Reverse-blade

quite. the sakabatou's kissaki is still quite charp so it could kill and as Miss Roxy pointed out a battou-jutsu or even a cut from the lotus position is still enough to kill...

 

in fact there are many folk tales about men who never kill yet they have carried a katana or a sharp blade. Their names escape me at the moment but i bet you wouldn't care to hear them anywya hehe. Kenshin carries a reverse blade because his Hiten Mitsurugi style is too powerful and he would never be able to use that style with a regular blade and not kill someone. And his reverse blade was a present i think i remember...from someone...dang the name escapes me...but it was not kenshin who chose it himself but accepted it...

 

it was the swordsmith Shakku-dono. he told him that a swords man lives by the sword and dies by the sword...and to try to live carrying the sakabatou with him...

 

yeah. I think that the reverse blade is fit for Kenshin Himura but for the Battousai still in him...its such a waste of such a great hitokiri and swordsman.

 

i would probably perfer the katana but also the reverse-blade then the zan-bato. i like the katana because it actually i don't know why i like it.

 

Ooo *claps* you people have veri good reasons! Smart people! ^_^ Anywayz uh i would choose the Reverse Blade Sword just because the fact that you can choose if you wanna kill someone or not. Plus i go by this saying that Rem (from Trigun) said "No one has the right to take a life of another" -- Rem Saverem...and i totally believe in the saying so i would choose the Reverse Blade for the purpose alone that i could still win battles but just not kill others ^_^ Plus i don't think i could kill someone :shy3: So having a weapon that could kill would only make me a weaker fighter because i would hold back so i wouldn't kill the person i was fighting.

 

Actually if you were a master swordsman then you can actually control your blade to the extent of choosing to kill or not. Most people think that the reverse blade represents the choice to not kill. But really if you were not a experienced swordsman and were jsut learning you could kill someone with the reverse blade. Its liek snakes...rattle snakes. The young ones are the most deadly because they don't know how much poison to inject so they inject until you...die...but the older ones only deliver how ever much they think is neccessary. So i would still choose the katana for the reason that i can execute my skill precisely with a sharpened edge...

 

besides that i think it shows great control of ones emotions...because the sword is used not to control ones opponent but to control ones self...

 

yes and i think to be able to be great at the sword is to be able to master your emotions therefore your mind is directing the sword completely and not your emotions...which sometime get the better of you...

 

I would choose a katana, although I can't pinpoint the exact reason for this... I agree with the many statements of the preservation of life with the sakabatou, but that's only partially true anyways. Since sakabatou do indeed have a cutting edge, they are still capable of killing (i.e. Jin'ei, he almost was killed with a sakaba). If one were to truly to wield a sword to protect and never kill, a bokken or shinai would be the best choices, as it is extreamly difficult to kill with them.

Also, samurai were usually not hesitant to kill, to whoever said that if they were a samurai they wouldn't want to kill (I mean no offense by it, this is merely based on my knowlage and I usually come out rude by accident...). If their lord was in danger of dying and killing was the surest way to save him/her, then killing should have been done. Not to mention that samurai were the only people with real rights, and they could, and were expected to, kill an offending peasent, artisan, or merchant in the middle of a crowded street and have broken no laws. So saying that a samurai would choose a sakabatou is most likely wrong.

 

those are very good points but a bokken and still kill...Musashi Miyamoto used them as killing weapon after his 60th duel...also Kenshin is not a samurai...its not quite clear if he came from a samurai family but with a last name the chance are that he was either from a merchent family or a samurai family...

 

actually if he was part of a samurai family he would not have been sold as a slave right? hmm...but back then people believed that samurai were born and not made. And with his potential as a swordsman at such a young age...he was probably of samurai blood...