#theme: adaption

My question is what do you think griffith would react to the other griffiths in doldrey? Like his look alikes in the memorial edition part 2(minute 53) when they died? Or was it just part of the memorial edition indivully? Cuz I dont really remember it in tge manga at al lol

Thank you, I'm good and I hope you are as well!

That was only included in the memorial edition/OVAs, and honestly it was such a bizarre change imo. Like, Gennon's into prepubescent child slaves and Griffith, not blond guys who look like they're of age, so that just makes Gennon as a predatory gay stereotype worse imo, since he's still villanized the exact same amount without textually being a pedophile iirc.

Plus like, kinda weird and fucked up that the Hawks slaughtered them? The manga never led me to believe that the Hawks would casually kill innocent people like servants/slaves/other non-combatants in the castles they besiege or whatever. They're depicted as pointedly quite noble in contrast to other mercenary bands, and basically the polar opposite of eg Wyald's Black Dogs.

Anyway, that said, Griffith does come across as much darker in the OVAs since they flattened his character so much, so in that context you can maybe suggest that Griffith was disturbed by their existence and killed them himself. I don't think that would be in character, but a lot of Griffith's screen time in the OVAs is a bit ooc imo, so whatever. (It would theoretically be weird as hell to the rest of the Hawks and perhaps make them draw some unflattering conclusions, but if they're all murdering every servant in Doldrey lol then I guess it wouldn't necessarily stand out.)

lol sorry, I breezed right over that because I've talked about it before and I have a tendency to forget that no one's read everything I've ever posted.

So basically

a) Guts leaving the Hawks was a Bad Decision in the manga. If you don't agree then this requires an essay behind it, so voila, here's that essay.

b) The anime portrayed it as a Good Decision for Guts, something he needed to do in pursuit of a noble, worthwhile goal.

The anime does this by changing a few key moments. One obvious one I always cite is the scene at Godo's, when Guts does his waterfall log exercise. In the manga this scene occurs in flashback after Wyald knocks him unconscious. Erika tells Guts he's going to die if he continues on the path he's going, and asks why tf he's doing this to himself. Guts basically says he has to get strong enough to defeat Zodd. End scene.

This contextualizes Guts' dream of sword swinging as an irrational need to defeat the guy who beat him. His goal is to fight Zodd again and win. Symbolically, due to the similar imagery they have in Guts' various nightmares and the essential themes of the story, Guts is driven to self-destructively fight monsters because of his csa trauma.

The anime, conversely, turns this moment into the first part of a training montage, dumps the conversation about fighting Zodd, and ends with Guts successfully slicing logs in half, signifying that he's now Strong Enough. It flattens all the nuance and implicit criticism of Guts out and turns it into a typical inspirational shounen moment.

There's also the Guts/Casca sex scene changing from two traumatized and miserable people hooking up ("licking wounds") into a much more cliched and straightforward romantic moment (using Guts' theme as a music cue, cutting out the choking and rape flashbacks and denial ("Don't think about those things right now,") swapping "I don't know if you'll get in the way of what I want to do or the opposite, but I wanna have you a hundred, no a thousand times" with "I don't know what the future will bring, all I know is I want to keep holding you," etc). All this adds up to Guts wanting to leave again with Casca being framed as the happily ever after that got foiled by the Eclipse, rather than part of the bad decision pile up that caused the Eclipse.

Cutting out the night after Guts leaves is another big one, removing Guts reflecting on whether he's making the right decision or whether he's throwing away a home and family based on a meaningless ideal that he can't even fulfill because it's a contradiction ("In the first place I got this idea in my head from hearing Griffith's words. If I hadn't... so can I say I've set out by my own will?") Spoiler alert, it's the second one. This theme is reinforced during the Lost Children Arc, so while it's not the anime's fault it cuts off abruptly, losing most of the Black Swordsman stuff also doesn't help.

The loss of the Wyald sequence in general cuts out so much implicative Guts character stuff - the irrationally driven to fight monsters due to trauma thing I mentioned earlier, but also Casca crying about it indicating that she would not be supportive of his goal if they did go off together, the self-destructiveness of Guts' monster hunting, and the parallels between Guts and Wyald (ie the other Hawks wondering if Guts is human, Wyald's forces being called the Black Dogs).

Even little tiny things like Guts telling Casca to stay back in the torture chamber, phrased as though he wants to spare her the sight of Griffith, rather than like he's irrationally guarding Griffith from anyone's approach, as is the manga vibe:

I don't think these changes are exactly intentional. I think they're mainly for pacing/content reasons - Guts stay at Godo's needed to be fleshed out because now it's half an episode, Guts' rape trauma is cut out so the Guts/Casca scene becomes less complicated, Skull Knight got cut so no long dark night of regretful contemplation, the Wyald sequence is a nightmare of pacing that had to be cut lol, etc. But they all add up to a Guts who is less flawed, less driven by trauma, and more driven by a noble, shounen-esque goal to be the best. It simplifies the story a lot imo, and downplays a lot of what makes Guts' narrative interesting to me.

Interesting to hear your opinion. If anything I don’t want to set someone against this author

Sorry for the late response, it took me a while to watch because I haven't had the attention span recently.

I'm unlikely to watch any more, just because an amateur unofficial anime adaption of Berserk doesn't really interest me personally, but I was curious enough to check out this episode and I thought that for what it was it was pretty well done. There were some clever creative choices, like Guts' nightmare, and the dark silhouette shot of Guts as he slices zombie!Collette in half, eg. I also thought it was cool that they tried to adhere to the 97 anime style, with the occasional painted frames eg.

Speaking for myself, I dislike a few of the changes and adaption choices they made around Guts' narrative, which imo add up to making his dream journey seem more noble than misguided.

I also think that the character designs for Guts and Griffith leave something to be desired lol, Guts looks a little too scowly and brooding for the Golden Age imo, and Griffith isn't pretty enough. But that's mild, and some of the other character designs are the best imo, like Casca's.

Other people might dislike the older animation style, though I personally love it so I'd never consider that a disadvantage of the anime.

It's a lot less sexually explicit, which could either be a good thing or a bad thing. One negative imo is that Guts' csa trauma is left in very vague implication, but on the plus side there's less het sex and Eclipse rape, so you win some you lose some.

OH and big one: not enough Black Swordsman arc! Like I get why they made that choice, honestly I don't think starting with 6+ episodes of Black Swordsman Guts would've worked lol, pacing-wise, but man. I'd still kill to see them animated in the same style, at least for vidding purposes.

Idk though, overall I think the 90s anime is a solid adaptation that I'd pretty happily recommend to people with only a few caveats.

I'm afraid I haven't watched the 2016/17 adaption so I can't really say whether it's the most accurate, at least script-wise. Though to me it automatically loses some accuracy points for whitewashing Casca in the Conviction arc, even if that's visual rather than script.

Also I wouldn't say the 97 anime is essentially fanfiction, a lot of it is panel-to-panel accurate. It takes some liberties with filler, and makes a few subtle changes with big fallout in terms of Guts leaving the Hawks imo (ie removing the inherent criticism and portraying it as necessary, which changes the central theme of the story lol), but overall it's pretty accurate imo. Maybe not more accurate than the 2016 anime, again I can't say because I didn't watch it, but still a pretty solid adaption overall, imo.

And as for the ovas, I think the 97 anime adheres closer to the manga, which is why I use it as my footage source for vidding lol, but you can argue that the ovas do better in terms of portraying Berserk's themes (except for utterly flattening Griffith). So I guess that just depends what you value more.

Thanks for the ask!

Immediate thought: Cut Moonbaby. Change the fetus into some kind of fucked up puppy looking thing which just exists to symbolize Guts' own pathetic inner darkness as a more objective counterpoint to the Beast of Darkness (which is what I think the fetus' original role was before Miura went ham with the baby shit). During the Conviction arc it doesn't save Casca a bunch of times, rather Casca is endangered less often and escapes from the occasional danger in ways that don't require magic.

No werebaby plot, if the Casca kidnapping turns out to be vital in some way and not something easily changeable into something else then Griffith shows up to kidnap her for other made up reasons, like, say, he needs someone with the brand of sacrifice to do some kind of magic thing, or something. If the Casca kidnapping plot turns out to be little more than an excuse to get Guts to Falconia then Guts just goes to Falconia to try to fight Griffith once Casca turns out to not be a good distraction.

Oh and of course there's no ambiguity wrt Griffith's feelings - we see inside his head at the Hill of Swords, he's going 'oh shit my heart's fluttering again,' and that's the last we get of NGriff's point of view. I feel like that would make his subsequent placidity with occasional hints of emotion even more fun.

I'd adapt the Black Swordsman arc very faithfully otherwise, including opening with the demon sex scene because I don't care, I think it's a fantastic opener, it would set that Verhoeven-esque tone I love perfectly. Guts blows her head off with a quip, cut to credits, cut back to Guts' more somber and haunted glance back at the corpse as he walks away, boom, perfect Berserk opening.

Also with the start of the Millenium Falcon arc I'd reframe Farnese as the point of view character and put Guts at a bit more of a mysterious distance, to mimic how his followers see him, and also to kind of underline his emotional ambiguity. I think canonically he's repressing his complicated feelings, and I think making his feelings kind of unknown but hinting that he's not taking Casca to Elfhelm solely for love would convey that complicated feelings vibe more overtly. Plus Griffith parallels. Make the last time we're in Guts' head for a whole arc like, the scene where he assaults Casca (which I would keep, if we're keeping the Eclipse rape) and we'd leave him on a very dark note and also suggest that he may have a strong emotional reaction to his own actions there, without showing exactly what that reaction is beyond hiring a babysitter lol. It would help fix the impression in canon that Guts just doesn't even have much of a reaction to it.

Oh and if we're centering Farnese more then I think she should have a longer arc of reconciling her religious black and white thinking with her new perspective, rather than a single fucking montage lol. This should be a process throughout the whole Millenium Falcon arc, so I guess I'd add some scenes where she still acts like a spoiled brat, maybe it takes her longer to treat Casca with decency and she has a revelation about protecting her that changes her attitude, still treating Serpico like a servant in an obnoxious way, either denying responsibility or being overly consumed by catholic-y guilt at points, etc. The whole point should be watching her slowly grow, not 180ing her personality.

Also Isidro goes home after the troll shit. Old Village Dude shows him the error of his ways. And consequently Puck is fun again.

Anyway yeah I think that's it. This was fun, ty!

lol yeah it really feels like most of fandom read a version full of missing pages. I guess tbf with this one specifically I do think the misunderstanding partly stems from the anime which was a little less clear on the point of Guts leaving - he still had his speech about wanting to stand beside Griffith by achieving something of his own, but Guts seems more bitter and less awed and admiring there imo, and his vibes tend to be surlier in general so I can kind of see why people get the impression that he's unhappy with the Hawks if they're more familiar with the anime.