I just stumbled upon a very interesting article concerning Medieval knights in manga and anime.

MadassAlex

Clicky.

I have yet to read it, but it promises to be very interesting. Obviously, most Japanese creatives can be expected to have something of a theme park approach to this kind of thing, but I've been looking for a good analysis for some time. There have to be some common factors within the perception of that era, since there are a variety of commonalities that show up in Japanese games, manga and anime that deal with it. I've had a few thoughts, but this article appears to be written with academic requirements in mind. It's on a bit of a different level to some random musings and observations.

Shichibukai

That is pretty amazing. It makes alot of sense referring to anime/manga's use of Christian symbolism in a light of refreshing open-minded secular creativity. I don't think that assessment included Berserk, though. I wonder what they would make of Guts.

MadassAlex

Guts doesn't really apply. The narrative knightly archetype is that of a gentleman warrior. While this is obviously violated for both the sake of historical accuracy and diversity in many works, knightly protagonists continue to follow that pattern. Guts is certainly quite the warrior and his moments of moral ambiguity are short-lived, pointed out and reflected upon, cementing him as a good guy, but he's not a knight in terms of narrative character heritage. A fictional protagonist knight's character arc is almost always about moral virtue and spiritual attainment, and Guts is primarily a good guy because he doesn't do evil things in a crapsack world moreso than because he goes out of his way in aspiration to a higher moral cause.