what are the things you like and dislike about the ’97 anime and the films?

ty for asking, i’m just gonna write a few long lists lol

97 anime likes:

the animation, including the like, yk the more detailed stills they pan over in place of action or to punctuate important moments, i love it
the gorgeous backgrounds
most of the colour choices. red eclipse, femto’s blue eyes, casca’s skintone, griffith’s mauve clothes, etc.
how close it is to the manga. like, it’s a solid adaption just by virtue of making very few changes.
so like, most of it really, because i like the manga
special mention to the entire lead up to the eclipse from griffith’s reality break to the sacrifice tho, because i think that was all pretty damn perfect. it’s the most important scene and they did it right.
actually also shout out to casca’s flashback to griffith and the dead kid, gennon, the river scene, all that. another difficult v emotional sequence that they nailed imo.
griffith thinking about how he “loves” guts during the monologue
skipped most of the griffith/charlotte sex scene iirc which i approve of
the glimpse of black swordsman guts in ep 1. it’s not perfect but it’s way better than the ovas starting w/ 15 yr old guts
the opening and closing themes. fucking love both songs ngl
also the opening monologue. never get tired of hearing it
the score
the portrayal of griffith was honestly pretty solid imo. i have very few issues there. and lbr that’s important lol

97 anime dislikes:

not a big fan of griffith or guts’ character designs.
just about everything that isn’t identical to the manga is a change for the worse
turned griffith’s scratch marks into that giant unexplained scar
adding extra scenes where casca is secretly impressed with guts’ skills in battle in an attempt to build up their relationship better, which instead just made casca look unfair for still being a dick to him for 3 years and made guts stupidly gary stu-ish
obviously the straightforwardly romantic portrayal of guts and casca’s relationship
through several seemingly minor changes (eg, skipping guts’ night of self-doubt after he leaves, giving guts’ stay with godo its own half-episode, making guts inviting casca along super romantic rather than the incredibly casual and assholish way he does it in the manga, etc) it makes Guts’ dream seem legitimately noble and worthwhile, with none of the like… implicit critique the manga has. like honestly it completely fucks up what i consider one of the central themes of the story lol
the pre eclipse stuff also fails to sell guts’ sense of regret – through things like playing guts’ theme while judeau is telling guts to leave, not repeating guts’ statement of regret after casca tells him to leave again, the tone remains consistently in favour of guts’ dream. wrong and bad.
like it really reads like the suggested tragedy is that guts doesn’t get the chance to ditch griffith with judeau and take off with casca and the raiders lol
also fucks it up by never directly mentioning guts’ csa trauma
also fucks it up by losing guts’ self-destructive single-minded urge to fight monsters that we saw thru the wyald stuff. i’m not gonna say that losing wyald was a bad decision, but they should’ve at least moved erika suggesting that guts just wants to fight zodd again to the fucking waterfall scene in question, which they portrayed completely sans zodd discussion, completely sans implication of the self-destructiveness of guts’ dream
like in the manga he nearly gets killed by the falling logs and just laughs it off like a dumbass while erika is concerned and suggests that guts is driven by something irrational and not actually a ~noble~ dream, ie, wanting to fight zodd again (ie, going deeper, his csa trauma), while in the anime we get a 2nd scene where he successfully slices through the logs as a super basic symbol of growth and a narrative pat on guts’ back that shouldn’t be there!
honestly just fucking everything about the portrayal of guts’ dream lol it just takes it at face value in a way the manga consistently never did and always undermined and critiqued, and it bugs the hell out of me.
guts is just drawn in a way that makes him look angry way too often and he often feels ooc to me bc of it. like he lacks a lot of the warmth he has in the manga imo
showing that griffith is awake when guts says “i’ll stay too” even tho in the manga those words are placed over a panel of him asleep for a reason like, ffs
lots of other random nitpicky details that only i give a fuck about because my opinions and feelings about the story are too strong lol. like not showing griffith’s face when he asks if guts thinks he’s cruel
oh huge one: moving the scene where the torturer rips off griffith’s behelit from about a day after he was imprisoned to right before his rescue. completely trivializes griffith’s torture because it still looks like he’s been in there for a day at most
why on earth did it end where it ended????????????? who’s bright idea was that? the perfect ending is skull knight riding tf out with guts and casca and femto not killing them, but then they also cut out skull knight’s first appearance so idfk man.
oh some downplaying of griffguts, like i can’t complain too much about this because it was still p homoerotic, but things like omitting guts assuming griffith wants to fuck him right before their first duel. boo.

ultimately at the end of the day as much as i do genuinely like the anime, it’s not telling quite the same story the manga was – the story it’s telling is more boring and basic. but because it sticks so close to the manga the good story still shines through? it just means there’s inconsistent tone choices and stuff, like the aforementioned grievances.

it’s like, they kept casca’s diatribe at guts line for line while she’s screaming that griffith needed him and a man can’t live on dreams alone, but they don’t extend that train of thought to guts going off to pursue his dream, while the manga does.

anyway despite that giant list of dislikes i still think the anime is pretty fantastic overall. i just also like, blame it for a lot of wrong fandom takes lol.

movie likes:

character designs! honestly imo everyone looked pretty great.
they played up the homoeroticism and i appreciate that
illustrating griffith being torn between guts and his dream through that lovely moment when he catches guts when he nearly falls off the stairs right before he catches charlotte, and in a more romantically suggestive way
the whole scene where griffith shows up at charlotte’s window thoroughly improved on the manga, so hats off there. loved how completely out of it he was to the point where he barely realized where he was and immediately turned to leave when charlotte was like ‘woah dude wtf,’ love that charlotte was the one to ask him to stay and then physically move his hand back to her tit, love how emphatically griffith was thinking about guts during that sex scene, etc. like it’s still not perfect, but it is a vast improvement.
griffith showing up in person after the hundred man fight was a nice touch
it was cool that they got a lot of the same english vas from the anime dub back, and they all did a gr8 job. like it’s a pretty good dub imo.
i liked that they moved ‘the crystalization of your last tear shed’ to after guts’ post-eclipse breakdown
compared to the anime at least gtsca was more low-key and chill rather than dramatically romantic. still don’t want it there, and still not as… unromantic as the manga, but i’ll take what i can get
the animation during griffith’s transformation into femto, yk that whole sequence, was cool
slan’s english voice was super sexy
ummmmm i feel like they conveyed the whole dreams are stupid theme, and guts’ decision to leave being a mistake, better than the anime? like i got the sense that the ova ppl recognized that was a theme, at least. i’d have to watch them again to really be sure of that tho

movie dislikes:

GRIFFITH’S. NARRATIVE.
like holy fuck they completely destroyed his character lmao
i cannot believe
no backstory! no tombstone of flame! no ‘do you think i’m cruel?’ THAT WAS THE REASON HE MADE THE SACRIFICE FFS HOW DO YOU SKIP IT????
no dead kid angst, gennon only in vague implication, no self harm – oh no wait we saw self inflicted scratches, they were just completely contextless and meaningless to the point where we could assume charlotte’s nails made them
no torture chamber monologue
no guts monologue in the tavern either for that matter
no rooftop scene
again barely the implication of guts’ childhood trauma, both the sexual abuse and the general parental abuse. one vague flashbacky nightmare doesn’t cut it, it’s the cornerstone of the story
like i get it, it’s a movie trilogy, you have to cut some things, but goddamn, cut out gtsca. trim the hundred man fight. add 20 minutes to the first ova and take the insanely long rape scene out of the third. trim down the whole eclipse sequence. don’t cut out like… the story. like they cut out SO MANY emotionally relevant scenes and kept so many much less relevant scenes, idek.
and like let’s be real here, they turned griffith from an immensely interesting and complex character into a 1 dimensional dude who is torn between a vaguely evil ambition and being in vaguely evil love with guts, just for the sake of streamlining the least interesting aspects of the story
they don’t even try to pretend otherwise lol, look at his fucking hilarious evil smile here

also while i’m looking at it, in general i think they failed at the whole eclipse sequence. looks, lighting, colour, build up of tension… there are a few minor improvements here and there (eg casca’s point of view shot of femto, femto telekinesising guts back a la the black swordsman arc which emphasizes his failure to act when he escapes), but overall it doesn’t work for me at all. like imo the anime has the exact same highs and lows as the manga, but while the ova avoids some lows it never reaches those highs.
they also had griffith overhear guts saying he wants to stay. i really don’t get why this happened twice lol, like… ok his face is kind of shadowed here but he’s still very clearly asleep? this is an important detail, guts’ interrupted words are even on that very panel, so why would you go out of your way to show that he’s awake and listening at that point.

the pacing sucked. 3rd movie was too long, 1st was too short, and they skipped waaaaaay too many significant scenes that should’ve been there as emotional beats
honestly the movies are pretty, they’re nicely fanservicey in ways, they capture some good subtleties and nuances at times, but they’re a husk of the story
oh did i mention the music during the eclipse rape? incredible.

also i am actually generally positive about the movies too despite what it seems like here lmao. i’ve watched them all like, 3 or more times and i find them v enjoyable.

i just have a way easier time listing nitpicky flaws than positives honestly. the flaws stand out to me, the virtues pass me by because i’m just enjoying them and not dwelling on them

and lbr here at the end of the day no adaption will ever really satisfy me unless i somehow find several million dollars lying around and make my own lol. and that would probably be a flop anyway.

I’m not asking you because I disagree with you rather you have a good point that fans from both sides(you know which “sides” I’m talking about) belive it to be true. Just what is it about the Berserk manga that makes it necessarily “unadaptable”? Is it the subtext that producers consistently dodge? Is it the themes that didn’t age well with the times(like rape every goddamn panel). Or is it something else?

Hm I’m not sure what post you’re referring to, but I do think that like… idk if Berserk is entirely unadaptable (did I say that somewhere? genuine q because I very well may have but I don’t remember lol), but each adaption definitely does a good job of fucking up certain aspects, and any adaption I’d like is probably an adaption most fans would hate lol, I think it would be impossible to please everyone.

Also like, a straight adaption is only going to be as good as the source, so you’d be stuck with pretty immense flaws – like the Eclipse rape is a major one. You can maybe improve it slightly

(eg I think the 3rd ova added a nice touch when they gave Casca a perspective shot of Femto that called back to her flashback of being sexually assaulted by the nobleman. It was a good way of grounding the audience in Casca’s point of view for a moment instead of purely objectifying her and illustrating what the assault means for Casca in a way the manga entirely failed to do. Then of course the ova immediately ruined that by making the scene super long, objectifying Casca anyway, and adding that ridiculous soundtrack, but welp)

but ultimately you’re still stuck with the worst example of fridging a female character for the sake of manpain I’ve ever seen. You can’t get rid of that fridging either because like half of Berserk is about Guts rescuing Casca and taking her to Elfhelm. Casca being a non-entity is fundamental to the plot.

But if you do start really changing the story you’re going to piss fans off.

Also yeah I think that like… the subtext makes adapting the story extra difficult, and I don’t just mean the gay subtext (to be fair the ovas embraced it to an extent) though that’s def part of it, but the fact that Berserk is actually a pretty subtle story in a lot of ways. Like the reason I was able to write 15k words basically just explaining my understanding of Griffith’s narrative lol is because 90% of his story is actually subtext, and again not just gay subtext. The fact that he’s driven by guilt is technically subtext, the reason he becomes emotionally dependent on Guts is subtext, the reason he’s obsessed with his dream is subtext, how he wants to change the world is subtext, the reason he has a breakdown when Guts leaves is subtext, his self-loathing is subtext, the reason he makes the sacrifice is subtext, etc etc.

It makes for a very engaging and rich story and it’s the reason I’ve had so much fun picking it apart for ages, but it also means there are going to be differing interpretations of it, even when the subtext is really really obvious. Like it’s very clear to me that the people who adapted the 97 anime didn’t really understand some of the story lol, even while they were adapting it nearly shot for shot most of the time, and you can see that lack of understanding in mistakes like turning Griffith’s scratch marks into a giant scar in the scene after he sleeps with Charlotte. They went with what the image looks like at first glance in the manga without giving any thought to whether it actually makes sense or means anything.

so differing interpretations of the story are def going to mean that an adaption can’t please everyone because like… even if you’re as true to the source material as humanly possible, you have to make choices when you’re filming it, from directing voice actors to music cues to how long to linger on a shot to the tone evoked by a colour palette, to just interpreting what we’re seeing in a panel, etc. Your own understanding of the source is always going to shine through.

another good example is the way the anime adds guts’ theme to the scene where he asks casca to leave with him. the manga’s tone was surprisingly casual and bordered on ominous with the way it immediately transitioned to snake man and the behelit making their ways to the scene of the eclipse. but the anime’s music choice turns it into a signficant moment of character growth and uncomplicated romance. But then if I adapted it and added the underlying sense of ominousness and highlighted Guts’ non-committal phrasing and his general attitude as negative, that would frustrate a lot of fans.

Anyway all that said, I don’t think it’s unadaptable because ngl I can envision an adaption I’d personally love, but it’s definitely impossible to make an adaption that every fan would agree is great, probably moreso for Berserk than most stories. The 97 anime comes closest, but even the acclaim it gets is hardly universal.

just finished the movies and bc i love your meta i just wanna say icb they made the waterfall scene to just be guts and casca calmly have sex. the movies only really work to prove how if you leave the entire character development and depth of guts out the series itself changes significantly

thank you! and yeah ikwym, it makes me wonder what people who got into the movies first take away from them characterization-wise.

like obviously griffith is completely different lol, transformed into a two dimensional conniving ambitious dude who happens to be in love with Guts. But also like you mention, how does guts and casca’s relationship come across? I feel like it’d be even more boring, like i consider guts’ flashback to be like the lone highlight of their interactions together, and without that it’s just… so rote. Same w/ the anime on that point actually.

idk i think the ovas are a pretty decent hook to get people into the story, but anyone who stops there instead of reading the manga is seriously missing out.

do 97 anime guts comes off as less interesting to you? idk if its cuz of cutting his childhood trauma or anime not being good about expressions lol. maybe im being too harsh about the anime but anime guts is maybe closer to the dudebro interpretation.

yeah i feel this tbh. I haven’t watched the anime in its entirety for years but just from checking out a few scenes and episodes here and there i def get this impression, and I think it’s largely because of the character design/animation? like yeah cutting his rape trauma prob doesn’t help but I’m aware of that so it doesn’t affect my take on the character, but i’m still way less fond of anime guts than manga guts.

idk he just comes across as angrier, even when he has no real reason to be during the golden age, yk the happiest time of his life. his default expressions strike me as kind of dour and he doesn’t have that warmth i get in the manga ime.

like just to illustrate this w/ a minor example i picked at random (i was actually gonna look at the rooftop scene from the scene after but i didn’t actually mind the vibe guts gave off there):

doesn’t really have the same vibe, yk?

and i mean yeah you can cherry pick examples, like i mentioned there are scenes in the anime that i think they depicted pretty well, but this does seem to be a recurring problem i have w/ guts in particular, as far as I’ve seen.

i’ve pointed this one out b4 but

idk maybe it’s the angle of the eyebrows more than anything lol. he always just looks low key pissed off.

what is your favorite berserk adaptation?

mmm I’d have to go with the 97 anime. I appreciate the ovas and how in one or two ways they actually manage to improve on the source material (i’m thinking griffith going to charlotte after guts leaves) and how despite making terrible adaptation choices they do manage to largely emphasize what i like about the story (ie griffguts) and indicate that despite yk, cutting most of griffith’s character, they do understand him to an extent (eg subtly showing that he’s bullshitting when he says he feels nothing towards gennon by having him back his horse away when gennon touches him).

the anime is different in that I don’t think the creators really like what I like about the manga or have the same understanding of it as me, but it’s also a much more faithful adaptation overall, so by virtue of that it’s still better. everything it changes from the manga is for the worse, but it doesn’t change all that much, and it gets some key moments very right in contrast to the ovas (eg the moment griffith chooses to sacrifice the hawks. the anime did it perfectly by copying the manga exactly, while the ovas made griffith look like a sinister scheming villain lol).

plus in the dub at least (i still haven’t rewatched the sub to that point) griffith lists “love” as one of the feelings he has towards guts that he’s been obsessing over in the torture chamber, and i can’t deny i fuckin love that.

also yk it includes the naked waterfight and griffith’s backstory and motivation.

like i have a lot of nitpicky beefs with the anime and I’d never consider it a legit alternative to the manga lol, but it’s still a pretty good adaptation.

bthump:

yk the anime is a good guide to how to copy really gay scenes shot for shot and suck the homoeroticism right out of them

more examples bc i’m bored and bc the contrast also rly illustrates how well the manga sells it

phydia63
replied to your post

“phydia63
replied to your post “yk the anime is a good guide to how…”

And not to mention those moments that were cut were supposed to humanize Griffith and make him more relatable and fun. Anime and films made him look just cruel and cunning.

yeahhhh

tbh i feel like there are a lot of rly minor, seemingly insignificant tweaks that end up making the story feel much flatter overall. In the anime I mean, the movies just full on cut most of Griffith’s character out lol.

But like, little things like how he looks angry rather than regretful when Guts is about to kill the hired goons in tombstone of flame, or how we don’t see his face on “do you think I’m cruel?” or losing the moment where Guts remembers him asking him not to tell the Hawks about the assassinations, etc, all add up to less depth and less understanding and sympathy.

Also Guts tends to look way more dour imo, like his default expression is much pissier in the anime than the manga, which makes him seem low-key resentful constantly and kills a lot of the chemistry between Griffith and Guts in significant scenes. Also a bunch of his super fond wistful thinking-about-Griffith smiles are gone lol. I’m sure that helps contribute to the idea that anything between them is one-sided.

And then there are the filler scenes added just so Guts can do something useful and Casca can act like a tsundere, playing up Guts and Casca in a rly cliched way.

Also no flashback to Guts during sex with Charlotte, and his scratch marks are interpreted as a giant scar which doesn’t make any sense – there’s no reason for him to be clutching a mysterious scar and crying, but we’ve seen him self harm before so like, whoever made that call fucked up.

Ooh the torture – the scene that happens after Griffith has spent about one day in the dungeon in the manga instead happens right before Guts returns which really makes his suffering in the anime seem diminished in comparison.

Also Guts’ sparks speech to Casca is turned into half an episode of him chilling with Godo, which means that his dream of fighting people and swinging his sword forever is treated as completely noble and manly by the narrative, because we don’t get Casca’s immediate “you sound like a fucking asshole” counterpoint. Casca’s angry reaction is instead solely a reaction to Guts saying he’s leaving again, not to his whole “dream,” which also makes her look worse.

Idk this turned into a list bc I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently lol. The anime does a lot of things rly well too, but idk I definitely feel like I interpret the story pretty differently to whoever made it.

kissing-monsters:

bthump:

anime dub adventures continued

“Stay away from me… if you touch me now… if you so much as touch my shoulder… I’ll never be able to… you and I will never be…”

you know how much i love that the moment of despair that opens the behelit is the moment guts touches him but man, preceeding it with “you and I will never be…” is one hell of a choice

like the manga translation of “I’ll never… I’ll never…!” is functionally meaningless as far as I can tell. Maybe I’ll never forgive you? But it’s not the point, the point is Guts’ touch sending Griffith into despair. Griffith’s words just draw attention to it. Despair + touch.

“You and I will never be…” on the other hand, like, that’s nothing but a statement on Griffith’s abject horror of being touched in that moment by a man he can’t have, right? How else can I interpret that? Add “I’ll never be able to” and all I’m getting is something along the lines of, “I’ll never be able to let you go but I’ll never have you either.”

anyway how do ppl interpret Griffith’s horror at being touched by Guts and subsequent despair, regardless of specifics of translation? I’ve always kind of wondered but I don’t think I’ve seen any meta or interpretations or anything about it at all.

I didn’t know the manga version was so different, that’s interesting. Maybe the reason the dub extrapolated to “I’ll never be able to…” is close to what the manga intended. “I’ll never be able to… have you again,” maybe?

I think you’re bang on with never be able to let you go/have you either, because that’s pretty clearly what happens. all of griffith’s despair is essentially that at that point, he can never keep guts and he wants to get away from everything he’s ruined but at the same time he’s clearly still got the same old horror of guts leaving/not being able to hold/own him anymore

I guess it also has a question of how much he instinctively knew what the behelit would do or not?

@chaoticgaygriffith said:

i can’t remember the original japanese phrasing so just based on the
manga translation i interpreted it as “i’ll never get over you” though
fully knowing that i’ll probably NEVER get to find out what he actually
meant. i mean, we can intuit the basic meaning, but still. god damn it
miura

Yeah regardless of how the sentence might’ve technically ended, I think the meaning of “I’ll never be able to get over you/let you go/that kinda sentiment” makes the most sense and is definitely my favourite interpretation lol.

And yeah since in that moment he believed Guts wanted to leave again, honestly I feel like a visceral emotional understanding of Griffith’s despair at being touched by him (which tbh is rare for me in fiction lol). Like as a response to these circumstances – he’s so consumed by love for this dude that he spent a year thinking about him while being tortured to stay sane, but he thinks this dude is going to leave him, and then Guts’ physical touch as like the final proof of how vulnerable Griffith is to this love and how he can be destroyed by it – the behelit screaming representing Griffith’s despair as Guts touches him just feels so damn right.

Also I tend to think Griffith doesn’t know anything about how the behelit functions, but imo it still works super well narratively with Griffith’s resulting decision to basically cut that love out of him by sacrificing Guts.

lol sorry I’m just so into this scene rn I had to go on another spiel about it.

kissing-monsters
replied to your post “the berserk episode synopses on wikipedia are killing me cut for petty…”

It’s… so confusing though, a close friend of mine watched the series based partially on my rec and him wanting to see it for ages and he misunderstood… basically… everything??? HOW DOES BERSERK FANDOM OUTSIDE TUMBLR FUNCTION???

honestly same, I really don’t get it. Like I can see general homophobia making ppl desperately want to downplay the gay vibes leading to as little emphasis on Guts and Griffith’s relationship, and especially Guts’ (extremely and wholly positive) feelings for Griffith as possible. Like describing Guts’ decision to leave the Hawks as “he does not want to be caught up in Griffith’s dream anymore” is technically accurate, and yet completely downplays the fact that the reason he doesn’t want to be caught up in Griffith’s dream is because Griffith is “dazzling” and he wants Griffith to “look at [him]” and he wants to feel like his equal and be regarded as a True Friend. In the terrible episode description it’s instead framed like Guts is pissed off about having to assassinate people lol.

And idk I think it might also be partially this weird desperate need to have a Hero and a Villain and have Guts prevail over the villain and ride off into the sunset with the Rescued Love Interest, because a lot of people are frankly boring and like boring stories and can’t conceive of good stories outside those basic parameters. So they twist the narrative in their head until it fits that shape, despite Guts and Casca not having anything like a traditional true love romance and Miura saying he only had Casca survive the Eclipse to keep Guts focused on revenge, despite Griffith not being a pure evil villain even after the Eclipse and certainly not before (like Miura’s directly talked about NGriff’s moral ambiguity and the way he’s not a traditional evil antagonist), despite the clearly complicated emotions that still exist between Guts and Griffith/Femto/NGriff, etc.

At my most generous I think part of the reason people choose to believe Griffith was evil all along is because Femto’s defining act is rape and people are uncomfortable seeing any good in a character who eventually becomes a rapist, tho personally the fact that he magically transforms into a demon first kind of mitigates that for me lol. (And, and I’ve ranted about this before but still, it’s also a double standard when so many of the same people go out of their way to excuse Guts when he sexually assaults Casca.)

But still idk it’s weird. Like, eg there’s so much you have to ignore to believe that Guts leaving the Hawks was fine and dandy and a good choice and Griffith was just a dick who overreacted. Pages and pages of Guts fretting about it, Casca yelling it at him, Guts regretting leaving, Guts realizing he was wrong in thinking Griffith looked down on him, Guts comparing abandoning Casca to abandoning Griffith multiple times, Guts determined not to make the same mistake again, etc etc. You can support Guts’ choice and blame Griffith all you want, but the narrative clearly does not, and it’s honestly baffling how ppl can ignore that when it’s not only discussed many times in direct words, but the whole story revolves around the fact that Guts made a mistake when he left.

Like what do you think the Golden Age is about if it’s not about a stupid misunderstanding between 2 dudes who both rly like each other and fail to realize their feelings are reciprocated and overreact and make dumb decisions because of that misunderstanding? I don’t understand what most Berserk fans see, it genuinely feels like we’re reading 2 different stories lol.