Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Kachü Tenshin Amaguriken

  • The Amaguriken isn't really a special technique it's just a flurry of really high speed punches. Cologne even showed surprise when Ranma used his newly obtained speed to throw a myriad amount of punches in such away as to overcome Ryoga's resistance to blunt force.
  • Throwing a large amount of high speed punches/kicks in not limited to Ranma. Ryoga, for example, has done the many punches moving in just blurs thing as well. E.g. He does it to female Ranma during the Koi Rod of Love storyline, Ranma deflects all the punches and then Ranma's entire body becomes a blur surprising Ryoga and she kicks him in the head. Ranma occasionally does a flurry of high speeds kicks as well.
  • Ranma does not have to yell Amaguriken (chest-nuts-roasting-over-an-open-fire). He doesn't yell it in the manga. Even his first time doing it while hitting Ryoga he did not yell it. Yelling it doesn't make sense since it takes longer to say than it does to execute.
  • I'm not going to try and calculate the speed of it but it is much faster than humanly possible (others have tried to calculate it and it just leads to lots of arguments). I will say this though, Before speed training with Cologne Ranma was capable of throwing dozens of punches per second. This was demonstrated by his battle with Mikado in which he threw 518 punches in a matter of seconds (we know the exact number because Akane counted them). After the speed training Ranma was moving so fast that Akane could only see a blur which she thought of as one punch this implies a much greater speed (because if the speed was only say 3 times as fast Akane should have been able to still tell that they were many individual punches and not one punch though she would have no longer been able to count them). Ryoga and Cologne also agree with Akane. Ryoga commenting that did you think that a few hundred punches would even hurt me and Cologne commenting that the speed training now pays off for him now. During later story arcs Ranma gets more speed training and becomes even faster (Martial art dining). Ranma's battles occur at super human speed. Even the audience (i.e. us and anyone watching) can't tell. In the manga we/anyone watching only see after images or the final position of the arm or leg. (Examples kick done to Kuno, time Ranma did all those hits to the skater that kissed him, Ranma feeding people during the martial arts dining story arc, etc.)
  • We have Ranma uses his flurry of punches in two ways. (This came from some posts on fukufics before its crash between Obsidian Fox and Pale Wolf trying to figure out the benefits of and how the Amaguriken works, though I have added some on my own.)
Against Ryoga in which Ranma threw as a bunch of shallow punches which are good for damaging muscle, breaking bones near the skin, chaining attacks, and keeps the opponent in place followed by a deep punch (which are good for damaging internal organs). The reason Ranma did not use his full strength punches/kicks and decided to use his speed in this manner is because his much more damaging deep punches sent his opponent flying giving him time to recover, are easier to dodge/block, and he would have to go hunt his opponent down since he just sent him flying. Even though the punches were shallow that does not mean weak, though they do disperse less energy into the target at one time, Ranma's shallow punches would still be strong enough to punch a hole through a regular person's chest. Ranma is not pulling his arm back all the way for each hit, doing so would serve no purpose and would be a waste of time and energy. For those of you who are having trouble understanding how this works do this: Take your finger and poke your other hand hard - that's a deep punch. Now do like Ranma and poke your hand 200-300 times but use less power (2/3) your hand will become sore from all the poking. Ranma could have trapped the opponent(Ryoga) with a wall or a tree and used his deep hits but because of the strength of the hits the wall or tree would just have been destroyed and the opponent (Ryoga) would still have gone flying (Ranma hit Ryoga into a wall, wall collapsed and both can punch through trees with ease) and unless the opponent is really dumb he will try to keep from being cornered. Though if your skilled enough to, you could continuously hit him into walls and trees until you run out of them of course they would also have to be unable to flip in mid air and then bounce off the tree. Grappling the opponent and then punching him a lot or using the Amaguriken in this way is good for opponents who are tough enough to take your deep punches and you don't want to cause serious possibly permanent injury (If you didn't care about how much you damage the opponent you could target weaker spots such as the eye balls, punching their ears to cause pain, kicking them in the balls repeatedly, using a weapon like a sword, kicks to the spinal column, hitting them in vital spots, etc.). Though grappling could also back fire if the person your grappling with is skilled or strong enough to prevent you from getting good hits or keep you from effectively using your speed or strength.
The other way to use it is to fill the air with punches (this is the way Ranma most commonly does it in the manga). Using it this way is good because it is very hard to dodge and incredibly hard to block. Best solution to counter this would be to be fast enough to knock every punch away, get out of range which is hard, catch the fist which is even harder (and would probably just make Ranma start hitting you with his other fist), or go on the offensive (would recommend trying to kick him in the legs) and take hits.
  • Easy way to power Ranma up without added training, conditioning, or magic. Have Ranma do the Amaguriken holding a knife/sword (slicing his opponent to pieces), wearing some type of brass knuckles or holding an object (increases strength of hits). That would easily multiply the damage done. Another way would be if two opponents were close enough to one another have Ranma bounce his fist between them this would cause a lot less energy to be wasted and allow Ranma to hit harder and even faster (rebounding off one to hit the other).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

that is way too long a disscussion for a single tecnique. Oddly enough there is a kung fu form that is extreme close quarters that uses several hundered rapid weak punches to break ribs, of course their motion is slowed because they have to maintain the right hand posture or they will break their own hand. the principle is battering ram theory, no matter how soft the hit, if you hit a door enough times it will break.
and ranma can not use a weapon, throughout the series he seems to closly follow the "only a fool trusts his life to a weapon"
a knife would actually slow him down, reaction wise. if you think about it because you have no nerves in a weapon, your brain must compensate by predicting the weapons location bassed on other nerves and the weapons size. this is why a two sword tecnique is not surperior to the one sword, because in one you have more attacks and blocks with slower action, and vise-versa.
and the rebound idea is wierd. they would have to be swing punches (where you swing the arm instead of launching forward) so it would be unnatural, but could work under ranma marshal arts logic but these are avoided because it will easily break your own knuckles. ironical this type of punch is why gloved boxing is more dangorous, even a simple cloth glove can provide enough support to crush a skull from the temple. but people automaticaly assume that something is safer if their is less blood and something to absorb inpact, when actually it makes it so that the puncher feels less and therefore the muscles in the arm do not resist the impact.
that was way to long a comment, but you made this in parts so i had to make parts for this.
in summary creative ideas.

antimatterenergy said...

While Ranma doesn't rely on weapons he does use them in the manga often. He used the in martial arts gymnastics, martial arts tea ceremony, Martial arts cheerleading, used a wood sword fighting Cologne, used a magical staff in battle versus Saffron, used magic weapons against Mousse, used magical weapons in battle versus pink and link, etc..

A knife would slow Ranma's reaction time down some but it would be more dangerous since he would be slicing and piercing instead of using blunt force.

The weapon type I was thinking of is more along the type of padded brass knuckles which would apply more force and offer some protection to Ranma's hand.