Master swordsman does things that I can't begin to believe but want to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe...;v=RsAC5ni0w6Q#!

But imagine how much better he'd be with a gun.

The video and story for this guy has all ready been posted here a few times. While we all agree it's cool, I wonder if it's a trained reflex to get his sword to a specific location by a specific time or is he actually seeing & aiming for what he is hitting.

The real genius is probably the guy aiming the BB-gun exactly where the sword will be in a few fractions of a second .

(I'm assuming this is the video, I didn't click the link.)

A BB gun is normally not that precise, so I personally assume that they had to film the scene pretty often, until the got a hit

That's why the real physad is the other guy... who cares how accurate the gun is when he's rolling all those dice .

(But what a waste of BPs: Exotic Weapon (BB-gun) 6, Improved Combat ability (Exotic Weapon(BB-gun)) 3)

But if he can scare enough successes to actually drop someone... Imagine to look on the investigator's face.

The thing is, a BB gun isn't just 'normally not that precise'. It's physically impossible for it to be that precise, right? This guy also did it on an American show, with a BB pistol from I wanna say 70 feet. No amount of skill can make that plastic BB accurate, no?

Heh, what are you even saying? Since when have physads cared about physical impossibility? That's the whole point...

Ha, magic. Really though: that's *not* what physads do, at least not via Improved Ability. A physad with Improved Ability can't make the buckshot from one shell hit the target in a smiley face.

But I was still talking about reality.

If I dressed up in a kimono and swung a katana at a flying BB a few thousand times, I'm reasonably certain I could capture a shot wher the sword and the BB came into contact.

But that would have little to do with skill.


-k

It is possible that's what this is. *shrug* If you assume people are lying, everything is simpler… and crappy.

I think this guy is really, really good with his sword (as seen from videos of him cutting stuff without it moving (much)), but the pellet slicing is just a rehearsed stunt, I believe. The TV-team makes it look like the first try was the one that worked. I'm assuming they had a few tries.

Sure. I'm just saying, if you assume something is just a lie, that's the end of the discussion. There's no reason to (enjoyably) talk about it at all, then.

that's what automatics are for

So what if he rehearsed it some? Do you think anyone gets good with a sword by just picking it up? practice is not cheating.

I didn't watch the whole video. Is there a scene, or another video, in which he fights something that fights back? Lightning strikes and feints that confound an opponent would be a better show for me than the (yes, still cool) ability to slice a mushroom.

He's not saying, 'he rehearsed so he was able to cut a pellet out of the air'. He's saying, 'they tried it until it randomly succeeded'.

I'm not so sure about randomly. I also think one of the main points of the demonstration is actually cutting the pellet and not just nicking it and having it fly off randomly, which is what would likely happen if any of us managed to get that one random hit in.

It would have been a great stunt if they had shot it on live TV and with something like three tries to get it right.


Just the ability to cut like that is amazing enough. In a real sword fight it means that basically any hit he might land will likely be enough. And since he does Iaijutsu that means that likely the fight won't have even started by the time you're dead .

I'm reminded of a physics question: how long would it take for a room of monkeys typing randomly at a keyboard to duplicate Shakespear's Hamlet?

Yes, I'm sure he never spars or actually practices Kenjitsu or Batto or any martial art using a sword, just practiced cutting things for years so that he could make a 5 minute video.

Randomly?

I could have sworn we have seen this skill on display before... did that thread get deleted? Anyways, I bring it up because there were other videos, other shows, different locales, different objects being sliced, yet Isao Machii is consistently hitting these targets under those different conditions.

Ah, here it is, another show, different conditions, a skeptic host no less: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhs1Z8Rwnk

So, for that to all be the magic of editing to get a desired result means that those various shows colluded with Isao Machii to get those results? None of those video taping were hoping to show him for a fraud if he fucked up?

*I'm* not saying it's random, Brainpiercing. I'm saying that's what you said. You said it took many tries and they just showed the one that succeeded. That means (even if skill is involved) there's a random non-skill element being deceptively removed from the presentation. Even if I misunderstood you, this *is* what KarmaInferno said.

Personally, I don't accept the deception hypothesis. 1) It's boring, 2) as CanadianWolverine says, it assumes a conspiracy of multiple shows.

From the one from western TV I suppose there is - except it's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just how TV production works. A show about amazing things often won't waste time showing several tries, because they really don't matter. TV-shows tell a story - they have a build-up and then there has to be a climax, and all that usually in very little time. So unless showing attempts is part of the build-up then there just isn't room for them. In another clip from a Japanese show he takes two tries on the baseball and two tries on the BB-gun. That really doesn't make it any less awesome. People just aren't machines. If they were we wouldn't need big sports competitions and the like.

There is another video from german TV where they take a german-japanese iaijutsu-"master" and ask him to reproduce the stunt. While his cuts work, and he can fairly quickly manage other moving objects, they have to cheat for the BB-gun - the shooter actually reacts to the swing, and not vice-versa. But you can see from the videos that Machi is MUCH quicker. In one shot from Japanese TV you can see the pellet flying towards him and only then he swings and hits.

Well, yeah, I'm just saying I would like to see it.

I imagine it would be like a scene from Seven Samurai. Draw, Sheathe, other guy drops.

It really depends on the number of tries, Brainpiercing. 1 out of 2 is less amazing that 1:1, but it's still way better than 1:100.

But I never suggested that. Since I believe he can actually do it intentionally, but humans aren't machines, he just needs a good attempt.

In that case, it's good you clarified (though clearly his success rate matters a lot). KarmaInferno did, though.

A good test would be if 3 people fired BB's (1 red, 2 white) at our samurai friend. He would have to try to cut the 1 red one.

Heh, we could make a whole AR show of making up new and bizarre tests for Isao Machii to cut things, we'd develop a whole product line around him...

That'd be *a* test, dunno if it's a good one: it's a whole different task. It'd be cool (independently) if he could do it, though. Personally, I'd settle for knowing his success rate.