My impression of the Kensei Odachi (not a full review)

All right, this is going to be an informal talk rather than an official review by my usual standards. I just want to show you this beast here and talk a little bit about it while being careful not to bump into anything due to the size. So this is a nodachi or odachi. I wasn't able to determine whether or not odachi and nodachi are just two different terms for the same thing or there's any kind of significant difference there. I just found some contradictory information so couldn't really determine that. It's made by Kensei. Apparently this has been discontinued a long time ago so these are not being made anymore. I got it from someone on Swordbuyer's Guide Forum, a guy in Finland, and I just when I saw this I just thought hey this would be really awesome to have in the collection because it's humongous. It's kind of ridiculous pretty much. I mean this is almost more of a polearm than a sword. It is very very long. I've put down a wooden buckler on the floor so I can put the point down. As you can see this goes up to my chin. I'm 1 meter 77 tall which is about 5 foot 9 or 10 I think which is pretty average at least by western standards so you can maybe get a rough idea of how large it is. Weight wise it's not too bad. It's a little under two and a half kilos. Balance is not too far from the guard. If I compare that to the other monster sword I have, the Lowlander, this is another size class up. Standing on the buckler this is a little taller than I am and it's also heavier than the Nodachi. It's 3.4 kilograms It doesn't actually feel a whole lot different in terms of weight. Balance on this one is not too different. Okay so back to the Nodachi. It is obviously significantly larger than a katana. It is also thicker and the blade is quite a bit wider. I'd say it's about one and a half times wider than an average katana. The guard is also larger. The handle I would say is also thicker and wider. A lot longer obviously. The cross section and edge grind is very similar to the katanas that I've handled so far. Although there is of course quite a bit of variety there as well. The edge isn't quite as sharp. I mean it's still decently sharp but compared to a lot of katanas on the market this is not quite there. It should be pretty easy to see that this is very strongly curved. I think a lot more so than katanas. They do come in different curvatures of course but this is... let me just point that this way you can probably see a little better just how extremely curved it is. I'm not going to say much about how well made it is because I don't feel particularly qualified to make such statements since I've never been very interested in Japanese swords so I don't know much about them and I've only handled a few so far. But one thing I can say is it's a shame that the fittings are completely loose. Let's see here. This moves a lot sideways. The guard is loose. I can also feel the tang moving inside the handle which is never a good sign so this particular one doesn't seem to be very well fitted. Other than that as far as the cutting performance is concerned I find it pretty challenging to use as large swords generally tend to be because when moving so much mass around it's a lot more difficult to get the edge alignment right. It's pretty easy to throw it off even just slightly so that it doesn't hit straight on with the edge perfectly aligned. As far as strength is concerned yeah it definitely helps to be strong enough to use it effectively but most important is that you get the technique right because even if you have very strong arms if you were to try to do this kind of clumsy swing with just the arms it's not going to be very effective. What you want to do is engage your core now get the hip movement in there and I have the microphone in the way unfortunately but you pull with the left hand or the off hand if you're lefty is of course the right instead of pushing with the right and then you just move your torso basically or your hips rather engage them to power the cut as opposed to just using the arms so it takes quite a bit of practice and I got a few decent cuts but overall definitely not easy and fun factor you would think that oh it's a humongous sword it's a it's a blast to use and well it's it's true to an extent but it's it's not the most lively sword in the hand like I personally prefer something that is a little more agile if you're a fan of big swords and this is of course awesome it's just just not entirely my cup of tea so to speak which is also why I'd like to sell this one if anybody is interested in it despite this flaw here if somebody with me wants to try to fix that from the scabbard by the way has been painted read by the previous user that owner I should well maybe he used it too but I should say owner and yeah so can't think of anything else to say about it right now so hope you found it interesting and thanks for watching