ZOMBIE FORUMS

I don't know about the rest of you, but in the last panel I see Sara falling over and deactivating her spear so that she doesn't gut herself.

There's no balance in her last pose, so I very much doubt she's pulled off some "killer" move...

Wahh? Neither end of the spear is anywhere near her. Once is about two inches from Sarine's chest. Are you looking at the same comic as me?

She drops to her right hand to avoid Sarine's swing then brings her spear around in her left hand. It's not a particularly graceful move, but it's one that would have killed Sarine if they were in a fight for real.

Looks to me like the last frame is the one in which they both realize something: they could both have killed eachother, but they also chose not to, recognizing that they are probably evenly matched, and having just made their point by not following through.

Sarine could have killed Sara by lopping her head off
AND
Sara could have killed Sarine by slicing her in half at at the midriff

Mutual respect for one's opponent, anyone?

-Ptrix

... damnit. This thread finally convinced me to quit lurking. Was ready to chime in with a fairly nice argument in favor "no, Sarine just kicked Sara's ass" too.

Then I look at Monday's comic again just to make sure I haven't missed anything to support it. And I finally take a closer look at the last frame. Which makes the whole "we'd have just killed each other if this was for real" so obvious it's not even funny.

Fifth frame has Sara off balance, with both momentum and zero leverage conspiring to make any sort of parry impossible. (I assume that her Dolan would destroyed if she tries using the shaft to parry another Drus Flamma weapon.) All she can do is lunge and pray. Probbably wouldn't work, but it'd at least do a nice job of slicing Sarine in two. Which Sarine can't do anything to stop, because her sword (Hape?) is too high for a parry and she doesn't have the footing to pull of a Specacular Dodge like she has in the past.

did sara just slide her hands one over the other? that looks like it'd be a slick way to transition off changing her angle of attack moving her left blade from high left to high right

if she isn't trying to take a shot at sarine's ribs with her fist or a fast spell of course ( sarine does have a hand off her sword at the same time and they are way too close to actually stick each other at that point)

actually I think they are way too close to each other the whole scene anyways. professionals don't rush an opponent like that especially if they have additional distance on someone like sarine does

and sarine just missed sara with a sweep at her head, she didn't actually hit her. which leaves her screwed once sara gets any kind off footing and gets her other hand on her weapon. I wouldn't keep something like that extended if I tripped. cut your own wang off

Yes, she would. Arms straight and the blade being swung by rotating the torso. Sarine clipped Sara a good one on the back of the head, knocking her out or, at least, disturbing Sara's concentration enough for Sara's weapon to deactivate, incidently clipping a few hairs. Sara didn't deactivate her Dolon voluntarily.

Note that either this all happened while they were both in time fugue, meaning that Sarine was matching Sara, or Sarine has somehow disabled Sara's time fugue ability. In either case, Sara is not moving any faster than Sarine and the magic time-ninja stuff appears neutralised.

BTW: The 5th frame doesn't follow the 4th, there is a huge gap.

That would be a really awkward move, one you couldn't put much force behind unless what you were swinging had most of its weight at the end away from your hands (like an axe or a hammer). Swords are balanced close to the hilt for speed, so you would only be able to give someone a light slap if you were swinging from the torso. Although, I guess it's possible the magic floaty crystal blades are super heavy or something.



I thought Sara wasn't using it for reasons of "honor".

(edit)- I'm not just arguing in favor of Sara because I want her to win. If anything, her whole "angsty teenager" routine kinda annoys me, and I'd like to see Sarine hand out a good ol' respect-your-elders style beatdown. I'm just postin' what I'm seein'.

Sarine is an Elf. Elves are stronger, faster, and more magical than humans. Also Durus Flamma are light, compared to steel weapons. In addition, it doesn't take much of an impact, on the back of the head, to really disturb things in a major way. A straight-armed torso swing, with a light weapon, can be extremely fast and even a light weapon, at substantial velocity, will develop noticable kinetic energy at impact. Even with the flat of the blade, this would put a minor dent in Sara's skull. Had Sarine used the edge, this would have performed a brain-ectomy.



Sara herself hypothetically discounted that as "Bullshit", during her previous conversation with Sarine. With that, I wouldn't quite trust the honor bit when it comes to lethal weapons like the Durus Flamma.



That along with a short and pointy lecture, yes. Like you, I'm only calling what I see

But having it lighter makes it worse. You can't get any real momentum going because you're limited by the speed you can twist your torso. That's fine if it's got a weight at the end (f=ma, after all), but if the crystal is lighter than steel with the same balance as a sword you're going to find it slow, awkward and powerless. Try it for yourself - swing something lightweight with the balance close to your hands by twisting at the waist.

If you want to cut something with a one-handed sword, you swing with your arm. If it's a particularly light sword, (like an epee or a smallsword) you use your wrist. It's too light to swing with from the waist.

Of course, if elves are significantly stronger than humans, none of this matters. Sarine could just beat her with brute strength.

You guys seem to be forgetting that these are special magic vibrating-crystals-full-of-magic-energy weapons. For all we know, being flatbladed by one is like being hit with a stun wand like they use in prison riots, i.e. you don't have to hit hard, the weapon makes it hurt no matter what.

Even if your opponent is packing a pistol? (Or, in this case, can throw lightning bolts with her off-hand.)

I had to create an account, just to say that this is an awesome comic, and the Blade of the Immortal style fight tickles my geek-bones.

As far as the winner goes, it's definately Sarine. Sara's got absolutely no footing in the last panel, and it's impossible for her to swing her weapon in such a way as to even touch Sarine. At most, in that position all she'd be able to do is move her wrist another 5 degrees or so, and it would be painful. If Sara used her arm at all, she'd hit Sarine with the hilt of the weapon, and give Sarine ample opportunity to disarm/kill her.

So, either Sarine's blade has a stun-effect, or Sara's smart enough to know that she lost the fight, and turned it off.

How would you like to take a tumble whilst holding a double ended staff of slicey uber-death? Irrespective of the current position of the weapon, the risk of injury is very real...

Yes she did, look at panel 4, her left hand is moving past her right arm, she'll be sliding and twisting her right hand in the other direction once she gets a grip with her left hand, incidently sweeping the bottom blade across to its position in panel 5. But that's a very dangerous move since she is pretty much letting go of the weapon from panel 3 to 5.

Looking at panel 6, anyone who wants to say Sara could slicey Sarine like that needs to pick up a 1.5 meter long stick, hold it in the middle and see how hard they can hit something with one end of the stick by pushing the stick away from their body with one arm.

Sarine won with the smack on top of the head.



Let me smack you on the top of your head with a 60cm wooden ruler and see how much it hurts... Plus she was driving the Hape and good 70 degrees from the left shoulder and there's the wrist action of going from the blade perpendicular to the arm to the blade extended.

Smack to the head = bouncing brains, bouncing brains = momentary loss of concentration.

It appears to me because she was struck in the head, and/or because she lost her balance, and/or because she realized "oh crap the elf bitch is going to slice the back of my head open", Sara lost concentration and her weapon deactivated.

A magical crystal that can cut through a normal sword blade like it's not even there... Like lightsabers I don't think it really matters how hard you're swinging the things.

From the Wiki entry on Durus Flamma:



People are saying she was hit with the flat of the blade. If Sarine hit her with the edge Sara would look like Lucy Liu in Kill Bill.

We have no confirmation that Sarine bopped Sara on the noggin with the flat of her blade, that Sara lost her balance, or that Sara deactivated her blades for any reason other than her own. Until Poe tells us one way or another, it is all speculation and all the "hey, I'm just callin' it like I see it" is more like "hey, I'm jsut callin' it like I want to see it."

This is an awful lot of discussion about the deeper meanings behind what's going on for a page Poe was considering not even doing...

^-^'

Except that in the last frame of the 6-frame fight sequence, we see Sara off balance, her feet in a suboptimal position, leaning on one hand -- a hand that's now off the weapon -- having barely avoided having her head bisected horizontally.

We can actually see, there, in the comic, several possible reasons for the unintentional deactivation of Sara's blade.

I'll go with what we can see on the page, as opposed to speculation about the character's motives. In other words, with what the author has actually shown us already.