactly how far I'd climbed.

[00:04:05]Not for comfort.

[00:04:07]Not for luxury.

[00:04:09]For proof.

[00:04:11]Proof that a boy born in a gutter could rise higher than any noble, any king, any god.

[00:04:19]My dream was never about helping people.

[00:04:23]It was about becoming something that couldn't be ignored.

[00:04:27]You wanted to save one woman.

[00:04:31]I wanted to make the world look up at me.

[00:04:34]We're both selfish. And the Band of the Hawk, they thought you cared about them.

[00:04:38]Thought you were fighting for something beyond yourself.

[00:04:41]Pippin, Judeau, Corkus, they died believing in you. Believing their deaths served a purpose larger than your vanity. You let them believe that. You cultivated that faith so you could spend it when the time [music] came. They followed me because following me gave their lives meaning.

[00:05:00]Guts told me this once, that a person's life only has value if they dedicate it to something greater than themselves.

[00:05:11]I was their something greater.

[00:05:14]The dream was the cause they chose.

[00:05:17]If I hadn't sacrificed them, they would have [music] died eventually in some pointless battle or wasted away in peacetime obscurity.

[00:05:28]I gave their deaths scale, significance.

[00:05:33]They mattered because I used them for something that mattered. That's the logic of every tyrant who ever lived. I gave their deaths meaning.

[00:05:43]You didn't give them anything. You You everything they had and decided what it meant afterward. Casca loved you. Truly loved you.

[00:05:50]And you violated her in front of the man who was supposed to be your closest friend. Not out of passion, out of cruelty. To prove that nothing they shared could survive your transformation. You didn't just kill them. You defiled them. You didn't defile Padme.

[00:06:06]Didn't choke the life out of her.

[00:06:08]While she begged you to stop.

[00:06:11]Didn't leave her to die of a broken heart.

[00:06:15]Because your grip crushed something more than her windpipe.

[00:06:20]You speak of what I did to Casca.

[00:06:24]As though your hands aren't around your own wife's throat in every nightmare you've ever had.

[00:06:33]We both destroyed the women who loved us.

[00:06:37]We both proved that our ambitions were more important [music] than their survival.

[00:06:43]Your hypocrisy is exhausting.

[00:06:46]>> [music] >> I regret what I did. Every day. Every breath through this mask reminds me of Mustafar, of what I became, of what I lost. When I look at Luke, I see her face, her goodness. The part of her I couldn't save because I was too busy damning myself to save her properly. Do you regret anything? Is there a single moment from the eclipse that haunts you?

[00:07:07]A single face that appears when you close your eyes? No.

[00:07:10]Regret is [music] for people who believe they could have chosen differently.

[00:07:16]I couldn't have.

[00:07:18]The dream was everything.

[00:07:20]Without it, I was nothing.

[00:07:23]A broken body in a dungeon waiting to die.

[00:07:27]The God Hand offered me a way to become what I was always meant to become.

[00:07:34]Taking it >> [music] >> wasn't a choice.

[00:07:37]It was gravity.

[00:07:38]Water flowing downhill.

[00:07:41]You regret [music] because you believe you had options. I know I never did.

[00:07:47]That knowledge isn't peace, but it isn't haunting, either. That's the lie you tell yourself. That destiny removed your agency. That the Behelit made the decision and you just went along.

[00:07:59]But Guts refused his own darkness, stood against the God Hand, chose a different path through pure will. If he could choose, so could you.

[00:08:08]You sacrificed your humanity, because keeping it was harder than surrendering it. Guts refused, because he had something to refuse [music] for.

[00:08:17]Casca, the boy, a reason to keep fighting beyond himself.

[00:08:23]I had nothing but the dream.

[00:08:26]When you remove everything else from a person, the dream is all that remains.

[00:08:32]My circumstances created my choice, just as your circumstances [music] created yours.

[00:08:40]You speak of will as though it exists independently [music] of context.

[00:08:46]It doesn't.

[00:08:47]Will is just the name we give to the direction our pain pushes us.

[00:08:53]Mine pushed me toward ascension.

[00:08:56]Yours pushed you toward destruction.

[00:09:00]Neither of us was free. And yet I came back. At the end, Luke refused to fight me, refused to fall the way I fell. And when Palpatine was killing him, I chose.

[00:09:10]For the first time in 20 years, I chose something other than the darkness. I threw my master into the reactor core. I saved my son. It cost me my life, but I died as Anakin Skywalker, not as Vader.

[00:09:21]Destiny didn't write that ending. I did.

[00:09:24]Can you say the same? When your moment comes, will you be capable of choosing differently? I would choose it again, a thousand times, without hesitation. [music] That's the difference between us, Anakin.

[00:09:38]You needed redemption because you never truly committed to your fall.

[00:09:45]Part of you always remained the boy from Tatooine, longing for his mother, dreaming of freeing slaves.

[00:09:54]I have no such remnant.

[00:09:57]The boy from the gutter died at the eclipse. [music] What rose from that moment has no nostalgia for who he was.