So I bought Reclaiming the Blade, have a few questions...

[Jonathan_Kaplan]

My questins with regards to Reclaiming the Blade are in the two disc special edition, on disc 2, with the roughly an hour of sword training videos. Specifically -- how high quality or useful do you all consider the non arma ones? Does anyone have any particular complaints? Arma's stuff definitely seemed some of the more dynamic, that's for sure -- but is the other stuff that bad? Has anyone any opinions on this section of the documentary?

[Sal Bertucci]

Don't know. Haven't seen it.

[Randall Pleasant]

My questins with regards to Reclaiming the Blade are in the two disc special edition, on disc 2, with the roughly an hour of sword training videos. Specifically -- how high quality or useful do you all consider the non arma ones? Does anyone have any particular complaints? Arma's stuff definitely seemed some of the more dynamic, that's for sure -- but is the other stuff that bad? Has anyone any opinions on this section of the documentary?

Jonathan

First, only the ARMA Director can speak for ARMA, thus the following is only my personal view.
Second, I don't have the two disk edition so I can only comment on what I see in on the first disk.

There are two things that really stood out to me:
1.) All videos where shinai SLOs are used in sparring looked totally crappy. A shinai is a SLO, SLOs are crappy, and you can't make crappy look good.
2.) I remember seeing some really bad footwork.


SLO = sword like object

[Chris Ouellet]

The one stand out is "To stand on a stone" which is really quite terrible, it's the sort of thing people at bullshido rightfully make fun of. The techniques would mostly only work with compliant opponents, the sword section is dreadful, "windows" and the dancing is downright absurd, reminiscent of bad 80's era stuff, really really bad.
The rapier work in Alfen's la Scherma is basic and reasonable.
Tom Urso is really good, the techniques he show are correct.
Master Ott's westling is solid.
Armored and unarmored training seem serious but lack energy, I wouldn't call them bad.
The same can be said for Silver's Four Fights, though their sparing is a little more vigorous it still lacks that edge that convinces me they are determined towards real violence. I really dislike the English hanging guard they use, I've had someone try their exact guard against me and it failed miserably at well, everything but that's a fine point.

It's overall quite OK with the glaring exception of of "to stand on a stone" which really I don't know how it got in there.