Now that I have actually watched the videos, I am even less impressed. Leave it to the silly wannabe's in the funny black pajamas to botch what the decent guys are doing. I would attempt to direct Mr. Seago's attention to this video, or Mr. Roley's. They may recognize the base for the strokes, and have better insight into what's right and wrong with them (room for improvement?).
I know the water bottle training thing. If I did this poor of a job in demoing it, I certainly would not post it on the web as a how-to. Water, as a mass being acted on by gravity and encased in the plastic shell, OUGHT to...for demonstration purposes...act like a limb being cut through (despite the exoskeleton vs endoskeleton thing). A couple of things to look for in bottle or glass cutting demos that are the hallmarks of skill (the reasons you would want to use this as a demo):
1. Speed of the stroke, and control of the blade = halving the bottle cleanly, WITH THE REMAINING PORTION NOT LEAVING IT'S SITE!!! If you take your cut, and are slow or lack focus, you run the risk of knocking the thing clean off the base without cleaving it, or only partially cutting into it before it goes flying. A better cut may have it splitting, but both parts still go bye-bye. An expert cut will show the top half going bye-bye, while the bottom remains, with water still in it. Speed of the stroke, people...not rocket science. The rougher cuts you can do with a cleaver, and still knock it for a loop. With a katana...greater concentration of mass to a sharper blade with a higher relative velocity...there should be no problem for such a self-proclaimed expert.
2. Control of the blade X Focus at Contact. I care less about his efforts to shake water from the blade and reinsert it with a twixie twirl than I do about questions regarding...
Why do his bottles need to be held and tied down?
Why does his parchment need to be anchored?
All resolved with cleaner, faster, better controlled strokes.
Batto on bottles ain't new...old demo trick for cultural parade days, and such. Except the guys who compete in sportive batto are cleanly and clearly better than this.
Swordlady...stick with your sensei's guidance and recommendations...I suspect he is on a less pathological road than this gent.
Pardon me...I just really can't believe he would post those videos as a sign of superiority. It's the equivalent of a karate guy posting video of himself failing to break his boards, tiles, or ice, then bragging about it to people who are trying breaking for the first time.
Final thought: One of the best examples of this [speed X force X path X focus] principle open to the viewing public that I've seen (keeping in mind I have never surfed the web for such, so there may be better) is in the video, "Budo". Karate guy chops the tops off of beer bottles; the speed of the strike fractures the glass at the neck and knocks the bottle top off, leaving the bottom sitting on the post, full of beer. AND THAT'S WITH A HAND! (So, why couldn't this self-proclaimed whiz-kid do it with a blade? Against plastic?)
We used to use, of all things, FRUIT! Toss an apple in the air: The first stroke is upward...as if to split pubis to chin...then follow though, and back around with a horizontal cut to halve it again in a complementary plane...4 pieces. The newbies...apple flying everywhere (blade slightly turned, instead of clean in the plane of the stroke, and slow). The good guys...you'd swear they missed, because the apple stays together until it hits the ground to fall into 4 very-close-to-equal-sized pieces. And besides: Bags of apples are cheaper than straw mats or bottle of water.
Regards,
Dave
