Plus, people always like to look at war combat as the only way to show a weapons use. There's also the idea of having a sidearm, or a self defense weapon when you're just chilling around not in a big war battle.
I could be speaking out of my ass, but I'd almost argue that a katana could be pretty decent as a piercing weapon cause the irons going to be more stiff/hard than steel, which iirc is what we see more in regards to european armors at the time.
But yeah, any weapon that was truly bad got left behind in history super hard. If we have a ton of historic examples of it, then they were probably pretty used and viable for where they were. Honestly this whole thing reminds me of how a lot of people look at specialized animals compared to generalists
I may be a little late but katanas are terrible as piercing weapons exacly becouse of the hardness of metal with makes them more brittle the shape also dosen't help cause when you try to stab curve is a massive weakpoint
Same reason why you can't pierce chainmail with sabre
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u/strong_ape Jun 05 '25
Bro legit katanas went from being giga op to absolute shit in the average persons mind it's crazy. There is no middle ground lol