Skill: Shows off the blacksmiths massive horse cock. In a time before modern machinery some crazy Germans and Swiss hammered beyond natural human limit. They probably did it as a meme then realised it was actually useful as a weapon. Sharpening a wavy blade would have been a nightmare.
Functional: Good for duelling sword vs sword. A traditional sword allows you to slide off an enemies blade if your swords clash, because the blade is straight. The waves in a flamberg blade creates vibrations which hurts the opponents hands, that doesn’t sound like much but it gives you an advantage. Very useful for parrying since the enemies sword will strike, then the blade gets stuck on your wavy blade or they pull away from the impact shock. Either way you will have an opening to attack. Also the waves cut much deeper similar to a serrated knife. If you got cut once by this blade, you would not be able to stitch your wound shut, you are pretty much sliced bread.
Aesthetic: Someone challenges you to a duel, while they unsheathe their boring longsword, you unwrap your wiggly sword. They immediately apologize and run because you are rich enough to afford a wiggly sword and probably have multiple wenches giving you ankle parchments.
i was having thoughts this morning about naruto and how. early days naruto was so different from the other loud spiky ‘underdog’ shounen heroes we get these days
a lot of underdog characters in current shounen manga that ive been reading are underdogs because they are timid or socially awkward or clumsy somehow (haikyuu, yowapeda, that baseball anime, bnha)
but naruto was genuinely obnoxious. he was gross and rude and clingy. he was loud and disruptive and ruined things.
he was affection starved and had little positive socialisation. he was from an extremely tough background with very very few good role models. he was grubby and wasnt fed well at home. he didnt quite know how to tone himself down, in fact hed never had a reason to try–hed do anything for attention, even negative attention. he was just like so many kids ive known, that i knew in school myself, that i see now as an adult.
that was such a great layer of realness. no matter how much i might enjoy other similar ‘underdog’ characters, i dont think ive ever seen another one come close to that level of nuance
Bart Simpson?
bart simpson, the greatest shounen anime character of our time
