Nobunaga seems to be portrayed as a literally demonic monster in a lot of Japanese games and media. Same as Muramasa being reduced to a stock villain whose swords are magical and evil.
Wasn’t Muramasa just a competing swordsmith? It’d be like if that one guy in ancient Mesopotamia with the shitty copper was turned into some kind of Final Fantasy final boss.
I don’t think he was even a competitor. Apparently Masamune was like 300 years prior. Supposedly Murmasa’s school made swords for many of Tokugawa’s troops and retainers so when the Tokugawa’s had disasters playwrights would spice things up by attributing it to Masamune’s demon swords or something.
Stories don’t have to be true, and one story I did read was about them being competing contemporaries trying to make a superior blade, one of them cutting too forcefully and the other being very gentle and smooth, or something like that.
I did like the Taoist idea I read a while back about a blade being sharp enough to sort of unmake something as it cuts through it, keeping its edge by not hitting any points of resistance that it didn’t need to.
I even worked that into a key moment in my second book, from an antagonist character that had a habit of breaking swords a bit too much before that moment.
Nobunaga seems to be portrayed as a literally demonic monster in a lot of Japanese games and media. Same as Muramasa being reduced to a stock villain whose swords are magical and evil.
Wasn’t Muramasa just a competing swordsmith? It’d be like if that one guy in ancient Mesopotamia with the shitty copper was turned into some kind of Final Fantasy final boss.
I don’t think he was even a competitor. Apparently Masamune was like 300 years prior. Supposedly Murmasa’s school made swords for many of Tokugawa’s troops and retainers so when the Tokugawa’s had disasters playwrights would spice things up by attributing it to Masamune’s demon swords or something.
Stories don’t have to be true, and one story I did read was about them being competing contemporaries trying to make a superior blade, one of them cutting too forcefully and the other being very gentle and smooth, or something like that.
That seems to be how they’re frequently depicted in media. And also lol “oh no my sword is too good at cutting! It’s evil cutting!” playwrights lol.
I did like the Taoist idea I read a while back about a blade being sharp enough to sort of unmake something as it cuts through it, keeping its edge by not hitting any points of resistance that it didn’t need to.
I even worked that into a key moment in my second book, from an antagonist character that had a habit of breaking swords a bit too much before that moment.