The Dragonslayer -The Berserk Monster Manual

[Music] massive thick heavy and far too rough those are just some of the words that will be used to describe your man-me if you subscribe to the real-life ryan channel but even more than that they are some of the first words to be spoken in the berserk manga to describe the signature weapon of the protagonist's guts a weapon that was indeed like a heap of raw iron and i speak about none other than the giant sword to end all giant swords the dragon slayer giant swords have existed in anime and manga for some time but with berserk there is an extra specialness to it all so in this edition of the manual let's dive into what the weapon is all about some of its feats and features and the significance it may have moving forward in the story but before i get into all that let's talk a little bit about real historical giant swords some of which the dragon slayer itself could have been based on i think the first thing that we have to realize is that the bigger the sword is and the heavier the sword is the more useless it becomes in a practical sense sword fights are usually very fast and over quickly your skill required not only the power of your swing but also the swiftness of which you could draw parry and evade holding on to something so huge awkward and heavy would make it more than likely that you would get laughed at and then promptly killed by your opponent however there still have been some seemingly fantastical swords forged throughout history that have left their impact on sword collectors and people in general first let's look into japanese history since berserk is a manga after all and one sword to look at in particular is the norimitsu odachi and i'm really really sorry if i butchered the pronunciation of these words but i'm trying my best yes the norimitsu odachi it is a specific sword and said to have been forged in the 15th century of japan and is basically a massive katana blade which is sitting at a length of over 12 feet and weighing about 32 pounds and 32 pounds might not seem like a lot but when you have to think about the weight being distributed through the form of a sword and how you would hold that sword to stand on your feet and wield this thing you would probably need the mass of two cone and the barbarians and even then you wouldn't be able to swing it quickly there is even a legend that the nori mitsu odachi belonged to a literal giant but the common explanation for why this sword even exists at all is that it was made for ceremonies or things of that nature so it wouldn't actually be used in any sort of combat now typical odachis or nodachi's were about one to two meters in length somewhere around there still not considered very practical but seemingly used to take down horses of their rider opponents so this would slice through the horse's leg taking down the rider and the horse all at once and the idea of this kind of sword existing at all leads into the fictional-ish horse-slaying sword called the zombateau it is a fictionalized weapon and is primarily featured in anime and manga one in particular is raroni kenshin which is another favorite manga of mine and it's wielded by the character of sanosuke yet he breaks it very early in the series and never gets a replacement but apparently you can still call just about any large sword in anime and manga and hell even in video games a zombato but even the zombie toe itself was an inspiration that actually came from chinese origins and not from japan itself but it is interesting to note that usually we see these gigantic sword and tropes in fictional media from japan and we also have to talk about the zway hander again i'm really really sorry for the pronunciation of these words but the zoe hander which is a german word which means two-handed weapon and this is basically a long sword design and associated with the swiss and german mercenaries they could be about four to four and a half feet in length and weighing about four to five pounds so slightly more plausible than the odachi's but still absolutely ridiculous in actual combat then there was this legendary warrior named grute pierre who was said to be this seven foot tall absolute badass who wielded the largest zway-hander known to man a sword that was as tall as him and weighing in at a good 15 pounds he is literally legend to have beheaded several people with a single sword swing and if you could get the weight behind the swing and nobody managed to dodge i mean i could believe this is plausible now getting to the berserk manga the dragon slayer is even more ridiculous than anything that was in actual history it's first seen in the opening chapter of the series but canonically it's first introduced in chapter 93 called armament it had been forged a long time prior by the blacksmith goto he had been commissioned by a king to make a sword that could kill a dragon though at this time in the berserk story there were no real dragons known to mankind other than just in superstitions so goto growing weary of making the elegant more refined swords that he has been used to making for nobles he instead doubled down into the large butcher knife aspect of what he felt a sword really did and he just kind of exacerbated the size to make a butcher knife for dragons apparently whatever king asked him to make it hated it as it was seemingly useless and impractical and so it stayed locked up tilted against a wall for many years that is until guts and goto became acquaintances and though goto made guts a different sword it proved to be ineffective against godz's new more powerful enemies in the apostles but guts the badass that he is shows that his strength determination will power and perseverance against the very fates themselves allowed him to wield the seemingly impossible sword the dragon slayer and yeah look how badass this moment is i love it but it is a sword that is odd and admired by everybody that sees it in action no one can believe that a human being could actually wield something as huge and heavy as the sword seems to be and that's for good reason and one thing i love about it is that you can always feel the power in every strike miura really draws the weight and intensity behind the sword swings and very very rarely is guts wielding it in some sort of incredible speed like fashion don't get me wrong he is fast but what i mean is you can tell the swings take effort and that they are big loud and nasty they cut right through humans trolls demons and much more and this was a deliberate choice done by mira to one make it different from other giant swords and fiction that seemed to be swung around defying the laws of physics completely but also seeing a badass decked out in black armor saying edgy things and throwing around a huge chunk of iron well that's a good draw to get readers very curious about what your story is but there is a lot more to the dragon slayer than just brute force first of all we have to talk about something now there has never been an official statement from miura at least to my knowledge someone please correct me if i am wrong but from what i've seen there has not been an official statement about the actual size and weight of the dragonslayer from most the drawings it appears to be about the same height as guts himself so what's guts maybe like six foot seven something around there so imagine that for one thing a sword being that gigantic and then we have to talk about the weight and different fans have speculated what the weight would be again there's no official way anywhere that i could find but doing the research for this video most people tend to lean in the dragon slayer being about between the 200 to 400 pound range now let's put that into perspective if you are an average fit person you do some lifting but you're not quite a bodybuilder or a power lifter you're not really into those styles completely but you stay in good shape you lift regularly regardless i'm sure you are probably able to deadlift 225 pounds that would be a barbell with two plates on each side of it it's difficult but not that difficult for someone who's in good shape okay so 225 pounds all right so if the dragon's there weighed that 225 that's an average fit person's deadlift that means that's their entire body using their core legs and back just to lift this thing off the ground and hold it for maybe a few seconds so guts is literally sideswiping this thing across his entire body and smashing targets in front of him with insane accuracy as he does so not to mention the fact that he carries it on his back from place to place everywhere that he goes and he's always walking so can you imagine the strength it would take to actually swing this thing go try to deadlift 225 pounds right now and then picture that weight in the form of a sword that you have to swing and that's not even assuming that it could weigh a lot more than just 225 pounds if we are to go to the extreme and assume the dragon slayer is like 400 goddamn pounds then perhaps the only real man alive that could possibly use it is ronnie [ __ ] coleman here's ronnie coleman squatting 800 pounds so that's like putting one maybe two dragon slayers on each side of the barbell picture that [ __ ] while watching this oh also he only does two reps so say it was only one dragon slayer then maybe he could do 8 to 10 reps put that into a swing and yeah okay so maybe ronnie coleman could be guts but anybody other than him would be absolutely impossible to ever use a dragon slayer but anyway so now that we establish where the sword came from why it was forged who wields it and how strong someone would need to be to do so what else is special about the dragon slayer and particularly the sword with guts as its user when guts faces off against a god hand member in clip-off we discover a few more things about the dragon slayer that had only been teased thus far in this moment a god hand one of the highest most powerful astral beings in existence specifically it was slan you know the one with the evil titties well she takes corporeal form in the form of using disemboweled troll guts to manifest her body and even using this form she was still able to massively overpower and subdue guts but though even as powerful of a sword as it may be the dragon slayer could be useless against such a powerful foe or so guts thought the skull knight informs guts that because guts has cut down just so many apostles and astral creatures with his sword the blade itself has been soaked in the literal blood and metaphorical malice of all the creatures that guts has cut down so what does this mean well essentially that because he's been using the sword to cut down so many unnatural astral beings the sword itself has attuned itself to be more effective against them capable of harming not only on a physical level but also on an astral one so harming a physical body and an astral self or soul if you want to call it that all at once guts was able to run slan's troll gut body through with the dragon slayer and how i interpret it is he was able to kind of force her spirit out of the vessel causing the innards to collapse back on the to the ground so it's not necessarily confirmed to be able to hurt a god hand in any way but it can harm on an astral level and at the very least destroy whatever physical substance the god hand is currently using as their vessel at the time this idea was used again when guts briefly teams up with nosferatu zod to battle against ganesha ganesha's apostle form can expand around his astral self in the form of mist and smoke so he was able to attack from far away from where his physical body was it was seemingly impossible to injure ganesha due to this fact but the dragon slayer now endowed with this ability was able to strike through and harm on an astral level allowing guts the opportunity to injure ganeshka once his actual astral slash ethereal body was located the dragon slayer thrust through ganeshka and snapped him back into his own physical body where he had an actual physical wound on his face the only other thing to mention would be guts actually using the berserker armor with the dragon slayer i went into depth on the berserker armor in my last monster manual video the link will be in the description below but rest assured when the armor is activated the dragon slayer becomes even more destructive as guts is no longer hindered by any bodily pain or held back by any tension or fear his bloodlust and rage is brought to the surface and he fights like a ruthless monster whipping the dragon slayer around as fast as humanly possible for him with no hesitation this is where the fights become much quicker and more acrobatic but it's due to the benefits of the berserker armor and as stated in the previous video the armor has just as many repercussions as it does its benefits now also the name dragon slayer it is worth noting that as of this point in berserk's run the sword has not been used to slay a literal dragon and this simply will not do sure grunbel's apostle form is basically a dragon but guts fought him and didn't get the kill and after the astral world was unleashed and merged into the physical we got this amazing double page spread of a dragon entering the world and assumingly there are many more as well so i got to at least hope and believe that before berserk is all said and done guts will slay a literal dragon with the dragon slayer and yes i know the term dragon was used as symbolism for something seemingly impossible to face as in the quote from the manga dragons are dragons because people can't kill them so what do you call a man who beats dragons it's about overcoming what seems possible to continue to struggle in a world that will constantly beat you down it's about guts a mere man doing what seems impossible not because he has special powers or items not because he's the descendant of some great character not because he has some grand destiny but because he is just a man but a man that refuses to quit until the bitter end even if he can't slay the dragons he's damn well going to try and because he is able to try he accomplishes more than those who would cower in fear but still i want him to slay an actual goddamn dragon in the manga can we make this happen miura please also if you ever come face to face with someone who has a dragon slayer and wants to fight you in real life and they're not guts or ronnie coleman you would probably have a great shot at beating them since they wouldn't even be able to lift the sword off the ground in the first place and if you try to wield it yourself well i hope you are a literal giant or you are very skilled at hand-to-hand combat because you won't be able to lift it either but anyways guys thank you so much for watching this video and that will do it for this edition of the monster manual i really do appreciate you guys watching this and checking it out i got a lot of new subs in the last couple of weeks so i just want to welcome you guys to the channel uh you are all welcome here let's talk about the things that we love talk about berserk because this is a channel where we're just gonna have fun with things like that please consider subscribing to the channel if you haven't already even if you watched a bunch of my videos and you haven't subscribed yet come on come on you just just press that little button you know you want to um but besides that guys again i truly do appreciate you guys watching these videos it really does mean a lot to me also in the description you will find links to the berserker armor video also to my discord and patreon if those are your thing other than that guys i hope you guys have a wonderful day and i'll talk to you in the next video

Channel: RealLifeRyan

Views: 364,034

Keywords: berserk, dragonslayer, dragon slayer, monster manual, lore, berserker, dragon, manga, anime, kentaro miura, explained, analysis, history, giant sword, katana, odachi, nodachi, zanbato, japanese, german, weight, heavy, iron

Id: mJUZWepp6JA

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020