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10-10-05: Sephiroth's Masamune Sword Replica
It's pretty damn heavy.
Ant buys a lot of weird stuff. The appeal of some of these items occasionally eludes me: I understand all the Twins stuff, because I share his enthusiasm for the pop duo, but the logic behind his decision to buy a dangly-eyed stuffed owl, or a drinking glass featuring the Fonz, escapes me (not that I'm complaining; this site would probably be pretty boring without these quizzical reviews of Ant's many impulse purchases).
That said, figuring out the logic that led to this decision was no trouble at all. You'd have to be insane not to want this sucker.
Final Fantasy fans have no doubt long been aware of the existence of this replica of Sephiroth's giant katana from Final Fantasy VII; SwordsOnline has been selling them for a while now, along with a half-size version of Cloud's Buster Sword. Ant had never even seriously played Final Fantasy VII before (not long ago, in fact, he confused Vincent with Sephiroth), but the idea of owning a six-foot sword (the blade alone being around fifty-nine inches) intrigued him for a variety of reasons, so a few months ago he coughed up the dough.
Here are some pics (for reference, I placed an ordinary-sized sword next to the Masamune in the photo on the right; however, I should note that because of its size and shape, it was hard to take good straight-on pictures of the thing, so the angle is perhaps a bit wonky):
The sword is huge. Upon attempting to swing the damn thing around, I was reminded of what the FFVII instruction manual had to say about Sephiroth: "His giant sword, which only he can handle, has extreme destructive power." If the fictional Sephiroth could indeed comfortably handle this sword, I sure as hell wouldn't want to tangle with him; at around sixteen pounds, it's extremely difficult to maneuver, even for brawny red-blooded Nordic guys like Ant and me (I'm no slouch, and Ant lifts heavy steel bars around for a living). Simply lifting it is no problem if you hold on to the blade as well as the hilt (which isn't a problem, since SwordsOnline sells it, for safety reasons, with a dull edge) but handling it without keeping one hand on the blade to balance it out is very difficult. Holding it out with only one hand, meanwhile, is practically impossible; I couldn't do it, and I think I heard my wrist snap when I tried.
Actually using the sword as a weapon is, of course, outside the realm of the serious, but as far as gigantically-impractical-but-cool-to-look-at swords go, this one's a definite keeper.