My desire for adaptations to be faithful to their source material doesn't mean that the art has to be recreated panel for panel. It's more important to me that the portrayal of the story and the characters -- what they say, how they act, who is in which scene -- remains consistent with the manga, and thus, leaves the continuity intact. Readers who know Berserk can spot an inconsistency of that nature a mile away, and it's usually pretty jarring.
However, I've always believed that the visuals should be adapted to suit the medium. Artists make decisions about how they portray something with the medium in mind. Comic/manga art is meant to be viewed on a page, in frozen panels, with some action happening between each panel, and some action informed by multiple panels. And to raise a specific point of folly about directly adapting comic art to a TV: comic art rarely accommodates a 16:9 dimension.
Animation provides a HUGE range of possibilities, and to me it's simply lazy or even cowardly to portray scenes JUST like they are in a comic/manga. I don't necessarily care which angle they draw Guts slaughtering trolls from. Make it look good. I don't care if they have to cut to different character reactions after a statement if such a reaction shot didn't exist in the manga. Maybe a group shot in one scene would be more accommodating to the screen dimensions instead of a close-up shot? If it makes sense to take those kinds of liberties in the adaptation -- why not? Again, make it work for the screen! The newest adaptation doesn't do that, though it's admittedly among the smallest sins it commits.
