Killfile Berserk Education Thread...

[Loeviz]

Maybe he thinks it´s to childish

[Sandman]

So what is it about berserk that turns you off Killfile?

[Eldo]

Reading some of the posts in this thread makes me understand why Killfile doesn't post here.

[Skullkracker]

Berserk is underground? Evil!

I don't have a dictionary at hand so I couldn't find a better word...

[Yoyimbo325]

Reading some of the posts in this thread makes me understand why Killfile doesn't post here.

He doesn't post but does he even read it? Guess not.

[Skullkracker]

well who cares as long as he takes time to read Berserk

[Yoyimbo325]

well who cares as long as he takes time to read Berserk

I agree with you on that.

[Loeviz]

well who cares as long as he takes time to read Berserk

I agree with you on that.

I second that (Or is it Third )

[Kazure]

lol

After posting the same reply to several threads, this guy's begging to be BBQed.

[psi29a]

lol

After posting the same reply to several threads, this guy's begging to be BBQed.

Done, account disabled and his class C banned to never know of mindwerks.net existance. That means no torrents, no EG, and no forums. I will also put a ban on the IRC channel as well.

http://www.evil-genius.us/forums/viewto ... 0921#50921

[Killfile]

Ok, I finished Berserk volume 1. It took me several pages to work out in what order the panels go.

Why you ask?

Because I have traveled in Japan. I know what order the PAGES go in, so I opened the book and read it correctly. Unfortunately, the instructions for in which order the the frames on the page go are in the Western Front/Japanese Back of the book.... so I didn't see those.

I'm assuming I'll get some background information in later installments as to exactly what it is that makes Guts tick. As things stand he's a psycotic with a large sword and a knack for breaking the established laws of physics.

[psi29a]

Ok, I finished Berserk volume 1. It took me several pages to work out in what order the panels go.

Why you ask?

Because I have traveled in Japan. I know what order the PAGES go in, so I opened the book and read it correctly. Unfortunately, the instructions for in which order the the frames on the page go are in the Western Front/Japanese Back of the book.... so I didn't see those.

I'm assuming I'll get some background information in later installments as to exactly what it is that makes Guts tick. As things stand he's a psycotic with a large sword and a knack for breaking the established laws of physics.

Heh... *evil grin* there are reasons why he is a psycotic with a large sword and a knack for breaking the established laws of physics. I'm serious, on both counts.

[Killfile]

Based on the average height of a japanese male, the angle at which Guts wears his sword on his back, and the variance of perfered heights for drawing such a blade, I estimate the length of the Dragonslayer at about 200 cm or 6.5 feet (including the hilt).

If only 1 foot of that 6.5 feet is hilt (not alltogether unreasonable) that leaves 5.5 feet of blade -- or 167.6 cm.

The blade itself has proportions that would suggest a width of about 8 to 10 inches (we'll split the difference) and a depth of 1.5 inchs at its widest point.

For those of you following along in metric, that's 167.6 x 22.9 x 3.8, or about 14584.5 cubic centemeters of volume for the blade. Making the estimation that the hilt is weightless should actualy over compensate for assuming the blade itself is a rectangular solid, so we'll stick with our 14584 cc estimate.

Iron has a density of 7874 kg/cubic meter. Since we have the sword's volume in cubic centemeters, we divide by 1,000,000. Gut's sword thus has a volume of 0.014584 cubic meters - equating to 114.8 kilograms of iron - or about 253 pounds.

Guts, in comparison, probably weighs in at about 200 pounds or 90 kilos, so the blade more than doubles his weight. With a little more math I could work out the force it would exert on his wrists -- suffice it to say his arms should have been shattered by the weapon the first time he tried to shift it in midswing.

The sword fighting patterns depicted in Berserk closely resemble the kind of blocking pattern I would expect from someone trained in Kendo. This means that there is a lot of linear movement of the blade with an emphasis of short quick strikes. Guts differs from this in that his attacks don't stop short like a traditional kendo attack, but continue through the intended victim. This is more like the use of a European broadsword.

It is possible to parry with a broadsword but it requires more anticipation of where the blows are coming from and how they will land. As long as the motion is circular rather than linear and the sword is kept in a constant orbit, the weapon's weight becomes less problematic. This is well represented early on in the series, but seems to deteriorate later on as Guts' swordplay becomes more Eastern and less Western.

Of course, I'm only in the middle of book 2, so these observations are limited in scope.

[Khelegond]

Hmm...I don't think Guts only weights 90kg. He probably weight something around 120kg, because of his huge muscular frame. And remember, muscles prevent bone breaking

[Finito]

Damn big ass text...I think your thinking too much, but thats a good thing.

Well what you said were only estimations so what your saying coudl be totally false.

Guts as been training with bigger swords since hes a child, dont worry about his wrists. I think he must weights more than 200lb, since I am 190lb and im not that big, but hes all muscles so I dont know if muscles makes you weight more or less(by the way im not fat).

[Khelegond]

Muscles wights more than fat. So, he probably weights much more. I'll look around for someone as big as him, and see how much he weights. A good aproach might be Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was younger...

[MrFelony]

well glad you finally finished a volume. i definitely enjoy guts a lot because it is an extremely well written manga and a lot of depth to it. i think you'll appreciate it and it iwll be fun to get your perspective on the whole story so far.

[Killfile]

The assumptions I'm making are all grounded in solid statistics and math.

We know the height of the average male
We know the angle at which Guts wears his sword
With those two peices of information we can calculate the length of the blade, assuming Guts' height is average.

If Guts is of greater than average height, the sword's height scales with his according to these calculations. Acutally, being shorter is better for him down to abot 4 feet where we start to see some diminishing returns.

As to the weight of the sword, I've estimated conservitively, meaning that my estimates probably run on the low side. The amount of iron shorn off to make the blade sharp probably doesn't balance out the amount needed to make the hilt.

Guts may well be heavier than the average, due to his physical condition. If we assume this, than we have to assume that he got this way by training with other swords, which will build certain kinds of muscle structures due to carrying and hefting in a predictable manner.

This should produce a more musclear chest, upper arm, and thigh (due to inward and upward movement of the blade, and carrying the weapons respectively).

The wrist though, is where all the tortional force of a quick direction change - particularly a parry protecting the lower midsection and upper leg, should come into play. If Guts parrys an incoming blow in this direction, then the weight of the blade will rest upon the wrist of the top hand of his two handed grip. Additionaly, any striking force that his opponent has will be multiplied by the distance between his wrist and the impact point in meters and applied to the wrist.

Since we can treat the sword as a point mass at its center of mass, this means that without a parry - Guts has about 94342.3 Neutons applied to his wrist just holding the blade level in a blocking position - or 21,208 pounds of pressure, exerted over an area about 1 inch square. Now the human femur (much stronger than the wrist) can withstand 1,200 pounds per square inch before giving way. Guts is over by a factor of nearly 20.

Everything we've calculated is either a scalar quantity or scales with Guts' height. That means that as Guts gets shorter, the numbers become more plausable (because a person's height increases faster than their girth and bone density). In other words - Guts probably isn't 5'7". Guts exists in a mythological time that we can probably place closer to 800 AD. Subsisting of a diet of mostly grains and devoid of lots of calcium - Guts is probably on the high end of four feet.

He's still straining reality at that point, but not as much.

[arke]

Since we can treat the sword as a point mass at its center of mass, this means that without a parry - Guts has about 94342.3 Neutons applied to his wrist just holding the blade level in a blocking position - or 21,208 pounds of pressure, exerted over an area about 1 inch square. Now the human femur (much stronger than the wrist) can withstand 1,200 pounds per square inch before giving way. Guts is over by a factor of nearly 20.

What did you do to get this? I'm assuming using static equilibrium. If so, then if we assume his right hand is at a pivot point at the base of the sword and we treat this as the pivot point, then his right hand provides no torque, it cancels the weight of the sword (~1.13kN) and the force of him opposing the torque. Following your guesses at the length of the sword (i.e. 1.676m long sword and a .305m handle) and guessing that his left hand would be halfway between the pommel and his right hand (~.15m we'll say) and the center of mass is at ~.80m (rounding down due to varying size), then Fh*.15 = Fs*.8, or Fh is equal to about 6kN (assuming I got the physics and math right, tad rusty). So, his right arm supports ~7.13kN.

Edit note: I agree that holding the sword one-handed in a horizontal position is impossible, with either hand (they likely lacked methods to open and close prosthetic hands at the time).

Also, this is probably closer to 1000-1100AD considering they have stone castles. This would mean the peasants are using a three-field system and thus have a decent source of protein.

[Killfile]

I do have some problems in there.... I'll get to that in a sec.

Edit:

Ok, so 114.8 kg * 9.80665 m/s^2 = 1125.8 N.
1125.8 N * 0.8m = 900Nm of torque.

All of the torque applied to Guts hand will be taken by his good hand, with the prosthetic providing most of the counter-balancing force. That means the fulcrum is the leading edge of his good hand.

So the question then is can his wrist bear up under 900Nm of torque?

If Guts is a good swordsman, he'll know that he will fair better if he absorbs as much of the blow as possible. This means that he'll allow a parry to pivot his sword as much as 90 degrees while countering the blow. Ignoring the force of the opponents blow, this means that Guts' sword's previously static torque can now be converted to power.

1 full revolution yeilds 2pi Joules per Neuton of force - and 90 degrees is one quarter of that. So Guts will experiance 1.5 Joules for each Neuton of force involved. His sword alone produces 900 so we're talking about 1350 Joules.

I'm having a hard time finding decent stats on how many Joules a human bone will take - but it seems to hover around 350 or less.

Of course, if someone actually strikes Guts' blade, he's going to have to deal with more than that.

As to the diet and time -- I've been reminded that we're talking about the technological equivilient of mideval europe. Meat and dairy were still rare at this time - and prized as compact sources of energy. Your average peasent still lived off of grains and other carbohydrates - though certainly in better conditions than 4th century europe.

The fact that Guts sword is consistantly refered to as Iron rather than Steel should mitigate our assumptions - as Europe was using steel in small quantities (for weapons) c. 1000 AD.

[arke]

So the question then is can his wrist bear up under 900Nm of torque?

Doubtful. But his good hand, being the fulcrum, doesn't need to provide torque, just to counteract forces in the vertical direction. His prosthetic would counteract the torque from the sword and his good hand would have to hold up both of those forces (see thrice edited post above). My calculator says 7.13kN is roughly 727 kg. Taking this a step farther, it means there's roughly 83kN of force applied to his bicep and 76kN to his elbow.

So yes, him supporting this sword is impossible.

As to the diet and time -- I've been reminded that we're talking about the technological equivilient of mideval europe. Meat and dairy were still rare at this time - and prized as compact sources of energy. Your average peasent still lived off of grains and other carbohydrates - though certainly in better conditions than 4th century europe.

Well, if the area is using the three field system, then he might have a source of protein from the beans.

The fact that Guts sword is consistantly refered to as Iron rather than Steel should mitigate our assumptions - as Europe was using steel in small quantities (for weapons) c. 1000 AD.

It is iron. Later in the manga it's referred to as a slab of iron.

[Istvan]

Ok, your probably correct that wielding such a sword is physically impossible for a human, and a number of people throughout the manga question how a human can use such a blade. There is, however, actually a fairly good explanation for this, just as there is to the comment the Count made in the very first volume that the force of his blows should have killed a human, but Guts is still alive and ticking. The author has thought of these problems, and an explanation is provided (though not till around volume 25 or 26, so you'll have to read to there to get it. I'd tell you but it would involve major spoilors, including, amoung other things the reason that Guts is such a homicidal maniac).

[Eldo]

The explanation provided is by no means an mathematical or scientifical explanation, but rather explained via supernatural and magical means. Guts is a physical phenomenon due to that reason. And yes, he regularly breaks the laws of physics...

Also check this site out, the anime laws:

http://www.garg.com/jim/anime_laws6.0.html

This was posted somewhere in the anime forum many eons ago, and it still makes me laugh everytime I read it.

[Tempest]

The way I like to think of it is, if you can buy into a guy transforming himself into a giant slug (The Count) then you should have no problem buying into Gut's athleticism. That and the fact that Guts is the man.

[Libaax]

I have never had any trouble buying Guts strength cause there are many things that are more unbelievable and Guts fights are so well done that it doesn't matter how strong he has problems with most apostles.