From the very beginning, Kentaro Miura presented a dark world inspired by the European Middle Ages. Berserk moves precisely in these contexts between castles and fortresses of medieval inspiration and between battlefields and tactics of that time. But exactly What era is Berserker playing in?? Let’s review the elements to identify the period.
Let’s start with the Golden Age, one of Berserk’s narrative arcs which has fairly eloquent elements and allows for fairly accurate identification of the reference period. The Middle Ages are a long time in the history of our world that covers about 1000 years of history from 476 to 1492 or from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. A very long period of time with considerable differences between one phase and another. But one of Berserk’s events involves an ongoing secular war in the Midlands, a clear reference to the Hundred Years War.
The war between the French and the English took place between 1337 and 1452, and this already allows us to narrow down the period to which Berserk refers. The Golden Age therefore refers to the last phase of these years One could say that Berserk was originally ceased in 1450. However, time flies in the manga and other elements are inspired by events and even subsequent events. The siege of the Kushans, a population inspired by Ottomans, Persians, and Indians, appears to follow either the siege of Constantinople in 1453 or the Ottoman march on Vienna in 1529, the latter taking us into the full Renaissance and into the exploration . And it is precisely this last period that seems to be remembered through the speeches of Roderick and Magnifico, owners of ships similar to the carracks of 1500. In addition, the two also speak of the exploration of overseas territories and far-reaching trading exchanges or of the same intentions as the Europeans had before the discovery of America. In addition, Griffith’s birth of Falconia could symbolize a renaissance and the abandonment of the medieval model.
Consequently, in the different phases of its history, Berserker has elements from the late Middle Ages, dated 1400-1450, and then elements of the very early modern timesbetween 1450 and 1500.
