The Energon Pub

I was just reading through tfwiki's listings for the limited amount of fictional martial arts in Transformers. I began wondering if it would be interesting to see more martial arts in Transformers. I recently saw a clip of Masterforce where Ginrai did a German suplex to King Poseidon and thought it was a wild thing to see in a TF cartoon. I'm just starting to watch the Japanese cartoons so I imagine I'll be seeing more martial arts/pro wrestling(the Japanese are crazy about puro/pro wrestling) bits.

The Crystalocution tfwiki listing stood out to me for two reasons. The first being a seemingly homage to Hokuto Shin Ken of the various Hokuto No Ken manga/anime, which I'm a fan of. The second reason is that it seems more pragmatic than other more famous fictional MAs like Circuit-Su and Metallikato. I read up on Banzai-Tron, a famous Crystalocution practitioner and he's perfect for Crystalocution, being a practical minded Decepticon who could care less about the spiritual aspects of the art. Also, just thinking about it, targeting weak spots seems an obvious strategy for robot and vehicle combat.

TFA brought back Circuit-Su and Metallikato so maybe the next cartoon series will continue to incorporate, however briefly, an MA aspect into the stories. Maybe more "cyber ninja" sort of characters. I really like the way that unorthodox combat approaches are mentioned in TFA like Oil Slick's expertise on vehicular combat and the way that he, Lockdown, Prowl, and Jazz are all trained in Circuit-Su.

Yeah, but....

Or maybe yeah, and.... (Can't decide right now).

...This is a major issue I have in life: this kowtowing (yes, deliberate choice of word) to Asian style martial arts. Like no one from the West ever had a martial arts style. Really? Then why is my Western Civ textbook crammed full of battles and wars that I have to memorize? Were they all just brawlers?

There is a long and powerful and VASTLY understudied Western martial arts tradition. Consider the Knights Templar. Ramon Lull. Vegetius. The Varangian Guard. I could name others, but they're more abstruse. Western martial arts value and work with the superior size and bulk of their warriors, where Asian styles tend to concentrate on smaller size.

Yes, we do have some smaller bots who could probably fit well into the tactics and strengths of the Eastern styles of martial arts, we also have a number of larger bots who would not do well with those styles. Anyone who has studied judo or tae kwon do can attest that size is oftentimes an impediment in practicing those styles and in sparring. Larger bots would work much better with the Western styles. Especially suited to armored types. With swords.

A cyber ninja might be a cool thing indeed, but I think I remember a _Deadliest Warrior_ (my GOD I love that show even though it should be called _DeadliER Warrior_) where they pitted a ninja against a medieval knight. Knight won.

Don't tell me it wouldn't happen.

HK, <--nerd who wrote a 400 page dissertation on western style martial arts and masculinity.

You're preaching to the choir, hellkitty! I didn't mean to single out Eastern martial arts but I mentioned Crystalocution because it is such a practical style(attacking weak points) and it is similar to a fictional martial art of one of my favourite manga.

I'm actually follower of HEMA(Historical European Martial Arts). I'm studying Western European sword arts(mainly German and Italian longsword schools, I'm also looking to get involved with La Destreza, a Spanish school of classical fencing). I'm also an advocate of Western martial arts, including the often forgotten pankration, one of the first comprehensive system of combat/martial arts, which also may have come up with the concept of chi/qi/ki before the Eastern martial arts.

HEMA is all about pragmatic approach. HEMA is also far more well documented in the area of late medieval and early renaissance through the various combat manuals from German and Italian masters. Unfortunately, because HEMA is more pragmatic, it lacks the air of mystery that Eastern martial arts have, which makes it more attractive to many people.

I have a dislike of the self imposed mysticism in EMA and the fact of the matter is that body mechanics remains the same for people around the world. When you get to the core of any martial art, the principles of understanding and utilizing body mechanics in the most efficient manner remain the same.

I also must add that I'm of Chinese heritage and I've had the opportunity to study traditional(not modern) shaolin kung fu when I was younger so I'm not criticizing Eastern martial arts without some personal perpective in the matter.

While I've spoken of the esoteric aspects of EMA, there are some Eastern martial arts that are less mystical and more practical like wing chun, which emphasizes practical application and principles in combat like linear striking(shortest distance between two points is a straight line). Now keep in mind that not all wing chun schools, or martial art schools for that matter, that are legitimate. There are a lot of "McDojos" out there that have instructors who are out to make a quick buck and don't have the proper background to be a teacher.

I'm putting up a white flag right now because, hellkitty, I must confess my dislike of the Deadliest Warrior show...to me, it's the Mythbusters of martial arts shows. Now I do realize that it's a show for entertainment and not a clinical examination of combat but one of my pet peeves is inaccurate testing of weapon related combat. The Deadliest Warrior is full of these tests. I recall seeing the episode of Viking vs Samurai and there was a segment testing a katana against a maille shirt. Obviously the katana couldn't slice through the maille but what neither of the "experts/hosts" of the show measured was concussive force. Despite the maille holding up, the blunt force trauma of the strike should have been taken into consideration. The same problem happens in their weapon vs helmet test. They only measured the amount of structural damage to the helmet but didn't factor in possibility of concussion and trauma to the neck from force of impact. They also didn't take into account that a helmet on a human being has give as a human will not stand resistant to a strike, a human will generally get pushed back unless they are literally running into a strike. I could go on...so fans of The Deadliest Warrior and Mythbusters for that matter, feel free to throw your rotten veggies.

Anyways, back to the topic, yes, I agree that size matters for combat because there's leverage and position to take into consideration. If someone significantly larger than me smothers me in close quarters, no matter how skilled I am, if I can't gain appropriate leverage, I'm trapped.

I think that since we already have had cyber ninjas in TFA, in a future Transformers cartoon the types of specialized warriors should be expanded upon. Something like a special forces group of Autobots and/or Decepticons would be cool. Bring in (C)lose(Q)uarter(C)ombat using knife fighting and utilization of rifles as CQC implements for striking and limb trapping.

If more melee weapons are used, I'd love to see half-swording with physical blades(obviously half-swording with energy blades would be self destructive). It was cool to see Jazz use throwing weapons and Prowl use nunchucks but polearms would be awesome. Staves, spears(the truly under-appreciated weapon that built empires), and multi-sectional staves. Powered/enhanced striking would be cool too like Priss' hardsuit weapons from Bubblegum Crisis.

I would also love to see the "vehicle-to-vehicle" combat style of Oil Slick's expanded upon. It's a great idea that seems so obvious for the concept of transforming robots. Damage the vehicle mode, you're likely to cause problems for transformation attempts. Bang up an alt mode enough and transforming to bot may damage the bot's body further or at least cause discomfort.

The action scenes in RotF involving close combat would be a great resource for inspiration too. OP's fight scene with Grindor, Megatron, and Starscream was great for showcasing bot to bot combat.

There's just so many things that could be done so hopefully we'll see more martial arts in future Transformers cartoons.

Convotron wrote:I'm putting up a white flag right now because, hellkitty, I must confess my dislike of the Deadliest Warrior show...to me, it's the Mythbusters of martial arts shows. Now I do realize that it's a show for entertainment and not a clinical examination of combat but one of my pet peeves is inaccurate testing of weapon related combat. The Deadliest Warrior is full of these tests. I recall seeing the episode of Viking vs Samurai and there was a segment testing a katana against a maille shirt. Obviously the katana couldn't slice through the maille but what neither of the "experts/hosts" of the show measured was concussive force. Despite the maille holding up, the blunt force trauma of the strike should have been taken into consideration. The same problem happens in their weapon vs helmet test. They only measured the amount of structural damage to the helmet but didn't factor in possibility of concussion and trauma to the neck from force of impact. They also didn't take into account that a helmet on a human being has give as a human will not stand resistant to a strike, a human will generally get pushed back unless they are literally running into a strike. I could go on...so fans of The Deadliest Warrior and Mythbusters for that matter, feel free to throw your rotten veggies..

You're absolutely right, except you make Mythbusters sound worse than it is. As a female who studies masculinity, _Deadliest Warrior_ is to me like a festival of manly stereotypes, covered with a thick coat of cheez. I LOVE the ridiculous smacktalk. The dopey pseudo-science. The inane cut scenes. I fear growing chest hair every time I watch an episode. It's...hilarious. How can you NOT love it? It's like Desperate Housewives is for women, only pretend-real.

(But seriously--crusader vs. ninja? crusader takes it.) (Gotta stick up for my guys).

HK, Except against Seljuks. Crusader vs Turk, owie. Turks win.

Haha, well, I was hoping for a Pirates vs Ninja episode but it never came about.

I'm surprised there wasn't a Samurai vs Knight episode as that's a dead horse topic on every HEMA forum I've gone to as well as sword and armour smithing forums.

I think it would be kind of cool to see Transformers "overload" pressure points and weak spots on other Transformers and cause them to have localized explosions similar to Fist of the North Star.

That would be cool, MYoung23. I'd like to see something like the overly dramatic stress-fracture damage leading up to an explosion that happens when fists collide between Priss and Largo during their climatic fight in Bubblegum Crisis. You can find this scene on Youtube but I must warn, there is a bit of fan service...nothing "bad" but it's fan service.

For something like Crystalocution, I'd like to see a more logical take on it. I mean on the shows, the martial artsy styles are taken as traditional human martial arts so they are learned. But for Transformers, technology could play more of a role. We could look at Crystalocution as even a "program", which allows a Transformer to analyze structural integrity and material composition to determine points of highest probability of "weakness".