7 A Berserkr in Shining Armour: Berserk Fury, Werewolf, and Mental Trauma in Kentaro Miura’s Manga Berserk

Minjie Su

7

A Berserkr in Shining Armour: Berserk Fury, Werewolf, and Mental Trauma in Kentaro Miura’s Manga Berserk

Minjie Su

Created by Kentaro Miura (1966–2021), Berserk is a dark fantasy seinen manga (young adults’ manga) that has enjoyed immense popularity both in Japan and overseas since its initial publication in 1989.1 Dark fantasy as an established and favoured genre in Japanese manga is defined and discussed in Kazushi Shimada, ‘Mainā na janru de ōdō no hīrō o egaku’ マイナーなジャンルで王道のヒーローを描く (Berserk: Depicting a Classic Hero in a Minor Genre), in Shinji Miyadai et al., Beruseruku seidoku ベルセルク精読 (A Close Reading of Berserk) (Tokyo, 2022), pp. 43–59. In particular, Shimada discusses the genre in relation to its forerunner, the heroic fantasy; he argues that the defining difference between the two is the presence or lack of a good/evil dichotomy; while heroic fantasy celebrates the triumph of a hero of light over an evil force of darkness, dark fantasy focuses on flawed heroes and, if not sympathetic, at least complicated villains. Still ongoing despite Miura’s unexpected death, the series published its forty-first tankōbon, or volume, in December 2021 and boasts a worldwide sales record of over fifty-five million copies, making it one of the best-selling manga of all time.2 In a promotional blog article published in October 2022, Hakusensha, the manga’s Japanese publisher, estimated a worldwide sales figure of 55 million. Hakusensha, ‘Beruseruku’ koraborēshon kafe kaisai! Terebi anime “Beruseruku Ōgon Jidai-hen Memorial Edition” hōsō-chū’ 「ベルセルク」コラボレーションカフェ開催!テレビアニメ『ベルセルク黄金時代篇 MEMORIAL EDITION 』放送中！ (Berserk Collaboration Café is Opening! The Animated Series ‘Berserk: The Golden Age Arc’ Memorial Edition is on Air!) (2022) <https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000900.000046848.html> [accessed 29 May 2024]. At the time of writing this chapter, it has also been adapted into two animated TV series (which aired between 1997 and 1998, and between 2016 and 2017, respectively), an animated film trilogy (2012–13), a memorial animated edition (2022), and four video games.

Essentially, Berserk is a bildungsroman: a narrative format highly popular in both shōnen (young boy) and seinen manga. The story, divided into ‘Arcs’, revolves around a highly skilled swordsman, Guts, who operates (as of Vol. 41) first in a High Medieval European set-up, and then in a quasi-Celtic, elvish otherworld. If we re-arrange the plot into the chronological order of the events, Guts’s journey can be roughly divided into three stages (shown and summarised in Table 7.1), marked by an increasing presence of supernatural elements as Guts gradually moves from the quasi-historical, human realm into the liminal otherworld, reflecting Miura’s own abandonment of his initial intention to create a historical manga in favour of the fantasy genre, which he believed would give his imagination free rein. The first stage, the Golden Age Arc, traces Guts’s physical as well as mental development from a child brought up on the battlefield to a captain of a mercenary army called Taka no Dan, ‘the Band of the Hawk’, under the command of Griffith, who through charisma and military genius attracts a group of loyal followers so as to fulfil his dream of acquiring his own kingdom. At this stage Guts only operates in a kingdom called Midland, widely believed to have been modelled on medieval France due to its involvement in a Hundred Years’ War (against a kingdom called ‘Tudor’) and a well-established, romance-like, courtly culture.3 Quentin Boëtin, Berserk: Written in Darkness (Toulouse, 2020), p. 110. However, when his ambition fails, Griffith invokes a ritual known as the Eclipse and sacrifices the entire Band of the Hawk in order to be reborn as the archdemon or ‘God Hand’ of a god of absolute evil. Only Guts and his lover Casca escape alive but at a high cost. Having witnessed her companions being devoured alive by monsters and having been raped by Griffith, Casca is shattered by the trauma and regresses into an infantile state. Guts, on the other hand, becomes haunted by monsters, who come at night to claim the prey Griffith has promised to them. This marks the beginning of the second stage, in which Guts aimlessly wanders across the Continent, nearly driven mad by his unresolved anger towards Griffith, who now resides in a spiritual world which is out of reach for Guts. The situation lasts until the end of the Conviction Arc, when Griffith is reincarnated and rejoins the physical world to continue his earthly ambitions with a new yet largely supernatural/monstrous Band of the Hawk. Guts is therefore presented with two options: to pursue Griffith, or to leave the human realm for the elvish island Skellig, ruled by an elvish goddess named Danann – a clear borrowing from the Tuatha dé Danann – who is believed to be able to heal Casca. By choosing the latter, Guts embarks on a sea journey that resembles the Old Irish Immram Brain (the Voyage of Bran), encountering a sea god and other Irish mythological elements along the way.4 For a summary of Immram Brain, see Séamus Mac Mathúna, ‘Immram Brain/The Voyage of Bran’, in The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain (2017), Wiley Online Library <https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb643> [accessed 29 May 2024]. In doing so, he practically initiates a rite-de-passage journey that forms the bulk of the third stage.

Table 7.1. Story arcs and structure of Berserk.

Story Arc	Volume, Chapter, Publication Year	Story & Background	Guts’s Activity
Golden Age (Stage 1)	Vols 3–14, preludial chaps 9–16, chaps 1–94, 1991–96	◆ The Hundred Years’ War ◆ The rise and fall of Griffith and the Band of the Hawk in the Midland court	◆ Guts’s childhood trauma and his pre-Hawk career ◆ Fighting as a captain in the Band of Hawk
The Eclipse	12.73–13.88, 1996	◆ The Band of the Hawk is sacrificed so that Griffith can be reborn as a God Hand (i.e., an archdemon or, in the manga’s plot term, an ‘archangel’ a god of absolute evil)	◆ Guts survives but is cursed; Casca, also cursed, suffers regression and memory loss ◆ Unresolved anger: Griffith out of reach
The Black Swordsman (Stage 2)	Vols 1–3, preludial chaps 1–8, 1989–91	◆ Introducing Guts as a lone warrior with a mysterious past ◆ Ambiguous as to the story’s background, as Miura was at an experimental stage	◆ Wandering alone across the Continent ◆ Haunted by monsters at night
Conviction (Stage 2)	Vols 14–21, chaps 95–176, 1996–2001	◆ Witch-hunt and the Inquisition: the Holy See investigates the events of the Eclipse ◆ Invasion of the Kushan Empire (a vast empire to the east)	◆ Wandering alone across the Continent ◆ Haunted by monsters at night ◆ (It is understood that the Black Swordsman Arc takes place at this stage)
Griffith’s Incarnation	21.175, 2001	◆ Griffith re-incarnated in the mortal world ◆ Founds a new yet largely supernatural/monstrous Band of the Hawk	Guts at a crossroads: to pursue Griffith or to seek an elvish Otherworld (i.e., the Island of Skellig); marks a departure from the historical framework
Millennium Falcon* (Stage 3)	Vols 22–35, chaps 177–307, 2001–9	◆ Griffith defeats the Kushan Emperor (who is revealed to be another demon) and his army of monsters ◆ Establishes a new empire ◆ Erases the barrier between the mortal and the supernatural world: monsters amok	◆ Entering an enchanted forest and encountering the witches Flora and Schierke ◆ Acquiring the Berserker Armour ◆ Embarking on a sea journey to Skellig, ruled by an elvish monarch known as Danann who is believed to be able to cure Casca
Fantasia (Stage 3)	Vol. 35–ongoing, chap. 308–ongoing, 2009–ongoing

* In Japanese, the word 鷹 (taka) is used for eagle, hawk, and falcon; in Dark Horse Comics’ official English translation, Griffith is referred to interchangeably as ‘the Hawk’ and ‘the Falcon’. The choice of ‘Millennium Falcon’ for the Arc title is likely a reference to Star Wars, Miura’s favourite movie franchise; an alternative translation of this Arc is ‘Falcon of the Millennium Empire’.

The sheer scale of the manga and the vast extent of its source materials warrant Berserk’s position as a pioneer and paragon of Japanese neomedievalist fantasy, which is typically characterised by a creative combination of foreign and local elements in ‘unarticulated narratives and pastiche’.5 Maxime Danesin and Manuel Hernández-Pérez, ‘Mangaesque Knights: Japan’s Path to Global Medievalism’, in Angela Jane Weisl and Robert Squillace (eds), Medievalism in a Global Age (Cambridge, 2024), pp. 52–64, at p. 57. It comes therefore as no surprise that all the existing academic and popular works on Berserk, albeit few in number, focus on delineating Miura’s multifarious sources, the reimaged Middle Ages, and the manga’s influence and position in modern-day Japanese popular culture.6 In addition to Danesin and Hernández-Pérez’s article which briefly mentions Berserk, this includes Jennifer deWinter’s article and three popular books on Berserk. Only taking into account the 1997 animated series, deWinter gives a rather binary reading: Guts is interpreted as the quintessential embodiment of the Samurai spirits as opposed to Griffith, the western medieval knight, the negative portrayal of whose rise and fall is analysed as a subverted American Dream, and Guts’s fight with and triumph over the monsters is ‘a critique of Western individualistic heroism as inferior to Japanese community’. Jennifer deWinter, ‘Neo-Bushido: Neomedieval Animé and Japanese Essence’, in Carol L. Robinson and Pamela Clements (eds), Neomedievalism in the Media: Essays on Film, Television, and Electronic Games (Lewiston, 2012), pp. 83–102, at p. 97. While I concede that the characterisation of Guts does indicate influences from bushidō as perceived in popular discourses, I find deWinter’s arguments oversimplified, as the 1997 anime omitted several important plot details in order to make the series self-contained, and the manga suggests that Miura prefers syncretism over separation between different cultural concepts, which is discussed at length in Boëtin, Berserk: Written in Darkness, p. 181. Moreover, as mentioned in the Introduction and as Chiharu Hasegawa demonstrates in this volume, bushidō as a nineteenth-century construct has been influenced by and fused with chivalric ideals borrowed from the Arthurian corpora. The other two popular books on Berserk are Jeremy Mark Robinson, Berserk: Kentaro Miura + the Manga & the Animé (Maidstone, 2022) and Miyadai et al., Beruseruku seidoku ベルセルク精読 (A Close Reading of Berserk). Strangely, none mention that the identity of Guts is constituted around the Old Norse berserkr (pl. berserkir), which apparently gives the manga its title (the Japanese original, ベルセルク, is the transliteration of ‘berserk’ in Katakana). Rather, the connection seems to have been taken for granted, as Guts does fight in a frenzy and his actions are largely driven by anger, echoing the popular conception of the Viking berserkr.

A close reading of Berserk, however, indicates that Guts’s berserkness is highly hybridised and ever-changing, as the long timespan of the manga allows Miura to explore different aspects of the motif and to develop Guts’s character according to the situation he is placed in. It is therefore this chapter’s goal to map out Guts’s development in relation to the structure of the story. In particular, I argue that, while Guts does start as a stereotypical berserkr in Stage One, his berserkness peaks in Stage Two and begins to change: in other words, we may read Guts’s aimless wandering at this stage in parallel to Yvain’s temporary period of madness in the woods, in that it burns away the old identity and prepares the individual for a new, rehabilitated one. In Stage Three, as the story moves from the human to the supernatural realm, Guts gradually transforms from a berserkr to a chivalric figure who fights berserkr, and the key to this process lies in a suit of shining armour he acquires immediately before his sea journey.

But, first, what might Miura have known about Old Norse berserkir? While it falls outside this chapter’s scope to discover exactly which primary sources were available to Miura before and during the creation of the manga, it suffices to say that, first, a number of sagas which feature berserks – including Ynglinga saga, Egils saga, and Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks – were (partially) translated into Japanese during the 1970s, accompanied by a number of introductory books on Norse mythology.7 See Ozawa’s chapter in this volume, p. 31. Second, Miura seems to have had a good grasp of the popular image of berserkr, as can be gleaned from Ynglinga saga: ‘Hans men fóru brynjulausir ok váru galnir sem hundar eða vargar, bitu í skjǫldu sína, váru sterkir sem birnir eða griðungar. Þeir drápu mannfólkit, en hvártki eldr né járn orti á þá. Þat er kallaðr berserksgangr’.8 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Íslenzk fornrit 26 (Reyjavík, 1941), chap. 6, p. 17. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I: the Beginnings to Óláfr Tryggvason, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (London, 2011), p. 10: ‘His [i.e. Óðinn’s] men went without mail and were as wild as dogs or wolves, biting their shields, being as strong as bears or bulls. They killed the people, but neither fire nor iron took effect on them. That is called berserk fury.’ Here berserkir are warriors who, more akin to beast than man, fight in a frenzy without armour. Immediately before writing Berserk, Miura co-illustrated a manga called Ōrō (King of Wolves), where he portrays a Mongolian troop under the banners of Genghis Khan confronting a vaguely defined, almost invincible group of ‘barbarian warriors from the North’, who were visually presented wearing wolf-skins, with bestial facial features, and fighting in a frenzy.9 Buronson and Kentaro Miura, King of Wolves (Milwaukee, 2005). The Japanese original was published in 1989 in a single volume by Hakusensha’s Monthly Animal House, predecessor to Young Animal where Berserk is still serialised today. Did Miura here have in mind the Kievan Rus’, which was indeed invaded by Genghis Khan in the first half of the thirteenth century? While it is impossible to find a definitive answer, King of Wolves provides evidence of Miura’s familiarity with at least the general traits of berserkr, and very likely those of úlfheðnar, ‘wolf-skins’, as well: sometimes thought of as equivalent to berserkr, they appear side-by-side with berserkir in Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem that makes the earliest mention of such warriors.10 The poem is generally accepted to have been composed by Þorbjǫrg hornklofi to commemorate Haraldr hárfagri’s victory at Hafsfjord (ca. 872). It introduces berserkir as fighting side by side with or equivalent to the úlfheðnar, ‘wolf-skins’: ‘Grenjuðu berserkir; guðr vas þeim á sinnum; / emjuðu ulfheðnar ok ísǫrn dúðu (Berserks bellowed; battle was under way for them; wolf-skins [berserks] howled and brandished iron spears). R. D. Fulk, ‘Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Haraldskvæði (Hrafnsmál)’, in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1 (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 91–117, at stanzas 8, 20, and 21, p. 102, pp. 113–15; for an introduction to the poem, see pp. 91–2. Fulk apparently thinks the berserkir and the úlfheðnar are one and the same. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir on the other hand sees them as two different types of warriors, but nevertheless closely related to each other. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, ‘Um berserki, berserksgang og amanita muscari’, Skírnir, 175:2 (2001), 323–53, at pp. 223–4; and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, ‘The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 106:3 (2007), 277–303, at pp. 280–1. Miura also recognised anger as a defining feature of berserkir and the root of their berserksgangr: when asked about the conception of Berserk in a 2006 interview, Miura said that the whole manga’s origin lies in the image of Guts, a hero whom he envisions as being able to become angry.11 Kentaro Miura, Berserk Official Guidebook (Milwaukee, 2018), p. 160. Indeed, when Miura first introduced the word ‘berserk’ in the Black Swordsman Arc, it is heralded by a range of negative emotions, later revealed to have been caused by the trauma of the Eclipse: ‘It’s rage, sadness, and fear. It’s all mixed together. So dark! And there’s something even deeper than that…’. A few pages later, Miura identified the ‘something’ as ‘berserk’, accompanied by the silhouette of Guts quitting a battlefield strewn with dead bodies (1.0-1, 1989).12 Miura did not assign chapter numbers to his manga until Vol. 5 (1992). The chapters prior to it are known as ‘preludial episode’ amongst Berserk fans; they are generally referred to in the form of ‘0-X’. All citations from the manga itself are taken from the English version translated and distributed by Dark Horse Comics. Kentaro Miura, Berserk, vols 1–41 (Milwaukee, 2003–2021). Only in-text citation will be used in this article, in the form of volume number.chapter number, publication year – the last referring to the chapter’s original publication year in Young Animal rather than that of the tankōbon , which is only published every seven to nine chapters. Nor do I use the translation’s publication year in the United States, as Dark Horse Comics did not publish Berserk until 2003 and had to block-translate what had been previously available in Japanese; the publication date of the translations therefore is not as relevant. At this point Miura gave no explanation as to precisely what ‘berserk’ is, indicating his expectation of and reliance on the readers’ prior knowledge to draw their own conclusions.

This image of an angry man wandering from one battlefield to another dates back to Guts’s pre- and early-Hawk career. Here his berserkness is mainly manifested in his appearance, behaviour, and social function, which resemble the Old Norse berserkir in times of war with a touch of the hólmgangr (duellist) or troublemaker.13 For a variety of the Old Norse berserkir’s social, political, and narrative functions across different saga genres, see Roderick Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr (New York, 2022), pp. 8–21. Guts is, to begin with, defined by nearly superhuman strength and extraordinary fighting ability, as evidenced by his skilful wielding of an unusually heavy sword, which comes to define his identity. Although Guts never wears animal skins as the northern barbarians in King of Wolves did, he always dresses scantily and uses a makeshift helmet that resembles an American football helmet, in contrast to his fully armoured fellow soldiers and opponents. Nevertheless, he consciously exposes himself to danger and death by purposely seeking out single combat against the deadliest enemies; even when he is severely wounded, he does not stop fighting until his wounds wear him down. When Griffith first sees Guts fight, he comments: ‘The way you fight, it is almost as though you’re gambling your own life. You don’t budge an inch against a monster like Bazuso [a knight who killed a hundred opponents in a fit] or multiple opponents like Corkus’ group … instead, you run in recklessly, sword swinging’ (4.0-13, 1991). For this reason, Guts is frequently called a mad dog who would eventually die on the battlefield. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Guts’s recklessness has a mental cause: the traumatic memories of his childhood. Life was already difficult for a child brought up on the battlefield, but to add insult to injury, Guts was forced to kill his adoptive father who had pimped him to a fellow soldier out of jealousy of the youngster’s fighting skills. This leads to a strong sense of self-hatred and a deep mistrust of others, which in turn fuel his actions in battle. It is only when Guts is defeated by Griffith and joins the Band of the Hawk that his trauma is, if not healed, at least alleviated through what Shinji Miyadai identifies as ‘the gift of love’ from the newly gained companionship.14 Shinji Miyadai, ‘Ningen no jitsuzon o egaku kessaku “Beruseruku”’ 人間の実存を描く傑作『ベルセルク』’ (Berserk: a Masterpiece that Depicts Human Existence), in Shinji Miyadai et al., Beruseruku seidoku ベルセルク精読 (A Close Reading of Berserk), pp. 9–24, at p. 21. With Griffith’s rise to power and his later attachment to the Midland court, Guts assumes the role as Griffith’s champion, fighting to further the royal cause and Griffith’s ambition.

Unfortunately, Guts’s healing comes to a premature end at the Eclipse, initiating the second stage of his journey. As an undevoured sacrifice marked by a quasi-runic symbol, Guts is drawn into a liminal space referred to as the Interstice – a place where the mortal/physical and the supernatural worlds overlap – and he is haunted by monsters every night. Guts thus becomes similar to Grettir Ásmundarson but, unlike Grettir who only sees ‘hvers kyns skrípi’ (all kinds of phantoms), Guts has to physically fight them.15 Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, in Guðni Jónsson (ed.), Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar; Bandamanna saga; Odds þáttr Ófeigssonar, Íslenzk fornrit 7 (Reykjavík, 1936; repr., 2001), pp. 1–290, at chap. 35, p. 122. The English translation is taken from The Saga of Grettir the Strong, trans. Bernard Scudder and ed. Örnólfur Thorsson (London, 2005), chap. 35, p. 86. It is noteworthy that Grettis saga was translated into Japanese in 1979 as part of Yukio Taniguchi’s Aisurando Saga アイスランド•サガ (Sagas of the Icelanders). For Taniguchi’s work and impact, see Halldór Stefánsson, ‘Foreign Myths and Sagas in Japan: The Academics and the Cartoonists’, in Gísli Pálsson (ed.), Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation and Anthropological Discourse (Oxford, 1993), pp. 75–99, at pp. 76–83. Having entrusted the mad Casca to a friend, Guts begins to aimlessly wander across the continent as an outlaw, seething with rage, only this time he can no longer fight it off. As a God Hand, Griffith now resides in an entirely different dimension, an absence that is also apparent textually, as he is seldom portrayed between the Eclipse and the Incarnation. With Griffith physically out of reach, Guts has to let his anger ferment within his mind, driving himself to the verge of madness.

But madness is not necessarily a negative thing. As Sylvia Huot demonstrates in her studies on madness in medieval French literature, periods of madness can be read as a means of cleansing the soul, a ‘spiritual purification’ that leads to chivalric or spiritual transcendence.16 Sylvia Huot, Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Found and Lost (Oxford, 2003), p. 19. This is certainly the case with Yvain, whose life as a madman in the woods paves the way for the construction of his new identity as the Knight of the Lion.17 For Yvain’s madness and its key function in reconstructing his identity, see, for instance, ibid., p. 31; and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, ‘The Lady and the Dragon in Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier au Lion’, in Jane E. Burns and Peggy McCracken (eds), From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Notre Dame, 2013), pp. 65–86. Likewise, this period also prepares Guts for the construction of a new self, beginning with identifying what is undesirable in his psyche. In Chapter 130 (Vol. 17, 1998), when Guts is reliving the memories of the Eclipse and Casca’s rape, he is suddenly enveloped by a giant wolf figure from behind, who in a whisper incites him to kill; when Guts turns around, however, there is only his own shadow on the wall (Figure 7.1). The wolf re-appears in Chapter 190 (Vol. 23, 2001), aptly titled ‘Fangs of Ego’ in English and 我牙 (teeth of ‘I’) in Japanese: when Guts is momentarily overcome by lust and forces himself upon Casca, the wolf whispers again into Guts’s ear, causing Guts to bite Casca’s breast. To highlight the parallel between Guts and the wolf, Miura juxtaposed this panel with a panel of a wolf-Guts hybrid (identifiable by Guts’s prosthetic arm) devouring Casca, understood to be an image that only the readers can see. Fortunately, the suffering girl’s scream brings Guts back to himself, fully realising that the monster he felt before is no illusion: even worse, it is not something to be looked for behind him, but within his mind. Although he still cannot see the wolf, he realises the urgency of jettisoning it from his ego, otherwise he risks losing his mind and becoming a threat to the people around him.

~

Description: Guts, half-naked, sits on a piece of cloth. His left arm, where his hand is missing,...

Figure 7.1. Guts enveloped by a gigantic wolf figure. © Kentaro Miura/HAKUSHENSHA.

This is where the Berserker Armour comes in. Two years after the Eclipse, Guts is presented with two choices: to go after Griffith (who has now been reincarnated and is once again within Guts’s reach) or leave the human world behind altogether to seek out the elvish island of Skellig, so that Casca might be healed. Having chosen the latter, Guts is directed by a mysterious figure referred to as the Skull Knight to the witch Flora and her young apprentice, Schierke, from whom he receives a suit of full body armour with a skull-shaped helmet. As soon as Guts dons it, he realises ‘an impulse. Something inside me, something ferocious is seething’. This is revealed to be the wolf, whom Guts sees for the first time; in the meantime, the visor of the helmet stretches out until the skull shape transforms to the shape of a metallic wolf (26.226, 2003).

In appearance, the Berserker Armour seems to rekindle Guts’s berserkness and replay it on a greater and fuller scale. His fighting skill is enhanced to the degree of nonhuman; he no longer feels pain or exhaustion; fire and iron do not seem to bother him anymore, as evidenced by his triumph over a fire-breathing dragon, his first opponent after the acquisition of the armour. More importantly, the armour figuratively transforms Guts into a wild beast. Demanding that Guts ‘yield’, the wolf inundates Guts’s mind with Guts’s own traumatic memories, which are visually presented as whirlpools of black lines emitting from Guts himself and engulfing him, and fuels his desire to take vengeance on Griffith. As a result, Guts fights on all fours and, as a mad beast, no longer distinguishing friend from foe.

In essence, however, the Berserker Armour functions as the exact opposite. To begin with, the image of a full body armour goes in direct contradiction to the berserkir in Ynglinga saga, who fight ‘without mail’. It is also revealed that the armour’s impenetrability is only a means by which to teach Guts to realise his vulnerability: underneath the metal, Guts’s body is being torn apart – he simply does not feel it anymore. This, as Schierke explains, can grievously endanger the wearer: ‘Humans have unconsciously established bounds to their strength so they do not harm their own bodies. Pain is a warning to keep us from destroying ourselves. A human without pain realises unbelievable strength, reflexes, and perceptions. He surpasses the limits of the human body at the risk of his own life’ (26.226, 2003). It is therefore of paramount importance that Guts recognises the limit of his body and learns to stop, contrary to his pre- and early-Hawk reckless fighting style.

Mentally, the armour helps Guts to draw a line between what is desirable in his ego and what is not. By taking on the shape of a wolf, the armour symbolically externalises the wolf Guts felt and feared in Chapters 130 and 190 (i.e., Stage Two). As a result, while Guts on the outside is fighting like a berserk, donning the armour in fact transports him onto an internalised, psychological battlefield, where he is fighting the berserk. In this sense the armour is akin to the wolfskin of the medieval werewolves, which is interpreted by Susan Small as representing and corresponding to a wolf ego.18 Susan Small, ‘The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin’, in Katie L. Walter (ed.), Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture (New York, 2013), pp. 81–97. The theoretical framework here is the concept of le Moi-peau, ‘skin-ego’, developed by the French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu. In Anzieu’s eyes, the skin ‘displays variable characteristics according to the individual’s age, sex, ethnicity, personal history, etc., which, like the clothing that forms a second layer over it, make it easy (or difficult) to identify the person’; the skin reflects ‘the complexity of the Ego on the psychical plane’.19 Didier Anzieu, The Skin-Ego, trans. Naomi Segal (London, 2016), p. 17 and p. 15. A werewolf therefore possesses two egos, respectively represented by the wolf and the human skin, thus transforming the act of metamorphosis into a psychological struggle. In cases where it suffices to put on a wolfskin to transform, as in Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli in Vǫlsunga saga and the Ossory werewolves in Gerald of Wales’s Topographia Hibernica, the werewolf perceives no discontinuity in their psyche, as the wolfskin is simply ‘laid’ on top of the human skin, as if a piece of clothing.20 Small defines this type of werewolf as belonging to the ‘overlay’ model; in Franco-Latin texts, in addition to the Ossory werewolves, this also includes Guillaume and Melior in Guillaume de Palerne, who simply wear bear and deer skin as disguise. Small, ‘The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin’, pp. 82–3. For its adoption in Old Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives and in particular in Vǫlsunga saga, see Minjie Su, Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: Between the Monster and the Man (Turnhout, 2023), pp. 44–5. For the courtly werewolves in the romance traditions who ‘turn’ into a wolf, their ego splits into two – the wolf and the human – as the human skin turns into the wolfskin, with the wolf temporarily overwriting the human.21 In Small’s terminology, this is the ‘fusion’ model. Small, ‘The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin’, p. 86–8. If the werewolf is like Bisclavret, who as a congenital werewolf transforms on a weekly basis, he will have to go through this process over and over again; however, if the werewolf manages to shed the wolfskin as in Ála flekks saga and Tíódéls saga, the act of shedding allows the wolf ego to be isolated and eliminated if the wolfskin is destroyed for good.22 Su, Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, pp. 45–7. What is left behind is a new layer of skin, representing a recuperated ego.

Guts’s ‘transformation’, albeit mental and metaphorical, fits the courtly pattern. Before he acquires the Berserker Armour, the wolf is an inherent part of his ego, but the armour draws it out and encases it, as evidenced by its own transformation. The original skull shape of the helmet symbolises a tabula rasa, a ‘non-ego’, as the skull is at the same time everyone and no one. As soon as the armour takes on the form of the wolf, the wolf ego becomes attached to a piece of clothing – a metallic wolfskin that can be taken off or perhaps even one day destroyed (Figure 7.2). Therefore, the armour affords Guts an opportunity to distance himself from the wolf. This process is made visual through the shamanic magic of Schierke, who dives into Guts’s mind in spirit form each time Guts dons the armour. Meanwhile in the physical world, Schierke falls into a trance and her body needs to be guarded; should it be disturbed, she would be ‘pulled’ back and forced to wake up. At first glance, Schierke’s practice resembles the shamanic shapeshifter who can transfer their consciousness into a beast, temporarily gaining control of the animal’s mind and body. The process, on the one hand, echoes the shamanic werewolves in De Mirabilibus Hibernie;23 John Carey, ‘Werewolves in Medieval Ireland’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 44 (2002), 37–72, at pp. 48–57. on the other hand, it also bears some resemblance to the berserksgangr of Bǫðvarr bjarki (little bear) recounted in Hrólfs saga kraka, a fornaldarsaga (legendary saga) heavily influenced by the romance tradition. In the final battle, Bǫðvarr fights in the (possibly spirit) form of a bear while his human body sits in a trance as if asleep; once the body is woken, the bear disappears from the battlefield.24 Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans, in Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (eds), Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, Vol. 2 (Reykjavík, 1944), pp. 3–81, at chap. 50, pp. 87–9. See also Guðmundsdóttir, ‘The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, p. 282. For Bǫðvarr’s shamanism, see also Timothy Bourns, ‘Becoming-Animal in the Icelandic Sagas’, Neophilologus, 105 (2021), 633–53, at p. 649; and Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr, pp. 50–1. Unlike either, however, Schierke herself does not take on an animalistic form; instead, she ‘rides’ the wolf in Guts’s psyche and tries to help Guts get the wolf under control. Her primary task is to locate and raise Guts’s human ego – portrayed as a candle-flame-like bust of Guts in the depths of an ocean of dark emotions – so that he may ‘overwrite’ the wolf with his own will. Schierke does so by reminding Guts that he as a human represents the opposite of the wolf; the gentle emotions – the negative ones included – that the wolf dismisses as trivial are in fact what defines Guts: the sorrow and regret from his past, and his care and love for Casca and his companions, whose lives depend on him; the blind rage and hatred he feels towards Griffith, though inevitable, are only a small part of what constitutes him (Figure 7.3). Thus awakened, Guts is shown forcefully yanking up the wolf-shaped visor; although he may keep on fighting wearing the Berserker Armour, he does so either with the visor pulled back or without the helmet at all, showing his face to reassure his companions and the readers that he has subdued the beast within. As soon as the fighting is over, Guts takes off the armour and emerges calmer and more sociable than before, leading to an improved relationship with Casca and a strengthened emotional bond between him and his companions, who move from fearing him to becoming his faithful friends. This development reflects what Miura envisioned for Guts in 1996 and, again, in 2000: that he wanted Guts to become more humane, even though Griffith, Guts’s archenemy, had become supernatural.25 Kentaro Miura, Berserk Illustrations File (Tokyo, 2006); and Miura’s interview with Yukari Fujimoto, a manga researcher based in Meiji University, Tokyo (2000) <https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Interviews> [accessed 29 May 2024]. Outside Japan, Berserk Illustrations File is only available in French; however, an English translation can be found in Berserk Fandom Wikipedia through the same link.

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Description: Four-strip panel showing that, in the top panel, Guts wears the Berserker Armour....

Figure 7.2. The transformation of the Berserker Armour. © Kentaro Miura/HAKUSHENSHA.

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Description: Schierke appears in her spirit form, which is depicted as if surrounded by white...

Figure 7.3. Schierke pulls Guts’s ego out of his traumatic memories. © Kentaro Miura/HAKUSHENSHA.

However, unlike the werewolves who shed the wolfskin for good, Guts for the time being must reuse his ‘wolfskin’ and clash with the wolf ego for as many times as the plot demands. What would happen if he were defeated and is lost to the wolf? The Skull Knight, who is given this moniker due to his skull-shaped helmet, is recently revealed to be the previous owner of the Berserker Armour (41.362, 2020). He has apparently become a wraith who can no longer shed his armour, and his form has returned to a skull: a non-ego. This adds a sense of emergency and urgency to Guts’s fate, which is not shared by the courtly werewolves who tend to be given a happy ending. But hope remains: as Flora reminds the Skull Knight, fate is not a circle but a spiral; although Guts now dons the armour and seemingly follows the Skull Knight’s footsteps, he may one day shed the armour for good (26.222, 2003). In a recent chapter produced by Miura’s studio, Guts is on the verge of leaving Skellig to return to the human world. His reincorporation would not be easy, as the outside world has now become a false utopia under Griffith’s reign, but we may rest assured that, even if Guts eventually dies fighting, he will die a human.26 It has been revealed in the manga that Griffith’s new world order, centring on his capital city Falconia, is a dictatorship disguised as a utopia, where he sends out assassins after those who question his reign and/or refuse to obey him (38.337–339, 2014). While Falconia’s epithet, ‘the Millennium Empire’, is reminiscent of the Tausendjähriges Reich of Nazi Germany and Miyadai has pointed out a similarity between the Empire’s founding speech and the Nazi party rally at Nürnberg, both Boëtin and Robinson remark on its authoritarian nature not only in Griffith’s policy and ruling style but also in the aesthetics of Falconia’s architecture. Miyadai, ‘Ningen no jitsuzon o egaku kessaku “Beruseruku”’ 人間の実存を描く傑作『ベルセルク』 (Berserk: a Masterpiece that Depicts Human Existence), p. 15; Boëtin, Berserk: Written in Darkness, p. 118; Robinson, Berserk: Kentaro Miura + the Manga & the Animé, p. 384–7. See also Minjie Su, ‘The Hero We Deserve: The Image of Dark Knight as Anti-Utopia in Kentaro Miura’s Manga Berserk’, in Carolyne Larrington, Hans Rudolf Velten, and Helen Young (eds), Popularising the Middle Ages in Modern Fantasy: Neomedievalism, Video Games, and Vikings (Cambridge, 2026), pp. 71–90, at pp. 81–4.

Intriguingly, as Guts’s humanisation progresses, he also takes on an increasingly chivalric image, which is reflected in a change to both his mission and the generic set-up of the story. Whereas in the past Guts only fights for money and to survive, now he fights to protect Casca and his friends, and gets rid of monsters for the commonfolk along the way, performing ‘justice and generous chivalry’ that he initially disparages in the pilot episode of the manga.27 Miura initially illustrated a forty-eight-page pilot manga in 1988 to pitch Berserk to Hakusensha, which provides the basis for the portrayal of Guts in the manga proper. The pilot, entitled Berserk Prototype, was published in Vol. 14 in 1997. In the meantime, the historical framework of the Golden Age and the Conviction Arc are exchanged for a fantastic one, and the story begins to follow a quest-adventure structure that characterises both medieval romance and early Japanese medievalist fantasy (i.e., the ‘Sword and Sorcery’ type).28 Two of the pioneer Japanese fantasy titles are, respectively, Guin Saga (1979) – which Miura said was one of his major inspirations – and Record of Lodoss War (1988). Both are quest-centred and set in a European medievalist framework. Record of Lodoss War is especially so: originated in serialised Dungeons & Dragons scripts, the series proved to be so popular that the Dungeon Master rewrote the scripts into high fantasy novels, which were in turn turned into animations, video games, and manga, and subsequently provided a model for the Japanese fantasy genre. Shimada, ‘Mainā na janru de ōdō no hīrō o egaku’ マイナーなジャンルで王道のヒーローを描く(Berserk: Depicting a Classic Hero in a Minor Genre), pp. 46–8. Guts, therefore, becomes a questing knight, who in Richard Kaeuper’s words is portrayed as ‘searching for adventure in the outer world and refashioning meaning in the world within himself’.29 Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2001), p. 253.

Therefore, as the generic features of the story change, Guts transforms from a berserkr to a knightly figure who fights berserkr. An interesting parallel is found in the characterisation of Bǫðvarr in Hrólfs saga kraka, whose berserksgangr is mentioned above. Although Bǫðvarr fights in the shape of a bear and is regarded as ‘a berserker of sorts’, he is, according to Ármann Jakobsson, ‘a new type of warrior – a chivalric knight’, as opposed to the bullying berserkir in King Hrólfr’s court whom he stands against, overwhelms, and regulates: as a result, he reforms the king’s court into a ‘Scandinavian Camelot’.30 Jesse L. Byock, ‘Introduction’, in The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (London, 1998), pp. vii–xxxv, at p. xxix. Bǫðvarr’s affinities with berserkir is also discussed in Bourns, ‘Becoming-Animal in Icelandic Sagas’, pp. 647–8; and Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr, pp. 32–3; Ármann Jakobsson, ‘Le Roi Chevalier: The Royal Ideology and Genre of “Hrólfs saga kraka”’, Scandinavian Studies, 71:2 (1999), 139–66, at p. 149. Another parallel is found in the bidirectional development of Vikings in fornaldarsögur, where berserkr is sometimes interchangeably used with víkingr and functions as the essential other. In her reading of the víkingalög (Viking law) in Örvar-Odds saga, Carolyne Larrington distinguishes two types of Viking as reimaged in fornaldarsögur: the chivalric Viking and the berserk Viking.31 Carolyne Larrington, ‘A Viking in Shining Armour? Vikings and Chivalry in the “Fornaldarsögur”’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 4 (2008), 269–88. Typically cast as the hero of these stories, although the chivalric Viking may still engage in conventional Viking activities, he tends to follow a set of rules that bears resemblance to the chivalric ethics that are found in romance literature. The latter type, on the other hand, functions as the villain for the former to kill in one of his many quests.

It would be too far-fetched to suggest that Miura could possibly have been aware of the development of the saga heroes, let alone to have deliberately incorporated it into his manga. The parallel, however, is too intriguing to dismiss. Both Ármann Jakobsson and Larrington attribute the appearance of Bǫðvarr and the chivalric Viking to the translated romances introduced to the Old Norse world during the reign of King Håkon IV Håkonsson;32 For an overview of the social, political, and cultural milieu of the translated sagas and their impact on and relation to the legendary sagas, see Torfi H. Tulinius, The Matter of the North: The Rise of Literary Fiction in Thirteenth-century Iceland, trans. Randi C. Eldevik (Odense, 2002), pp. 44–6, where he draws an analogy between the creation of the legendary sagas to ‘the same way as French and Anglo-Norman authors did the three “Matters” of Rome, France and Britain’ (at p. 46). See also Massimiliano Bampi, ‘The Development of the Fornaldarsögur as a Genre: A Polysystemic Approach’, in Annette Lassen, Agneta Ney, and Ármann Jakobsson (eds), The Legendary Sagas: Origins and Developments (Reykjavík, 2012), pp. 185–99, at pp. 190–3. I would venture to suggest a similar reason behind Miura’s creation. The Arthurian materials, considered to represent strong Western morals, were among the first European medieval literary works to be translated and taught in Japan during the Meiji Era, encouraged and sponsored by the Japanese government in their effort ‘to catch up with Western civilization and establish it in Japan’, an endeavour that somewhat echoes King Håkon’s translation project.33 Masako Takagi, ‘Malory in Japan’, in Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton (eds), A New Companion to Malory (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 271–95, at p. 271. Japan’s introduction of medieval history as an academic discipline in the same era goes hand-in-hand with it; early histories of Europe and the US were considered to be these countries’ ‘success stories’ from which Japan could benefit. Takeshi Kido, ‘The Study of the Medieval History of Europe in Japan’, Journal of Medieval History, 21:2 (1995), 79–96, especially pp. 80–1. It comes as no surprise that the two earliest Japanese indigenous medievalist fictions, Kairo-kō: A Dirge and Maboroshi no Tate (Phantom Shield), are modelled exclusively on Arthurian romances.34 See the Introduction to this volume, p. 10. Both were published in 1905 by Natsume Soseki: the former is an adaptation of the Lancelot-Guinevere-Elaine triangle in Malory meshed with Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, while the latter is Soseki’s own attempt at a chivalric romance, drawing on his knowledge of the Arthurian materials. Although no serious attempt at Arthurian medievalism is made in Japan after Kairo-kō, the image of knights in shining armour nevertheless is intimately connected with the European Middle Ages in the Japanese imagination and can be freely adopted into any type of stories so as to give the characters an air of nobility and to highlight their prowess in battle. For instance, in Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac (originally published in 1986), young warriors who fight to protect the goddess Athena against a number of Greek deities are portrayed wearing knightly armour; in the 2004 anime Gankutsuō: The Count of Monte Cristo, which reimagines Alexandre Dumas’s famous revenge story in a futuristic world and in space, the audience see Monte Cristo and Franz d’Epinay fight a duel inside gigantic robotic knights.35 Masami Kurumada, Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac (Tokyo, 1986–91). In the original Japanese, the ‘knights’ are simply called senshi 戦士, ‘warrior’ or ‘soldier’. However, when the series was translated and later marketed for French and English readers, it was rendered as ‘knight’ so as to keep in line with the warriors’ appearance and code of behaviour. Gankutsuō: The Count of Monte Cristo, animated series, directed by Mahiro Maeda Gonzo K.K., 2004–5, Episode 18: The Duel. For the persistence and popularity of knights in Japanese manga and anime, see also Danesin and Hernández-Pérez, ‘Mangaesque Knights’, pp. 59–63; and Clément de Vasselot de Régné and Louis de Vasselot de Régné, ‘La fascination pour le Moyen Âge européen dans l’animation japonaise’, in Martin Aurell, Florian Besson, Justine Breton, and Lucie Malbos (eds), Les médiévistes face aux médiévalismes (Rennes, 2023), pp. 77–88, at pp. 84–5. Miura’s creation essentially follows the same tradition, except, whereas Soseki aims to create scholarly informed pieces, the manga artist does not necessarily share the same concern about accuracy. As the two-dimensional, unrealistic aesthetics of the manga genre already require the suspension of belief, the artist can incorporate into their manga a variety of tropes from sources of any origin and give free rein to their imagination.

Last but not least, the parallel between Guts’s development and that of the saga heroes points to a continuity that transcends as stark a difference as that between a modern Japanese manga artist and the medieval saga authors. Namely, all these authors essentially follow the same creative process: they have inherited a number of motifs and literary tropes through listening, learning, reading, and travelling; the only difference being that, having lived and worked in the age of the internet and globalisation, Miura had greater and faster access to information via a greater number of different forms of media. These motifs and tropes may come from the past, the contemporary, the foreign, or the native; inspired by and drawing from them, the author in turn creates something new, which is, however, not entirely unfamiliar. To understand one, therefore, would shed light on the other. At the same time, this also poses a challenge to the parameters of neomedievalism: if we consider both literatures as essentially belonging to the same tradition – and to the shared human activity of creating and telling stories, is it still productive to try to draw a line between what is medieval and what is not? Going back to the sagas influenced by the translated romances: can we not also consider them to be a form of medievalism? As Angela Jane Weisl asks in her book, The Persistence of Medievalism: ‘If the real Geoffrey Chaucer can have Trojans and Greeks wearing medieval armor and practicing courtly love in Troilus and Criseyde, then why can’t a tournament audience sing along with Jock Jams?’36 Angela Jane Weisl, The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Adventures in Contemporary Culture (New York, 2003), p. 5. Likewise, if the Vikings of old can fight in armour and abide by a set of chivalric codes in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Icelandic sagas, then Guts, created by a twentieth-century Japanese manga artist, can certainly be a berserkr, a knight, and something of a Samurai all at once, who fights with a gigantic sword and a metal prosthesis concealing a small cannon. The difference lies in the scope rather than the nature of their work: while the saga authors work on a regional scale as opposed to Miura’s global context, both rewrite a past or pasts for the present and mix up the foreign with the local, creating new narratives that they find relevant to their own time and place.

1 Dark fantasy as an established and favoured genre in Japanese manga is defined and discussed in Kazushi Shimada, ‘Mainā na janru de ōdō no hīrō o egaku’ マイナーなジャンルで王道のヒーローを描く (Berserk: Depicting a Classic Hero in a Minor Genre), in Shinji Miyadai et al., Beruseruku seidoku ベルセルク精読 (A Close Reading of Berserk) (Tokyo, 2022), pp. 43–59. In particular, Shimada discusses the genre in relation to its forerunner, the heroic fantasy; he argues that the defining difference between the two is the presence or lack of a good/evil dichotomy; while heroic fantasy celebrates the triumph of a hero of light over an evil force of darkness, dark fantasy focuses on flawed heroes and, if not sympathetic, at least complicated villains. »

2 In a promotional blog article published in October 2022, Hakusensha, the manga’s Japanese publisher, estimated a worldwide sales figure of 55 million. Hakusensha, ‘Beruseruku’ koraborēshon kafe kaisai! Terebi anime “Beruseruku Ōgon Jidai-hen Memorial Edition” hōsō-chū’ 「ベルセルク」コラボレーションカフェ開催!テレビアニメ『ベルセルク黄金時代篇 MEMORIAL EDITION 』放送中！ (Berserk Collaboration Café is Opening! The Animated Series ‘Berserk: The Golden Age Arc’ Memorial Edition is on Air!) (2022) <https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000900.000046848.html> [accessed 29 May 2024]. »

3 Quentin Boëtin, Berserk: Written in Darkness (Toulouse, 2020), p. 110. »

4 For a summary of Immram Brain, see Séamus Mac Mathúna, ‘Immram Brain/The Voyage of Bran’, in The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain (2017), Wiley Online Library <https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb643> [accessed 29 May 2024]. »

5 Maxime Danesin and Manuel Hernández-Pérez, ‘Mangaesque Knights: Japan’s Path to Global Medievalism’, in Angela Jane Weisl and Robert Squillace (eds), Medievalism in a Global Age (Cambridge, 2024), pp. 52–64, at p. 57. »

6 In addition to Danesin and Hernández-Pérez’s article which briefly mentions Berserk, this includes Jennifer deWinter’s article and three popular books on Berserk. Only taking into account the 1997 animated series, deWinter gives a rather binary reading: Guts is interpreted as the quintessential embodiment of the Samurai spirits as opposed to Griffith, the western medieval knight, the negative portrayal of whose rise and fall is analysed as a subverted American Dream, and Guts’s fight with and triumph over the monsters is ‘a critique of Western individualistic heroism as inferior to Japanese community’. Jennifer deWinter, ‘Neo-Bushido: Neomedieval Animé and Japanese Essence’, in Carol L. Robinson and Pamela Clements (eds), Neomedievalism in the Media: Essays on Film, Television, and Electronic Games (Lewiston, 2012), pp. 83–102, at p. 97. While I concede that the characterisation of Guts does indicate influences from bushidō as perceived in popular discourses, I find deWinter’s arguments oversimplified, as the 1997 anime omitted several important plot details in order to make the series self-contained, and the manga suggests that Miura prefers syncretism over separation between different cultural concepts, which is discussed at length in Boëtin, Berserk: Written in Darkness, p. 181. Moreover, as mentioned in the Introduction and as Chiharu Hasegawa demonstrates in this volume, bushidō as a nineteenth-century construct has been influenced by and fused with chivalric ideals borrowed from the Arthurian corpora. The other two popular books on Berserk are Jeremy Mark Robinson, Berserk: Kentaro Miura + the Manga & the Animé (Maidstone, 2022) and Miyadai et al., Beruseruku seidoku ベルセルク精読 (A Close Reading of Berserk). »

7 See Ozawa’s chapter in this volume, p. 31. »

8 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Íslenzk fornrit 26 (Reyjavík, 1941), chap. 6, p. 17. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I: the Beginnings to Óláfr Tryggvason, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (London, 2011), p. 10: ‘His [i.e. Óðinn’s] men went without mail and were as wild as dogs or wolves, biting their shields, being as strong as bears or bulls. They killed the people, but neither fire nor iron took effect on them. That is called berserk fury.’ »

9 Buronson and Kentaro Miura, King of Wolves (Milwaukee, 2005). The Japanese original was published in 1989 in a single volume by Hakusensha’s Monthly Animal House, predecessor to Young Animal where Berserk is still serialised today. »

10 The poem is generally accepted to have been composed by Þorbjǫrg hornklofi to commemorate Haraldr hárfagri’s victory at Hafsfjord (ca. 872). It introduces berserkir as fighting side by side with or equivalent to the úlfheðnar, ‘wolf-skins’: ‘Grenjuðu berserkir; guðr vas þeim á sinnum; / emjuðu ulfheðnar ok ísǫrn dúðu (Berserks bellowed; battle was under way for them; wolf-skins [berserks] howled and brandished iron spears). R. D. Fulk, ‘Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Haraldskvæði (Hrafnsmál)’, in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1 (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 91–117, at stanzas 8, 20, and 21, p. 102, pp. 113–15; for an introduction to the poem, see pp. 91–2. Fulk apparently thinks the berserkir and the úlfheðnar are one and the same. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir on the other hand sees them as two different types of warriors, but nevertheless closely related to each other. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, ‘Um berserki, berserksgang og amanita muscari’, Skírnir, 175:2 (2001), 323–53, at pp. 223–4; and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, ‘The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 106:3 (2007), 277–303, at pp. 280–1. »

11 Kentaro Miura, Berserk Official Guidebook (Milwaukee, 2018), p. 160. »

12 Miura did not assign chapter numbers to his manga until Vol. 5 (1992). The chapters prior to it are known as ‘preludial episode’ amongst Berserk fans; they are generally referred to in the form of ‘0-X’. All citations from the manga itself are taken from the English version translated and distributed by Dark Horse Comics. Kentaro Miura, Berserk, vols 1–41 (Milwaukee, 2003–2021). Only in-text citation will be used in this article, in the form of volume number.chapter number, publication year – the last referring to the chapter’s original publication year in Young Animal rather than that of the tankōbon , which is only published every seven to nine chapters. Nor do I use the translation’s publication year in the United States, as Dark Horse Comics did not publish Berserk until 2003 and had to block-translate what had been previously available in Japanese; the publication date of the translations therefore is not as relevant. »

13 For a variety of the Old Norse berserkir’s social, political, and narrative functions across different saga genres, see Roderick Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr (New York, 2022), pp. 8–21. »

14 Shinji Miyadai, ‘Ningen no jitsuzon o egaku kessaku “Beruseruku”’ 人間の実存を描く傑作『ベルセルク』’ (Berserk: a Masterpiece that Depicts Human Existence), in Shinji Miyadai et al., Beruseruku seidoku ベルセルク精読 (A Close Reading of Berserk), pp. 9–24, at p. 21. »

15 Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, in Guðni Jónsson (ed.), Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar; Bandamanna saga; Odds þáttr Ófeigssonar, Íslenzk fornrit 7 (Reykjavík, 1936; repr., 2001), pp. 1–290, at chap. 35, p. 122. The English translation is taken from The Saga of Grettir the Strong, trans. Bernard Scudder and ed. Örnólfur Thorsson (London, 2005), chap. 35, p. 86. It is noteworthy that Grettis saga was translated into Japanese in 1979 as part of Yukio Taniguchi’s Aisurando Saga アイスランド•サガ (Sagas of the Icelanders). For Taniguchi’s work and impact, see Halldór Stefánsson, ‘Foreign Myths and Sagas in Japan: The Academics and the Cartoonists’, in Gísli Pálsson (ed.), Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation and Anthropological Discourse (Oxford, 1993), pp. 75–99, at pp. 76–83. »

16 Sylvia Huot, Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Found and Lost (Oxford, 2003), p. 19. »

17 For Yvain’s madness and its key function in reconstructing his identity, see, for instance, ibid., p. 31; and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, ‘The Lady and the Dragon in Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier au Lion’, in Jane E. Burns and Peggy McCracken (eds), From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Notre Dame, 2013), pp. 65–86. »

18 Susan Small, ‘The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin’, in Katie L. Walter (ed.), Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture (New York, 2013), pp. 81–97. »

19 Didier Anzieu, The Skin-Ego, trans. Naomi Segal (London, 2016), p. 17 and p. 15. »

20 Small defines this type of werewolf as belonging to the ‘overlay’ model; in Franco-Latin texts, in addition to the Ossory werewolves, this also includes Guillaume and Melior in Guillaume de Palerne, who simply wear bear and deer skin as disguise. Small, ‘The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin’, pp. 82–3. For its adoption in Old Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives and in particular in Vǫlsunga saga, see Minjie Su, Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: Between the Monster and the Man (Turnhout, 2023), pp. 44–5. »

21 In Small’s terminology, this is the ‘fusion’ model. Small, ‘The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin’, p. 86–8. »

22 Su, Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, pp. 45–7. »

23 John Carey, ‘Werewolves in Medieval Ireland’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 44 (2002), 37–72, at pp. 48–57. »

24 Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans, in Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (eds), Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, Vol. 2 (Reykjavík, 1944), pp. 3–81, at chap. 50, pp. 87–9. See also Guðmundsdóttir, ‘The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, p. 282. For Bǫðvarr’s shamanism, see also Timothy Bourns, ‘Becoming-Animal in the Icelandic Sagas’, Neophilologus, 105 (2021), 633–53, at p. 649; and Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr, pp. 50–1. »

25 Kentaro Miura, Berserk Illustrations File (Tokyo, 2006); and Miura’s interview with Yukari Fujimoto, a manga researcher based in Meiji University, Tokyo (2000) <https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Interviews> [accessed 29 May 2024]. Outside Japan, Berserk Illustrations File is only available in French; however, an English translation can be found in Berserk Fandom Wikipedia through the same link. »

26 It has been revealed in the manga that Griffith’s new world order, centring on his capital city Falconia, is a dictatorship disguised as a utopia, where he sends out assassins after those who question his reign and/or refuse to obey him (38.337–339, 2014). While Falconia’s epithet, ‘the Millennium Empire’, is reminiscent of the Tausendjähriges Reich of Nazi Germany and Miyadai has pointed out a similarity between the Empire’s founding speech and the Nazi party rally at Nürnberg, both Boëtin and Robinson remark on its authoritarian nature not only in Griffith’s policy and ruling style but also in the aesthetics of Falconia’s architecture. Miyadai, ‘Ningen no jitsuzon o egaku kessaku “Beruseruku”’ 人間の実存を描く傑作『ベルセルク』 (Berserk: a Masterpiece that Depicts Human Existence), p. 15; Boëtin, Berserk: Written in Darkness, p. 118; Robinson, Berserk: Kentaro Miura + the Manga & the Animé, p. 384–7. See also Minjie Su, ‘The Hero We Deserve: The Image of Dark Knight as Anti-Utopia in Kentaro Miura’s Manga Berserk’, in Carolyne Larrington, Hans Rudolf Velten, and Helen Young (eds), Popularising the Middle Ages in Modern Fantasy: Neomedievalism, Video Games, and Vikings (Cambridge, 2026), pp. 71–90, at pp. 81–4. »

27 Miura initially illustrated a forty-eight-page pilot manga in 1988 to pitch Berserk to Hakusensha, which provides the basis for the portrayal of Guts in the manga proper. The pilot, entitled Berserk Prototype, was published in Vol. 14 in 1997. »

28 Two of the pioneer Japanese fantasy titles are, respectively, Guin Saga (1979) – which Miura said was one of his major inspirations – and Record of Lodoss War (1988). Both are quest-centred and set in a European medievalist framework. Record of Lodoss War is especially so: originated in serialised Dungeons & Dragons scripts, the series proved to be so popular that the Dungeon Master rewrote the scripts into high fantasy novels, which were in turn turned into animations, video games, and manga, and subsequently provided a model for the Japanese fantasy genre. Shimada, ‘Mainā na janru de ōdō no hīrō o egaku’ マイナーなジャンルで王道のヒーローを描く(Berserk: Depicting a Classic Hero in a Minor Genre), pp. 46–8. »

29 Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2001), p. 253. »

30 Jesse L. Byock, ‘Introduction’, in The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (London, 1998), pp. vii–xxxv, at p. xxix. Bǫðvarr’s affinities with berserkir is also discussed in Bourns, ‘Becoming-Animal in Icelandic Sagas’, pp. 647–8; and Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr, pp. 32–3; Ármann Jakobsson, ‘Le Roi Chevalier: The Royal Ideology and Genre of “Hrólfs saga kraka”’, Scandinavian Studies, 71:2 (1999), 139–66, at p. 149. »

31 Carolyne Larrington, ‘A Viking in Shining Armour? Vikings and Chivalry in the “Fornaldarsögur”’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 4 (2008), 269–88. »

32 For an overview of the social, political, and cultural milieu of the translated sagas and their impact on and relation to the legendary sagas, see Torfi H. Tulinius, The Matter of the North: The Rise of Literary Fiction in Thirteenth-century Iceland, trans. Randi C. Eldevik (Odense, 2002), pp. 44–6, where he draws an analogy between the creation of the legendary sagas to ‘the same way as French and Anglo-Norman authors did the three “Matters” of Rome, France and Britain’ (at p. 46). See also Massimiliano Bampi, ‘The Development of the Fornaldarsögur as a Genre: A Polysystemic Approach’, in Annette Lassen, Agneta Ney, and Ármann Jakobsson (eds), The Legendary Sagas: Origins and Developments (Reykjavík, 2012), pp. 185–99, at pp. 190–3. »

33 Masako Takagi, ‘Malory in Japan’, in Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton (eds), A New Companion to Malory (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 271–95, at p. 271. Japan’s introduction of medieval history as an academic discipline in the same era goes hand-in-hand with it; early histories of Europe and the US were considered to be these countries’ ‘success stories’ from which Japan could benefit. Takeshi Kido, ‘The Study of the Medieval History of Europe in Japan’, Journal of Medieval History, 21:2 (1995), 79–96, especially pp. 80–1. »

34 See the Introduction to this volume, p. 10. »

35 Masami Kurumada, Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac (Tokyo, 1986–91). In the original Japanese, the ‘knights’ are simply called senshi 戦士, ‘warrior’ or ‘soldier’. However, when the series was translated and later marketed for French and English readers, it was rendered as ‘knight’ so as to keep in line with the warriors’ appearance and code of behaviour. Gankutsuō: The Count of Monte Cristo, animated series, directed by Mahiro Maeda Gonzo K.K., 2004–5, Episode 18: The Duel. For the persistence and popularity of knights in Japanese manga and anime, see also Danesin and Hernández-Pérez, ‘Mangaesque Knights’, pp. 59–63; and Clément de Vasselot de Régné and Louis de Vasselot de Régné, ‘La fascination pour le Moyen Âge européen dans l’animation japonaise’, in Martin Aurell, Florian Besson, Justine Breton, and Lucie Malbos (eds), Les médiévistes face aux médiévalismes (Rennes, 2023), pp. 77–88, at pp. 84–5. »

36 Angela Jane Weisl, The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Adventures in Contemporary Culture (New York, 2003), p. 5. »

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7 A Berserkr in Shining Armour: Berserk Fury, Werewolf, and Mental Trauma in Kentaro Miura’s Manga Berserk

Medievalism in Japanese Manga

Chapter illustrations ()