#arguably I think you can still glean the negative side to guts leaving from the anime but it's a lot more subtle and contradictory

[bthump]

I wanted to ask what you mean by this? "It takes some liberties with filler, and makes a few subtle changes with big fallout in terms of Guts leaving the Hawks imo (ie removing the inherent criticism and portraying it as necessary, which changes the central theme of the story lol)" What do you mean the 97 anime removes inherent criticism for Guts leaving the hawks and portrays it as necessary? I don't get what you're saying at all so I'd appreciate an explanation.

lol sorry, I breezed right over that because I've talked about it before and I have a tendency to forget that no one's read everything I've ever posted.

So basically

a) Guts leaving the Hawks was a Bad Decision in the manga. If you don't agree then this requires an essay behind it, so voila, here's that essay.

b) The anime portrayed it as a Good Decision for Guts, something he needed to do in pursuit of a noble, worthwhile goal.

The anime does this by changing a few key moments. One obvious one I always cite is the scene at Godo's, when Guts does his waterfall log exercise. In the manga this scene occurs in flashback after Wyald knocks him unconscious. Erika tells Guts he's going to die if he continues on the path he's going, and asks why tf he's doing this to himself. Guts basically says he has to get strong enough to defeat Zodd. End scene.

This contextualizes Guts' dream of sword swinging as an irrational need to defeat the guy who beat him. His goal is to fight Zodd again and win. Symbolically, due to the similar imagery they have in Guts' various nightmares and the essential themes of the story, Guts is driven to self-destructively fight monsters because of his csa trauma.

The anime, conversely, turns this moment into the first part of a training montage, dumps the conversation about fighting Zodd, and ends with Guts successfully slicing logs in half, signifying that he's now Strong Enough. It flattens all the nuance and implicit criticism of Guts out and turns it into a typical inspirational shounen moment.

There's also the Guts/Casca sex scene changing from two traumatized and miserable people hooking up ("licking wounds") into a much more cliched and straightforward romantic moment (using Guts' theme as a music cue, cutting out the choking and rape flashbacks and denial ("Don't think about those things right now,") swapping "I don't know if you'll get in the way of what I want to do or the opposite, but I wanna have you a hundred, no a thousand times" with "I don't know what the future will bring, all I know is I want to keep holding you," etc). All this adds up to Guts wanting to leave again with Casca being framed as the happily ever after that got foiled by the Eclipse, rather than part of the bad decision pile up that caused the Eclipse.

Cutting out the night after Guts leaves is another big one, removing Guts reflecting on whether he's making the right decision or whether he's throwing away a home and family based on a meaningless ideal that he can't even fulfill because it's a contradiction ("In the first place I got this idea in my head from hearing Griffith's words. If I hadn't... so can I say I've set out by my own will?") Spoiler alert, it's the second one. This theme is reinforced during the Lost Children Arc, so while it's not the anime's fault it cuts off abruptly, losing most of the Black Swordsman stuff also doesn't help.

The loss of the Wyald sequence in general cuts out so much implicative Guts character stuff - the irrationally driven to fight monsters due to trauma thing I mentioned earlier, but also Casca crying about it indicating that she would not be supportive of his goal if they did go off together, the self-destructiveness of Guts' monster hunting, and the parallels between Guts and Wyald (ie the other Hawks wondering if Guts is human, Wyald's forces being called the Black Dogs).

Even little tiny things like Guts telling Casca to stay back in the torture chamber, phrased as though he wants to spare her the sight of Griffith, rather than like he's irrationally guarding Griffith from anyone's approach, as is the manga vibe:

I don't think these changes are exactly intentional. I think they're mainly for pacing/content reasons - Guts stay at Godo's needed to be fleshed out because now it's half an episode, Guts' rape trauma is cut out so the Guts/Casca scene becomes less complicated, Skull Knight got cut so no long dark night of regretful contemplation, the Wyald sequence is a nightmare of pacing that had to be cut lol, etc. But they all add up to a Guts who is less flawed, less driven by trauma, and more driven by a noble, shounen-esque goal to be the best. It simplifies the story a lot imo, and downplays a lot of what makes Guts' narrative interesting to me.

Thanks for asking, hope that makes sense!