They've already been drawing "outside the lines" as it is, though.
I know what you'll say: not enough. But I'd rather not see this project turn into more of a field for experiments than it already is.
And you're arguing to make it even harder!
More seriously, while I'm waiting until the chapter is over to really have that discussion, I think it comes down to very simple things. Guts can't hit Griffith, Casca gets abducted, a black ooze rises and the island crumbles, the elves disappear. That kind of stuff and not much more.
Where I and you and
@Griffith disagree is that the format chosen can be a good conveyance of Miura's intent while being a bad manga. My position is that this is impossible because the method chosen, that of a narrative manga, condemned it to always be an adaptation of Miura's remembered ideas, ergo a form of fanfiction. If we had gotten the art book + notes that I think we'd all much prefer, then I'd agree entirely, but in this case the delivery is also part of the story told and if the delivery is poor, as it has been up to now, so is our understanding of the plot beats.
Going back to what we talked about re: Guts, having a manga but not trying to include the connective tissue where Miura would is also an adaptational choice. Guts saying nothing isn't negative space, it's, due to the format, an absence of thought that Miura would have included. Suppose Mori knows that Guts would've thought in the general sense about Casca, but not what, so he chooses to include nothing and the artists consequently draw nothing. That Guts would've thought of Casca is thus excluded. For a bigger example and one we can see the results of, let's go for the Elfheim cast. Jury's still out if they all unceremoniously vanish having done nothing in the continuation, but we can see very clearly from the episodes Miura did do that this is a robust set of characters he put a lot of thought into and from previous chapters that even incidental characters, like Nina and Joachim, have their own mini-stories with a beginning and end.
For example, to not include Volvaba or Morda at all because the sum of his discussions with Miura on them were only, let's say, 'the elves in general disappear at the end of the arc' is true to the extreme broad strokes of what he is told, but is not true to Miura's sort of storytelling or the seeds he planted. There is no payoff, emotional or otherwise. The choice not to embellish or include where we, let alone he, can infer Miura would have, becomes an adaptational choice that leaves us worse in trying to understand what he would have done, not better. Choosing to condense rather than expand is also an adaptational choice, and this is a work of adaptation. For a comparable example where the decision to excise instead of embellish has this effect, see the result of cutting the Young Griff story from the Song of Ice and Fire adaptation.
Well, I don't think they're going to change course in any case (so we're essentially wasting our time here
),
but I do still have a tiny little bit of hope that maybe they'll abbreviate things more once the Elf island chapter is over. I know, I know, it's wishful thinking... Still, as far as I'm concerned, the more concise they make it, the better.
I really hope you're right. Sadly, nothing we say will change anything, all we really can discuss what we get and what we could've gotten.