The action in this series had a lot of sword dodging which is unrealistic and not as cool looking/sounding. If you've seen Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children then you'd know what I mean. Instead of the "swish, swish, swoosh, swish" in SC, FF7AC had "clank clank clank, chop, slice, whack, bang bang....." Dodging a sword takes more energy than a simple block. Boxers will attest to that.
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Blocking when all you have is a blade isn't that good an idea, since it nicks your blade. If the nick is big enough, it can never be completely removed. Remember, these aren't people with infinite resources at their hands. If their sword gets nicked, they can't just up and buy another one. Steel was expensive back then.
I personally thought of the fights in the show as highly realistic. I may not know a lot about japanese combat from that period, but it's easy to guess that Japanese warriors didn't favour blocking, otherwise their combat would have evolved to incorporate shields as shields are a tool specialized with the purpose of blocking. Shields were used in the West because blocking was such a huge part of the combat. When you read stories like King Arthur or Tristan and Isolde, much of the combat consisted of people standing still in their armour and hitting each other until one of the combatants succumbed to their wounds. Japanese combat had more to do with reach and mobility, which I think the show illustrated fabulously.
Real life Japanese sword fights back then only lasted a few seconds and there were not a lot of dodging or blocking. But for the sake of the show they could make it cooler looking. A lot of martial arts movie with hand to hand fighting makes it cool with the way they block, parry AND dodge then attack. SC had a lot of dodging , JMO.
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"Real life Japanese sword fights back then only lasted a few seconds and there were not a lot of dodging or blocking."
That's exactly the way it was portrayed in the show. No encounter lasted for more than a few seconds. Mugen and Jin could cut down opponents in the blink of an eye.
"But for the sake of the show they could make it cooler looking."
I thought it was pretty darn cool looking.
"A lot of martial arts movie with hand to hand fighting makes it cool with the way they block, parry AND dodge then attack."
Hand to hand is unarmed combat. Samurai champloo had mostly armed combat. And as I said, I liked it just fine the way it was.
yeah i guess so, i am too used to certain combat that i enjoy
SC's fights last only a few seconds when they fight the grunts but for stronger fighters it's much longer, Jin's last fight with the other Samurai was the coolest, oh well no biggie
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"clank clank clank, chop, slice, whack, bang bang....."This sounds more like Western knights with their heavy broadswords and plate armour. A katana goes more like "zeep swish zeep squelch". share
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