#theme: adaption

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I hope you're doing alright!

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.)

And imo if Gennon had a creepy harem of Griffith lookalikes in the manga (who were seemingly there of their own free will rather than slaves) I think Griffith would be disturbed and maybe contemptuous and might even low key want to kill them as a way to like, you know, strike them out and erase his fear, as he describes in chapter 32. But what he'd actually do is ignore them entirely and carry on as if there was nothing weird there at all, because Griffith is not actually into casual murder. Plus again there are other Hawks around lol so there's 0 chance he's killing innocent bystanders in front of them no matter how he feels personally.

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any thoughts on the studio eclypse black swordsman anime that’s supposed to come out next year?

First I've heard about this. I just looked it up and I guess good luck to them, hope they pull it off and don't run into legal issues as a fan project. It'd be awesome if they really could pull off the style and quality of the 90s animation. I'd kill for more Black Swordsman vidding footage lol.

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I wanted to ask what you mean by this? "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)" What do you mean the 97 anime removes inherent criticism for Guts leaving the hawks and portrays it as necessary? I don't get what you're saying at all so I'd appreciate an explanation.

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.

Thanks for asking, hope that makes sense!

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https://youtu.be/mkTZrt7xgrU?si=mg81YcTXkx0uxSQ3

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.

Kudos to everyone who worked on it! It's not really my thing, but it's a neat project.

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What's not to like about Berserk 1997? What are the disadvantages there?

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.

Thanks for asking!

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What's the best adaptation of Berserk? Looking at the content, not the visuals. It's been a while since I watched the 2016 film adaptation and I could be wrong, but isn't this the most accurate film adaptation of the arc? Yes, there is a changed third episode, but the script for this episode was written by Miura. I've heard many times people complain not only about the visuals, but also about the story. They say he's boring, but isn't that because Berserk himself became a little… boring after the Golden Age? Many people praise the plot of the 1997 anime, although it is essentially fan fiction and not an accurate adaptation. They usually say that the 1997 anime comes first, the movies come second, and the 2016 anime comes third. I think it's exactly the opposite (anime 2016-movies-anime 1997) because isn't the 2016 film adaptation the most accurate adaptation of some Berserk arc? Why is the 2016 anime so bad apart from the visuals? I'm interested to hear your opinion <3

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.

Anyway for me accuracy isn't necessarily the most important aspect of an adaption anyway. Even if the 2016 anime was shot-for-shot accurate to the manga, I still wouldn't watch it because it's unpleasant to look at lol. And tbh I like when an adaption brings a new perspective. At least in theory lol, in practice obviously it depends on whether it suits my own interests and takes on the story, but yk - I've already read the manga, if I want something word for word accurate I can just re-read it. Sometimes it's cool to see how a change in medium or a different writer can affect the story.

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If you were in charge of an adaption of the Black Swordsman, Conviction, and so on arcs and you could make whatever additions or cuts you wanted, what stuff would be added or cut?

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!

If you're interested I've written a long answer to a similar question that includes the Golden Age here.

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I'm always so confused when people say Guts left the Hawks because he wanted to be free from Griffith, like did we read the same manga? Miura literally had Guts explain his reason for leaving

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.

But yk, it's still 100% incorrect lol and you'd think one reading of the manga would clear that up, but these fans love to cling to their misunderstandings for some reason.