wtf, is this why we rarely see naginatas in action combat games? i think naginatas are one of the most aesthetic weapons.

I believe Onna-Musha were most commonly armed with Naginata, the association stuck.

No weapons of war are feminine.

>>715353389
i remembered reading a post about naginatas being considered feminine and just googled it and tons of results came up

>>715353389
Dual swords/daggers.

>>715352925 (OP)
You think it's aesthetic because it's feminine and the male gaze is attracted to femininity

>>715352925 (OP)
Can anyone post that picture with the 2 naginatas varre mask bullgoat phantom from elden ring?

>>715353826
Nah, son.

>>715352925 (OP)
Actually, the main reason is the same as the reason why you rarely see spears and pikes as mainline weapons in European-inspired vaguely middle-age based titles.
They are indeed a battlefield weapons, suitable for group fighting rather than soloing a small small group of enemies in between town exploration. A spear or a naginata presents no advantage if you aren't fighting a large formation-based battle or defending a siege. In fact their usefulness lessens due to how cumbersome they are.

But also yes, naginatas do have something of an effeminate reputation in Japan, due to the fact that until relatively recently, they were literally the only weapons women were legally allowed to train with.
But then again, the stigma should not be over-rated. Vast majority of people using naginatas were still men, by the simple virtue of vast majority of people fighting were men. Women were only allowed to use naginatas because of a potential siege scenario, in which all adherence to gender roles and expectations would be dropped, and everyone ablebodied, men and women alike, would be expected to join the defense. Outside of those defensive battles, and extremely rare exceptions, women were not expected to join battles, because... why would they? Naginata's happen to be arguably the best siege defense weapons Japan employed, so it made sense to make them THE exception for woman to train with. And again, this really wasn't a common practice either, female naginata dojo's were still a curiosity, not a common place occurance. They mostly served as a kind of low-key flex of their respective daimyou's, sending a message to others that they don't fuck around and are prepared to launch extreme defense if threatened.

>>715353389
Throwing Anus

>>715353389
The word "Gun" literally comes to us from a woman's name, pleb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun

longer handle = more momentum.
spears arent feminine but probably easier to use with less power.

>>715352925 (OP)
>TVtroons

>>715356304
>The word "Gun" literally comes to us from a woman's name, pleb
Actually the word "gun" just comes from pie gwhen (to strike), via old Germanic gunnr (to fight, to strike, to wage war).
The name Gunnhildr is just compound of two different words for war to begin with.

Also, hilariously enough the wiki article completely misses the second most common word for a gun in medieval europe: pistol. Which comes from old Czech, "píšťala", meaning pipe (the musical instrument). This is because one of the first large-scale popularization of gunpowder weapons happened in the Hussite wars on the side of mostly Bohemian-speaking heretics.

TLDR: don't trust wikipedia uncritically, there is a lot of factually wrong information there.

Post female vidya characters with naginatas

>>715352925 (OP)
I have literally never heard of this trope

>>715352925 (OP)
Japanese nobility women just preferred naginata, nobody forced them favor it. But all of them had to train in some kind of self-defence because Sengoku Jidai samurai were brutal and didn't spare women or children. So if you were going to lose your head anyway, might as well fight to the last.

>>715357309
>Japanese nobility women just preferred naginata, nobody forced them favor it.
Where the fuck did you get that info?

iirc naginatas fell out of favor as battlefield weapons as more modern yari were better at defeating armor but had a resurgence as a defensive weapon during the Edo period and so they were associated with trained noblewomen

>>715357141
I think its because very few japanese media show men using a naginata.
A guandao is a different case of course since Guan Yu its namesake is show using it, along with many chinese warrior archetypes. After all, unlike the much slender naginata, the guandao is a big manly blade on a stick. A male japanese warrior in fiction on the other hand either uses a katana or tachi or a nodachi because that requires more strength and precision.

>>715357141
tv tropes just makes a page for anything and everything that has more than 1 example

>>715357484
Fighting Techniques of the Oriental World.
100 Weapons that changed the World.

Good books, recommended. Sengoku Jidai warfare didn't have strict rules and samurai were not some type of strict and honorable soldiers. Sengoku Jidai was an age of brutal wars. The Daimyo who adopted new fighting techniques and new european weapons became the victors. Clans and daimyo who stuck with traditional values got crushed.

>>715352925 (OP)
Sounds like made up bullshit tbqh.
Naginatas are monk weapons.

polearms are almost never in games for some reason despite being used in war more than swords

>>715356981
Sumire, my beloved

>>715357917
monks are feminine

>>715357695
Ah outside of women, I also forgot but the other warrior archetype who also got associated with naginatas are warrior monks. I guess its to show that the naginata is a weapon of personal defense for people wanting protecting castles or in the monk's case, shrines and temples.

>>715356981

>>715357851
>Good books, recommended.
Apparently fucking not, since it's COMPLETELY FUCKING WRONG. Women were literally banned by law from training with most weapons very since long before katanagiri and long into Meiji restoration, during which the idea of weapon training being a sport-like activity started to dominate.

Naginata's were an exception purely because of their utility as a defensive weapons, since siege defenses were literally the only times when women were expected to actively fight.

The book is very obviously full of complete shit.

Shrine priests and priestesses are caretakers of the shrine grounds and become masters of the broom. In times of battle they exchange their sweeping bristle broom for the war-broom, or naginata. The practice is less associated with 'women in war' and more associated with priestesses.

>>715358049
In reality it was also used in the field by men. It was just the fashion weapon of choice for noblewomen and thats where the image stuck. Like this anon: >>715357927 said. Majority of close combat weapons were polearms, not swords.

>>715357141
>My reaction to 90% percent of “tropes” documented

>>715358301
I suppose thats why it can be seen as feminine. Most naginatodo techniques I see makes it seem the naginata feels like very elegant weapon fighting style wise. Compare it to the more snappy and powerful strikes from a sword.

>>715358431
>Majority of close combat weapons were polearms, not swords.
Yes, but it's also incredibly fucking obvious why games don't feature them much. A polearms excel in very narrow and specific situations, ones that games very rarely actually feature.

>>715358431
I'm sure, but I am mostly referring to japanese fiction and media portrayal and trying to rationalize it. It's like the common media portrayal of bows being for girls.

>>715358262
>Women were literally banned by law from training with most weapons
I'm talking about Sengoku Jidai, pay attention you ignorant fuck. Sengoku Era was the era of no rules. The first wave of bans and restrictions especially to Ashigaru class started when Toyotomi Hideyoshi finished uniting Japan, later further and stricter bans and Japans self-isolation was started by Togukawa after Siege of Osaka. Do you think the women in Osaka gave two shits about some weapon ban when Togukawas army breached the walls and all hope was lost? Retard. Hideyori's own grandmother committed suicide with a knife before Togukawas soldiers reached her.

If the reasoning that spears or halberes look awkward on a main character travelling, then explain staves then?

>>715358575
>ones that games very rarely actually feature
games also very rarely actually feature realistic swordfighting

>>715353389
Tell that to Roland; the fruit cake.

>>715358798
Imagine if games accurately portrated slashing weapons as being nearly useless against armored enemies.

Games with nagamaki? Or is that too hipster?

>>715358575
That is not it at all. It's just that swords are a lot more interesting and "cool." You're also completely wrong about polearms. In reality reach > everything else in 99% of situations. That is just physical reality.

>>715358575
>. A polearms excel in very narrow and specific situations
Bro there is not one single instance where having a big pointy stick with lots of reach is a disadvantage, other than boom sticks with lots more reach.
Swordfags are in shambles every single day.
Common farm tools are more effective than swords.

>>715359230
In reality maybe, but in vidya, even in melee games like mordhau or bannerlord, the best weapon always seems to be a 2 handed sword or axe. Games always make spears have really shit damage while you can go unga bunga with 2handers.

>>715352925 (OP)
Momji in the NG games is such a dogshit character. Her naginata moveset is completely uninteresting right down to the pogo jump, it has no pogo properties it's just a ground pound and has less invincibility than other ground pounds, which makes her an easy target for grabs. I think she's better in NG3, but they're still worse than Ryu

>>715358575
>A polearms excel in very narrow and specific situations,
On the contrary weapons like halberds were very versatile weapons. You could stab with two ends, slash, hack and use the hook side to drag a guy down from his horse. Polearm soldiers were still used to the late 1700's when improved bayonets finally made them redundant.

Spears and polearms are entirely too OP to be treated correctly in games.
When they had sword that could slice simple bamboo spears, they just left the branches on, sharpened it, and coated the tips in poison.
Give it to literally any person and tell them to wave it around the enemy and they fucking drop like flies.
IT really ramped up when they replaced bamboo with metal.
Spears are the Chad's weapon.
LARPers use swords.

>>715359645
>*17th century
Fuck, stupid typo.

>>715359441
Another being that the lenth of polearms mean that they tend to unnecessarily bounce off from other objects or the target just hyperarmors through your pokes and flattens your ass.

>>715358728
>I'm talking about Sengoku Jidai, pay attention you ignorant fuck.
Yes, and I said LONG BEFORE katanagiri, which happened at the end of Sengoku Jidai.

You literally don't know what we are talking about, do you?

>Sengoku Era was the era of no rules.
Are you 12? What do you think Sengoku era was? Actually, you apparently don't know what katanagiri was so this is a pointless question.

>Do you think the women in Osaka gave two shits about some weapon ban when Togukawas army breached the walls and all hope was lost?
Literally my point you absolute cretin.

>Hideyori's own grandmother committed suicide with a knife
Holy shit you fucking retard. That is like saying "Cleopatra poisoned herself: that is a clear proof that women were an integral part of Egyptian chemical warfare industry!"

YEAH. WOMEN KNEW THAT KNIVES ARE SHARP, YOU RETARD. THEY GENERALLY SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN KITCHENS. ALSO, 6 YEARS OLD CHILDREN UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF "KNIFE = POSSIBILITY TO HARM THEMSELVES".

The fuck is wrong with your brain?

>>715352925 (OP)
>Naginatas are feminine
What fucking opinion nonsense is this.

>>715358798
>games also very rarely actually feature realistic swordfighting
There is a difference between the difficulty of capturing the nuance and complexity of swordfighting in animation, and between the fact that that polearms are literally fucking terrible in 99% of all combat scenarios ever featured in videogames.

Games tend to shy away from focusing on large scale organized battles, unless they are fucking strategies.

That is why you don't see many polerams in them. Because that is what they are made for, that is where they provide an advantage. Anywhere else and they become a fucking liability.

This is how swordfags legitimately think.
Absolutely delusional people.

>>715359962
>reddit spacing
That checks out. Post your sources or shut your tranny mouth about things you don't understand.

>>715359230
>" You're also completely wrong about polearms. In reality reach > everything else in 99% of situations
Were your parents brother and sister by any chance?

>>715356846
>heretics
Spotted the Papist

>>715358575
>Yes, but it's also incredibly fucking obvious why games don't feature them much. A polearms excel in very narrow and specific situations, ones that games very rarely actually feature.

What utter bollocks. Have you not played any Koei Tecmo games like Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors/Nioh, or Fromsoft games where Dark Souls makes the point about the spear pole arm is effective at killing Stone Dragons.

>>715359645
>On the contrary weapons like halberds were very versatile weapons.
They were absolutely not. They were very SPECIFICALLY designed to do two things: crowd control if you had a full contingent of men, and taking down riders when in defensive situations. There is a good reason why halberds are so deeply associated with city guards, and not bandits.

>>715360281
Best weapon from those games are either nodachi/fists or in souls, UGS though. I never beat any souls games using only spears. Feels more like pvp weapon.

>>715360191
Nein, they were cousins!

Games just follow the "MC needs to have a sword" trope.
You barely see mcs with a shield and weapons like a mace, greataxe or flail either.

>>715360259
>Spotted the Papist
Not really, no. But it is an objectively accurate description, and I worried calling them "ultraquists" would just confuse everyone.

At the time the Hussite uprising happened, Cathologic's nominally unlimited authority on issues of faith hasn't been yet challenged, so they did genuinely get to decide the nomenclature.

Not for very long after though.

>>715360443
>I never beat any souls games using only spears. Feels more like pvp weapon.
While not a spear but in the pole arm category, the Gargoyle Halberd 2 handed in DS1 is an S tier in PvE.

>>715357927
they were the weapons you gave to fresh recruits you weren't going to bother to train and expected to die quickly on the field
connotations bad for that reason
in a duel context a well-trained swordfighter can also easily get inside the reach of the polearm and force them to drop the weapon

>>715360312
>when in defensive situations.
Or in offence situations. Swiss spearmen were famous for using simple polearm regiments offensively in Late Medieval period wars where spearmen were losing relevancy with increasing influence of gunpowder weapons. British unit in Iraq War 2001 used all their bullets, so they went for a bayonet charge and won the day. Thats spears successfully used in a counter-offensive in modern day urban combat.

There's a reason why the lancer trope is associated with the supporting character. The hero has to have a sword. The spear is the weapon used by the other not as important guy.

>>715360671
Swords are literally just gold DLC for your investments.
They were wildly impractical, cumbersome to manufacture, wildly expensive, chipped to no end and lost their edge and took great skill to sharpen.
You give spears to your army if you want to win the war.
You give them swords if you want to watch your investment become worm food.

>>715360671
>they were the weapons you gave to fresh recruits you weren't going to bother to train and expected to die quickly on the field
>connotations bad for that reason
Sure thing, whatever you say weeb.

>>715360671
>>715360132
Absolutely delusional as expected.

>>715360929
professionals exist, yes
are you giving swords to your conscripts or spears?

>>715360671
>Landsknechts were expendable newbies.

>>715357927
It's because the optimal way to fight with a pole arm is to fight lame (keep out pokes to wear down your opponent through attrition).

>>715361048
Spears. Modern day conscripts are given bayonets to this very day. And bayonets are not shaped like your precious samurai swords.

>>715360132
this is the stupidest fucking diagram I've seen. If a combatant gets into your reach you're not going to have 2 seconds to readjust your grip on your spear, you're going to drop your spear and pull your sidearm to shove it into his face

>>715360929
>>715360895
You guys are forgetting that footmen also carried swords. They were munitions grade swords made of quickly hammered iron or steel but they were still swords. Swords in general were just side arms like every soldier today has a handgun to go with his combat rifle.

>>715360121
>Games tend to shy away from focusing on large scale organized battles, unless they are fucking strategies.
>That is why you don't see many polerams in them. Because that is what they are made for
By this logic we should also never see 2-handed greatswords in games since their historical utility was in breaking up massed pike formations instead of one on one combat but you're far more likely to see them in videogames
it has absolutely nothing to do with historical usage and more about what looks cool to people, giant double axes have zero historical basis in warfare but you're still more likely to see them in games than spears.

>>715360671
>they were the weapons you gave to fresh recruits you weren't going to bother to train and expected to die quickly on the field
you still had to train them to move together as a unit, which is difficult when everyone has a 10 foot stick to accidentally bonk the entire unit with.
not to mention the bulk of polearm tactics was "walk directly at enemy with pointy bit forward" and getting dudes to do that without breaking while another group of dudes is walking directly back at them with more pointy bits is a thing in and of itself.
turns out people don't like to purposefully impale themselves in a lockstep death march.

>>715360163
>reddit spacing
Yeah, figures.

>Post your sources
Let's start with Suzuki Hiroatsu's comprehensive collection of research. I fucking studied japanes history for 4 years, you clown.

>>715361245
>Swords in general were just side arms like every soldier today has a handgun to go with his combat rifle.
Thats funny because soldiers don't have a handgun to go with their combat rifle. Why would they need it, they have their combat rifles. You should play less video games, read more history books, serve in the army and then come back to these threads.

>>715352925 (OP)
>naginatas
>feminine
>even built bitches can't fucking use them properly because not enough muscle mass and height to do it
What retarded incel looney troon wrote that article?

>>715361183
>And bayonets are not shaped like your precious samurai swords.
many were. bayonet shape is pretty diverse actually. the deciding factor was what sort of knife you'd like to have when it's not being a bayonet.

>>715361410
Name a male vidya or anime character that uses a naginata then. In case you dont know what tropes are.

>>715361205
Anon if you're in front of a person with a spear, you're dead.
All of your acrobatics is defeated with a thrust.
If a sword user goes against a spear user, the sword user loses.

>>715354132
Your post is worth reading, but if I had to tl;dr it it's that "Naginata being the best weapon for women" is a sub-function of "Naginata is the best weapon, full stop".

>>715361372
Pretty sure infantry was issued 1911s with their m1 garands back in ww2.

>>715352925 (OP)
Naginata found its way into Silent Hill before Nioh. Let that sink in.

I dunno what's convinced people that swords were these crazy impractical useless things but the fact that almost every culture throughout history had some kind of sword should give you an indication that they were actually pretty good.

People are really saying that hundreds of different, distant unconnected cultures all invented the same thing, but purely as a ceremonial/status tool. lol

>>715361487
Name a fucking female army, or a female figure in history, that wielded the naginata.
I can name two, they were both beheaded by Chinks after achieving nothing, probably one of the few Viet losses.

Are we gonna go the "naginatas are feminine because hardy fucking peasant males are given them as conscripts, because they lived a life of fucking bodybuilding for survival and can uset them" route to pull shit out of our ass next, even though the conscript army would be the very peak of fucking masculinity when their lives and physical prowess is compared to cuckolds like yourself?

>>715361596
Pretty sure switch glaves were supposed to be a naginata stand in but surprise it's the main weapon for Mumyo.

>>715360671
>they were the weapons you gave to fresh recruits you weren't going to bother to train and expected to die quickly on the field
>connotations bad for that reason
What a load of shit. You have to train, otherwise how in the fuck can you give commands to people who don't understand them.

https://youtu.be/qBGHolXGi3A

>>715361487
>Name a male vidya or anime character that uses a naginata then

>>715361263
Their historical utility was actually just about hacking through increasingly improved armor. Although greatswords were surprisingly versatile weapons thanks to their length so they could be used in a lot of ways. Same with big axes like Dane Axes. They were weapons designed for raw power, where with muscle alone you could break shields or smash bones through ringmails. Bayeux Tapestry depicts a guy splitting a horse's skull with an axe to stop a cavalryman in his tracks. Abattoirs to this day use wide bearded axes to chop big animal skulls in half. If its sharpened well all you need is one swing.

>>715360760
>Swiss spearmen were famous for using simple polearm regiments offensively in Late Medieval period
Yes, in very tightly organized formations, you moron. That is the fucking point. Polearms are absolutely fantastic... in large-scale formations or in tightly controlled environments.

Historically, polearms did absolutely drastically outnumber any other weapon types on the battlefield. But the key fucking word is "BATTLEFIELD". As in "situation where several very large groups fight in very organized fashion, or in artifically controlled situations involving defensive preparations - such as sieges.

When you can rely on the fact that there are guys next to you and behind you, each covering for the other, polearms absolutely excel. Simlarly, in situation where you artifically limit enemy angles of attack, such as in siege holdouts.

What they absolutely SUCK at is situations where you have no defenses - fortifications, or organized squad covering each other.

If one man holding a spear faces off against one man of equal skill holding a sword, the sword will win 80% of the time.

If 300 men holding spears face against 300 men holding swords, the spears will win 80% of the time. It's not fucking rocket science, it's common fucking sense.

>>715361676
>switch glaves were supposed to be a naginata stand in
yeah, they're slop and not naginata, exactly

>>715361367
>comprehensive collection of research.
Name it. Or do you have to google some important sounding name a bit longer?

>>715361725
sorry
that was a job for slings and arrows
Heavy weapons without reach are just a liability

>>715361410
dunno about tvtropes but women with polearms is an established thing in japanese folklore, has been for hundreds of years.

sometimes women had to defend the home while the men were away at war and long sharp thing to keep bandits further away was preferred.

>>715361793
>If one man holding a spear faces off against one man of equal skill holding a sword, the sword will win 80% of the time.
nigga
you're going to have to explain the fact that the spear guy's killing end reaches the sword guy before the sword guy's killing end reaches the spear guy.
Go on.
I'm listening.
Otherwise swords will always lose.

>>715354132
Nothing wrong with a good simple spear. I watched a youtube video once where they tried to see which weapon was the superior weapon, the spear vs the sword, and the spearman won. Just about, but still.

>>715361676
There's also a boss in each game that uses the naginata, Yuki-Onna/Noh and Imagawa Yoshimoto

>>715361667
Yes, nearly all of the onnamusha and infamously tomoe gozen. Also you are reading tv tropes. It's not based on history but recording common stereotypes in video games, TV, anime and comics. This trope comes from the fact that Japan tends to portray the naginata as a weapon usually used by female characters just like how the dual swords is associated with ronin and other musashi archetypes.

>>715356846
You're welcome to correct the wikipedia articles, brehh.

forget naginata. We never see any Tetsubo/Kanabo in games.

>>715362120
Because just like tv tropes say, kanabo is associated with oni.

>>715356304
>"Flying-cloud-thunderclap-eruptor"
Kino

>>715362120
Oh?

>>715361263
>By this logic we should also never see 2-handed greatswords
Not really, no. Both claymores and zweihänders were heavily used in one-on-one combat. It seems odd with zweihänder's absurd lenght, they look like very clumsy weapons, but if you ever actually held one, you'd know how lightweight and nimble they were. Less versatile than shorter blades but a lot more versatile than polearms.

That was the whole trick of the famous Landsknecht corps. They were extremely versatile, bridging the gap between the extremely limited pike formations, and the light pressure gangs mostly equipped with Dusack that were used between them, mostly tasked with crawling under the pike walls and disrupt the formations.

As for Claymores... they were mostly a prestige thing. Basic "look at how big my weapon is and thus how physically strong I am". They did not pose much of an advantage on battle field, but style was genuinely an importat thing in agonal battlefields.

>>715362308
>Less versatile than shorter blades but a lot more versatile than polearms.
the cope of a lifetime

>>715361487

>>715361647
this isn't a perfect analogue but swords were sort of like pistols in that the sword was a secondary weapon or something used in close quarters. all throughout history the greatest weapon of war was a spear or some variation thereof (halberds, pikes). cavalry would use long swords because it's more practical to swing down at enemies than to thrust a spear with one arm. and there were other swords like zweihanders or uchigatanas which were used to swing wildly at enemies armour or shields, with their size and weight mattering as much as their cutting ability.
basically if you wanted to win a battle in the ancient world you wanted spearmen and archers. i agree with anons in the thread that say the spear isn't seen as "cool" compared to swords, but they're more practical in real world battles.

>>715361596
tbf Nioh 2 went in a weird direction with its new weapons
we got wacky transforming scythes, magical floating axes and the lunar staff from NG whereas the first game's DLC gave us tonfa and odachi
Rise of the Ronin has naginatas and imo they're one of the best weapon categories but everyone forgot about that game already

Pretty sure the hype about greatswords came from pier gerlofs donna. A legendary landsknecht and pirate. Renowned for supposedly chopping a handful of men in one swing one time.

>>715361793
>What they absolutely SUCK at is situations where you have no defenses - fortifications, or organized squad covering each other.
No they don't. Again, spears aka bayonets are used to this day in urban combat where fighting is up close and personal, without massed ranks. Where spear loses against a sword is overall versatility of use. With a good broad sword you can slash, stab and hack an opponent with reasonable force and reasonable chance of penetrating the armor. With a spear a spearwielder simply has to keep the sword-wielder out of his range to prevail.

Swords stuck through time as versatile and easy to use sidearms, not as some superior fighting weapons that trump every other weapon class. You can pull a sword at a moments notice to defend yourself in any situation. With a long pole arm you first has to screw in both ends to assemble it, unless you want to carry a cumbersome spear everywhere. Spear was foremost a soldiers weapon stored in weapon storages, not the everyday useful personal decorated tool of a rich warrior or nobility like swords were.

When swords went out of style, nobility started using walking sticks instead. Those sticks were built sturdy enough to be clubs you could split a skull with in self defence.

Jannies are swordfags.
With main character syndrome, so it tracks.

>>715362513
Nioh 1 had covered basically every possible moveset for the era so they had to go weird otherwise they couldn't add anything at all. A standard Naginata in Nioh would have had like 100% overlap with spears and odachis for animations.

>>715361793
>If one man holding a spear faces off against one man of equal skill holding a sword, the sword will win 80% of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLLv8E2pWdk#t=1m42s

I really wish there was a game where you can use half swording or mordhaus to defeat armor. Probably with semi accurate armor hitboxes. Closest right now is probably bannerlord with the realistic battle mod.

>>715361829
>Name it. Or do you have to google some important sounding name a bit longer?
What library do you use?

>>715361941
>you're going to have to explain the fact that the spear guy's killing end reaches the sword guy before the sword guy's killing end reaches the spear guy.
Are you 12?

>>715362432
>the cope of a lifetime
What do you think the word "cope" means?

>>715362847
I already named my sources. Why is it so hard for you to name yours? Oh thats right, because trannies like you don't read history books because they keep reminding you that theres only two biological sexes and you're just a delusional pedophile in a dress.

Guy with sword and shield > guy with spear and shield
Dont ask me. Ask the romans.

>>715361064
Fuck me, that's a stupid name. Those old names sound utterly deranged, if you are scandi/germanic. Knecht means knægt in danish and is slang for a boy/kid. Land means land. So, in other words, landsknecht literally means landboy or landkid. As in, farmer kid or farmer joe.

>>715362569
>Again, spears aka bayonets are used to this day in urban combat
You don't know what a bayonet is, or how it is used (or isn't, because no, you will not find bayonetts in modern warfare, because melee charges are not a thing anymore, with maybe some exception of russian tactics in ukraine.

>>715362973
>I already named my sources.
I'm asking what fucking library do you use, you idiot. I can't fucking link you papers that aren't publicly listed, a you need an academic library access. Holy shit did you not go to uni? Not even public college, huh?

>>715363001
In this case it just means land knight or foot knight, to distinguish them from ritters/reiters who were mounted men at arms.

>>715363001
Lot of soldier slang is similar to prison slang where they're just funny nicknames. Molotov Cocktail is a word coined by finnish soldiers making fun of Molotovs shitty propaganda. Yi Sun-Sin's roofed ships were named Turtle Ships because thats what they look like.

>>715361647
The romans literally just used the gladius for a thousand years. That was all they needed, really.

>>715363108
>I can't fucking link you papers that aren't publicly listed,
Yes you can. Simply fucking name them. Like you're supposed to when you're citing a source. You've clearly never written a single fucking essay in your life you child-raping tranny fuck.

>>715352925 (OP)
They probably are. Japanese are weird in some ways. Seeing a spear/polearm (the overperforming weapons of war) as 'feminine' does a lot to explain why they are outclassed by everyone in history.

>>715363195
Not really a thousand since they later adopted the spatha from the barbarians but yeah they were still swords.

>>715361793
>if one man holding a spear faces off against one man of equal skill holding a sword, the sword will win 80% of the time.
Not according to the youtube video i once saw

>>715363261
But the west also associates bows with women or effiminate characters like elves, the other over performing weapon of war. They saw conquerors like the huns or the mongols and thought yeah bows are for women.

>>715363124
>In this case it just means land knight or foot knight, to distinguish them from ritters/reiters who were mounted men at arms.
Actually the term landsknecht refers to the fact that they were paid in land for their services. Landsknechts originated in mountaineous regions of Germany and most importantly Switzerland, where land was at an absolute premium, if you weren't first in line for inheritance, you were shit out of luck, you literally could not buy any land because every single square meter of arable land was already occupied by someone.

Young men who weren't eligible to inherit family land would join armies for the promise that once they finish their service, they would be awarded a plot of land to farm on. That is where the term landsknecht originated.

>>715361647
>I dunno what's convinced people that swords were these crazy impractical useless things
Nobody has said that. Swords simply weren't necessarily superior to spears in war or even in combat. Swords were much more convenient weapons when outside of combat and had more versatility than spears. Easy to use doesn't directly translate to "more effective than other weapons.". Pistol is easier to use than an assault rifle but assault rifle is the mainstay weapon for all soldiers in the world.

>>715360671
swords were more versatile for the kind of battles you'd fight but did require more training and were more dangerous to use in combat
thats why they were traditionally the side arm
a spear is a safer weapon to use since you have more range and being something that can be given to new requites doesn't mean its something that's not valuable to veterans

its just a safer weapon to use

>>715363440
>Landsknechts
Countryboys

>>715363248
>Yes you can.
OK, fine.
沼津市千本浜の首塚と関東地方の中世日本人頭骨
I can even give you a doi, though you have no idea what that is.
https://doi.org/10.1537/ase1911.97.23

Good luck with that, you mongoloid.

>>715363487
>Nobody has said that
There are multiple posts in this thread stating that swords were bad, even awful weapons and they were primarily used as status symbols. It's like this in every thread now and I don't know what youtuber has delivered this opinion to the lunkheads around here.

>>715357141
tvtropes is a good example of why too much pattern recognition is undistinguisheable from schizophrenia

>>715363656
It's part of the armchair historian wave that first started with demystifying katanas, then vikings, then swords/knights/crusaders etc. everyone's a military history expert now.

>>715363557
Holy shit. The very 2nd paragraph of your own link immediatly disproves what you said:
>"It also seems that in medieval battles, in addition to men, about one-third of the participants were always women."
LMAO weapons were banned from women you say? Fucking retard read your own sources.

>>715363261
>as 'feminine' does a lot to explain why they are outclassed by everyone in history.
Yeah, Korean really kept kicking their asses.

The main reason why women were associated with naginata's was the 1880's school reform law that made naginata training a common part of most female education.
There was a historical precedent for this, as again: women did historically use naginatas and very much only naginata's due to their function in defensive sieges, but really, the strong cultural association that exists even today is just a product of 60 years during which about 50% of all public schools actively taught naginata-do as part of basic physical education curriculum.

>>715363849
Continue reading...

>>715364021
>1/3rd of participants in war were women.
>Weapons were banned from women.
So how did the women fight in castle sieges? Karate?

>>715364127
Screamed enemies to death. Or probably using kitchen utensils and pots.

Ghost of Yotei would have been better if it was about shrine maiden but you defended against bandits and youkai. Basically kuon.

Spearfags are the new katanafags.

>>715363487
Pistols are not easier to use than assault rifles

>>715361793
this man is fighting ghosts

>>715364127
>>1/3rd of participants in war were women.
Actually, it says that in Numazu city, almost 1/3rd of the bodies burried in battle graveyards were women or children.
If you continue reading, you will find that it concludes that the unexpectedly high number of non-male bodies is consistent with other siege-related sites, providing evidence that women regularly participated in city defenses. It's a way to explain the discrepancy between female body ratios in sites like Numazu, and open-field sites like the Nagakute site.

The whole article is written in response to previous exaggerated claims about female presence on battlefield, sparked by the completely unexpected initial findings in fortification-bound graveyards, clarifying and tempering the "onna-bushi" hype that happened in late 70's as a consequence of Japanese archeology focusing on urban combat sites.

It confirms that yes, in siege battles, women (and children) were a lot more common that people expected. But it clarifies that this is not an evidence of women participating in war campaigns uniformly, but rather, but rather, being very specifically a siege defense phenomenon.

Read the whole damn thing if you want and can. If you weren't a fucking retard and told me which library you use, I could have send you a link to a full translation.

>>715364021
Not surprising that trannies can't comprehend the simple fact that women had to grab weapons and fight to the death in a culture where women and children were not spared in war. Women also regularly joined castle and city wall defence throughout the entire world, not because they were good warriors but because the defenders are desperate and the women know theres rape and murder in the way if the attackers get inside.

Even Bible mentions how one jew king got struck to the head by a millstone thrown by some woman on the walls he was besieging.

Banning women from regular weapons training is not contradictory with women using spears in defence, because spears are insanely easy to learn to use. Stand here, hold this long stick with a blade at the end, stab anyone that gets close to you. You don't need regular training for that.

>>715364776
>It confirms that yes, in siege battles, women (and children) were a lot more common that people expected. But it clarifies that this is not an evidence of women participating in war campaigns uniformly, but rather, but rather, being very specifically a siege defense phenomenon.

I never claimed that. Noblewomen were trained to use weapons because they were in charge of home defence when husband was away. The corpses in siege battles only prove they were doing their duty. Now you're moving goalposts. This is what you originally said: >>715359962

Sengoku Jidai aka Age of Warring States didn't give a shit about any rules. No mercy was given to women and children, thats why they participated in home defence because mercy was not expected nor given. You fought to the death, or you got raped first and your head cut off second.

>comfy naginata thread ruined by spearfag/swordfag bickering

>>715364776
Assblasted

Naginatas are such shit in shokuho. Very slow while not having enough damage compared to nagamaki or odachis. You are really just better off using an odachi and a katana/tachi side arm for tight spaces.

>>715364808
>Women also regularly joined castle and city wall defence throughout the entire world,
Eh.. that actually varied a lot depending on culture and era. A lot of European medieval warfare generally spared commoners. There were exceptions, the rape of Brod and Chomutov during the Hussite wars, or hell, the rape of Skalitze (you can probably tell where I'm from by now) that inspired the entire KCD franchise were so well recorded and documented precisely because they were outliers, acts of unusual cruelty and often caused a major upheavel and political shifts. The destruction of Skalitze genuinely caused a large number of the league of lords to cut their ties to Sigismund, the Husite contingent responsible for burning of Brod was later decimated by Zizka himself because he feared such act would genuinely completely destroy the support the commoners had for the uprising and so on.

Japan was... a lot less kind in this respect. So was China. And the mongols were also known for not giving a fuck about commoners. Then you had slaving cultures who were their own unique cases...

It's really a matter of time and place is what I'm saying.

>>715365359
Naginatas are great in pic related. Great reach and not as much of stamina hogs as other two-handed weapons.

>>715365019
>I never claimed that.
You literally claimed that most japanese women had formal military training you mongoloid. And that they were free to chose any weapons to train with, something that the article also fucking debunks, by the way.

And you - I wish I was making this shit up - argued the fact that a noble woman killed herself with a knife is a proof of the fact that most Sengoku-era women had extensive military training with whatever weapons they fancied.

>>715365250
>Assblasted
If you lose an argument, just stop posting for a while and wait until people forget your debacle.

>>715365437
Yeah but siege situations are a bit different. It was a generally accepted rule in Ancient Greece, Rome and medieval Europe that if besieged refuse to surrender, then the attacker had the right to rape and pillage the city. Example Siege of Tyre, it was a long and hard siege for Alexander so when they finally breached its defences, Alexander let his men loot, rape and pillage for 3 days. He only spared people who fled inside the local temple of Apollo. All the men were put to the sword and women and children sold to slavery after the siege was over.

>>715365581
>You literally claimed that most japanese women had formal military training
Where? Quote on me that. This is what I said: >>715357309
>Japanese nobility women just preferred naginata, nobody forced them favor it.
>Nobility women.
>NOBILITY
Try reading next time before you decide to write stupid shit and waste everyones time.

>>715363001
German isn't Danish you moron.

>>715357927
Because you're playing the wrong game.

>>715352925 (OP)
i think this concludes that "women" are feminine since that's all the analysis touched on
did you know air was feminine since women breathe it?

>>715352925 (OP)
Originally they're used for war, and katanas are more like a secondary weapons. It's considered femwnine qeapons because the wives of samurais used them to defend their houses whwn their husbands were away, and they really trained with them.
Nut inside Momiji brw

>>715366038
I honestly think chink settings are the only place where heroes primarily used polearms. Like their biggest figures, Lu Bu and Guan Yu were known for using halberds.

>>715365707
>It was a generally accepted rule in Ancient Greece, Rome and medieval Europe that if besieged refuse to surrender, then the attacker had the right to rape and pillage the city.
I'm reminded of one of the few very good lines from Sapkowsky's Narrenturm:
"Remember guys. We are joining this war as a liberation force! That means no pillaging, no burning, no rap-... be very quite if you are raping."

But really, it was a bit more complicated. Again, different times and different specific circumstances, but speaking about mid to high medieval era, only pillaging was openly endorsed (it's how a lot of the soliders were paid). Rape, or even killing and maiming of commoners were officially considered very bad, though that obviously didn't stop them from happening.

There was a very simple rationale behind this. Medieval wars were very agonal and the whole society was extremely legalistic. Most wars were waged over who gets a legal claim of some land.
And commoners were just a valuable resource, they were what made the land profitable. Pillaging was necessary to reward your own troops, but anything that severely threatened the commoner population (and this included raping, since unwanted pregnancy was massive resource drain on the community) was just uneconomic. You would be crippling the very same land you really wanted to fucking tax later down the line, not to mention setting the locals against yourself.

So... there was a lot of pressure on keeping your troops on relatively tight leash from the nobility in context of medieval warfare. Even if a city refused to surrunder, the damage to the city an extensive raid would cause would defeat the point of conquering it in the first place.

Again, there were a lot of exceptions. Soldiers weren't that well disciplined, and sometimes, being brutal did serve a point. But in this context (mid-to-late middle ages, central europe), these were rare.

Again: my point here is just that there isn't one universal pattern here.

>>715366508
Yeah of course not. Mongols generally spared cities that surrendered immediatly. Generally, sometimes they thought keeping a potential rebellious garrison behind you when confronting the enemy army was too much trouble so they killed everyone anyway no matter if they surrendered. And then theres instances like Battle of Roses were the bloodshed started by both parties following code of honor but over time the feud got so ugly that both stopped following them and just killed and raped indiscriminately.

General rule in sieges tended to be that if attackers had to take your city the hard way, it was very likely to get pillaged after the fact. Commanders had to let their mercenaries get some reward out of a long and hard siege or else they risk mutiny. Which makes sense. Imagine half a year of dodging boiling oil and arrows while scaling ladders and when you finally win your leader just grabs all the loot for himself.

>>715362081
>Correct article
>Fat autist who is either on a payroll or has a grudge to fill immediately undoes it and bans you before locking the article claiming the right-wing nazis are editing history.
Oh yeah because that works great anywhere else. There are multiple articles on Wikipedia right now where people post video evidence to the contrary in the discussion pages, and the mods just ban them and lock the article anyway. Wikipedia only says what Eglin needs it to say.

>>715366826
Nta but that was the rationale behind the rape of nanking. The defenders gave the IJA such a hard time that by the time the city was finally taken, the inavders were so pissed off tha they utterly devastated the populace.
It just makes sense on an emotional level dont you think? How many fights in vidya where an enemy or boss gave you such a hard time where you dropped all pretense of fighting fair and just wanted to absolutely destroy them?

>>715362081
>>715367045
I clicked the discussions thinking this was just hyperbole but this is what I found right away:

>Missing the forest for the trees?
>The introduction never mentions that guns are a weapon, or intended to kill or injure. Perhaps something about their purpose and aims would be appropriate? 98.156.196.243 (talk) 05:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
these are the people deciding history btw. "LE GUN... LE WEAPON???"

>>715367112
Fun fact the rape of Nanking was so bad that Nazi Germany announced their disdain for the japanese brutality.

>>715352925 (OP)
The fuck you want a naginata for when gameplay wise they function the same as any sword?

>>715367225
Now that you mention I honestly have never heard of any cases of mass rapes by the wehrmacht. Jew genocide notwithstanding.

>>715367418
More reach? But yeah the way you use a naginata looks really gay. It looks like brandishing or sweeping a broom.

>>715366035
Yes it is retard. Germanic and scandinavian languages have the same origin point.

>>715366826
>Mongols generally spared cities that surrendered immediatly.
Mongols were famously incrediby extreme in their conquest: both avoiding doing any damage, and then suddenly committing what was even for back then considered some of the most henious and inhuman crimes imaginable.

And again, the reason behind it was very pragmatic. Mongolian hordes were used to operate on scales incomparably bigger than most medieval feuds would. They were not settled people, they were used to covering a LOT of land and their economic interest was focused on trade, because if you are a nomad, trade is your primary source of income, it's what you care about, not land itself.

So... their actions were driven by the need to send a message. Exaggerate the benefits of cooperation, exaggerate the punishment for resistance, turn both into a display that will reach as many people as possible.

>General rule in sieges tended to be that if attackers had to take your city the hard way, it was very likely to get pillaged after the fact.
Sure, that very much follows common sense, though I would say in context of most warfare strategies I'm familiar with, pillage was just... standard everywhere, because again... it was a key component of securing your army's moral and just basic supplies.
An army eats a lot. Stealing whatever is edible and isn't nailed down was the only way to feed them.

The key difference is in how harsh the pillaging was. Because there was a big difference between the standard medieval "take all the grain and cattle and if you find some valuables, take those too, while the locals watch from the hills (e.g. taking away shit that could be replentished within a year), to "maim, rape, and burn down everything that can burn" (e.g. destroying infrastructure and moral in a way that will cripple the land for upwards of a decade).

It's a nuanced thing.

>>715353604
Naginatas were used by women to defend themselves from roaming bandits, only samurai were legally allowed to carry swords or something.

>>715367627
>this post in reply to me saying "German =/= Danish"
Great quality bait, I got annoyed for a hot second.

>>715354132
>>715356846
>>715357309
>>715358728
>>715359645
>>715359701
>>715359962
>>715360548
>>715360671
>>715360760
OOOH THE EXPLAINERS EXPLAINING. WOW WE ARE TOTALLY IMPRESSED BY YOUR YOUTUBE POP HISTORY KNOWLEDGE

>>715367818
Not my problem if you don't believe it

>>715367728
Yeah but that depends on the era. Ironically Edo period had the most amount of rules and least amount of actual battles. Age of Warring States nobody respected any rules because winners win the country and the losers get their heads chopped off. Oda Nobunaga the eventual winner and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi both favored every new and modern fighting method, most notably mass arquebus fire over strict samurai codes and rules. You can have your rule-bound honorary samurai cavalry of 200 men. I'll have my 15 000 peasants with guns.

>>715368021
>You dare discuss weapons in a video game weapon thread?!

>>715352925 (OP)
That kinda explains why you mostly see women wielding naginata, not just in games but also manga/anime.

Learned something new today.

>>715367540
>More reach?
Only in a game like bushido blade where fumbling one swing ends in instant death would that even matter. No game out right now would change by the introduction of naginatas.

>>715368146
>Age of Warring States nobody respected any rules because winners win the country and the losers get their heads chopped off.
That is only half true. Sengoku Jidai wasn't actually nearly as horrifying as people tend to think. Conservative estimates state that only about 14-20% of the population was directly affected by the wars, which in a society where 10-15% of the population was fucking samurai class is... impressively peaceful.

Also, Sengoku Jidai was actually an era of relative economic prosperity. Trade in particular exploded.

>>715363001
Only you danes use your variant of a root word, "knægt", to refer to young boys. In Norwegian "knekt", the same root word, translates to english knight and german knecht, while in Swedish it translates to soldier.

>>715368294
>Learned something new today.
Except that text misses the most important info: why exactly does naginata have feminine implications. It's wasn't because it's long and thus keeps the user out of harms way.

>>715368720
Yeah but the japanese way of war where they collect heads of all losers was quite savage compared to rest of Asia at the time. Like mongols their warfare was a much simpler affair in that regard. When swords were drawn, samurai didn't show any mercy and because collecting heads was a huge game of prestige for them or lower class soldiers, they didn't care if they took women's or children's heads. Second siege of Jinju in Imjin war both sides reported how frenzied samurai even decapitated cats and dogs for their heads after the walls were breached.

>>715369113
Now that you mention it, funny how the head hunting aspect is rarely acknowledged. I think I only heard of it as a gag in girls und panzer when the history nerds thought of adding skulls to their tank barrel.
I think the whole hair style used by samurai was even a thing because samurai expected their heads to be taken someday when they eventually die in battle so they made their heads clean and pristine.

ENTER KAMEN RIDER GAIM

>>715369113
>Yeah but the japanese way of war where they collect heads of all losers was quite savage compared to rest of Asia at the time.
I think this is such a broad statement that I can't fucking agree on it. "rest of asia" is a very, very, very broad term.
Also, the whole samurai head-taking thing was massively exaggerated as part of the whole orientalism and yellow perril thing. The whole "once a sword was drawn, you must show no mercy" shit is in large part just the whole mythologization and misconstruction of the Samurai class process - again, fueled by mixture of the yellow perril and japanese fever that caused the west (and ironically later retroactively influence even Japan itself) to completely uncritically accept sources like Hagakure as unquestionable historic evidence.

I'm not saying Japs weren't frequently nasty. I don't dare to compare them to practices in China, Mongolia or Middle East because each of those is way too big of a subject for me to have a firm grasp on.
But I also think a there is a lot of exaggeration when it comes to ideas of Japanese warrior culture floating around.

Japan in general has a very strange attitude towards both pain and death. One that is quite uncomfortable for us western softies. It's rooted in history but still exists in Japan.But it's not really an indulgent one. Just... extremely detached one.

Anyway, the only historical period in which I would confidently say "Japs were unusually cruel, even for asia", would be WW2. In that era: yeah. They were literally the worst.

The only monstrosities that could even being to compare to Japanese WW2 behavior would be the Belgians in Kongo and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

>>715369721
>But it's not really an indulgent one. Just... extremely detached one
Could you please elaborate? I'm very interested in Japanese philosophy/theology, but I haven't read anything yet (I want to read shit in Japanese).

>>715368021
Hahaha, look at all those losers with their knowledge and education! They're not borderline illiterate like us real men!

>>715363001
Knecht literally means knight in Old-german.
The English word knight even is derived from it as an etymologic root.
Landsknecht literally means "infantry knight."

Reddit.

>>715363001
>>715370462 (cont.)
Except as >>715363440 correctly mentions, the term's origins are that of mercenaries paid in plots of land.
As these generally could not afford full mounted cavalry, they tended to fight on foot.
And over time the term morphed into simply meaning a knight on foot.

>>715369953
>Could you please elaborate?
I'm not sure if I can be very helpful, because this is something that is more a collection of personal observation over nearly two decades of my fascination with Japanese culture (including university studies and several research trips to the country). What I'm saying is that this isn't really rooted in much authoritative literature.

But the first thing you'll inevitably realize when you spend some time paying attention to Japanese reality, is how fucking bleak their fundamental world-view is. It's actually a fascinating contrast when you realize how much emphasis they put on smaller joys than we do, but how much more pessimistic they are about the general nature of life.

There is a reason why so many japanese teenage fiction focus on the subject of suicide.

There is a lot to this in my head, but again it's not very well academically backed up.

I think a part of this is deeply buddhist. The oldest versions of Buddhist teachings are fucking awful, incredibly depressing, they basically consider existence to be suffering that can't be ended even by death. All Karma in older buddhist texts is bad, by definition, because it's what ties you to the circle of reincarnation, and reincarnation is endless suffering. Nirvana, the buddhist analogy to Samadhi, means "disappearance". It's not a state of bliss, it's a sweet release into nothingness. Buddha sought death, not enlightement.

Now, most people familiar with japanese culture will counter with the fact that japan is far from being tied to older forms of buddhism. They were mostly kegon and amidists which are as far removed from the tripitaka era buddhism, and that is true, but then again, Japan was the only part of the world where Chan Buddhism buddhism managed to take hold, and Chan buddhism was very much a "return to the bleak, early buddhist views". So... it's complicated and I'm already out of space. Are you interested in more of my speculative ramblings?

>>715369509
chonmage haircut let samurai wear helmet easier. the tied and folded long back hair was used as a cushion for the helmet and the bald head handled summer heat better.

>>715368720
I have never seen it tagged as "horrific". Like, what franchise spends time to complain and vagina around about the "human suffering" of the Sengoku Jidai? It's portrayed as an era of great battles, musketmen, and samurai on horses.

>>715370803
Please do! That's very interesting.

>It's actually a fascinating contrast when you realize how much emphasis they put on smaller joys than we do, but how much more pessimistic they are about the general nature of life
My exposure to Japanese culture is more limited, but I figured that much. That said, I wonder if it really is that pessimistic if not in actuality, but at least in potential. After all, people can achieve nirvana, i.e., they can transcede this world. Ontologically speaking, this means the fundamental truth CAN be reached, which makes it immediately far more appealing than the den of skepticism that's modern Western thought.

Now sure, the fundamental truth seems pessimistic because our world is just emptiness, and nirvana, AFAIK, means you look at this empty world from the outside position. However, to me this seems a lot like reaching God (via Uncreated Light specifically). It's just that God represents a "completely full" world as opposed to "completely empty" one. Who would be correct here? Neither, because both sides talk about the final level of reality, being itself. This means learning from both sides has a lot of potential.

How can swordfags ever recover from this?
https://youtu.be/afqhBODc_8U?t=8s
https://youtu.be/igaQww59NY0?t=1s

>>715371793
Yeah it's more like the good ol days of heroes, villains and epic battles. It's like how china romanticizes rotk or in the usa, the civil war. It's a period that has many larger than life characters worth telling stories of.

>>715371793
>I have never seen it tagged as "horrific".
I've seen and met a lot of people who were under the impression that Sengoku Jidai was an era of absolute chaos and anarchy, a veritable homo homini lupus scenario. Most people that I've talked to had that impression. Which is somewhat understandable if you look at the political map of Japan.

But things were a bit more complicated and nuanced than that.

A good few people earlier in the thread expressed very similar beliefs. The idiot who claimed that japanese women routinely trained with any weapons they wanted during that era being a very prominent example.

If you don't fall into that group yourself... good for you, genuinely. My experience tells me that you may be a minority of people, but it's also personal experience, I may have been just very unlucky with my sample.

>>715352925 (OP)
>is this why we rarely see naginatas in action combat games?
Yes.
>i think naginatas are one of the most aesthetic weapons.
That's because you're a fag.

Anything that looks aesthetic is inherintly feminine. It's like comparing metals. Gold is soft and glamorous. Like a woman. Compared to iron. Rough, dark and strong, like a man.

>>715366506
yeah watching 3 kingdoms and they all use polearm.
Samurai shit is never accurate anyway, We know that samurai mainly uses bow and after that gun but watching Japanese media, you would never know that

>>715352925 (OP)
feminine penis

>>715356981

>>715372178
>My exposure to Japanese culture is more limited, but I figured that much.
Yeah, it's not really that subtle, if you are into anime but aren't completely brain-dead you probably will start to pick up on it.
I got distracted by the particularities of religious influences, but my point is that there is a serious analogy between very early buddhist views of existence and what is today - and was for the majority of Japanese history as far as I can tell - general Japanese sentiment towards life.
Which is to say: The standard default, axiomatic truth of life for most Japanese is that.. existence is suffering. The default state of life is shit. Most of your life will be shit.
Whenever this really is a buddhist outlook or not, I can't say for sure, but I feel like the analogies there are too strong for it to be a coincidence.

This is such a stark contrast from our default outlook, which has always been "life is a gift from god. It may hurt but it's a fundamentally good thing, something you are supposed to be grateful to."
And Japan just... does not have that sentiment. There is nobody you should be grateful to for your existence. No part of Japanese multiple pantheons is actually actively looking out for people. The shintoistic outlook on gods (seeping into buddhism in Japanese interpretation of Bodhisatwa's) is generally that Gods are something that exists just alongside of humanity, and our relationship to them is strictly transactional. You can and often will bribe a god into granting you better luck for a few weeks, but that is it. Gods don't need people, and strictly speaking people don't need Gods, they just happen to share the islands together.

Eh I'm getting sidetracked again and nearly out of characters. My point is: Japs don't see life as a gift, and they don't have optimistic expectations of it. Which as you can imagine, translates into a whole BUNCH of very... disconcerning conclusions. Starting with the whole attitude towards suicide.

>>715368765
Wrong. We use "ridder" for knight.

>>715372705
>Samurai shit is never accurate anyway, We know that samurai mainly uses bow and after that gun but watching Japanese media, you would never know that
That is mostly because the model culture for japanese samurai fiction is actually rooted in Edo period culture. You know, the longest recorded period in history without ANY wars?

The (pop)cultural iconography of a samurai is mostly rooted on sources from an era when Samurai completely lost their roles as warriors, era when for 400 years, there was no need for actual warriors.

The most iconic sources for what people think samurai culture was (like Hagakure) was written by a guy who never fought anyone in his life, and the whole book is his autistic reeing about how Samurai class has became redundant, and dumb glorification of what he THOUGHT samurai were like back when they were genuinely an integral part of society.

It's kinda like a lot of europen medieval imagery back until second half of 20th century was based on romantic fiction like Walter Scot's Ivanhoe. E.g. entirely ahistorical.

>>715372792
sex with Miji

>>715370462
So? I said earlier that these names sound funny in scandinavian, i don't give a fuck about what it means in german or english.

>>715370736
Again, don't give a fuck.

>>715372926
I see, thank you. My Japanese pen pal also mentioned that they do not view nature as something helpful due to the fact how much their archipelago suffers from cataclysms, so that's probably another cause of this worldview.

That said, is there really nothing but doom and gloom for Japanese? As I mentioned, buddhism means people CAN transcend, unlike, for example, protestantism and its view of God as a permanently transcendent being you cannot reach. At this point of history where reason can no longer be a guiding light the ability to transcend equals potential. So does reverence to smaller things in life, but that's too long to explain.

>>715356981
Hisako, my beloved

>>715372926
(Cont.)
>Starting with the whole attitude towards suicide.
If you had any interest in Japan you probably noticed how absurdly everpresent suicide is as a topic in Japanese culture. From anime to award-winning literature, it's fucking everywhere, it's an entirely natural and integral part of their life. Always has been, all the way back to when Portugese managed to convert half of Japanese samurai population to christianity just by re-framing the death of Jesus AS A FUCKING SUICIDE, thus making him super-relatable to the warriors, whose life was framed as "waiting for the most lord-benefiting way to end my own life".

And again: to me this oddly mirrors those old Buddhist views on existence. It sucks, and taking a swift exist is the fucking point.

I genuinely think that the one thing Japan never really adopted from Buddhism very deeply, is the doctine of reincarnation. I think they kinda merged actual death with the notion of Nirvana (as an escape) and the whole circle of suffering got very... overlooked.
But that is one of my many, many, many speculations and gut feelings, rather than solid points.

But being so damn cavalier about life also easily translates to being very indifferent about deaths of others. It's not like it carries that heavy moral burden of you depriving others of something GOD HIMSELF granted to them... life sucks, death is preferable to life in most cases, so... killing someone does not seem like as big of a deal as it is to us.
I mean: they aren't psychotic, Japs understand full well that most people don't want to die most of the time, but... it all is a bit less of big deal to them.

Which is why I think Japs just have much higher tolerance to a lot of forms of extreme cruelty. I don't think they relish in suffering like some cultures do, but... I think they are just extremely indifferent to it. It's already the base-line of their existence, so... why make a big deal out of it.

Should I continue, or are you getting bored?

>>715353389
Rapiers suit women and are kind of feminine and gay looking, despite being by far the best and most deadly weapon in 1 on 1.

>>715374115
Please continue.

>>715372926
>>715374115
The fixation on suicide makes sense when you realize just how frequent natural disasters are and have historically been in Japan. When your life can end at any moment due to an earthquake or typhoon or volcanic eruption or some idiot causing a fire that engulfs an entire city, it makes sense why they'd favour having a good honourable death when they can't control whether they'll have a long fulfilling life.

>>715373885
>That said, is there really nothing but doom and gloom for Japanese?
On the contrary. In fact the thing that consistently strikes me as fascinating, so much that I can't stop returing to Japan, is the constant duality and seemingly paradoxical nature of... everything Japanese. And when it comes to life, it's the paradox of having such a deeply pesimistic outlook on life in general, and having such an insane propensity to ENJOY things in life, seek those little things to appreciate.
Which makes sense, they ballance each other out.
Yeah, "Life fucking sucks, so holy shit I'm going to pay so much more attention to how nice the weather today is!" kind of deal. Japanese people generally don't understand the concept of cynicism. They are especially absolutely unashamed of positive emotions. The kind of childish glee we are deep-programmed to be embarrased about, is just 100% natural to them. They don't mock each other for it, because... I genuinely believe the just have to seize any and all reasons to be happy possible, since you never know if it's going to be the last one for the rest of your life.

I like it, but I'm an eastern-european, a fucking slav, so it is impossible for me not to fucking cringe and feel incredibly embarrassed for so much of the things Japs unashamedly enjoy. Their humor, their fascination with pop-culture, their childish stories... to us it seems often so immature, but to them... we are fucking idiots just depriving ourselves of joy in life that is mostly already suffering.

So yeah, that is the counter-balance of their doom-and-gloom: the comparatively much greater and more intense appreciation of small joys: food, weather, sex etc... They appreciate all of those things much more than we do, in general that is.

Also, Japan does have a few very strong moral codes, and the one that is most fascinating, is their comparatively MUCH greater value placed on the idea of parenthood. But that is for another several blocks of text so...

>>715374876
Hahaha, I'm Ukrainian myself.

Yeah, now you'll have to switch to Confucius instead of talking about buddhism.

>>715374170
>despite being by far the best and most deadly weapon in 1 on 1.
Before being perfected by the sabre

>>715374538
>The fixation on suicide makes sense when you realize just how frequent natural disasters are and have historically been in Japan.
Yeah, the memento mori that the natural disasters bring to Japanese life is very important too, you are absolutely right about that. Again, it's always kinda surreal to me as someone living in the most stable environment on the planet, but Japs genuinely live with the awareness that the nature will fucking try to kill them at least once in their life, and that is just... harsh.

>>715375125
>Yeah, now you'll have to switch to Confucius instead of talking about buddhism.
Yeah, I was getting to it, since the whole parenthood is the core subject of Confucianism to begin with. Everything in confucianism is about parenthood. It's the single most important form of connection and order in the world.
And specifically... it's the duty and reverence of children towards their parents. There is literally NOTHING more important, a purer moral imperative, a more fundamental law of all reality, than the law of absolute, unconditional obedience and reverence of a child towards their parent.

And here is my hot take, one that actually did get help me launch my academic opinion:

I don't think Japanese actually ever gave a shit about Confucianism. I genuinely believe that the influence of Confucianism on Japan was actually incredibly superficial. It absolutely didn't resonate with whatever the pre-china contact Japanese culture was.

Because Japan is obsessed with the opposite sentiment. The duty of a parent towards a child. The importance of parenthood, and the (often unstated, but always present) unconditionality of parental love.

Which is absolutely NOT what Confucianism stresses out. And it really makes sense when you follow the history of failures to implement chinese, confucian bureocratic models of government into Japanese practice.

>>715375596
That is a very interesting opinion. Also, as far as I know, in Japan the duty to the lord superseded the duty to the family, which is what their theatrical plays often deal with.

>>715354132
>A spear or a naginata presents no advantage if you aren't fighting a large formation-based battle or defending a siege. In fact their usefulness lessens due to how cumbersome they are.
You can say you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about in fewer words than the paragraph you typed.
>cumbersome
This word alone reveals your ignorance. Until you've spent time fencing with these weapons, you really shouldn't speak on their use.

>>715352925 (OP)
Momiji sex

>>715376023
>in Japan the duty to the lord superseded the duty to the family, which is what their theatrical plays often deal with.
It gets really fucking complicated, actually. Because even going all the way back to very, very ancient japanese fiction, the fundamental contradiction between the Confucian-style "duty to your superiors" (e.g. lord's interest absolutely superseed your responsibility towards your children), and the deeply rooted Japanese OBSESSION with parenthood, create an endless source of conflict that just... does not have a good solution.

I lost track of how many court and samurai stories that obsess over how unsolvable contradictions between the two unsolvable moral codes are.

If you want to see what I mean by that, I think the movie Seppuku (sometimes called "harakiri in the west, it's a 1962 samurai movie by Masaki Kobayashi) is the absolute purest representation of this dillema, and that particular movie very clearly gravitates towards clearly putting love for your child morally above your samurai honor and duty to your lord.

And you can argue: yeah, but that is a mid 20th century movie, no shit it represents a more western-style values, but the thing is... you can find the same thing all the way back to fucking Genji Monogatari. I'm not shitting you. Genji's story is insanely meandering, but ultimately: it's a story about growing up to become a loving father who does everything in his power to look after the interests of his (illegitimate, in this case) kids.

That is 9th fucking century.
And that is the other thing that blows my mind about Japan, the other great paradox of it. So much of it is superficially confucian, all about reverence to your superiors, unconditional loyalty of sons to fathers, citizens to state, subjects to Emperor, but so much of it actually falls apart the moment you look closer to at it, and ends up being all about love for your children, the desire to protect them, to be of help to them.

>>715356981

>>715357927
Staves are also almost always just a stat stick for mages
Games can retarded shit like twinblades yet no proper quarterstaff
I can't even remember any big action games (apart from Surge 1 and 2 lmao) that have them

>>715376934
>but so much of it actually falls apart the moment you look closer to at it, and ends up being all about love for your children, the desire to protect them, to be of help to them.
I genuinely stand by this, and actually, I've done a lot of research into Japanese kinship systems and language analysis that confirms this. It's the one part of what I'm saying I would not hesistate to present at an international conference.

And I also think this is why the West ends up circling around to Japan in it's orientalist fascination, rather than switching between Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam... I think this obsession with parental love and duty towards children is what makes Japanese A LOT more relatable to western people than the Chinese or Korean.
Whenever I visit Korea or even fucking watch a Korean movie or read a book, I'm always struck by just how alien it feels to me. Despite being so culturally close to Japan, Korea and China always feel entirely incomprehensible to me, I just... can't follow their values, their character or personal motivations. And I never had that problem with Nips. And historically, Japan always had an obscenely large influence on western culture, art etc... Which is weird given how much shorter their history is, how much less variety and complexity there is to their cultural history... China should be the west should be perpetually fascinated and inspired by but it never is, it's always fucking Japan that we obsess about.

Anyway... thank you for reading at least some of these rambles, it's actually very nice to share this shit. I'm probably going to stop now though, because this is way to close to being my personal fucking blog now.

>>715352925 (OP)
Silly rabbit Naginatas are for kids

>>715352925 (OP)
>believing tvtropes

>>715358431
I'm still laughing at the fact that samurai were like 5'-5'5". Just imagining some middle schoolers yelling and slicing each other with metal weaponry.

>>715377832
Thats a guandao.

>>715379193
Its less funny when its asians on horses and armed with bows though.

>>715379193
>samurai were like 5'-5'5"
Nigga everybody was a midget in the past. Ever been to a museum with Renaissance armors? They're all manlets.

>>715379679
Those horses were the size of modern toy ponies that eight year old girls ride.

>>715380061
Yes and they still terrorized millions. Imagine hordes of midget asians raping and killing your people while shouting in black speech. I'm fairly sure Tolkien based the orcs on mongols.

>>715352925 (OP)
Niggernatas are a weapon for cowardly holes. Real men use katana or yari.

>>715381754
Man I wish my pc could run rise of ronin.

>>715381754
Is that the ghost of tsushima sequel?
Because Jesus this looks so fucking bad. I get that I'm not the target audience for this ubisoft slop shit, but my god everything about this is so wrong, it feels like I went through a time-machine and we are back in early 2010's.