Has anyone ever heard of swordsmen that are blind? If so were they any good?

 

Zatôichi was the recent remake. Beat Takeshi is a bit of a bad-ass. Movie was decent but not terribly spectacular.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363226/

As for historical precedent, I've no idea.

 

I watched Zatôichi... not the best movie in the world, but minimalistic fight scenes are always cool.

 

May I ask why you want to know about blind swordsmen?

 

Im outlining a fic idea, and i am making Harry's wand a sword (Im a firm believer in the wand chooses the wizard type deal so no custom wands generally, but in this case i think i actually have a very rare and well working argument for why it should work making it custom, though im gunna keep the idea to myself until i actually get it on ff.net first).

In my fic (starts Pre-hogwarts) Harry is going to go blind. No magical bullshit to bring his sight back, hes dead blind. I was thinking of disguising Harrys little blind man walking stick as a sword, that will be his wand (a developement later in the story). That way if no one knew it was a wand, he could take it anywhere like the Ministry of Magic.

In this fic im thinking alot about making him adept at hand to hand combat (i read and know alot of blind people can absolutley kick ass at this). But i was thinking if i do that would it be plausable to add in that he can sword fight? If so i would do the whole walking stick sword/wand thing. If not ill probly just stick to normal style wand.

 

Look at daredevil. You can get some good theories as to WHY he would be good at hand to hand, especially if you include some sort of mage sight thing. I'm not big on blind!harry stories though.

 

There's a guy in Rurouni Kenshin... can't remember his name though, saw it years ago. He compesnates with really good hearing, which is what I think most blind swordsmen do.
With magic though, I suppose that opens up new avenues...

 

you shoud make harry's other sences go nuts. hell have him take a ritual where he sacrafices a crazy ass animal like a jaguar and get all his powers from it. like a super hearing senses, smelling, spider sense but in his own way of course etc, etc.

ofcourse he can activate it instead of having it all the time.

 

yeah i could go daredevil style, but i really donT wanna have harry turn into seeing like a bat or something.

Im just kinda stuck now. Belive it or not you were right harry does get a sort of mage sight deal to compensate (so he can see stuff as long as its magical sort of) but he gets it in a much better and believable way than cool contacts, an ancestrial power awakening, or talking to dobby
Thing is i was trying to make this blindness a real part of his weakness so if hes suddenly able to sense or hear other people swinging a sword at him and knows where everyone is anyways it's gunna take away from beeing blind as he already has the magical sight shit, but im puting some fairly heavey restrictions on that.

Then again just becuase he can hear Lucious slashing a sword at him doesnt mean he sees the pot hole his foot will slide into if he counters lucious' move. I guess i can still use it.
The Balance between Independant and Super Harry can sometimes be hard to control

 

You could use an idea which I originally had for Naruto, but it would work well with magic too.
Harry is able to fill up the space around him with magic which allows him to "sense" his surroundings. This of course is straining as hell and he can´t keep it up for long.

 

yeah i was thinking of having something like this for extreem situations

 

Ei tinder, you meant Yusui right? That dude was cool.

Just remember to balance Harry's powers, his power of (?)magical sight and you're good to go. Just don't overdo it with making his senses a thousand times better just because he can't see. Balance is the key.

 

I would like to suggest that you may want to try a sort of near sense (like astropaths in Warhammer 40K) which lets him sense outlines around him. He doesn't see them, he jsut knows roughly where they are. Also in 40K, more powerful Astropaths can sense what sort of thing the outline is (ie, the outline is humanoid, but it could be human or alien)

 

Also hone his instincts which will help him extreamly instead of always relaying on the sence or whetever you call it. the instincts will be come the second nature to him kinda like the dare devil.

 

I don't normally recommend Hung Nguyen these days as IMHO his writing hasn't held up too well over the years, and he writes mostly in the anime fanfiction world. However he has a story set in the Ranma 1/2 world that features a blind Ranma that uses his chi to create a sixth and seventh sense which allows him to function almost completely without impairment. The first few chapters a re good and then he gets hung up on character bashing and the quality of the fic goes straight to hell. I'd recommend reading chapters one and two though to get an idea of one way to do this type of thing, even though IMHO Hung Nguyen went a bit over-board in the powers department...

http://ladycosmos.anifics.com/stories/fight01.txt
http://ladycosmos.anifics.com/stories/fight02.txt

--bornagainpenguin (who mourns the potential these stories could have...if Nguyen could only get over his hangups...)

 

thanks for the help and ideas guys.

I can assure you though hes not going to get any super boost to his current senses (like vampire smell and hearing.) It is my understanding that when one goes blind their senses dont get enhanced, they simply adapt and get much much better at using and focusing on them.


One thing that might be cool is to give him the ability to kinda project his magic out 3 or 4 feet around him, and he can sense where any movement is within this field? I think something like that would be in reason as long as i gave him time to develope it. Though its a pre-hogwarts story im summarizing each couple years into a chapter all the way to 6th, so i can take skills that take a long time to develope and put them to use relatively soon 5 or 6 chapters in.

 

I just had a random idea

what if he could use like magic to feel outwardly, like imagine one of those electrical balls that go towards you when u touch the glass, on him through magic, so whenever an object/person comes towards him, he knows where it is and how far/close it is to him

 

I read this a couple of years ago it has what your talkin about if i remember correctly he is blind (abuse from dursleys) and has sword in his stick check it out: http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/katling/HPATGOTN.html


P.s. has "decent" harry/ginny if i remember correctly but this was in 2004