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I'd recently gotten my grubby lil hands on vol 1 of the Rurouni Kenshin graphic novel by Shonen Jump and Viz. I have to say that this is one excellent series. The mix of romantic comedy and swordwielding action make for one excellent read. I really loved the creator's blending of Japanese history with his own fiction as well as the fact that Kenshin was based off an actual person from their history. This combined with seeing The Last Samurai made December a great month in '03 for me. Bad thing is it makes me yearn to further add to my collection of samurai swords. I am, however, interested about the plausibility of Kenshin's weapon. The sakabatou, or reverse-edged sword, seems like it'd be possible to create and wield efficiently. Just from look alone, it would appear that it would weigh more than your typical samurai sword. I tried swinging my sword reversed, with the sharp edge towards me, and I could already feel the difference. Anyone's opinion on the matter?

Last night I was messing around with my Isamu YF-29 and thinking about some of the criticisms it's received for being very "Super Robot" like in many respects. It obviously has a lot of pointy bits hanging off of it and it's bristling with weapons. It got me thinking about the different weapon load-outs on all of the Valks and I realized that it took iterations from the 19, 21/22, 24/25/27 to eventually reach weapon load out parity with the VF-17. Something I found funny considering the 17 is about the opposite of the 29 in look (though no less pointy.) But look at it. The 17 has medium cannons in the forearms, the 29 has the high bore cannons on it's back. The 17 has the smaller cannons mounted towards the cockpit/chest. The 29 has smaller cannons in the wing roots which become the greeble bits on the hips in Gerwalk/Battroid. The 17 and 29 both have their main gun pods. They both also have rear facing light lasers as well. In addition the 17 has internal mini-missiles launchers in the shoulders. The 29 has the same. The 17 has internal room for heavier missiles as well, the 29 instead has more mini-missiles mounted to the legs. And that's before either of them have their Fast Packs mounted, which gives them both a lot more missiles. That's some pretty effective craft when you consider how little some of the other fighters carry. The VF-1 and 11 both only have their small bore lasers, gun pod and wing mounted missiles on their own. They seem positively defenseless. I thought it was interesting one extremely showy Valk and one very utilitarian looking Valk both wind up having very similar loud outs.

I'm looking for pics of the GU-11 gun-pod for the VF-1X/P. Google was infriendly. Greg