Evil Genius

In the very beginning of the anime in the tavern spoken dialogue is added that is non-existent in the Manga. I didn't notice it until repeated viewings but the reason it is so important because the line is not only completely inaccurate with the Berserk timeline but it contradicts the story established in the Manga so far.

The lines are:


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Customer: Bartender, do you have any good news?

Bartender: No good news at all.

Customer: Still nothing? Things aren't looking well, even in Midland's castle town. The times have been dark ever since Griffith became king.

Bartender: B-Be careful what you say! Someone might be listening.

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Problem 1: This tavern meeting takes place pretty much right after Gutts and Casca are rescued from the Eclipse. Gutts has just acquired the DragonSlayer and undergone his one man quest for revenge while Rickert looks after Casca while he is away. At this point in the timeline Griffith HAS NOT even been resurrected. If my memory serves me right no one doesn't even know that he was captured and tortured.

Problem 2: Also when Griffith is finally brought back he is worshipped as a savior not a tyrant. Due to his godly charisma people even overlook the fact that he has demons and monsters in his employ.

Any thoughts on how this unnecessary and forgettable conversation made it to the final cut? Was it Kentaro Miura's idea or someone else? Did Miura have a memory gap or just wasn't around to edit out someones contradicting ad-lib?

Discuss

It's a bit old in the news.

DrPepperPro wrote:It's a bit old in the news.

Quoted for truth. Yep, there are lots of differences between the anime and the manga, even weird stuff like this, which many of us did in fact notice and have even discussed before. Who knows why they decided to do it that way, but I'm pretty sure that Miura gave his consent. Unfortunately the anime was never meant to be exactly like the manga. I'd love to see a remake made to the tee, full on explicit content with every plot detail. Though sadly the day will probably never come.

They knew they weren't going to make it past the Eclipse, so the inconsistency wouldn't matter, and it was a cheap, easy way to foreshadow some of what was coming. Simple as that.

hbi2k wrote:They knew they weren't going to make it past the Eclipse, so the inconsistency wouldn't matter, and it was a cheap, easy way to foreshadow some of what was coming. Simple as that.

Yeah, they knew they were only going to make the one season, so they changed a number of things to "fit" better, of which this was one.

It was also to catch people's interest, because by episode 2 Griffith was introduced in the story. I did recall the bartender mentioning his name in episode 1, so I wanted to see how he would screw Guts over. It seems it was almost quite literal.

You knew shit was going down since the first episode with Griffith, and finding out how was part of the interest as well.

Isn't the biggest issue with that scene that those guys basically said that Griffith was king and because of that life was shit? He's only just married Charlotte now, and that's 13 years after the anime came out. And that doesn't even make him king, just the queen's husband. The anime predicated something really fucking far in the future there with a couple words. And we don't know if that will even happen, we just expect it.

Starnum wrote:Well even then, with the entire script for the anime in mind, it's not that hard to infer the possibility. Throughout the anime, it is clearly his goal to become king, and with the way the anime ends it's not really much of a stretch.

Exactly. It fits with the anime, and helps tie things together without adding in lots of additional elements that won't be relevent to a series that will never leave the Golden Age.