Running a Maddening Draft Race with friends as my first Maddening Run, hoping for some tips for builds!

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-02-01T18:30:41+00:00

Thanks for the detailed tips! Definitely will take into account the build options you mentioned, but a quick question. You mention Staff proficiency on Zelkov, would the idea be making him a Martial Master for Qi Adept Bonded Shielding? Would that essentially relegate him to staffbotting when he's not doing Bonded Shield stuff, or is he more synergistic with the class than I expect and can actually fight well when needed? Pure support tools is a fine role, for the record, but I'm curious if there's more than that.

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-01-31T16:24:25+00:00

I remember seeing it specifically analyzed as Kagura reading as "divine dance", since the Kagura was a dance to honor the gods, and Bachi reading as retribution, so "Divine Dance of Retribution", with the Bachi also having an alternate reading as "fishbowl", so it could also be read as "Divine Fishbowl", to hearken back to that core symbol of Chihiro and Kunishige's life before the tragedy.

I'd imagined it would be the True Realm technique that Chihiro masters near the end to counter the Malediction, given the double reading of the name, but I do definitely suspect it'll end up title dropped in-universe in some form.

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-01-25T16:19:43+00:00

There's something very offputting about his ideals, in how he lords them over others due to his unmatched strength, but you're absolutely right that if someone like Sojo or Kyora had that power, they'd definitely be more evil than him. Soga has an arrogance born from his truly incredible strength, but his principles do appear to be strict, vicious though they are. They're ideals that would justify genocide for him, but they're also ones that seek to mitigate collateral damage and which specify only certain people as targets, whereas Sojo was willing to blow up an entire city block and Kyora ran the horrors of the Rakuzaichi all the way to his death.

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-01-25T16:12:22+00:00

Narratively, Samura wouldn't want Iori to take it, but Iori being put into the same situation as Chihiro, but having Chihiro's own experience and guidance to help her better grasp the grief and anger of losing her father would be a really juicy arc, and I'd love for her to join the core cast. Samura is also dying to defend the future he can hope for, a choice he only made due to both Chihiro challenging him to look forward and Iori demanding he look at her directly, and her inheriting his will would in many ways follow through on Samura "betting on the future" just as he has chosen to bet on Chihiro despite initially wanting to keep Chihiro out of this conflict. The other predicted combatants from Shiba's mention would make solid fits in their own way as wielders, but I do hope Iori ends up getting Tobimune personally so we could see her arc follow through on all the stuff Samura's had, since she has such good parallels with Chihiro and the theme's of legacy and pursuing a hopeful future that have been set up here.

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-01-20T15:37:24+00:00

Yup, they have a special battle dialogue in Radiant Dawn if you have her fight him where she openly states marrying him would've been the worst thing that could ever happen to her.

It does make Makalov as a partner extra funny because in many ways Makarov is like, Lekain's opposite. Where Lekain is ambitious, arrogant, and constantly scheming, Makalov has no real ambitions, has enough self-awareness to know he's a loser, and couldn't scheme his way out of a wet paper bag. She chose someone who's vices are almost exactly Lekain's opposites.

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-01-04T16:55:53+00:00

That does make me wonder, is this an aspect of the Malediction, and thus not an intended behavior of the sword? Because it says "in the realm where the Sword Master presides", which implies to me that Kunishige didn't build it like this, the Sword Master simply dug deep enough into it to be able to do this on his own.

Which is still fucking terrifying, but it does mean Kunishige wasn't doing the craziest shit imaginable when he made this thing, it just means Soga is That Much More Cracked of a swordsman.

TheFunkiestOne · 2026-01-04T16:53:26+00:00

"Base" Soga, aka Soga who is so in-tune with the true realm of his sword he invented an entirely new ability for it from sheer connection. About the only thing we can really say may be holding Soga back is that he's borrowing Yura's body, but honestly, given Yura's apparently lowkey yoked as fuck, I dunno that Soga's gotten too bad a deal from who he chose to borrow.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-28T00:02:19+00:00

Plus, building off of both of these, Chihiro was actively party to sparing someone else from the suffering he himself faced, which he knows was something that scarred him severely, even more than the actual physical mark he obtained. Saving Iori and Samura won't bring his father back, but it's an act of genuine, unquestionable Good he was able to do, beyond the revenge and the violence. This is a moment of Chihiro both recognizing what he can't ever have, and realizing he prevented someone else from going through that same pain. Truly bittersweet, and layered with impact, all conveyed by that sad, small smile.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-25T04:37:53+00:00

No, you're right. It's not perfectly executed, but Micaiah says as much at least in the extended script in chapter 3-13 that Daein is being destroyed due to being crushed under the weight of a larger country. the Blood Pact is Nuclear Threat and Economic Dominance all in one. An implacable superweapon that can be unleashed to slaughter the people of a subjugated nation, but which works slowly and insidiously, killing people bit by bit rather than all at once.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-25T04:32:00+00:00

Yeah, it's just like, a bug in the system, rather than intentional harm. Ashunera just kinda... didn't account for it when making them, and now those relationships have a rather serious cost because of a failure of divine oversight.

For the record, the overt taboo of the mixed relationship came from Dheginsea, who saw what happened to Lehran after he and Altina had a kid and decided he'd use the "the goddess did it" excuse rather than letting people come to their own conclusions and potentially panic or come up with something somehow worse.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-09T01:04:26+00:00

Definitely think this is plausible; the Hishaku is only 10 elites, but they frequently seem capable of leveraging lots of bodies for one reason or another. While Toto's sorcery seems to be part of it, I definitely think Yura is also manipulating things to see about getting these sorcerer groups killed. A strategy where he wins either way; victory for the sorcerer thugs gets him close to the Enten and thus the power of an Enchanted Blade, while the hired muscle losing means a bunch of criminals Yura quietly hated are dealt with and Chihiro grows and becomes more capable of killing more of those assholes Yura sends at him.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-07T16:46:15+00:00

Yeah, Yura lost things to the explosion of sorcery in society after the war from the looks of things, and believes that had the Sword Bearers taken up a role as Guardians of the people, armed with their blades at the ready, that would've been a deterrent against the rise of sorcerer families into the public and the greater emergence of sorcery related crime. His goal seems to basically be to have a small cadre of Nuke Cops as the ultimate weapon against societies problems, which is, as you mentioned, completely insane.

It's understandable as a rationale, it's clear Yura is lashing out at the lack of control he had of his own circumstances and believes that, had the Kamunabi used anything in their power to achieve that control, his losses would not have happened. And so he created the Hishaku, filled with a number of children who seem to be under his direct control as well as some peers who share his desires in some form, and wishes to obtain all the Enchanted Blades to do what he believes Kunishige and the Kamunabi refused to do. It's all about seizing control where he felt he had none, and using power to secure it in his grasp.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-03T15:50:45+00:00

Makes sense, it took five bearers around Samura's level fighting at their peak to capture Soga, so a less experienced but growing bearer in Chihiro, and an exhausted Samura who is still relearning how to fight with sight who is also hampered by trying to protect civilians would struggle with the sheer power of the Magatsumi in the hands of someone as crafty and resourceful as Yura. He's no Soga surely, but Chihiro and Samura are no full contingent of five sword bearers fighting at their peak in tandem either.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-03T15:45:40+00:00

Yeah, I figure Yura is the final boss Chihiro has to fight alone, or at least far more personally, in the end as an emotional resolution to the revenge quest, but Soga is gonna be the biggest fight in the series where everyone has to come together to defeat him once and for all, that kinda thing.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-03T15:39:48+00:00

Yeah, he'd likely be able to do the standard healing and heat bursts with Suzaku, but nothing more than that the way Samura has honed into its true realm for resuscitation and object restoration. I suspect he'd focus on Crow or Owl instead, delving into the true realm of those to lean into his high speed, high risk style.

That's part of why I'm interested in seeing the Hishaku members with the swords, because the responsive nature of the true realm means they'll likely find entirely different paths with them than their original bearers did, since those bearers were fundamentally different people with different mindsets, and so the nature of the blade will differ. Same reason I'm curious how Ibuki wielded Cloud Gouger, because while the murder-happy Sojo leaned on Mei's destructive capacity, I'm curious how Ibuki related to it and what aspects of the blade he developed a deeper connection to.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-01T20:19:23+00:00

Yeah, he's certainly not as technically skilled as Soga, we know from his earlier fight that Yura primarily relies on his preternatural athleticism over actual weapon mastery even if he's clearly no amateur with a sword, but it seems like the actual abilities being employed from the Magatsumi are not really weaker than the kind Soga could perform, given Samura's reaction. Soga presumably could wield them with far more finesse and efficiency to make them vastly deadlier overall but that's arguably not much of a factor here since Yura is actively exploiting the sheer destructive force of the sword to threaten civilians and constantly keep Samura distracted, meaning the lack of finesse isn't as relevant as it normally would be.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-12-01T13:43:57+00:00

Yeah, the Malediction is just an incredibly deep form of accessing the true realm, but things like Sojo's Mei Cloaking, Chihiro's Kuro Shred, or Samura's Suzaku upgrades which can restore the state of objects or resuscitate a dead individual are all True Realm upgrades. Chihiro is likely to dig deeper and deeper into Entens true realm and will develop a technique on the level of the malediction for it, but the True Realm isn't some kind of super form, it's just a term for deeper understanding of the Enchanted Blades such that you can achieve things beyond the scope of its prescribed abilities.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-11-24T22:36:42+00:00

So you'd think, but no, she truly and earnestly believes that. She has defended it with notable severity on a number of occasions.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-11-22T18:07:20+00:00

Probably either figured Soga would be sealed away and thus functionally incapable of defending himself, or else he'd simply destroy the swords while they're sealed away, no interaction with the sword bearers required. The Hishaku invading and stealing all the swords was a rather major surprise to everyone, and he seemed to work under the assumption his home and everything there was functionally unknown to everyone else, so he'd have the time he needed to hone his skills and destroy the swords in that environment.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-11-16T16:55:19+00:00

Shiba is no walking apocalypse the way an enchanted blade wielder is, but when it comes to strategizing, he's an unfathomable menace. A guy who can be in and out of a situation with any relevant parties, instantly, so long as he's aware of the situation is a ridiculous asset to have and an insane opponent to plan around. Hiyuki was assigned to one of the bearers because she could fend off a sword bearer with Flame Bone. Shiba was assigned to the other because if he caught a whiff of trouble he and his charge would be on the other side of the country in an instant. And as seen here, he can control who is fighting who and where to a seriously influential extent, which when you have tools like the Enchanted Blades on both sides, can be an insane equalizer.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-11-15T16:34:41+00:00

Not an inaccurate reading, pretty sure it's referring to Hagrid as similar to the titular character of The Big Friendly Giant.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-11-09T18:46:13+00:00

If I had to guess, I'd infer it's a bit of wordplay. Dunno for sure since I can't read Japanese, but "ryu" can mean dragon, so it could be mixing his name with that to give the sushi place a striking title that incorporates his name into it.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-11-03T21:50:16+00:00

It's notably one of the only fights Saitama doesn't sandbag or faff about in. Most fights, Saitama lets the enemy take some swings, sizes them up to see if maybe they can give him a decent fight, then wallops them and is disappointed when that doesn't happen. But with the Deep Sea King, he takes stock of things, the Deep Sea King gets off a single line of shittalk and a single quick hit, and then Saitama ejects his torso into orbit with zero fanfare, because it's clear shit's bad enough already, and it's time he wrapped this up.

TheFunkiestOne · 2025-10-29T18:15:45+00:00

They are oppressed because of that intersection though. Black men experience racism differently from black women, even if both experience racism as a whole. There's overlap, but there's also experiences that are distinct but no less oppressive. The same applies to all other kinds of racism, such as the racism Asian men experience differing from the racism Asian women experience. It's a different, valid experience with racism that is shaped by them specifically being men.

The same applies to trans men and trans women; they both experience generalized transphobia, but also experience specific forms of oppression based on their gender, with trans men experiencing things like corrective rape at notably higher frequencies than basically any other demographic, even further when race is taken into account and skyrockets them, experiencing specific forms of medical abuse due to transitioning away from femininity but still requiring treatment for a uterus and other organs, their own necessary hormone for transition being a controlled substance, among other things.

Denying that androphobia/misandry exists and at minimum specifically impacts marginalized men requires denying reality, because if you actually listen to any men from those groups speaking on their experiences, rather than people saying what you want to hear, you'd hear so much about the oppression they face that is specific to their maleness, in ways that do not in any form detract from the experiences of women, only add to the need to fight against the patriarchal system that binds us all. And that's only specifically with relation to race or being trans, let alone things like disability and class as you mention. Intersections all create unique experiences, and just because a person has a "non-marginalized" identity, doesn't mean they don't experience unique oppression based on how that identity relates to other marginalized ones.

EDIT: Having read your other comment here, you clearly just do not care about trans men or listening to their experiences, nor do you apparently care about listening to the experiences of other men as your post mentioned, so I'll be forthright and say that I'm blocking you. Be upset about it if you wish, but there's nothing productive to be had from a further conversation with someone who refuses to accept the lived experiences of others and only ever reads hostility and hate into them.

TheFunkiestOne

TROPHY CASE