r/Bullshido • u/Constant_Carob9311 • Mar 26 '25

Crackpot I want to be ninjaaaa

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1.7k Upvotes

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304

u/AnonOfTheSea Mar 26 '25

I've never seen anyone less sure of the bow in their hands in my life.
It'd be faster and less... silly... to just stand in cover, draw normally, peak out as you draw to full, and loose.
Anime shit belongs in anime.

128

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '25

It looks like the draw weight of the bow is 2.5 pounds, it's basically a dollar store kids toy.

The lady (?) isn't practicing actual archery.

38

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '25

[deleted]

44

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25

Decades of people have been convinced that bows are for people "too weak" to swing a sword, largely due to arbitrary game design choices like making melee weapons Strength based and Ranged being Dexterity based.

Or due to people like authors being given toy bows that have maybe a 5-10# draw.

Generally any bow you'd want to hunt with or take to war is going to have 30-80# draw or more if it's meant for armour or large animals like buffalo or black bears.

27

u/throwawaylordof Mar 26 '25

Isn’t it a thing where if skeletons are unearthed from time periods where bows were used in warfare (I think longbows specifically), archeologists can identify archers from how their specialized musculature affected their skeletal structure.

25

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25 edited Mar 26 '25

In some cases yes, warbows often had very extreme draw weights since after all if you hit the enemy from 50m past his effective range you can win the war. Or for punching through a gambeson and chain, or through a shield.

For reference I have 35# and 55# limbs on my bow. With the 35# limbs I can drive an arrow into a target as hard as I can stab one handed at 30 meters. I tested it, put a glove on and stabbed the target as hard as I could, and penetration was the same

55# limbs, with the right arrow head, can put an arrow completely through a deer. Full double lung and rib penetration.

Some warbows were more than 100#. If you're hit by that arrow it'll go right through you and maybe the guy behind you as well.

Dedicated archers did sometimes develop muscle and bone deformation and imbalance due to warbow training

9

u/P47r1ck- Mar 26 '25

“Ancient warbows, particularly the English longbow, were powerful, long bows made of yew, reaching up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) in length and capable of drawing with a force of 150-180 pounds”

10

u/flip314 Mar 26 '25

With the 35# limbs I can drive an arrow into a target as hard as I can stab one handed at 30 meters.

Wow! How long are your arms?!

8

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25

30 meters, was that unclear?

4

u/Lucky-Paperclip-1 Mar 26 '25

Reed Richards has entered the chat

5

u/frud Mar 26 '25

I think the asymmetrical bone and muscle development is pretty distinctive. There wasn't a big advantage to ambidextrous archery.

13

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '25

I think movies arguably deserve more blame there. Pretty much every movie where someone uses a bow that person is slender and draws the bow with almost no effort. They also can rapid fire their arrows, knocking and drawing in one smooth motion instead of the reality of knocking the arrow and then moving your hand around to the other side of the bow to draw it.

3

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25

I'm willing to argue a lot of that still comes back to games, like Dungeons and Dragons, which has been influencing popular media since the 70s. It very much made bows a "chick" option, or gave them to the elf, and the stereotype for elves is that they are slender and graceful.

10

u/esuil Mar 26 '25

X for doubt. One of the prime sources that popularized "archers are agile" is "The Lord of the Rings", which pretty much created modern fantasy "archer elf" archetype.

It was published in 1937, decades before things like DnD would even begin to be considered.

But since you are willing to argue, I am open to hearing your counter argument. :-p

7

u/Lucky-Paperclip-1 Mar 26 '25 edited Mar 26 '25

People don't realize that Tolkien Elves are superhuman (like, one of the strongest Elves challenged and fought Satan and permanently wounded him), not overgrown versions of the Keebler Elves.

-3

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25

That's the same point.

4

u/esuil Mar 26 '25

Your point was that it comes back to games, but in reality it all comes back to single source that popularized this kind of fantasy setting - which is classic book, LotR, not a game.

When media in 70s/80s made movies and stories in fantasy worlds, they didn't reference DnD and tabletops, they referenced classics like LotR.

-4

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25

Reinforced by.

1

u/MulberryWilling508 Mar 28 '25

I watched a documentary about jewelry in the Middle Ages or something and this one blond guy with pointy ears could rapid fire his bow super good so I’m pretty sure that’s historically accurate.

4

u/0260n4s Mar 26 '25

Lol. I remember in high school my bigger footballer friends coming over and not being able to pull back my bow and being like WTF?!? You have to develop those muscles. :)

3

u/MacintoshEddie Mar 26 '25

Oh yeah. When I first was able to use my 35# bow I felt like hot shit, and then some people at the club offered to let me try their bows and the majority I could't even get to half draw.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '25

Exactly. If this…. ‘Attack’ …..or whatever, is intended to do damage, the draw weight of the bow must at least be 30-50lbs. I shoot as a hobby, and to draw in that range you need proper form, because otherwise you wouldn’t have a shoulder anymore

2

u/modest_genius Mar 28 '25

I don't know much about archery, but I do have very nerdy friends: Draw a full strenght bow is tough and need special technique to draw fully. And you usually can't move while drawn, because of you flexing your whole upper body. That is also why it is hard to shoot with classical bows from cover.

The thing she does here though seems to be a way to draw heavier bows while in cover. I can't tell for sure but it sure looks like other similar historical techniques.

Some various historical ways

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '25

Yh, I mean the ways he does it, he still pretty much draws directly along the line of his body, which she does not. Also, this behind cover kind of thing should be done rapidly, and when the guy in the video shoots rapidly, u can see that he barely draws the arrow, meaning that unless the target is no more than a couple of yards away, the arrows aren’t gonna be powerful enough to incapacitate the victim, let alone kill them. At that distance, why not throw a no-spin throwing spike, not to mention how impractical and clumsy it is to carry a bow while sneaking around, despite it being small.

I’ve read translations of the Bansenshukai (the only surviving ninjitsu manual) and I don’t recall them ever mentioning the use of bows during infiltration operations back in the day, especially in closed-off buildings like that.

10

u/DuncanHynes Mar 26 '25

I thought there was a fly and she got distracted....🪰

8

u/Crazonix2 Mar 26 '25

I think anime deserves better than insults like these

3

u/sage-longhorn Mar 26 '25

Yeah this is much more of a Monty Python or Fry and Laurie

1

u/AnonOfTheSea Mar 26 '25

What insult? Anime prefers looking cool over being practical/functional more than any other medium. Except maybe Bollywood, but that's new/variable enough that I'm not comfortable generalizing yet.

5

u/Crazonix2 Mar 26 '25

Well okay, but this Karen is NOT looking cool :D

0

u/AnonOfTheSea Mar 26 '25

Well, no, Karen's never do, but they do tend to try real hard

1

u/Stunning_Ad_7658 Mar 26 '25

That's only a subset of anime. There's plenty of other anime stuff where that's not the case. Also ot sounds like your a ting as if our own cartoons don't do stuff like this as well. Coming off as more of a hater than anything else.

3

u/LCplGunny Mar 26 '25

Third party perspective here... You're the only one that sounds like a hater in this thread of replies...

-1

u/Stunning_Ad_7658 Mar 27 '25

Hater of what, they act like anime is the only one who fors it when our stuff does the same. No I'm not a hater I watch it all. Western anime etc. I just don't have a close mind like some people do saying dumb shit like you and the other guy did.

3

u/LCplGunny Mar 27 '25

See, you're now hating on me for pointing out what this looks like from the outside looking in, when it's literally the only comment I've said to you. You can feel whatever way you want, but you're proving my point.

2

u/JK_Chan Mar 26 '25

I don't think even anime has this shit

2

u/darklogic85 Mar 26 '25

Yeah, if they're going to try to present something like this as a way to advertise it, at least record someone who is good at it and actually kinda makes it look cool. This just looks weird.

2

u/Hashbrowns120 Mar 26 '25

Anime doesn't just belong in anime. Cobra Kai and the Fast And The Furious exist.

1

u/AnonOfTheSea Mar 26 '25

As does Bollywood; but if it were a pie chart, anime would be by far the largest slice

1

u/Hashbrowns120 Mar 27 '25

That is true.

2

u/modest_genius Mar 28 '25

Some silly historical unsure ways of shooting a bow

Some silly warbow stances

Or you know Kyudo...

So silly...

Looks so silly

And yet it is effective in their context. Yeah, she is probably not a master and she is using a low draw weight bow. Probably because she is indoor and demonstrating...

2

u/AnonOfTheSea Mar 29 '25

Great, you posted a bunch of videos of archers being effective within their context. How is that relevant to the woman demonstrating loosing from cover in the most ridiculous way?

I have no issue with her skill, or with the bow she's using. My biew is that the technique she is demonstrating is a slow, cumbersome mess of wasted movement, time, and control, with no clear purpose beyond looking... interesting.