The common stated weakness for it is that it fails against raw power styles, I find this ridiculous. what if a person such as anakin became a makashi duelist or mace windu? Both are physically strong, and I imagine they using makashi would not be overwhelmed by brute strength.
Makashi to me seems to focus on precision, skill, speed, so with that said, why could not a makashi user just out manuever the enemy blade and then strike them in open spots. Or if forced into direct contact, just fight using their own strength and still have precision, skill, aim? Or does being upclose in the fray make a makashi user lose intelligence....
I just don't see why one could not combine makashis speed, footwork, precision, aim, skill, with ones own natural strength, force powers.
say if windu were a makashi user could he not combine his super strength with its super precision and use his speed to basically one shot people while efotlessly dodging?
Makashi isn't inherently weak against styles with more kinetic power, that's a micsonception. Dooku with one hand effortlessly parried two simultaneous strikes from Obi-Wan and Anakin and did it with such proficiency that it threw them both off balance. It's not a weak style.
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"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
The problem is not so much the strength of the individual but rather the fact that the style doesn't USE a lot of strength while doing Makashi. Makashi is ALL about quick light lightning blows meant to disorganize and weaken the enemy. As such, you don't put much of your weight into any given strike.
And you theoretically COULD create a super-Makashi, it would just be very, VERY difficult.
Registered: Aug 2008
Location: Drinking gasoline. Pissing napalm.
Re: saber style Makashi: Questions
Makashi often uses a one-handed grip. That means, inherently, no matter how strong you are, you're never going to strike as powerfully or as fast (if slashing, not thrusting) as if you were using two hands behind the blows.
Makashi isn't WEAK. who believes that? Cause they be high on opium.
Makashi is a fencing style. The ONLY reason Dooku was overwhelmed by anakin's strength was that anaking was tapping the force and was REALLY FREAKING strong at that moment. Dooku wasn't going to be able to counter his strength at that point with any style.
So why do people believe makashi suffers against high kinetic force styles? If makashi is able to deal with high kinetic saber styles by redirecting the kinetic force, such as you say he did simultaneously to kenobi and anakin? Then what's the deal? Because from what I see makashi doesn't seem inherently weak vs strong styles at all....
Board Walker: Really because Makashi generally is a highly defensive style and doesn't work as well as one would like when somebody starts going for the kill and literally whaling on you (like what Anakin did to Dooku on the Invisible Hand).
It's a "weakness" but it still requires a good duelist to pull off and Makashi is still one of the best styles in a duel IMO.
It doesn't make them lose intelligence but the move set is less well suited for direct contact and different grips that give more strength may have less precision.
Registered: Aug 2008
Location: Drinking gasoline. Pissing napalm.
Re: Re: saber style Makashi: Questions
I'm definitely showing my nerdiness here, but my cousin and I bought some nerf swords (http://www.target.com/Nerf-N-Force-...d/dp/B001LRPNBW) and pretend like they're lightsabers in the backyard. I have one and use my sort of...improvised Makashi (plus I love doing the salute and flourish), because I used to fence (I won gold metals at major Florida tournaments in 2005 and 2004), and my cousin bought two of them and tried to use the Galen Marek Shien style with two blades. Not a lot of power with Marek's style and its very difficult to block with. I dominated him easily when he tried it. So we went to Home Depot, got a PVC pipe and cut a longer hilt for him out of it. He put the hilt of his swords in both of the openings so that he has what looks like a double-bladed lightsaber, and tried out some of Maul's moves (he's a drummer and is ridiculously good at spinning the hilt in his hand).
Anyway, long story short is it was A LOT more difficult to beat him with my improvised Makashi when he was using that style for a few reasons. But the main one was that most of his hits were two-handed. I ended up losing my sword four times in about 25 minutes of sparring. So canonical applications aside, the practical applications support those conclusions.
In hindsight, I have no idea why I'm sharing this...lol
En, you've forgotten that the blades were not weightless. So your swords were trying to stop some amount of force (the mass of the blade times the acceleration of the blade).
Registered: Aug 2008
Location: Drinking gasoline. Pissing napalm.
"Although the blade was weightless, two-handed slashes were the most common movement. This was because inertia was still needed to cut through solid objects. Solid objects were repelled by the blade arc until they were changed to gas or plasma. Therefore, inertia was required to counteract the initial repelling force. The stronger the swing, the faster and easier the blade would cut. If little force was applied to the swing, the repelling force of the blade arc would leave shallow cuts. When two lightsaber blades came in contact with each other, the two repelling forces made the blade appear to be solid. If the lightsaber is dropped, the blade will retract automatically, so the user will not be injured.
Also, the field that caused the energy to arc back into the blade caused some gyroscopic effects. While technically weightless, the blade still had some resistance to changes in motion. The slight gyroscopic effects were easily controlled by a trained force user, but could become problematic for lay person."
Woah! A scientific concept used incorrectly in a science fiction franchise! Who would have guessed?
I'm not really gonna criticize the "strong/fast" dichotomy between forms; the division is clearly useful (as it is seen onscreen) and nitpicking using real-world physix is a bigger waste of time than usual.
What style would Obi-wan/Vader's fight in ANH constitute? Somebody earlier here said Makashi is a fencing style. Did both Vader and Kenobi use that on the Death Star? (granted the PT saber fights were much different than OT, and saber styles weren't classified around when the OT period was produced by GL, or were they?)
Registered: Aug 2008
Location: Drinking gasoline. Pissing napalm.
Vader's style was a custom blend of Form V and Form III. With elements of other forms mixed in. Although that hadn't been defined yet at the time of ANH.
Neither combatant's style even remotely resembles Makashi in that fight, though. It was definitely far from elegant.
Jun 25th, 2010 11:27 PM
