Martial Arts Thread

Something you don't often see, Piper a South African knife system:

Basically, the founder Nigel February needed to find a self-defence solution for the epidemic of knife crime perpetrated by gangs. So he went to interview gang members in prison and elsewhere to find out how they used knives. The system created from the various methodologies was Piper. A small interview.

Being Old School: An Interview with Ellis Amdur on the Classical Martial Arts of Japan

Does anyone know of any film/television where the woman fight with a boxing style as opposed to martial arts? I should specify that I don't mean films that are about boxing, just that boxing happens to be their fighting style.

It stuck me watching a Bond film that Bond and action heroes like him seem to be fighting based on endurance more that anything else, two people hitting each other until one of them starts flagging, but woman in films never seem to fight like that, its martial arts or nothing.

edited 25th May '18 9:16:03 AM by MCE

Well, done right that shouldn't be what boxing looks like either which is why there's a difference between Boxing Battler and Good Old Fisticuffs, but I get your point!

Double standards like that are why Waif-Fu and Beauty Is Never Tarnished exist, and the age of those particular tropes tends to coincide nicely with the prevalence of Good Old Fisticuffs in film before more smoothly choreographed martial arts scenes exists.

So IMO at least it's a LOT harder to find a less choreographed knock-down-drag-out endurance brawl with women because in the sort of older films when that was popular, it was extremely unexpected to have women be in fight scenes. The fact that even now some people seem to see fight scenes with women as needing to fight more delicately doesn't help.

I've heard the Nikita TV show has more of a straightforward, non Waif-Fu fighting style, but it's still pretty martial arts based. Will edit this post with more if I can think of a more proper example.

I recall martial arts in general becoming a lot more popular than they used to be. Especially if a character is supposed to be a skilled fighter. However I would say it is more notable that female fighters have a trend towards acrobatic fighting than most of their male counterparts.

As I understand, Agent Carter leans more towards Good Old Fisticuffs for her fights. I've only watched 2 episodes of it, but she definitely goes more for punch-punch-punch than flip-kick-flip.

This talk reminds me of Black Lagoon and Atomic Blonde, in that both of those works featured female combatants getting into a massive fistfight, complete with ensuing exhaustion and many unpretty bruises.

All three of those are great! I just didn't think of them because I thought the post was talking about clumsy more brawler style choreography rather than just pragmatic, brutal fighting styles.

Would also like to point out that a lot of Hong Kong action cinema set in the 70s-80s that are about policewomen (usually starring actresses like Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan, Kara Hui, or Cynthia Rothrock) will have them also engage in good old fisticuffs as opposed to dance-battle-y waif fu. Still stylized, as all movie choreography is, but they're also fighting pretty much the same way as the men and taking hits just as hard. Those films are somewhat of a gold mine if you're not fond of the double standard regarding who can and can't get hit in movies.

Reminded me of a meme regarding the Wonder Woman film as "finally we have a strong woman on film" with the Landlady from Kung Fu Hustle going "bitch please", to which I commented:

Hollywood femme fatales are "fatale" because they distract you with boobs and stripper heels, Asian femme fatales are "fatale" because they stab you in the face.

Thanks for the answers everyone. Flash martial arts have their place, but I'd prefer more film to take a more practical approach, the aim is to disable or kill your enemy, not spend five minutes, doing acrobatics and defying gravity.

Well the reason they do that is simply audiences like it. You only have to look at the history of fighting and action sequences in the movies to see it applied to everything from gun fighters, sword play, hand to hand, and even how vehicles are used. I kid you not there is a movie that has the USS Iowa doing a J turn by dropping its anchors.

Wasn't that Battleship?

I guess that martial arts in fiction are like dancing, a spectacle of movement and skill, something more people would enjoy, rather than the brutality of straight up violence.

Yeah it was Battleship and it was mind numbingly idiotic.

Now to be fair audiences can and do appreciate a more realistic approach but I have found that tends to be more in the realm of "gritty" and/or dark works.

Something you don't often see, a school for battlefield archery in Japan, Satsuma Heki-ryu.

edited 6th Jun '18 12:24:26 PM by TerminusEst

That is kind of neat to see. Very shouty archery though. I liked the skirmisher advance.

Uh oh look out an old martial tradition that never died out completely has back quivers. Lars Andersen must groaning in savage pain.

I can't say for sure, since I'm not part of the school, but the kiai might be to signal others that you're firing. Longer shout for "I'm out!". Might have an esoteric meaning as well, as the schools often do.

Kiai is basically working with breathing and mental focus. Encompasses a lot of things. The mundane and weird.

edited 7th Jun '18 5:48:27 AM by TerminusEst

Kiai are also for intimidation. Nice to see some battlefield archery - I want to get back into archery myself, but I need a new bow and some arrows.

I also am curious why they're doing a staggered advance like that. My guess is to spread out their line to counter something like musket fire. Also interesting in that they're practicing point archery - aiming presumably at a specific target rather than indirect massed fire like you'd expect of archers. Guessing it's for safety reasons.

edited 19th Jun '18 10:22:32 PM by TomoeMichieru

Being a ryuha there's a chance these guys were never trained with mass archery in mind, but rather with individual combat being a primary concern (as opposed to the common soldier). With some skirmishing advances and unit tactics when with others. Without the internal knowledge of the school though, it's mostly speculation.

Paradoxically, when the ryuha system started to appear during the Sengoku period, they were teaching skills that were for personal combat and not for the mass warfare it was turning into. To quote Dr. Karl Friday:

edited 19th Jun '18 11:10:29 PM by TerminusEst

1st woman to learn ways of the warrior at famed school in Nara

Stay classy, traditional kung fu guys.

I'm of a notion that no-gi guy should have just completed that armbar instead of waiting for a tap.

Not a very smart dude. TMA rarely has any ground grappling for a reason.

Edited by TerminusEst on Jul 19th 2018 at 9:22:26 AM

That was kind of sad to watch.

TCM Aers have been getting butthurt ever since Xu Xiaodong has been doing his thing. He and Xiong Chengcheng (boxer) did a second exhibition fight wherein both of them wrecked their respective Wing Chun master opponents.

My personal theory is that our TM Aer never intended to abide by the rules and was always intending to make some kind of "see, you just do a sport, if this was a real fight I'd have poked your eyes out and broken your windpipe" point. Never mind that if this was a real fight, our sport fighters would know to watch out for that kind of thing and change their tactics accordingly.

TCMA has very few people around who are seriously capable, should've just stabbed the guy in a dark alley if he wanted a "real fight". People like Al Haroun Hisham in Taiwan or Thomas Holtmann in Germany are rare.

Similar things exist on te Japanese side of things.

Eh, no need to stab anyone in a dark alley. A simple "hey, so I know this is a grappling event, but can we fight MMA style instead?" would have sufficed.