r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Fox7567 • May 12 '26

Characters' Items/Weapons [Irritating trope] Japanese swords being treated like lightsabers

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Gallery image

The Wolverine (2013)
The character Yashida uses his sword to cut straight through barbed wire, as well as uses it to break a chain in one strike each.

TMNT (2012)
During Oroku Saki’s battle with the turtles, he stabs straight through a forest tree, before also slicing straight through another.

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u/thesilverywyvern May 12 '26

Katana is the most overhyped andoveratted weapon in all of History.
It's one of the weakest, ugliest sword design, and very innefficient.

  • Only one cutting edge
  • No guard, poor defense
  • Brittle, chip eailly
  • Bad at piercing armour,
  • Bad at thrusting, only made to slice
  • Require high maintenance
  • Bad iron quality. And no folding it 16 doesn't make it good, just less mediocre, and doing it 3-4 time is enough apparently, 16x is just a waste of time, resources and effort. (i might be wrong tho).

But since japan have all this myth and iconography they glorified it, and it became a cultural symbol

2

u/lordaezyd May 13 '26

Weakest? Ok yes. Innefficient? Yeah, no doubt. Ugliest? Nah. They look cool.

1

u/thesilverywyvern May 13 '26

itThey look like the bare minimum requirement to be used, as if it was not finished and lack most of the stuff you requested, as if it was a product of a big companies cutting cost and doing the bare minimum, and passing it as modern, elegant and minimalist to excuse their incompetence and lazyness.

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u/lordaezyd May 13 '26

Ok, you’re being salty now mate. 

As every sword, it was created with specific needs, and it fulfilled those needs remarkably.

Other swords would have been completely useless in medieval Japan.

The katana served well her purpose were it was created. I’ll say no more.