A little Swordsman trivia

[TMPikachu]

well, I'm the one that cares, you're the one that doesn't, duh.

I see you still care enough to keep on postin'

[Tito]

ok ...first of all he was talking about the philosiphy of the samurai and its ties with martial arts...nothing to do with the game.
second why does it have to relate to the game anyway? Maybe he wanted to post some intresting bit o info he found or saw or whatever....some of u ppl get WAY to wound up over this shit



and there my 2 pennies

[Anom]

I found a penny once...

...in a gutter. It wasn't very shiny. In fact it was covered in this black stuff that was kinda sticky. I wiped the black stuff on my pants. My mom yelled at me for getting my clothes dirty. She would have yelled at me more if she found out that I also licked the penny...

but that's just between me and the penny.

Oh yeah, back on topic. I like swords. Especially those tiny plastic ones that delis use to hold their sammiches together.

[Kurgan]

Originally posted by Anom
Oh yeah, back on topic. I like swords. Especially those tiny plastic ones that delis use to hold their sammiches together.

And after you have become one with your sword, you can kill anything with that little plastic sword. Maybe even with your penny.

^^

[Kyolii]

Hmm.. Guess I should've checked back on this thread sooner...

So, yes, this method of thought is mentioned in Hero (2002), but it's a well-respected belief about Chinese swordplay in general.

As for whether or not it relates to Samurai, it doesn't (directly). That's why the first line of the post asks you to bear with me; it was a little off-topic. I didn't want to pontificate about its connections to Japanese swordplay because I know comparatively little about it.

TMPikachu was correct in his explanation of the connection between China and Samurai, but to be fair, the Japanese developed blacksmithing (as it pertained to blades) in a way that the Chinese never did. By way of example, the curve of the Katana (and other Japanese blades) is natural; it bends during part of the incredibly specific cooling process. I mean, that's pretty remarkable

It's very useless to debate the superiority of either style of swordsmanship; Chinese swordplay is very evasive and focuses on parries, blocks and indirect attacks, as well as an integration with hand-to-hand combat. Japanese swordplay is very much "one hit one kill;" there are no parries because generally one sword would cut straight through another's blade. And while Kung Fu may have slightly faster, more cunning strikes, a Samurai only needs one good hit to cleave someone in half; a task that would be far more difficult for a Chinese swordsman to achieve. Kung Fu, on the other hand, provides a higher level of internal health and ability than Japanese martial arts can provide, but only at the cost of extensive, often life-long training. Both have equal strength in different areas.

Re: All the debate in this thread -

It wasn't my intention to start a flame war, and I'm glad it didn't quite get to that point. It was my intention to throw out a little thought that I found intellectually interesting at the time. And Seulgaist, it is relevant to the game; some of us do roleplay, you know.

[TMPikachu]

hmmm, don't quite follow on the cleaving part. I think in general, being struck by a sharp metal edge will be rather incompasitating.
Could also be that China had vastly greater resources, allowing for iron (even steel) body armor.

Generally there's two main groups of swords

strait bladed 'fencing' or 'wushu' swords used for sword dances and the like, and curved blades used in war for optimised cutting force.
There were also a few large two handed straight swords (they are known as 'horse killers', I think it gives a slight idea on their power :D)

I'm very interested in where you got your sources on japanese sword fighting and chinese swordfighting, website? book? Osprey Publishing has a good line of books with neato historic info on historic japan n' samurai

and Dual to the Death, a movie I think I mentioned before, has fights between chinese Swordsmen/assassins/monks vs Japanese assassin/samurai/etc.
probably not too historically accurate, but extremely cool :D

[Tiamath]

Bah, I like reading about Samurai and stuff, its neat. Note how the subject is called Swordsman trivia, and that it really didn't have anything to do with FFXI in the first place Stop arguing before I start crackin' skulls. ^^

[Tiamath]

oh wait, I was a little late on the above post, no? Didn't see the page 2. Derrr *Smacks forehead*

[TMPikachu]

Originally posted by Tiamath
Bah, I like reading about Samurai and stuff, its neat. Note how the subject is called Swordsman trivia, and that it really didn't have anything to do with FFXI in the first place Stop arguing before I start crackin' skulls. ^^

slicing skulls, slicing

samurai slice



and there's an edit button, like this

[Quezi]

Sure they are related. Everythings related.

Its just a game? What kind of reasoning is that? Let me point something out. Ok, you get some form of money, and you can use it to buy things! OMG! JUST LIKE REALITY! Do you know why? I will explain.

All fiction is based on reality. It is not possable for someone to come up with a single idea that is not related to reality, simply becaus all of our ability to think and reason and dream and imagine are based upon the catalogue of real world events that we all keep in our head and use to think with, starting from the moment we are born.

That being said, 'real world' things have great relavence, becaus this game exists in reality, and hence is governd by it.

There are 'samurais' in this game, there where 'samurais' in reality. Now you could try and say that for all we know 'samurai' means rubber chew toy in the 'game world', but ofcorse it doesnt. There needs to be a logical way to connect the game to reality, wich is why in games, only the setting changes. Various things like, as i mentioned a money system, hitting things with a weapon will probibly kill them, up is up and down is down, and if you get hurt to bad you will die, stay true in all games. Its not just becaus its a neat design element, its becaus if things are to 'unrealistic' people will not be able to relate to them.

Becaus of this great insight can be gained. Infact it was a game that introduced me to eastern philosophies, i was playing NexusTK and ended up buying and studying the i ching, inspired by some of the subpaths *diviner, geomancer, do*, aswell as other things such as intoduceing me to zen and taoism and whatnot. Games are a great way to enrich yourself.

Becaus of all of this it always upsets me to run into those kinds of people who just HATE haveing related but not game-exclusive things brought up. Theres alot to learn from games, and you dont get it by just looking at charts and tables and whatching your exp per kill, you get it from starting with the game, finding something interesting in the game, and learning about its roots in reality.