Sword-drawing anime?

[Ninja_Grand]

Hello All! I was wondering if anyone had a good anime with Battōjutsu,Iaido,Iaijutsu whatever you want to call it. I have a Pathfinder PC who has a slew of tricks like this thanks to Path of War, and I need some crazy ideas. If the anime only has a few fights with the style then please link/describe a clip of the fight.

Also lets not just limit it to Anime. If you got flash animations, webcomics, gifs, by all means please share.

[Lethologica]

Rurouni Kenshin is indisputably the premier exponent of this technique in anime. Some other iaijutsu practitioners are Sesshoumaru from Inuyasha, Zorro and Brook from One Piece, and Takahata-sensei from Mahou Sensei Negima (fist iaido counts, right?).

[KillingAScarab]

Suzuka in Outlaw Star takes this to supernatural levels, as an assassin who uses a bokken (wooden sword) rather than an edged weapon. She follows Gene Starwind around after her initial appearance (http://outlawstar.wikia.com/wiki/The_Beautiful_Assassin), but I'm having trouble finding a list of appearances.

[Lethologica]

Also, since you asked about this both here and in the Gaming sub-forum, I figure you'd benefit from the relevant TVTropes page (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IaijutsuPractitioner).

[Ninja_Grand]

Also, since you asked about this both here and in the Gaming sub-forum, I figure you'd benefit from the relevant TVTropes page (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IaijutsuPractitioner).

Is it too soon to say I love you? :smallbiggrin: This is a great resource! Thank you!

[Lethologica]

It's your first trip into TVTropes and you made it out in under an hour? The mind boggles.

Happy to be helpful. :smallsmile:

[Ninja_Grand]

Haha who said I made it out in a hour? I just finished my first episode of Kenshin at 3:30. All ready bookmarked some shows and games for the morning.

[KillingAScarab]

I checked out some episodes of Outlaw Star, here are the things I took away from it.

In episode 6, her initial appearance, Suzuka shows off pretty much everything she can do. Taking people out with one hit from the sword, even though it is wood, is the simple part. Creating shockwaves through air which can then crack a concrete roof and cutting a speeding metal truck in half would be the challenging parts.

In episode 6 she also had access to some kind of portable force field technology, which effectively made her bullet-proof. In episode 8, it was either off or gone, because she then uses her sword to block projectiles at super speed.

The character did have a few weaknesses. Pride, for one. Modesty, for another. She was also so reliant upon her bokken that she didn't have any other weapons. So, if you feel there's a chance you'll be invincible, at least you can have character flaws.

[Red Fel]

Mentioned on the TVTropes page, but worth noting, Kenshin may be one of the archetypes of iaijutsu, but Goemon Ishikawa XIII from Lupin III is one of the classical sources. Lupin III itself is an archetypal anime, one of the golden legacies, and features adventures in many different styles. One of the four protagonists (others being Lupin, thief and master of disguise; Fujiko, femme fatale and also master of disguise; and Daisuke Jigen, crack marksman), Goemon is basically a legendary swordsman with a borderline-magical (i.e. made from an indestructible meteorite) sword. He spends much of the time doing very little, and then suddenly he's crouching with one hand on the hilt, and then there are some arcing slashes in the air, and he is resheathing the sword while an airplane or something explodes.

[Prime32]

Claymore has characters who can apparently disintegrate things by looking at them, but are actually drawing and sheathing their swords invisibly fast.


Takahata-sensei from Mahou Sensei Negima (fist iaido counts, right?).

Haha who said I made it out in a hour? I just finished my first episode of Kenshin at 3:30. All ready bookmarked some shows and games for the morning.
The Negima anime (there's more than one) are very different from the manga - IIRC, anime Takahata can't even fight.

Basically, the creator of Negima was ordered to make a harem comedy but was tired of writing them, so he started it off as one then gradually turned it into a shonen action series (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreShift) under the editors' noses. He had very little input into the anime, however, which are based on padded-out versions of the early parts of the story.

tl;dr - there isn't much point in looking at the Negima anime.

[Flickerdart]

Katanagatari has all sorts of wacky sword-based hijinks, including an iaido user pretty early on in the (relatively short) series.

The second arc of Hunter x Hunter also features an iaido user, but there's much less focus on him.