Ganishka - The Berserk Monster Manual

[Music] he's big he's powerful he's mean and he's got a beard that would make any man jealous as well he almost took over all the known kingdoms in berserk so let's talk about the great emperor himself ganeshka also if you're not already consider hitting the subscribe button and turning on the bell notifications if not i might just have to impregnate one of your women and then throw them into a vat of apostles so that she gives birth to yet another one of my warrior daca sons i'm [ __ ] serious anyway ganeshka is an apostle and one of the most powerful characters featured in the berserk series to get the breakdown on what an apostle is if you don't know check out my monster manual video on them the link will be in the description as for ganeshka well he's a very unique case when it comes to the very concept and ideas of what apostles are and perhaps he was a way for miura himself to challenge his own lore and ideas and see how far he could push the story within the rules that he had already set up a bit of history first and keep in mind i know next to nothing about the actual kushan dynasty and i'm getting my research from google which has failed me in the past but it would seem fairly obvious that ganeshka with a g is based off the actual kushan dynasty ruler named kanishka with a k not so subtle but it makes trying to tie the two together a bit easier for me but kanishka was renowned not just for his leadership and military tactics but also for being a spiritual person and more specifically when he found that of buddhism he was responsible for helping to spread buddhism and is also known for making coins with not only his own image engraved on them but of buddha as well interesting because a lot of the kushan culture shown in the berserk manga represents this kind of mix of buddhism and hinduism but either way they are religions and philosophies that stem from eastern cultures so it contrasts heavily with the holy see concept that sweeps over all the kingdoms in the story as being more of a christian or roman catholic style or way of life i think it was really great world building to add in this concept to show that there is a lot more than what is indoctrinated in you from birth and it also adds to the people being more fearful of the kushan as their way of life their religions beliefs etc and even their skin color is way different than the norm of the people living in midland shooter and wherever else berserk takes place but the thing to be more fearful of than any of that is ganeshka himself the ganeshka in the story doesn't seem to cherish any of the principles of buddhism and is instead a power hungry warlord hardened from years of having to be the toughest man around and with a desire to conquer all of the known world even if it means opposing god himself ganeshka was born a prince the oldest and destined to inherit the throne but he was poisoned as a child by his own mother who favored his younger brother instead yet ganesha managed to survive and in turn he murdered his brother to ensure his own inheritance but see this is what sparks the theme of power and paranoia within the kushan empire ganeshka even saw his father's eyes being of that of fear and suspicion that ultimately consumed him yes you are emperor but for how long who plans to assassinate you next what's the next enemy to face and can you even trust your own family or will they too stab you in the back ganishka didn't want to live with this paranoia and he devoted himself fully and wholly to world conquest he used conquering as his coping mechanism to run from his fear rather than to face it he had to ensure that nobody could beat him no matter what so this isn't like griffith who came from nothing and desired a kingdom this is a kingdom handed to you from birth but the constant paranoia that it will be stripped away from you and most likely from somebody that you put your trust in so instead trust nobody and try to instill as much fear in others as you can to overcome your own fear but that constant living on edge or anxiety kind of stripped away the meaning from ganesha's life and if you think about it the irony that takes away from buddhism as in buddhism the goal is to distance yourself from worldly desires and realize that they're ultimately meaningless to find that inner peace and oneness with the universe but instead the ganeshka in berserk desired more and more to fill that void of fear well eventually he was poisoned again by his own son this time one that ganesha never spent time with in order to distance himself from those kind of connections and yet perhaps that distancing itself and lack of love was what perpetuated the hate and desire for power within his own bloodline well as luck would have it ganesha possessed a bailout and upon his dying wish of despair he was granted an audience with the god hand and either due to his already great reputation in power the amount of people that he may have sacrificed or maybe just all due to causality's plan he became the most powerful apostle that had existed thus far that we know of of course and ganesha continued to rule and act as emperor while hiding his true apostle nature from the majority of his followers and in the manga itself he has a very slow reveal that works quite nicely we see snippets of the kushan invading midland after the death of the king but ganishka is finally revealed after pretty much having decimated all of the men and capturing the women he sits on a throne showcasing his size looking as though he has some power behind him has a long epic beard and also that evil grin that never seems to go away but it's his apostle form that really showcases his true strength he can essentially turn himself into a mixture of smoke fog and lightning the range of which can expand near entire cities and this makes him nearly impossible to physically damage at will ganeshka can transform himself into a giant smoke cloud that loosely takes the form of his physical body but as being smoke anything will pass right through it swords arrows you name it and he can also continue to spread the smoke as thick or as thinly as he wants and with that he can sense anything that's moving around in the smoke or touching it when he was invading britanus the smoke or fog as it seemed to the people at large slowly started to roll in before any of his men or creatures did the smoke can also soar into the sky and loom over any of his victims from there just like a storm cloud ganesha can send lightning down onto his opponents and these aren't just casual little electric shocks these are gigantic bolts of lightning that can wound or kill even apostles and even wounded nosferatu zod himself in combat added to that ganesha can create and manipulate the smoke from a distance as well so he doesn't even need to physically be there in the same space he can be sitting on his throne and through a sort of like astral projection send his spirit or astral self into the mist to travel wherever he wants this is done by manipulating wind and water elementals elementals in berserk are basically little swarms of astral entities that allow wind fire water earth to co-exist with them meaning like you're using an astral thing to manipulate a physical thing what this means for the story is that ganesha can make himself into a giant big [ __ ] cloud and you are unable to hurt that cloud because well it's a cloud but he can still hurt you by hurling wind and thunderbolts right in your stupid face let's not also forget that ganesha is an emperor that commands all of the armies and soldiers of the kushan and on top of that has various magical attack methods at his disposal he has the sorcerer daiba and other magic users at his beck and call that can enchant animals into vicious demonic creatures known as the pashaka and has the apostle centipede machine daca thing creator that makes mindless monster soldiers known as the daca check out my monster manual videos on both of those creatures down below as well with these abilities and his already sickening determination to rule over all things ganeshka quickly became perhaps the biggest thing to fear in the world of berserk that is until griffith was reborn into the world as the hierarchy goes a god hand is much more powerful than an apostle but due to ganeshka's upbringing personality even knowing this ganesha declared griffith and the god hand as his enemy so like i said earlier miura was playing with the very ideas and concepts that he had constructed earlier in the story as we know all the apostles understood that they paled in comparison to the god hand but the apostles still do have free will and who they were as human still influences how they act as apostles and we've seen glimpses of this before with wild the count and even with zod but ganeshka took it to another level as he truly believed that he could beat a god hand and not conform into their game he actively fought against griffith and the new ban of the hawk until the bitter end until he was finally forced to come to terms with his own place on that totem pole and in the face of griffith himself ganeshka was overwhelmed and brought to his knees in a symbol of submission imagine being face to face with what was like a literal god and this is after denying him in the first place for so long it's quite the blow to the ego now before i get into ganesha's shiva form let me state that ganesha's missed form does have a few weaknesses but not any that a standard fighter or apostle could even exploit first of all we have when ganesha was moderately wounded by guts and this was only possible due to the dragon slayer guts's sword having slain enough apostle creatures and being steeped in their blood along with guts's own will power and belief that he can strike them down enhance the sword's power to be able to wound at an astral level so when ganesha creates his giant cloud self with the elementals they surround his actual astral body guts and zod were able to pinpoint where that astral body was and pierced through it with the dragon slayer this caused enough damage to ganeshka that he was unable to maintain that form any longer and his astral self returned to his physical body showcasing an actual physical wound on his forehead meaning the sword was strong enough to harm him on both the astral and physical planes at the same time this is more of a nod of what's to come regarding guts and his sword but it does show that ganesha was at least not invincible in his misform the second time the form was thwarted was by griffith himself who allowed a huge gust of wind to blow through as ganeshka was in the form not allowing himself to contain the mist without being blown away this forced ganesha back into his human form and onto his knees now we have to talk about ganesha's shiva form in order to compensate for his weakness against griffith ganesha resorts to barbaric twisted and drastic measures the daca machine in his possession or the man-made baylet is a mass of sewn and chained together apostles and in the center it is filled with amniotic fluid once submerged it will corrupt whatever is put inside due to the concentrated negative energy brought on by all those apostles ganeshka decides to dunk himself inside the machine to force a reincarnation upon himself so what does that really mean okay so when a human uses a bailout and becomes an apostle they essentially reincarnate themselves as a new being no longer a man but they are an apostle to do this they use the sacrifice of something they care about along with their desire despair and willingness to give up their own humanity ganesha was no doubt similar to griffith in the sense that the first time sacrificing his men he cared about how they meant to him as an asset to his own ambitions but he didn't care about them as individuals so when plunged into the man-made baylet you are taking somebody who has already been corrupted by demonic transformation and then doing it again but this time it is by completely unnatural methods like i said he is forcing it so every person ganesha's missed was touching instantly becomes absorbed into this man-made bailing machine the more fuel for the fire equivalent exchange so ganeshka sinks deeper and deeper into the astral world and ganesha pulls in as much of that power as he possibly can and brings it back with him into the physical world this causes his body to fill literally ballooning up with power to the point where he becomes a massive kaiju cthulhu like being so gigantic that his head is reaching into the clouds and he towers above even the castles that were built by man he becomes an abomination and due to the unnatural way he went about obtaining this power he all but loses his mind in the process his thoughts become nothing but simplicity just step crush destroy in this form he is like a giant black tower with arms that branch out into numerous tentacles flailing about wildly as he takes gigantic steps crushing hundreds of people with each step this form is point blank called shiva in the manga and shiva is a god that comes from hinduism and is part of kind of a trinity of gods which i always found ironic that many holy things come in threes you know christianity has the father son holy spirit even berserk has the physical astral and idea worlds and here we have brahma vishnu and shiva gods of creation preservation and destruction in that order so ganesha here is often referred to as shiva or the form of the destroyer the thing that breaks the reason of mankind that shows the characters that not only do otherworldly beings exist but this is the magnitude of which they can exist a massive mythological incomprehensible monster not unlike a god but ganesha never reached that true god status only a faux one his body may have ascended but his mind just couldn't keep up he also inadvertently creates numerous pseudo-apostles in this form every person that he crushed into a mesh of blood and guts spawned hundreds of little creatures like miniature versions of himself that were used as an army of sorts but again they were mindless and only capable of destroying in this form there would be no hope at all of defeating him if you were an average man or even an apostle or anything really ganesha's ultimate defeat came in three waves from my point of view the first was ganeshka giving in to the light of griffith his life was about force and he forced himself to always be alone and not connect with anything he built a world of darkness but in his final moments griffith or femto the god hand offered him light he was drawn to it with his mind broken he sought to feel that kind of warmth and comfort just like god reaching out to comfort you in your darkest time in his last moments ganesha gave into that light and accepted his oncoming defeat the second was his literal death as a result of the bailiff sword a swing and a mist from old scully boy allowed griffith to use a dimension cutting sword swipe to slice ganeshka down the middle causing him to split open and expel all of that astral power that he had drawn inside of himself this was so much power that he literally covered the entire globe and merged the astral and physical worlds together it is known as the blast or roar of the astral world and was perhaps the biggest game changer in the berserk story now melding fantasy with reality and unleashing all sorts of monsters onto the world and third and finally though ganeshka may be dead his body remained but transformed into the world spiral tree a source of power that permanently links the astral and physical world meaning it puts the entire planet into an interstitis and its branches extend through the sky essentially throughout the entire world minus a few areas that are blocked but those are also slowly being destroyed as griffith has his way with the world so it's a true link throughout the entire world coming from this point of the tree some such as griffith and the moonlight child have even been shown to be able to use the branches of the world tree to travel super fast speeds to different areas of the world so even after death ganeshka's presence plays a super important role in the story in maintaining and combining the entire world and keeping it in a state of fantasia so yeah when it comes to ganeshka there is a lot of crazy [ __ ] that surrounds him and what he means for the story even though i don't find his personality that engaging or appealing i can't deny the impact his existence had on the berserk story and its lore so let me know what you think about the great emperor down below and your favorite and least favorite aspects about him also do you prefer his misform or his shiva form more besides that guys thank you so much for watching this video i really do appreciate it thanks for all the love and support on these videos and for the channel and getting me past 30 000 subscribers that's really really super cool special shout out to my patreon members as well you guys rock i really appreciate you guys supporting the channel on that extra level other than that like this video subscribe if you want to stick around see some more other than that guys hope you have a wonderful day and i'll talk to you in the next video

Channel: RealLifeRyan

Views: 485,320

Keywords: ganishka, berserk, monster manual, analysis, explained, haw of the millennium empire, falcon of the millennium empire, pishaca, daka, kushan, silat, emperor, history, shiva, blast of the astral world, skull knight, apostle

Id: Em0u-gXGYe4

Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020