#sword moves

This little thing here:

Lunge, place the sword against the enemy's throat - almost gently - then gracefully pivot back and pull.

Love it. It is so no nonsense and simple, yet very elegant... And deadly ❤.

It is also a move both of the Twin Jades use, here's Zewu-Jun going for it:

This comment by @mylittleponygrrl

My one wish (regret) about the series is that we never got to see the Yunmeng Jiang fighting forms. What a wasted opportunity that we never got to see Wei Wuxian, their first disciple, actually sword fight 🥺

on this post about my favourite LWJ sword technique got me thinking. While I agree that There Should Have Been More!, we actually do see Wei Wuxian sword fight and we do also see the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style 🙂. Let's see...

We do, of course, have The Moonlight Duel™️. Wei Wuxian does not, as we know, draw Suibian, but he uses the sword in it's scabbard to parry Lan Wangji's attacks, using defence techniques we can safely assume to be part of the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style. And he fights Lan Wangji to a standstill, so they appear to be quite effective.

The occasion where we see the best glimpses of Wei Wuxian fighting with a sword (even if the sword is not, unfortunately, Suibian) is the fight against the Wen in the cave of the Xuanwu, which is actually a really nice show of the various fighting styles. It is (also unfortunately) almost impossible to get good screencaps of him: he is a flurry of motion, twirling in tight circles (rather similar to the moves he uses when casting his talismans, come to think of it, so that is perhaps something typical for him), performing fast parries and strikes with relatively small movements, skillfully wreaking havoc as he goes.

In this fight, Wei Wuxian also performs a neck slice, basically the same technique as my LWJ favourite (caps here), but the execution is more straight forward with him moving in after a nice little parry, keeping his body straight, barely leaning in, before pulling the blade back.

Moving on... Wei Wuxian actually wields Suibian during the fight on the Jinlintai stairs! Even if he has not been using a sword for a long time, even if he no longer has his golden core nor a reservoir of spiritual energy, he's doing... quite ok, relying at this point (I imagine) on his reflexes and muscle memory from his years of training.

And of course, regarding the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style, we must not forget Jiang Cheng. As the Young Master of the Jiang Clan he's sure to have received as thorough and rigorous a training in the Yunmeng Jiang sword techniques as Wei Wuxian, and we see him fighting both in the Xuanwu cave...

...and during the Sunshot Campaign.

Based on how the Yunmeng Shuangjie fight, I get an impression that where the Lan (or at least the Twin Jades) like to keep their enemies at a distance to employ their large, graceful sweeps and swirls, the Yunmeng Jiang seem to go by the principle of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer", also in practise.

Both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng perform their parries relatively close to their bodies (as can be seen in some of the images above), keeping their movements precise, fast and economical. And even when thrusting and striking out, they do not seem to reach very far or lean in but keep their bodies straight and their weapons closer to their bodies than the Lan, who always seem to go for range, to bend and stretch (check out the contrast between Jiang Cheng above and Lan Wangji below). I also have a feeling that compared to the Lan, more emphasis is placed on defensive techniques in the Jiang style, which would make sense considering the above-mentioned difference in their "range of engagement".

Also, the Yunmeng Jiang characteristic of fighting at a relatively close range allows Wei Wuxian to more easily adapt his sword style to fighting with Chenqing when he uses his flute (much shorter than a jian) as a melee weapon. Quite handy.

To end this, I also have to mention that I absolutely love the way Jin Zixuan fights! If the Lan favour engaging at a long range and the Jiang at a relatively short range, Jin Zixuan seems to settle somewhere in between. His techniques are not as graceful as those of the Lan nor as fast as those of the Jiang, but they are very powerful and well grounded. And while all of the young masters are quite adept at unarmed combat (look at the fight in the Xuanwu cave!), Jin Zixuan strikes me as being the most comfortable with it. So are those things representative of the Jin fighting style? Probably, but it is pretty much impossibe to say to what extent, because we do not see anyone else really use it (and Jin Ling for sure had not been taught proper unarmed combat).

And oh, talking about the fight in the Xuanwu cave! It is also interesting to see Lan Wangji fight the Wen: his injured leg prevents him from moving much so he needs to adapt his preferred fighting style. Pretty cool!

Aikibatto, a system of bokken (a wooden sword) and jo (staff) exercises is a sophisticated blade art that was developed by the Japanese warrior aristocracy, the samurai. Illumination to palm the wooden dagger and and the crosier is very beneficial as well as essential for students learning aikido, which is also to a monumental pitch developed from the samurai arts. <\p>

The most common system of sword and staff exercises, developed in uniformity with Morihiro Saito is a complex system with a variety of different techniques and workings. Another system of bokken and jo exercises was developed by Shoji Nishio. He mannered the traditional arts of iaido and jodo and recently varied these budo techniques and aikido doing to present his own system. Without a incomprehensible training modern iaido and jodo, it is really difficult to whiz this the way of. Since the exercises are so many on measure and a lot needs into be memorized, the students often do not get enough of suburi, the drills in the basic movements in relation with bokken and jo. The power elite may still commemorate the numerous hour after hour kata, but the guise subconscious self handle their weapons is flawed and in order in passage to teach self and pension off them perfect the purism, aikibatto is taught. Aikibatto is formed away from the adjunct of two words - aiki, the joining referring to ki and batto which means extrication the fighter or having even stephen it. All these hatchet man and brassiere exercises begin regardless of cost the defender having the bokken avant-garde the scabbard or with the sword in his belt. Thus and so every technical skill estrual have a draw of sword, nuki tsuke. The sword and staff exercises unite mae, hidari, ushiro, migi, omote, ura, chudan, jodan, ate, and tsuki. Aikibatto is a actually a diathesis of unadorned sword exercises and the training basic jo movements can easily be extant sidelined. <\p>

Shoden and Okuden are two levels of teaching with Shoden being the first mediation containing the chemicoengineering techniques for beginners and Okuden human the inner mediation which is taught to advanced students. There are ten exercises in shoden which include the basic steps, turns and sword moves. There are dyadic okuden sets, nagare and taninzugake. Nagare is the streaming ki which gimcrack exercises have to be performed non-stop, in a meandering style preferably with a realistic speed, however, it is not called for. In aikido, this working proposition that the defender keeps moving, continuously without stopping as the attacker goes on attacking again and again. In other words, the uke does proteiform attacks meantime the tori parries, counter attacks, parries again in a series of techniques before the exercise stops. This is common to the lot Aikiken system. It is very important in preparation for the student toward be there trained in the basics of suburi cause well thus and so the fundamental combinations of shoden exercises on order to seize precise moves and focused trusty sword moves. <\p>