@@SpectralSound. Li Shuwen was noted to have engaged in a ton of fights, and killed quite a few of his opponents too, to the point where he allegedly died due to being poisoned by vengeful family members of one of his opponents.
@@SpectralSound. If you know Li Shuwen history you would think otherwise. His martial art career start since he was young with the title "God Spear Li" then he have an accident making him unable to use spear again. After treatment he learn and spar with many form of Bajiquan and others martial arts and killed quite a lot of his opponent, that's why he had so much enemies and poisoned leading to his death. His quote of "Never strike the same opponent twice" is quite a boast but he have the skill to backup his boasting.
@@minuano2ndtrueancestor865 i said maybe he was a good martial artist,but those "achievements" are so full of shit.the same problem as in bruce lee case.they said even if he lived now,nobody could beat him....damn people are such idiots..
Actually… King Artoria might not be that much of a stretch. I mean, Arthurian Legends started as a fan fiction of just a date of when the two people died. Anything else is just extra since it never specifically said the ‘King’ was a man.
Li Shuwen’s “never hit a man twice” thing refers to his spear skills, as his opponents always died in the first strike. As for why he used a spear Bajiquan is a martial art based on spear skills, so they naturally have spears forms in Bajiquan.
Not sure if that makes the quote better or worse though. With a spear you want to wear out an opponent, especially when he wears heavy armor because you need to go for non-vital but less defended parts of the body.
@@Chraan well, given his circumstances the type of armor he probably faced wasn't like metal plates as it was with western armors, but rather wood or other lightweight yet sufficiently resilient materials
lol, right? 🤣 I mean, I appreciate the effort, but when you combine their animations with their choice of styles, all you are left with is stuff like Li Mei's "bajiquan", Kenshi's "taiqiquan" or, worse, Sonya's "kenpo" 😓
@@huytungnguyen119 does MK even use real styles? Given the awkward animations it's hard to tell what they are even trying to do. I can only guess that Scorpion uses some form of Kung Fu due to the rope dart GETOVERHERE?
0:51 A cute lore bit for DOA. Helena Douglas, the Piquaquan master, tries to connect with her only recently discovered half sister, Kokoro, the Bajiquan master. Sister styles used by sisters. Cute. I like it.
@@frozezone2947 Yeah, I understand that half-sisters have a common mother or father :p Still, it kind of comes out of nowhere ? To be fair I'm not well versed into this series' lore so maybe it had been previously hinted at but flew over my head ^_^;
@@1Diddums there's also the interpretation of moves, which either can't be translated well, not found, or only made for the sport so it doesn't go well into fighting games for fighting.
bajiquan just a cool style to watch, which I think helps it become such a common part of fighting games, and its a big part of general japanese pop culture too which, y;know, since a lot of fighting games are japanese helps too
You have no idea how much I love that you made a video on this style. As a practitioner and admirer of Chinese Martial Arts styles, I've noticed Bajiquan in so many games, I've lost count. Even Fighter's History had a Baji exponent in it. Every time I saw it, I'd just smirk and think "there it is again..." It made me wonder if there would ever be a game with Piguaquan in it (as far as I know, there are only three fighting games I can think of that do... Garou: Mark of the Wolves (Hotaru), Dead or Alive (Helena), and Tekken (Ling Xiaoyu) ). You're the only person I can think of who pointed out how the Kenji manga influenced much of how Japan tends to portray Chinese Martial Arts, and Baji in particular. It didn't just spawn a bunch of virtual Baji experts, but it also influenced plot and design elements. The Shenmue series owes a great deal of its plot to Kenji, and Leo design from Tekken seems to be something of a homage (not just the style, but their second outfit... the one that looks like a Japanese gakuran). If you've never read Kenji, I suggest you check it out... there are a lot of tropes in modern Japanese martial arts plots in games and manga that I suspect originated in Kenji. Now if only I could see Baguazhang well represented in a game, then I'd really be happy. :P
to possibly add to that piguaquan list Yang (Street Fighter) is _ostensibly_ a piguaquan character to complement Yun's bajiquan, although I can make no claim to the accuracy of that
@@Ihavenolifeorvideos It would make a lot of sense if Yang was a Pigua practitioner to be a contrast/compliment to Yun, sort of like Hotaru and Gato in Garou. However, if you look at Yang's movements, you quickly realize this isn't the case. Yang first started out as a clone of Yun, so they had the exact same style. When Capcom later decided to give Yang his own moves, you'd think they'd just give him the loose, whipping arm motions of Pigua, and at first glance, you think that was the case.. but then you look at the mantis like hands, and you realize that this is not really Piguaquan. Maybe they gave him those moves because Gen is supposed to be the guy who trained the two brothers, but no matter the reason, there really isn't any of the characteristic Pigua movements in Yang's fighting style. Missed opportunity, really. Then again, they don't make these games to educate people on different martial arts styles and movements. :P
@@PhuNguyen-ph6lx While that was one of the best fights in the tournament, it also had some of the most artistic license for sure, since Nitoku absolutely should have finished him either when he suplexed him onto his head or when he broke his arm.
I love these types of informative videos. I'm not a "casual" fighting game player (im a Guilty Gear lorehead), but this is the sort of content I wish the FGC had more of. Stuff that people can analyse or get engaged in without needing to understand fighting games at a high level. Your analysis of Strive is my favorite from your channel. It's the kind of content the casual side of me loves to watch about this genre.
I do have to say personally i have liked every fighting video game i have played myself but i have practiced a lot of different moves out of play games and watching martial arts movies for mobility reasons being a bigger sized person. A lot of those moves actually work, but i mainly practice the sword, staff, chain whip, duel welding daggers, club, and swashbuckling sword and dagger, and use such moves for self defense.
I wouldnt be surprised if it had an influence in Karate's devrlopment given that they both use linear movements and power. And influenced Muay Thai as well with its use of all 8 limbs.
Those are probably coincidence. Bajiquan is a Northern style and Karate was influenced by Southern styles like Wuzuquan and Baihequan. Bajiquan had a huge impact in Japan mainly thanks to Kenji a manga written by Ryuchi Matsuda who was a Bajiquan practitioner.
@@EzeHSK True, but Li Shuwen's "I dont know what its like to hit a man twice" seems very close to Karate's "One Strike,One Kill" philosophy to just be a coincidence.
@@IrishKyokushin Li Shuwen lived during the 20th century (died in the 30s) while Chinese influence on Japanese martial arts is a tad older at the very least. Some kenjutsu styles also favor that idea of one strike one kill. Again it's probably a common cultural denominator. It's always preferable to end a fight with one strike, but there's a reason kata/form applications have a lot of combos.
Okay, so, real life martial artist here and I wanted to touch on something you expressed in this video because I feel it is an incredibly important thing to bring up specifically for those who are casual viewers and not actual combatants. That is "indulging in the FANTASY of martial arts". In the setting of a videogame, this is perfectly fine. Same with books or movies. They aren't beholden to reality, you can slip away and enjoy yourself. The reason you don't see any of these arts in MMA, however, comes with a VERY good reason. In fact, story time: I'm a black belt in JKD, that being the acronym for Jeet Kune Do; Bruce Lee's personalized and staple martial art. Bruce Lee was originally from China and studied under the fabled "Ip Man" and his art of Wing Chun. Wing Chun is a largely stationary martial art that does not emphasize footwork beyond micromovements for minor spacial adjustments as you strike and parry. In theory, the idea is that you shouldn't have to sacrifice your position if you can make concise, effective use of what space you already have and turn your own opponent's force against them; a simple redirection of momentum and power; becoming the immovable object. There's a problem with that in reality though: Real life is not the Ip Man movie. See, there's this phenomenon that happens in the real world where martial arts can become effective not as a matter of their own practical value, but because they are given space away from more pragmatic martial arts in favor of indulging in strict guidelines set by other, similar arts. This is a huge issue with a LOT of traditional Chinese martial arts. Basically, the reason they felt so effective was because Wing Chun practitioners would largely fight other Wing Chun practitioners, Kung Fu users would fight other Kung Fu users, etc etc. Their skill existed in a bubble where they did not have to concern themselves with the methods of outside forces. Which is why the moment Bruce Lee hit American soil and fought a Karate blackbelt who largely just (literally) ran circles around him the whole fight (before Bruce abandoned Wing Chun stances to chase him down, drag him to the floor, and pummel him), Bruce said, "This shit is dumb, we need footwork". And thus, he deconstructed Wing Chun and took certain ideas from it, abandoned others, and meshed them together with various other martial arts like Boxing. As a result, he created Jeet Kune Do, not the first but certainly the most important mixed martial art to ever exist; emphasizing movement and capitalizing on blunders down to a T. This is the story with a lot of Chinese martial arts. It's not that they have bad ideas per say. Wing Chun for example and its idea of "movement economy" is seen a lot in Boxing. There's a reason a boxing ring is smaller than the Octagon. The problem is most of the arts either lack crucial components to become fully realized or refuse to learn from their contemporaries. Emphasis on "refuse", because that there lies the problem: Chinese grandmasters and even the Chinese government cling to tradition to the point of self detriment. Xu Xiaodong is a self professed "amateur" mixed martial artist in China who did not like the attachment to tradition and the lies of fraudulent or naive martial arts being taught in mainstream China (to the point of Chinese schools pressing these arts down on students). He loathed the Chinese public effectively being sold a lie and that they could be trained to do things such as blast opponents with psychic waves. So... Being an amateur with something to prove, he started going around BEATING EVERY CHINESE GRANDMASTER WILLING TO FIGHT HIM just to prove how ineffective their arts were when faced with reality. Most of these fights go down the same way: The fight begins, Xu approaches them while they're busy striking their over embellished stances/guard, and then proceeds to punch them to the floor. China HATES him for this, but that's another story. The moral is this: When I see people willing to believe in the lies these martial arts teach, I see people being set up for failure, even potentially death if they are to try and defend themselves in the case of a real life attack. See, I didn't learn martial arts for sport. Next to JKD, I also hold a blackbelt in Kali/Arnis; real commando shit that is taught to police and military worldwide that is far more concerned with ending a fight at whatever means whether it be through beating someone to death, breaking limbs so they can't proceed, or simply gutting them with a knife. I've also trained Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Boxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and for the relevance to this video, a TEENY bit of Baji Quan. And I wanna say: Out of most of the traditional Chinese Martial Arts, Baji Quan is the most realistic. Use of the entire body's collective momentum to turn yourself into a battering ram is the realest shit. My only real complaint is that, once again, it's done in isolation. Most of what Baji Quan teaches is much more effective when combined with other contemporary martial arts where excessive leaps or slides are not necessary and instead you can use it to close gaps or combine it in grapples. That "Tetsuzanko" for example? Works great if you're setting someone up for a shoulder throw; why just try to load and hurl someone over your shoulder when you can slam into them like a battering ram first so they lose all their wind and footing? I know this has been a long post (I'm legit aspergic and go into way too much detail) so I'll wrap it up here: MMA is exceeding for a reason. Be CAREFUL of what fantasy you indulge in. And always remember: Wing Chun is some bullshit.
Thank you for the big reply, it's great hearing the perspective of someone with experience in the field and I'm always eager to hear more. I didn't mean to imply that traditional martial arts were in any way better or more practical than realistic MMA; decades of combat have pretty much provided the field testing for what is now the most scientifically practical fighting style, and I could not debate that even if I wanted to. And especially the bullshit that the CCP is trying to brainwash its citizens with by forcing *mandatory* kung fu lessons in the spirit of "cultural integrity" is outright disgusting, and Xu Xiaodong is a goddamn hero. That said, I will always love martial arts as an 'art' first and foremost. As a tradition and a philosophy, I think it is beautiful and inspiring, but I would never defer to it as a real means of combat. That's why I think fighting games are the ideal way for martial arts to express their power, in a virtual space where they get to be the strongest form of themselves.
@@SugarPunch Absolutely. You actually are the one that got me interested in animation as a whole and made me realize how interesting this whole subject is. If anything, I was a little surprised to hear that you were merely an observer rather than a martial artist yourself given how insightful some of your past remarks had been. I just heard that one comment and wanted to elaborate on it, I really do appreciate you reading that all and not taking it as anything aggressive (I am very used to people thinking that). And Xu is definitely a hero. If there was any take away I wanted to profess, it was that these martial arts I just shit talked all have a cool untapped potential that's being restrained. Baji Quan is an interesting outlier more than anything because I feel with most traditional arts, they're largely either primitive in nature as they were a product of the context they existed in or lack perspective. Baji Quan meanwhile just takes an incredibly cool and practical idea and works with it. I think it has its problems, but it's well and above its brother/sister arts. Love your work A.B.I., can't wait for your next video.
In practice, the hand trapping can be useful as there is legitimately good parrying going on underneath the hood. The problem is the EXPECTATION that your opponent is playing the same game as you. The best way I can put this is like this: If you've ever played a fighting game and labbed the shit out of this sick, crazy combo thinking you were going to pull it off in a real match, and then went into a real match only for the stress, situational awareness, and linearity in your approach wound up making you get your ass kicked, then you understand exactly why Wing Chun's trapping can be seen as overrated. There is ironically a lot of overlap in fighting game mentality and real world fighting. Sidenote: In Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee actually kept a lot of the trapping methods. He condensed the parries down though, working with the philosophy that you should also hit the opponent when deflecting a blow. From how it felt in the 7 years I spent with it, a lot of the art is just waiting for your opponent to give you an opening in one way or another, then going ballistic on them the moment they hand it to you; throwing them off balance and rushing them into the floor.
@@Akaykimuy: He probably forgot that the word is Mandarin Chinese, and not Japanese, and that the two languages have totally different phonologies or sounds, even if they both use the Roman alphabet (Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin, Modified Hepburn for Japanese)
@@dasetman It's the ambiguity of the romanization itself. Some transliterations choose to write "ch". You can see this in words like qi/chi. Bajichuan is an acceptable transliteration of the phrase, if it makes you feel any better
One hilarious thing I saw regarding Li Mei's stance is that it's an actual thing in bajiquan, but it's a stance used as part of a series of warmup exercises that they isolated and made into her primary stance.
It amazes me how immensely obscure and immensely popular touhou is at first when you don't know about what it is you don't notice it but then once you learn about what touhou is you start seeing it everywhere.
Disclaimer: Bajiquan shouldn't be confused Baguazhang, another Chinese martial art that you may have seen before, most notably as the Gentle Fist from Naruto. The main difference that sets Baqua from Baji is the use of circular motions through the use of circle stepping and rotational attacks. From a distance, Bagua resembles more of a dance than the straightforward, hard-hitting Bajiquan, almost as if it were its conceptual opposite. I also find it ironic that Baji would make its first fighting game debut in a 3D fighter, whereas Baqua would've been more fitting for that genre.
That's what i love about fighting games. It makes more traditional martial arts shine in ways reality can't. While modern arts are more practical, they somewhat don't look fantastical in video games. Imagine if 75% of Streetfighter was ground game and submissions. Nobody would really play since every grappler would be unfair.
There are ways to make things interesting with the 'practical' stuff, just as there are ways to actually bring something like Bajiquan into combat sports, believe it or not. That would involve a lot of trimming away all the hand jiving stuff and wacky stances though, but I do believe its possible. I mean, Stephen Wonderboy Thompson made cheesy 80's American Karate work in modern MMA at the highest level, I think anything is possible.
@@TheNEOverse modern arts are more practical in ring fights..there is no better art...only better fighters...btw i used many times baji quan in street fights...MMA isnt the be all of martial arts eheh
As someone who started BJJ 20 years ago, this is not really true. Not only is there tons of wrestling and submissions in traditional arts, but people in traditional times all wrestled. The entire concept of TMA is what let's one wrestler overcome another. That and weapons. People say modern styles are more practical but the majority of the moves in mma are from traditional arts- from hammer fists to chokes to joint locks to oblique kicks and hip tosses.
I didn't realize that kyo had some of this influence, He starts some moves with the elbow strike ( his anti air and command grab). the shoulder strike is his heavy attack, and he has the double kicks as a launcher, you could even argue his fighting style has that aggressive forward progress in it. I wonder if i'll notice it anywhere else?
A lot of characters with 'unique' fighting styles are often just blends of real-world martial arts. Karin Kanzaki's Kanzaki-Ryu style is clearly a blend of Bajiquan's piercing strikes and defensive and throwing techniques closer to Aikido.
Athena has the flip kicks, Kensou in '99 and 2000 had the lunges. I think Athena uses a variant if the iron shoulder too during her Psychic 9 HSDM if memory serves.
@@tobyjones7682 well in most games Kototsuki (the elbow attack into a grab) is a mid attack instead of a command grab. The EX version in the newer games turns into a command grab however, so he’s not entirely wrong but not entirely right either.
This video is the greatest crossover on this channel. Yunnand Karin from SF, the legend Akira from VF. The small child Miyako, the effin chad Enkidu,A fully expanded Hong, Blazblue, More meming on MK, and so many more.
One of my personal favorite martial arts when put in fiction. The form, power, the iconic moves, etc etc, it's so cool to watch I hear in real life it's actually somewhat limited, mostly in effective range, bit it sounds like a great complimentary martial art too
That's true of all martial arts, actually, most of them wouldn't actually be that much useful in a real fight. Even Kung Fu, which fiction often portrays as this invincible fighting style that makes you untouchable.
"great complimentary martial art" is a bad idea, baji particular characteristics make impossible to use with another MA, and being honest, unless you dream to become a pro fighter, 1 good martial art is more than ok
People forget that these systems are just parts of larger training. It's like you told a kickboxer to exclusively fight peekaboo style never ever using drills from other systems and then saying kickboxing is not a real martial art and is too limited.
@@Stroggoii no, they are complete thing, if they lack components because the world change and the founders only focused in only thing, is another history
Not surprising considering Mortal Kombat had a bit of an identity crisis back then. It wanted to be Tekken, and Soulcalibur while trying to be Mortal Kombat all at the same time.
Man, FGs using real martial arts is always the sickest shit I will never forget having a long winded conversation with my tutor, a Capoeirra Teacher/Practitioner, about the stylistic influences behind Elena and Eddy Gordo, Elena possessing a fair few legitimate techniques while also having a lot of, for lack of a better description, dancey bullshit, whereas Eddy is substantially more refined in his style and flows a lot more like a seasoned user of the form
I'll never forget Virtua Fighter's Akira badass 3 hit combo that took a huge chunk of the life bar. It was so odd that the main character of the franchise was so hard to play with.
I dunno if you'd really care to do it again but it'd be dope to see you cover other martial arts representation in fighting games because this instantly became one of my favorite vids from you.
Huh for some reason I never realized Enkidu used Baji. As for my favorite characters who use Bajiquan outside of Enkidu are all Type-Moon characters. Kirei Kotomine, Li Shuwen, and Miyako Arima It’s funny that even though they all practice the same style they’re not alike in the slightest.
Shenlong from Bloody Roar is the one that I remember the most... And you got to love MK for their neverending amount of "resources" Have a great day, thanks for these videos
But shenlong was never a bajiquan stylist. Long, the original guy was a master of kempo, but strangely has many moves resembling bajiquan, maybe the styles are quite similar. Shenlong used mostly leg variants of longs mostly hand based style.
So cool to see Hisoutensoku in the examples. I'd love to see a video on the touhou fighting games, especially the post-13.5 ones with how unusual they are.
As a -Fate fan- fan of Karin and Enkidu, Meiling main in Hisoutensoku and Miyako main in Type Lumina, I smiled like an absolute fool watching this video.
My impression is that it's very easy to convey and is simple enough that it isn't necessarily limited to a specific body type or personality type. If you've practiced how to draw Baji Quan then you can slap it onto basically anyone in a different project, whereas if you actually went out of your way to find something more unique that works better for the character then there isn't really a guarantee. Also, the style basically has built-in key frames as opposed to many soft martial arts styles and even a lot of hard martial arts style. It's something that you can easily show in static manga frames, or easily convey in fast-paced animation be it in anime or video games. And there is a feedback loop, where due to other series using it, someone making a new character will be more likely to consider it as opposed to some obscure fighting style like Turkish Oil Wrestling. In case you haven't picked up, I think it is WAY overexposed and often just slapped onto a character just so the creator can convey "they know martial arts" rather than saying anything about their personality or physicality.
It conveys "well trained." Style doesn't necessarily need to convey personality, because part of training in any field is to override base instincts with actual skill and knowledge. Same thing he's mentioned with Melty Blood designs where overt appearances aren't a necessity for a character to have personality.
@@seokkyunhong8812 Point I'm saying is that you can convey a ton of personality simply through a character's choice of martial art, though. For instance, Feng Wei in Tekken. His style is not said to be it, but it's obviously Hung Gar. Hung Gar is a stable, powerful style that emphasizes extremely long portions of training to simply standing in horse stance. This tells you already that Feng is heavily dedicated to fighting, he is patient, determined, and values strength above all else. Then let's look at how even using the same style, you can have the way that they use it differently to contrast their characters. Like Sagat's powerful, stable, patient Muay Thai that is built more on the style's kicks compared to Adon's hyper aggressive mobile Muay Thai that heavily goes for the elbow and knee attacks. Geese Howard, there's another example, in a case of someone who uses a fighting style that his body isn't even exactly built for. Usually, Aikido is used by smaller and weaker characters to convey that they need to redirect power to fight. Geese, however, uses it to convey his strength and dominance because you can tell from his physique just how strong he is, so not only can he smash your face in with his own muscle but he can turn your own attacks against you. Those are just a few examples of how simply picking the right fighting style can add so much personality to a character. It is capable of showing so much more than just "they learned martial arts." Baji has its place being an iconic fighting style but is it really worth it when you get to the point where it's basically "every game NEEDS at least two or three characters who just use Baji just to have Baji and everyone who uses it should just use the same moves in the same way"?
@@Zetact_ you CAN You don't need to is my point. Because style being the character is just a different way of making the character one note. As an example, sumo characters except Hinako all lean into sumo super hard, and they all suck for it. The fact that bajiquan says so little is a positive thing as users are allowed to be their own characters by other avenues.
As a heads up, the "quan" (fist) character that you see in a lot of Chinese martial arts styles is pronounced more like "chuen". Nevertheless, this was a solid video, and I love the research you put into it and the several examples you included.
Linear movement? Closing the distance? A single decisive strike? Now I'm even more convinced that the Pokemon Urshifu was inspired by Bajiquan. Or at least its Single Strike form.
@@SquidwardProfilePic Yeah, I know that, and when I read about it I thought it was referencing Li Shuwen. But nobody I talked to cared about that when it first came out.
At first, I thought this video was going to be about Akira. lol Okay, I know you said "no more Mortal Kombat videos" but that last part of the video reminded me about how someone said the martial arts in Mortal Kombat (The 3D titles) weren't authentic, can you make a video about that?
The speculations you made about how full contact fighting as seen in MMA has overshadowed other and more diverse Martial Arts seriously struck a chord with me. I fuckin love Martial Arts. It's endlessly fascinating and exciting to see such a wide variety of styles and techniques from all around the world and from all across time that are both similar and vastly different from one another. And while I certainly understand the significance and appeal of MMA (especially as someone who used to be a fan of it in high school), it really starts to feel stale after a while watching UFC matches where it feels like every match is between a pair of Thai Boxers who also know Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu or something. I think your observation about appreciating the diversity of Martial Arts perfectly sums up one of the reasons why I love the Fighting Game genre so much, even on the occasion when the presence of real life fighting styles is minimal within them.
Yeah since fighting games are fantasy they’re able to make pretty much any Martial Art look cool and feel how they look. Sadly though we’re in the real world where practically and efficiently rule or all things so more unique fight styles just aren’t ain’t practical anymore
@@hyperdreamer9483 Yeah I mean I wouldn't expect to be strolling down the street and suddenly see a pair of bystanders get into it where one of them starts performing Capoeira or something. And I do also understand and value the practicality of fighting styles. I just really love variety, especially when it comes to stuff like this.
@@hyperdreamer9483 Definitely agree about that latter detail especially. Any time I hear the name of a new fighting style I'm not familiar with I always have to stop whatever I'm doing and look it up to learn about it. That's part of the reason I love fighting games like Tekken or Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat (in some instances anyway) so much, because they feature such a wide variety of martial arts, even if not all of them are real, so it gives me incentive to learn about them to see which of them are at' the very least.
I really love these videos about martial arts in fighting games, they are so interesting! Do you think you can do an episode on Muay Thai? I love seeing it represented in fighting games
3:14 Leo-chan!! First character i learned Tekken with in T6 and fighting games in general, 2007 the year i stopped mashing #BajiquanGang. 8:15 I knew where this was headed lmfao, you gotta make this a series of videos, was truly awesome to watch
So I think i understand what you're getting at with what you said about MMA and that sort of "practical" style, but I think there's definitely something to be said for the art of all of that practicality! I'm not gonna argue that it's not as beautiful in the traditional definition but I think there is a certain beauty there. And, as you said, Bajiquan was taught with another style so...perhaps it was a Mixed Martial Art?
wonderful vid A.B.I. I honestly hope this may eventually become a series looking into the history of different martial art styles and their portrayal in fighting games.
I feel like I had a similar journey of connecting with baji, I read the Manga and then not only started noticing how many games include baji but also how they represent the art. At one point in time if a character in a fighting game used baji I would try my darndest to main them. Love this video sooo much
Lets all be grateful to Yu Suzuki and his obsession for martial arts. Probably someone would make realistic fighting styles in a game, but he was the first serious about it.
Another great video. We need more people like you in the FGC. Though, you forgot to show footage of Akira Kazama from Rival Schools & SF5, she also used the style.
I love stalking this fighting style in every game and fighting game possible. Always so satisfying to play and to watch! Thanks for all this background on it, and a quick guide on more games to track down to play it in.
As someone who fell in love with bajiquan in 3s because Yun had a hat, every character who uses this style in fighting games I will play simply finding things that relate to the day when I saw this style. This is definitely one of my favorite videos now
here because Fei Fong Wong of Xenogears uses bajiquan so I was looking up more about the style again. Very interesting to see how many fighting games incorporated its various moves. Particularly, I love the sudden start/stop movements of its singular arm strikes when watching someone perform its' tao lu. btw, its pronounced "baji chuan" ;) think of the Q as being "CH" and the rest follows
Gonna be pedantic and correct your pronunciation of "Quan" which is pronounced more like "chwen" (Chinese to English alphabet spellings are weird). It makes more sense if you realize that the Japanese equivalent is pronounced as "Ken", meaning "fist". You can hear the similarities in both languages.
@@goranisacson2502The 'q' is pronounce more like the 'ch' in 'chair'. If you want to get more technical, Chinese pronunciation differentiates both 'q' and 'ch' sounds. 'q' is spoken with the tongue flat, while 'ch' has the back of the tongue curled.
I like how you brought up the disconnect between MMA and most traditional martial arts, especially kung fu. Note that some traditional martial arts survived the transition to MMA quite nicely -- judo, TKD, karate, and Muay Thai have their representatives in the sport -- but these specific martial arts get combat-tested _constantly_ as they have their own full-contact tournaments. As beautiful and artful as kung fu is, outside of some old sparring footage of Bruce Lee, we really don't see it tested often. That said, I need to see an MMA guy try the Bajiquan shoulder tackle as a surprise move, the way the spinning back elbow is used most of the time.
I also love that with every representative of Baji Quan there are almost always ridiculously hard to use. Shenlong from Bloody Roar, Akira from Virtua Fighter etc. Another Chinese Martial Art that I think deserves more representation is Xin Yi Liu He Quan which is argued as one of the first forms of Chinese Martial Arts ever discovered. Gen Fu from DOA, Uriko and Long from Bloody Roar, Gato from MOTW and Wang Jinrei use it and it's one of my favorite forms of Chinese Martial Arts to see and use in Fighting Games period.
Been a big fan of your channel, love the video as always. "Slight" nitpicking here~ the "quan" part of "bajiquan 八極拳 " should be read as (the way I would spell it in English) "chuan". Like you would say combining the word "chu" (as in "choose") with "yan" (as in Japanese "yen"). You'll see this word "拳" comes up alot in fighting style because it literally means in Chinese "fist/punch", or it can be loosely translated as "style" or any martial art style that uses primarily fist (as in "bajiquan 八極拳" = eight extremist fist/style, "zui quan 醉拳" = drunken fist/style, or "Tang Lang Quan 螳螂拳" = mantis fist/style ). That word is often spelled with the letter "q", as a Chinese myself, I really never understand why. It comes up in the word "qi 氣" as well, also should be read "chi". ;P Please keep making awesome videos.
Kenji is one of my favorite mangas, and I really like Bajiwuan representation in games a lot as well. Great video! Hope we see more about other martial arts as well
So this is the style of character I like that I never knew, I (almost) always picked the chinese fighters in a lot of fighting games because I thought the way they fight it's really cool like Jam, Litchi, Yun and Miyako (even thou she is not chinese) and so on and now I know that is because they use a lot of attacks are inspired by Bajiquan.
very dope video only concern is that the "quan" is pronounced like "chuen", since it is fist in Chinese. Primary reason I care is because my dad was actually raised with bajiquan and even taught it. 開門八極拳; Kāimén bā jí quán; (English: Gate-Opening Eight Extremities Fist) Love the content as always though, thank you for the rep, mr fighting game animation man.
Interesting thoughts I think it's mainly cuz of its very disciplined-looking strikes, they make for easy and distinguishable key poses Also cuz of the nature of extremes being romanticized in Japanese culture... The idea of One Strike is very appealing
Love the MK shot there; they just assigned fighting styles in those games without even considering what they are or even trying to research them in order to accurately portray them
This was pretty cool to see. I didn't know where that iconic shoulder charge came from, but I can easily see why so many animator use it. It's got a great end pose, and it's a full body motion so there can be a good amount of anticipation frames before it comes out to indicate power. And from the video, I can see there were plenty of other eye-catching poses that Bajiquan utilizes too, making it very good for video games and animation. I'd be interested in seeing you cover other styles of martial arts. If Bajiquan is summed up with "I do not know what it's like to hit a man twice," Wing Chun must be "I don't know what it's like to hit a man less than 100 time a second." At least, that what the Ip Man movies left me thinking, haha.
Seeing that clip from Symphogear XV reignited my desire for a Symphogear fighting game just so we could see Hibiki and Genjuro doing Bajiquan techniques left and right.
Now, this was a blast. Seeing Bajiquan in games makes me wanna find a school that teaches it. Do you plan to make similar videos with different martial arts?
You forgot about the "other" Akira... Akira Kazama from Rival Schools and SF5! Plus her biker aesthetics were really cool! Great character development too. This was excellent! This was always one of my favorite styles to behold in any form of media! Beautiful...
Yea. Fun fact akira kazama was originally name of main heroine in kenji manga, which also a biker, tho she doesnt do any martial arts. Capcom basically just make new character with same name, and made her a biker also lol, but this time she can do the baji compared to akira kazama in kenji.
I think Akira Yuki do the most realistic and accurate portrayal or Bajiquan then again his movement was captured and based on a real life famous Bajiquan practioner in the 90's
If you noticed, most Bajiquan fighters have their feet perpendicular to each other in a fighting stance. We usually call this a 60/40 stance, in which the back leg is holding more of the body weight, while the front foot is lighter, being able to get off of the ground for an attack. For the stomping, we don't necessarily 'STOMP' onto the ground with force, but rather raise the foot and drop/fall our body weight onto the foot, making the signature 'STOMP' sound. This allows for a larger force to be applied to to the strikes while using the spine as the 'handle of the whip'. You would in a way 'explode', having your limb come out to strike with control. Do take this with a grain of salt, since these applications come from my Sifu's Wu Tan Lineage of Bajiquan. There are 9 lineages in total and I'm not sure if they all go in the same methodology, but the form does stay the same.
There are some similarities, to be sure, and Japan really seems to like the style ()the Kenji manga definitely helped with that), But you will find that the style that shares the most in terms of origin material for Karate is 5 Ancestors Fist. Check out the earlier Okinawan forms, and 5 Ancestors Fist, and you'll see what I mean.
"I do not know what it is like to hit a man twice" is probably one of the rawest quotes I've ever heard and I fucking love it.
Sounds like what a fake martial artist would say who's never been in a real fight before.
@@SpectralSound. Li Shuwen was noted to have engaged in a ton of fights, and killed quite a few of his opponents too, to the point where he allegedly died due to being poisoned by vengeful family members of one of his opponents.
@@SpectralSound. if I was making a mcdojo, I would use that but the guy earned it
@@SpectralSound. If you know Li Shuwen history you would think otherwise. His martial art career start since he was young with the title "God Spear Li" then he have an accident making him unable to use spear again. After treatment he learn and spar with many form of Bajiquan and others martial arts and killed quite a lot of his opponent, that's why he had so much enemies and poisoned leading to his death. His quote of "Never strike the same opponent twice" is quite a boast but he have the skill to backup his boasting.
@@minuano2ndtrueancestor865 i said maybe he was a good martial artist,but those "achievements" are so full of shit.the same problem as in bruce lee case.they said even if he lived now,nobody could beat him....damn people are such idiots..
"As depicted in Fate" we're going to the most accurate sources I see...
Indeed
Pretty based choice
really caught me off guard lol
of course
Guilty bits god
Actually… King Artoria might not be that much of a stretch. I mean, Arthurian Legends started as a fan fiction of just a date of when the two people died. Anything else is just extra since it never specifically said the ‘King’ was a man.
3rd Strike Yun:
"I do not know what it's like to hit a man fewer than 15 times"
XD
*Genei Jin intensifies*
HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY
I guess if he kills you off 1 touch then he's good
Li Shuwen’s “never hit a man twice” thing refers to his spear skills, as his opponents always died in the first strike. As for why he used a spear Bajiquan is a martial art based on spear skills, so they naturally have spears forms in Bajiquan.
Thank. You. 🫡
oh wow. very interesting.
Still metal.
Not sure if that makes the quote better or worse though. With a spear you want to wear out an opponent, especially when he wears heavy armor because you need to go for non-vital but less defended parts of the body.
@@Chraan well, given his circumstances the type of armor he probably faced wasn't like metal plates as it was with western armors, but rather wood or other lightweight yet sufficiently resilient materials
Ah, took another opportunity to poke fun at MK again at the end.
Yeah, aside from janky animation of all games, the Bajiquan only appeared as a fighting style for Li Mei and seemingly haven't returned in NRS era.
Of course MK got it wrong
Again lol
lol, right? 🤣
I mean, I appreciate the effort, but when you combine their animations with their choice of styles, all you are left with is stuff like Li Mei's "bajiquan", Kenshi's "taiqiquan" or, worse, Sonya's "kenpo" 😓
I was about to type this very thing as soon as i finished the video...i chuckled a lot
@@huytungnguyen119 does MK even use real styles? Given the awkward animations it's hard to tell what they are even trying to do. I can only guess that Scorpion uses some form of Kung Fu due to the rope dart GETOVERHERE?
Hearing about a real historical martial arts master and suddenly seeing an anime guy cracked me up xd
didn't you know? the fate franchise is canon in real life lore.
Fate b like that... it takes real people and makes them anime guys... or girls... regardless of their actual sex and gender
Gotta admit. Wada made him looks hot af.
Li shuwen
@@hieple4164 Wada makes anyone look attractive
0:51 A cute lore bit for DOA. Helena Douglas, the Piquaquan master, tries to connect with her only recently discovered half sister, Kokoro, the Bajiquan master. Sister styles used by sisters. Cute. I like it.
Nice!
What ?
They don't even look alike XD
Well forget it, we're talking about DOA, nothing surprises me any more :/
@@Biouke They have the same father but different mothers, thus making them siblings
@@frozezone2947 Yeah, I understand that half-sisters have a common mother or father :p
Still, it kind of comes out of nowhere ?
To be fair I'm not well versed into this series' lore so maybe it had been previously hinted at but flew over my head ^_^;
wait people play doa for lore?
It's a martial art that has hit stop in it's moves, it's perfect for videogames.
This is probably the most important feature for it to be a good fighting game moveset
@@kevinh4042 Relatively speaking, why Wushu is quite rare.
@@1Diddums there's also the interpretation of moves, which either can't be translated well, not found, or only made for the sport so it doesn't go well into fighting games for fighting.
@@1Diddums The main reason being, japan doesn't take kindly to China, much less Chinese martial arts.
@@Xannyphantom905 need citations
bajiquan just a cool style to watch, which I think helps it become such a common part of fighting games, and its a big part of general japanese pop culture too which, y;know, since a lot of fighting games are japanese helps too
You have no idea how much I love that you made a video on this style.
As a practitioner and admirer of Chinese Martial Arts styles, I've noticed Bajiquan in so many games, I've lost count. Even Fighter's History had a Baji exponent in it. Every time I saw it, I'd just smirk and think "there it is again..." It made me wonder if there would ever be a game with Piguaquan in it (as far as I know, there are only three fighting games I can think of that do... Garou: Mark of the Wolves (Hotaru), Dead or Alive (Helena), and Tekken (Ling Xiaoyu) ).
You're the only person I can think of who pointed out how the Kenji manga influenced much of how Japan tends to portray Chinese Martial Arts, and Baji in particular. It didn't just spawn a bunch of virtual Baji experts, but it also influenced plot and design elements. The Shenmue series owes a great deal of its plot to Kenji, and Leo design from Tekken seems to be something of a homage (not just the style, but their second outfit... the one that looks like a Japanese gakuran). If you've never read Kenji, I suggest you check it out... there are a lot of tropes in modern Japanese martial arts plots in games and manga that I suspect originated in Kenji.
Now if only I could see Baguazhang well represented in a game, then I'd really be happy. :P
Hey man, you do good work. I'm looking forward to another crossover with you and Skall.
If you like Bajiquan, go have a vacotion on Taiwan
to possibly add to that piguaquan list
Yang (Street Fighter) is _ostensibly_ a piguaquan character to complement Yun's bajiquan, although I can make no claim to the accuracy of that
@@Ihavenolifeorvideos It would make a lot of sense if Yang was a Pigua practitioner to be a contrast/compliment to Yun, sort of like Hotaru and Gato in Garou. However, if you look at Yang's movements, you quickly realize this isn't the case.
Yang first started out as a clone of Yun, so they had the exact same style. When Capcom later decided to give Yang his own moves, you'd think they'd just give him the loose, whipping arm motions of Pigua, and at first glance, you think that was the case.. but then you look at the mantis like hands, and you realize that this is not really Piguaquan. Maybe they gave him those moves because Gen is supposed to be the guy who trained the two brothers, but no matter the reason, there really isn't any of the characteristic Pigua movements in Yang's fighting style. Missed opportunity, really. Then again, they don't make these games to educate people on different martial arts styles and movements. :P
Just hearing the basic plot and I when "Oh Baki homages Kenji"
Bajiquan master: Charges in for a killer attack
Oponent: Moves to the side
Master: Fuck he got me
You know, in the recent chapters of Kengan Omega where a bajiquan user fight, he had this exact same problem
@@PhuNguyen-ph6lx i must have read the chapters where i was asleep, i cant recall a bajiquan guy in any kengan manga
@@texteel Liu Dongcheng, he used a lot of baji quan moves
That's why you mix it with other martial arts
@@PhuNguyen-ph6lx While that was one of the best fights in the tournament, it also had some of the most artistic license for sure, since Nitoku absolutely should have finished him either when he suplexed him onto his head or when he broke his arm.
I love these types of informative videos. I'm not a "casual" fighting game player (im a Guilty Gear lorehead), but this is the sort of content I wish the FGC had more of. Stuff that people can analyse or get engaged in without needing to understand fighting games at a high level. Your analysis of Strive is my favorite from your channel. It's the kind of content the casual side of me loves to watch about this genre.
Same, I play MK, Tekken & SF at a hardcore level & these types of vids interest me the most!!
Sometimes knowledge outside of the technical aspect is good.
I do have to say personally i have liked every fighting video game i have played myself but i have practiced a lot of different moves out of play games and watching martial arts movies for mobility reasons being a bigger sized person. A lot of those moves actually work, but i mainly practice the sword, staff, chain whip, duel welding daggers, club, and swashbuckling sword and dagger, and use such moves for self defense.
The impact this style of kung fu had on Japanese pop culture is nuts
I wouldnt be surprised if it had an influence in Karate's devrlopment given that they both use linear movements and power. And influenced Muay Thai as well with its use of all 8 limbs.
Those are probably coincidence. Bajiquan is a Northern style and Karate was influenced by Southern styles like Wuzuquan and Baihequan. Bajiquan had a huge impact in Japan mainly thanks to Kenji a manga written by Ryuchi Matsuda who was a Bajiquan practitioner.
@@EzeHSK True, but Li Shuwen's "I dont know what its like to hit a man twice" seems very close to Karate's "One Strike,One Kill" philosophy to just be a coincidence.
@@IrishKyokushin Li Shuwen lived during the 20th century (died in the 30s) while Chinese influence on Japanese martial arts is a tad older at the very least. Some kenjutsu styles also favor that idea of one strike one kill. Again it's probably a common cultural denominator. It's always preferable to end a fight with one strike, but there's a reason kata/form applications have a lot of combos.
@@IrishKyokushin coincidences happen in the real world a lot more often than you think
lmao that MK's "version" of Bajiquan XDDDD
Actual baji Quan would most likely break mk's fighting system 😅
As bad as NRS animation is, the Midway era was even worse 😆.
@@lukejones7164 At least they told a good story, though.
@@leonlegend That's true.
Midway era >>>>>>> NRS era when it comes to storytelling and character writing.
@@lukejones7164
The slope started at Deception, and things didn’t get irredeemable until MK11.
Okay, so, real life martial artist here and I wanted to touch on something you expressed in this video because I feel it is an incredibly important thing to bring up specifically for those who are casual viewers and not actual combatants.
That is "indulging in the FANTASY of martial arts".
In the setting of a videogame, this is perfectly fine. Same with books or movies. They aren't beholden to reality, you can slip away and enjoy yourself. The reason you don't see any of these arts in MMA, however, comes with a VERY good reason. In fact, story time: I'm a black belt in JKD, that being the acronym for Jeet Kune Do; Bruce Lee's personalized and staple martial art. Bruce Lee was originally from China and studied under the fabled "Ip Man" and his art of Wing Chun. Wing Chun is a largely stationary martial art that does not emphasize footwork beyond micromovements for minor spacial adjustments as you strike and parry. In theory, the idea is that you shouldn't have to sacrifice your position if you can make concise, effective use of what space you already have and turn your own opponent's force against them; a simple redirection of momentum and power; becoming the immovable object. There's a problem with that in reality though: Real life is not the Ip Man movie. See, there's this phenomenon that happens in the real world where martial arts can become effective not as a matter of their own practical value, but because they are given space away from more pragmatic martial arts in favor of indulging in strict guidelines set by other, similar arts. This is a huge issue with a LOT of traditional Chinese martial arts. Basically, the reason they felt so effective was because Wing Chun practitioners would largely fight other Wing Chun practitioners, Kung Fu users would fight other Kung Fu users, etc etc. Their skill existed in a bubble where they did not have to concern themselves with the methods of outside forces.
Which is why the moment Bruce Lee hit American soil and fought a Karate blackbelt who largely just (literally) ran circles around him the whole fight (before Bruce abandoned Wing Chun stances to chase him down, drag him to the floor, and pummel him), Bruce said, "This shit is dumb, we need footwork". And thus, he deconstructed Wing Chun and took certain ideas from it, abandoned others, and meshed them together with various other martial arts like Boxing. As a result, he created Jeet Kune Do, not the first but certainly the most important mixed martial art to ever exist; emphasizing movement and capitalizing on blunders down to a T. This is the story with a lot of Chinese martial arts.
It's not that they have bad ideas per say. Wing Chun for example and its idea of "movement economy" is seen a lot in Boxing. There's a reason a boxing ring is smaller than the Octagon. The problem is most of the arts either lack crucial components to become fully realized or refuse to learn from their contemporaries. Emphasis on "refuse", because that there lies the problem: Chinese grandmasters and even the Chinese government cling to tradition to the point of self detriment. Xu Xiaodong is a self professed "amateur" mixed martial artist in China who did not like the attachment to tradition and the lies of fraudulent or naive martial arts being taught in mainstream China (to the point of Chinese schools pressing these arts down on students). He loathed the Chinese public effectively being sold a lie and that they could be trained to do things such as blast opponents with psychic waves. So... Being an amateur with something to prove, he started going around BEATING EVERY CHINESE GRANDMASTER WILLING TO FIGHT HIM just to prove how ineffective their arts were when faced with reality. Most of these fights go down the same way: The fight begins, Xu approaches them while they're busy striking their over embellished stances/guard, and then proceeds to punch them to the floor.
China HATES him for this, but that's another story. The moral is this: When I see people willing to believe in the lies these martial arts teach, I see people being set up for failure, even potentially death if they are to try and defend themselves in the case of a real life attack. See, I didn't learn martial arts for sport. Next to JKD, I also hold a blackbelt in Kali/Arnis; real commando shit that is taught to police and military worldwide that is far more concerned with ending a fight at whatever means whether it be through beating someone to death, breaking limbs so they can't proceed, or simply gutting them with a knife. I've also trained Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Boxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and for the relevance to this video, a TEENY bit of Baji Quan.
And I wanna say: Out of most of the traditional Chinese Martial Arts, Baji Quan is the most realistic.
Use of the entire body's collective momentum to turn yourself into a battering ram is the realest shit.
My only real complaint is that, once again, it's done in isolation. Most of what Baji Quan teaches is much more effective when combined with other contemporary martial arts where excessive leaps or slides are not necessary and instead you can use it to close gaps or combine it in grapples. That "Tetsuzanko" for example? Works great if you're setting someone up for a shoulder throw; why just try to load and hurl someone over your shoulder when you can slam into them like a battering ram first so they lose all their wind and footing?
I know this has been a long post (I'm legit aspergic and go into way too much detail) so I'll wrap it up here: MMA is exceeding for a reason. Be CAREFUL of what fantasy you indulge in. And always remember: Wing Chun is some bullshit.
Thank you for the big reply, it's great hearing the perspective of someone with experience in the field and I'm always eager to hear more. I didn't mean to imply that traditional martial arts were in any way better or more practical than realistic MMA; decades of combat have pretty much provided the field testing for what is now the most scientifically practical fighting style, and I could not debate that even if I wanted to. And especially the bullshit that the CCP is trying to brainwash its citizens with by forcing *mandatory* kung fu lessons in the spirit of "cultural integrity" is outright disgusting, and Xu Xiaodong is a goddamn hero.
That said, I will always love martial arts as an 'art' first and foremost. As a tradition and a philosophy, I think it is beautiful and inspiring, but I would never defer to it as a real means of combat. That's why I think fighting games are the ideal way for martial arts to express their power, in a virtual space where they get to be the strongest form of themselves.
@@SugarPunch Absolutely. You actually are the one that got me interested in animation as a whole and made me realize how interesting this whole subject is. If anything, I was a little surprised to hear that you were merely an observer rather than a martial artist yourself given how insightful some of your past remarks had been.
I just heard that one comment and wanted to elaborate on it, I really do appreciate you reading that all and not taking it as anything aggressive (I am very used to people thinking that). And Xu is definitely a hero. If there was any take away I wanted to profess, it was that these martial arts I just shit talked all have a cool untapped potential that's being restrained. Baji Quan is an interesting outlier more than anything because I feel with most traditional arts, they're largely either primitive in nature as they were a product of the context they existed in or lack perspective. Baji Quan meanwhile just takes an incredibly cool and practical idea and works with it. I think it has its problems, but it's well and above its brother/sister arts.
Love your work A.B.I., can't wait for your next video.
what about some of wing chun's hand trappping? Does that work?
Thanks for this!
In practice, the hand trapping can be useful as there is legitimately good parrying going on underneath the hood.
The problem is the EXPECTATION that your opponent is playing the same game as you. The best way I can put this is like this: If you've ever played a fighting game and labbed the shit out of this sick, crazy combo thinking you were going to pull it off in a real match, and then went into a real match only for the stress, situational awareness, and linearity in your approach wound up making you get your ass kicked, then you understand exactly why Wing Chun's trapping can be seen as overrated.
There is ironically a lot of overlap in fighting game mentality and real world fighting.
Sidenote: In Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee actually kept a lot of the trapping methods. He condensed the parries down though, working with the philosophy that you should also hit the opponent when deflecting a blow. From how it felt in the 7 years I spent with it, a lot of the art is just waiting for your opponent to give you an opening in one way or another, then going ballistic on them the moment they hand it to you; throwing them off balance and rushing them into the floor.
Bro, the flopkick is Bajiquan's most effective technique.
Why, hello there wayward traveller!
Oh hi Snake
@@dirckthedork-knight1201 o hi mark
In Mandarin Chinese, the Q is pronounced as a "ch" sound.
you'd think he would look up the pronunciation considering how many times he says it
@@Akaykimuy: He probably forgot that the word is Mandarin Chinese, and not Japanese, and that the two languages have totally different phonologies or sounds, even if they both use the Roman alphabet (Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin, Modified Hepburn for Japanese)
He's speaking English not Mandarin Chinese
@@dasetman it's a mandarin word
@@dasetman It's the ambiguity of the romanization itself. Some transliterations choose to write "ch". You can see this in words like qi/chi. Bajichuan is an acceptable transliteration of the phrase, if it makes you feel any better
One hilarious thing I saw regarding Li Mei's stance is that it's an actual thing in bajiquan, but it's a stance used as part of a series of warmup exercises that they isolated and made into her primary stance.
Yeah, you are supposed to crouch and get up in that stance as a basic warm up.
My knees say F that.
Talk about carrying Tradition on your Shoulders.
Damn I love fighting games.
It amazes me how immensely obscure and immensely popular touhou is at first when you don't know about what it is you don't notice it but then once you learn about what touhou is you start seeing it everywhere.
Disclaimer: Bajiquan shouldn't be confused Baguazhang, another Chinese martial art that you may have seen before, most notably as the Gentle Fist from Naruto. The main difference that sets Baqua from Baji is the use of circular motions through the use of circle stepping and rotational attacks. From a distance, Bagua resembles more of a dance than the straightforward, hard-hitting Bajiquan, almost as if it were its conceptual opposite. I also find it ironic that Baji would make its first fighting game debut in a 3D fighter, whereas Baqua would've been more fitting for that genre.
Wait is that what the Hyuga style is based off of? Bagua?
Airbending
@@Tenchigumi Correction: Bad Jet Li uses Hsing Yi (Xingyi) as his straightline style of combat, which he discusses in his interview in The One.
@@DPXEntertainment Whoops you're absolutely right. I wrote that while waking up one morning, clearly my head wasn't straight.
@@Tenchigumi I've had those kinds of mornings. All too often, actually. 😅
That's what i love about fighting games. It makes more traditional martial arts shine in ways reality can't. While modern arts are more practical, they somewhat don't look fantastical in video games. Imagine if 75% of Streetfighter was ground game and submissions. Nobody would really play since every grappler would be unfair.
Absolutely true. But on the other hand it takes some pretty absurd linieances. Like my suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
It'd just be kick boxing and wrestling
There are ways to make things interesting with the 'practical' stuff, just as there are ways to actually bring something like Bajiquan into combat sports, believe it or not.
That would involve a lot of trimming away all the hand jiving stuff and wacky stances though, but I do believe its possible. I mean, Stephen Wonderboy Thompson made cheesy 80's American Karate work in modern MMA at the highest level, I think anything is possible.
@@TheNEOverse modern arts are more practical in ring fights..there is no better art...only better fighters...btw i used many times baji quan in street fights...MMA isnt the be all of martial arts eheh
As someone who started BJJ 20 years ago, this is not really true. Not only is there tons of wrestling and submissions in traditional arts, but people in traditional times all wrestled. The entire concept of TMA is what let's one wrestler overcome another. That and weapons. People say modern styles are more practical but the majority of the moves in mma are from traditional arts- from hammer fists to chokes to joint locks to oblique kicks and hip tosses.
I didn't realize that kyo had some of this influence, He starts some moves with the elbow strike ( his anti air and command grab). the shoulder strike is his heavy attack, and he has the double kicks as a launcher, you could even argue his fighting style has that aggressive forward progress in it. I wonder if i'll notice it anywhere else?
A lot of characters with 'unique' fighting styles are often just blends of real-world martial arts. Karin Kanzaki's Kanzaki-Ryu style is clearly a blend of Bajiquan's piercing strikes and defensive and throwing techniques closer to Aikido.
“Command grab” lol
@@JohnGaming55 hes not wrong, kyo does have a command grab
Athena has the flip kicks, Kensou in '99 and 2000 had the lunges. I think Athena uses a variant if the iron shoulder too during her Psychic 9 HSDM if memory serves.
@@tobyjones7682 well in most games Kototsuki (the elbow attack into a grab) is a mid attack instead of a command grab. The EX version in the newer games turns into a command grab however, so he’s not entirely wrong but not entirely right either.
This video is the greatest crossover on this channel.
Yunnand Karin from SF, the legend Akira from VF. The small child Miyako, the effin chad Enkidu,A fully expanded Hong, Blazblue, More meming on MK, and so many more.
One of my personal favorite martial arts when put in fiction. The form, power, the iconic moves, etc etc, it's so cool to watch
I hear in real life it's actually somewhat limited, mostly in effective range, bit it sounds like a great complimentary martial art too
Also there's so many Baji practicioners that are just so cool
Yun, Akira Yuki, Leo, Hong Meiling (technically Tai Chi Chuan)
That's true of all martial arts, actually, most of them wouldn't actually be that much useful in a real fight. Even Kung Fu, which fiction often portrays as this invincible fighting style that makes you untouchable.
"great complimentary martial art" is a bad idea, baji particular characteristics make impossible to use with another MA, and being honest, unless you dream to become a pro fighter, 1 good martial art is more than ok
People forget that these systems are just parts of larger training. It's like you told a kickboxer to exclusively fight peekaboo style never ever using drills from other systems and then saying kickboxing is not a real martial art and is too limited.
@@Stroggoii no, they are complete thing, if they lack components because the world change and the founders only focused in only thing, is another history
3D MK had the spirit, it was just a little confused
Not surprising considering Mortal Kombat had a bit of an identity crisis back then. It wanted to be Tekken, and Soulcalibur while trying to be Mortal Kombat all at the same time.
Man, FGs using real martial arts is always the sickest shit
I will never forget having a long winded conversation with my tutor, a Capoeirra Teacher/Practitioner, about the stylistic influences behind Elena and Eddy Gordo, Elena possessing a fair few legitimate techniques while also having a lot of, for lack of a better description, dancey bullshit, whereas Eddy is substantially more refined in his style and flows a lot more like a seasoned user of the form
That's one of the big reasons i love fighting games, so much variety of styles, self defense and cuture from all around the world!
@@Drago9545 fuck yeah! Even things like, I did Yoshin Kenpo when I was younger, and Kazuyas stance is EXACTLY the stance we're taught!
I'll never forget Virtua Fighter's Akira badass 3 hit combo that took a huge chunk of the life bar. It was so odd that the main character of the franchise was so hard to play with.
The beauty of Leo's animations in t7 are what drew me to the character to begin with.. Clear and concise with so much feeling of impact
and the voice actress bro, those "ngeeeehhh" is music to my ear. I fucking love Leo so much
The only place I can ever see t7 Leo appreciation, it feels like everyone forgot them. 😭
I like how everyone mentions Leo but not Feng in tekken lol.
@@Arcbuddha Feng does kempo though.
@@Arcbuddha Yea, Feng does Kempo, not Bajiquan.
I dunno if you'd really care to do it again but it'd be dope to see you cover other martial arts representation in fighting games because this instantly became one of my favorite vids from you.
First thought Capoeira, we know to hate it because of Eddy Gordo, but I want to know more
Same here! I’d love to see a piguaquan next!
You'll be getting your wish in Style Select
The " I do not know what it is like to hit a man twice" is such a raw quote
Huh for some reason I never realized Enkidu used Baji.
As for my favorite characters who use Bajiquan outside of Enkidu are all Type-Moon characters. Kirei Kotomine, Li Shuwen, and Miyako Arima
It’s funny that even though they all practice the same style they’re not alike in the slightest.
Shenlong from Bloody Roar is the one that I remember the most... And you got to love MK for their neverending amount of "resources"
Have a great day, thanks for these videos
But shenlong was never a bajiquan stylist.
Long, the original guy was a master of kempo, but strangely has many moves resembling bajiquan, maybe the styles are quite similar.
Shenlong used mostly leg variants of longs mostly hand based style.
Why did I never. Freakin. Realized. That my favorite characters to play in fighting games tends to use Bajiquan? GREAT video!
This video is ESSENTIAL viewing for all fighting game fans. Sharing this. And THANK you for this.
Ngl that quote is fire as hell
It's nice to see Touhou Hisoutensoku included in a fighting game video. Thank you
So cool to see Hisoutensoku in the examples. I'd love to see a video on the touhou fighting games, especially the post-13.5 ones with how unusual they are.
Great video. I love seeing Virtua Fighter getting some love from time to time
I studied some bajiquan and I love the style. Especially the "iron shoulder", as I used to call it.
As a -Fate fan- fan of Karin and Enkidu, Meiling main in Hisoutensoku and Miyako main in Type Lumina, I smiled like an absolute fool watching this video.
My impression is that it's very easy to convey and is simple enough that it isn't necessarily limited to a specific body type or personality type. If you've practiced how to draw Baji Quan then you can slap it onto basically anyone in a different project, whereas if you actually went out of your way to find something more unique that works better for the character then there isn't really a guarantee.
Also, the style basically has built-in key frames as opposed to many soft martial arts styles and even a lot of hard martial arts style. It's something that you can easily show in static manga frames, or easily convey in fast-paced animation be it in anime or video games. And there is a feedback loop, where due to other series using it, someone making a new character will be more likely to consider it as opposed to some obscure fighting style like Turkish Oil Wrestling.
In case you haven't picked up, I think it is WAY overexposed and often just slapped onto a character just so the creator can convey "they know martial arts" rather than saying anything about their personality or physicality.
It conveys "well trained." Style doesn't necessarily need to convey personality, because part of training in any field is to override base instincts with actual skill and knowledge.
Same thing he's mentioned with Melty Blood designs where overt appearances aren't a necessity for a character to have personality.
@@seokkyunhong8812 Point I'm saying is that you can convey a ton of personality simply through a character's choice of martial art, though.
For instance, Feng Wei in Tekken. His style is not said to be it, but it's obviously Hung Gar. Hung Gar is a stable, powerful style that emphasizes extremely long portions of training to simply standing in horse stance. This tells you already that Feng is heavily dedicated to fighting, he is patient, determined, and values strength above all else.
Then let's look at how even using the same style, you can have the way that they use it differently to contrast their characters. Like Sagat's powerful, stable, patient Muay Thai that is built more on the style's kicks compared to Adon's hyper aggressive mobile Muay Thai that heavily goes for the elbow and knee attacks.
Geese Howard, there's another example, in a case of someone who uses a fighting style that his body isn't even exactly built for. Usually, Aikido is used by smaller and weaker characters to convey that they need to redirect power to fight. Geese, however, uses it to convey his strength and dominance because you can tell from his physique just how strong he is, so not only can he smash your face in with his own muscle but he can turn your own attacks against you.
Those are just a few examples of how simply picking the right fighting style can add so much personality to a character. It is capable of showing so much more than just "they learned martial arts." Baji has its place being an iconic fighting style but is it really worth it when you get to the point where it's basically "every game NEEDS at least two or three characters who just use Baji just to have Baji and everyone who uses it should just use the same moves in the same way"?
@@Zetact_ you CAN
You don't need to is my point. Because style being the character is just a different way of making the character one note. As an example, sumo characters except Hinako all lean into sumo super hard, and they all suck for it.
The fact that bajiquan says so little is a positive thing as users are allowed to be their own characters by other avenues.
I couldn’t agree more with the bit that starts at 6:47.
As a heads up, the "quan" (fist) character that you see in a lot of Chinese martial arts styles is pronounced more like "chuen".
Nevertheless, this was a solid video, and I love the research you put into it and the several examples you included.
every time he says ba ji kwan I die a little bit inside.
@@jianng7795 same
@@jianng7795 Same.
@@jianng7795 same
@@milk2312 same. He can pronounce the Japanese but he doesn't research the pronunciation of the Chinese pronunciation.
2:55 GOD DAMN! You can almost See the Force he's exerting!
Good vid. I'm surprised that SFV's Akira was missing in all the footage. She's kinda Capcom's bajiquan character right now.
Linear movement? Closing the distance? A single decisive strike? Now I'm even more convinced that the Pokemon Urshifu was inspired by Bajiquan. Or at least its Single Strike form.
I just looked up a picture of Ushifu and he's literally doing the Bajiquan elbow strike!
Dude urshifu literally looks exactly like akira I mean cmon
@@SugarPunch Look up its signature move Wicked Blow. It looks exactly like a stepping thrust punch from the enemy's POV!
@@SquidwardProfilePic Yeah, I know that, and when I read about it I thought it was referencing Li Shuwen. But nobody I talked to cared about that when it first came out.
Both Urshifu forms refer to Bajiquan and Piguaquan respectively.
Mes sitting down with me lunch pondering what to watch as I eat
A.B.I: Have an interesting video topic with Virtua Fighter on the thumbnail
Me; yessir
At first, I thought this video was going to be about Akira. lol
Okay, I know you said "no more Mortal Kombat videos" but that last part of the video reminded me about how someone said the martial arts in Mortal Kombat (The 3D titles) weren't authentic, can you make a video about that?
At least in video games, hitting someone with your shoulder and sending them flying through the fighting arena is a great feeling!
The speculations you made about how full contact fighting as seen in MMA has overshadowed other and more diverse Martial Arts seriously struck a chord with me. I fuckin love Martial Arts. It's endlessly fascinating and exciting to see such a wide variety of styles and techniques from all around the world and from all across time that are both similar and vastly different from one another. And while I certainly understand the significance and appeal of MMA (especially as someone who used to be a fan of it in high school), it really starts to feel stale after a while watching UFC matches where it feels like every match is between a pair of Thai Boxers who also know Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu or something. I think your observation about appreciating the diversity of Martial Arts perfectly sums up one of the reasons why I love the Fighting Game genre so much, even on the occasion when the presence of real life fighting styles is minimal within them.
Yeah since fighting games are fantasy they’re able to make pretty much any Martial Art look cool and feel how they look. Sadly though we’re in the real world where practically and efficiently rule or all things so more unique fight styles just aren’t ain’t practical anymore
@@hyperdreamer9483 Yeah I mean I wouldn't expect to be strolling down the street and suddenly see a pair of bystanders get into it where one of them starts performing Capoeira or something. And I do also understand and value the practicality of fighting styles. I just really love variety, especially when it comes to stuff like this.
@@BenOlsberg1995 Yeah, and it sucks that not all martial arts can work IRL but at least they’re neat to see and learn about
@@hyperdreamer9483 Definitely agree about that latter detail especially. Any time I hear the name of a new fighting style I'm not familiar with I always have to stop whatever I'm doing and look it up to learn about it. That's part of the reason I love fighting games like Tekken or Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat (in some instances anyway) so much, because they feature such a wide variety of martial arts, even if not all of them are real, so it gives me incentive to learn about them to see which of them are at' the very least.
I really love these videos about martial arts in fighting games, they are so interesting! Do you think you can do an episode on Muay Thai? I love seeing it represented in fighting games
3:14 Leo-chan!! First character i learned Tekken with in T6 and fighting games in general, 2007 the year i stopped mashing #BajiquanGang.
8:15 I knew where this was headed lmfao, you gotta make this a series of videos, was truly awesome to watch
Just random stab of MK at the end? Makes sense.
2:08 Holy fuck, that is the most badass thing I've ever heard
I was hoping Li Mei's Bajiquan from MK: Deadly Alliance would make it in and get roasted.
Yes, it did! :D
So I think i understand what you're getting at with what you said about MMA and that sort of "practical" style, but I think there's definitely something to be said for the art of all of that practicality! I'm not gonna argue that it's not as beautiful in the traditional definition but I think there is a certain beauty there. And, as you said, Bajiquan was taught with another style so...perhaps it was a Mixed Martial Art?
I fell in love with this style of martial arts when I saw daurgon C. Mikado do it on the game the "Bouncer" with one chained behind his back
wonderful vid A.B.I. I honestly hope this may eventually become a series looking into the history of different martial art styles and their portrayal in fighting games.
I feel like I had a similar journey of connecting with baji, I read the Manga and then not only started noticing how many games include baji but also how they represent the art. At one point in time if a character in a fighting game used baji I would try my darndest to main them. Love this video sooo much
I hear that Smash remix of Min Min’s theme. You have my respect.
So that's enkidu's fighting style origins, damn this is awesome.
Lets all be grateful to Yu Suzuki and his obsession for martial arts. Probably someone would make realistic fighting styles in a game, but he was the first serious about it.
8:25 MK being MK
XD
Another great video. We need more people like you in the FGC. Though, you forgot to show footage of Akira Kazama from Rival Schools & SF5, she also used the style.
I love watching these videos. They satisfy my intrigue of martial arts and also awaken an intrigue and appreciation for 2D fighting games.
I loved Bajiquan since I saw it in the Airmaster manga. Sadly, the character that used this fighting style never made it into the anime.
Li Shuwen in Fate Extra was the most broken Assassin at the time. An Assassin that never breaks its invisible status. Though later it was changed
My man added a clip from Hisoutensoku. This is why i love this channel.
Also, I just love how martial arts styles look in DOA.
Glad to finally know the origin of my favourite moves in all of fighting games (the double-palm strikes and double snap kicks)
I love stalking this fighting style in every game and fighting game possible. Always so satisfying to play and to watch! Thanks for all this background on it, and a quick guide on more games to track down to play it in.
As someone who fell in love with bajiquan in 3s because Yun had a hat, every character who uses this style in fighting games I will play simply finding things that relate to the day when I saw this style. This is definitely one of my favorite videos now
here because Fei Fong Wong of Xenogears uses bajiquan so I was looking up more about the style again. Very interesting to see how many fighting games incorporated its various moves.
Particularly, I love the sudden start/stop movements of its singular arm strikes when watching someone perform its' tao lu.
btw, its pronounced "baji chuan" ;)
think of the Q as being "CH" and the rest follows
It’s me, there’s a beauty to seeing real life fighting styles portrayed wonderfully and media instead of just boring slap sticks
Didn't expect to see Vanguard Princess in the examples, but it was a pleasant surprise
Gonna be pedantic and correct your pronunciation of "Quan" which is pronounced more like "chwen" (Chinese to English alphabet spellings are weird).
It makes more sense if you realize that the Japanese equivalent is pronounced as "Ken", meaning "fist". You can hear the similarities in both languages.
Yeah like how Tekken means iron fist.
Ah, so more like "shu-wen" (spoken real fast) rather than "ku-wan"?
@@goranisacson2502The 'q' is pronounce more like the 'ch' in 'chair'.
If you want to get more technical, Chinese pronunciation differentiates both 'q' and 'ch' sounds. 'q' is spoken with the tongue flat, while 'ch' has the back of the tongue curled.
Technically, it's pronounced Bah-Shii ChuAn.
If you wanna use the Yale romanization of Mandarin. Which is easier to pronounce than Pinyin.
I was wondering if you were gonna use any clips of Hong from the Touhou fighting games. Ya did good, son. 👍
Li Mei is back in the spotlight for MK1! ...She still doesn't do bajiquan.
I like how you brought up the disconnect between MMA and most traditional martial arts, especially kung fu. Note that some traditional martial arts survived the transition to MMA quite nicely -- judo, TKD, karate, and Muay Thai have their representatives in the sport -- but these specific martial arts get combat-tested _constantly_ as they have their own full-contact tournaments.
As beautiful and artful as kung fu is, outside of some old sparring footage of Bruce Lee, we really don't see it tested often.
That said, I need to see an MMA guy try the Bajiquan shoulder tackle as a surprise move, the way the spinning back elbow is used most of the time.
I also love that with every representative of Baji Quan there are almost always ridiculously hard to use. Shenlong from Bloody Roar, Akira from Virtua Fighter etc. Another Chinese Martial Art that I think deserves more representation is Xin Yi Liu He Quan which is argued as one of the first forms of Chinese Martial Arts ever discovered. Gen Fu from DOA, Uriko and Long from Bloody Roar, Gato from MOTW and Wang Jinrei use it and it's one of my favorite forms of Chinese Martial Arts to see and use in Fighting Games period.
Been a big fan of your channel, love the video as always.
"Slight" nitpicking here~ the "quan" part of "bajiquan 八極拳 " should be read as (the way I would spell it in English) "chuan". Like you would say combining the word "chu" (as in "choose") with "yan" (as in Japanese "yen"). You'll see this word "拳" comes up alot in fighting style because it literally means in Chinese "fist/punch", or it can be loosely translated as "style" or any martial art style that uses primarily fist (as in "bajiquan 八極拳" = eight extremist fist/style, "zui quan 醉拳" = drunken fist/style, or "Tang Lang Quan 螳螂拳" = mantis fist/style ).
That word is often spelled with the letter "q", as a Chinese myself, I really never understand why. It comes up in the word "qi 氣" as well, also should be read "chi". ;P
Please keep making awesome videos.
Kenji is one of my favorite mangas, and I really like Bajiwuan representation in games a lot as well. Great video! Hope we see more about other martial arts as well
S+ tier video, would be awesome to see more content about martial arts in fighting games.
So this is the style of character I like that I never knew, I (almost) always picked the chinese fighters in a lot of fighting games because I thought the way they fight it's really cool like Jam, Litchi, Yun and Miyako (even thou she is not chinese) and so on and now I know that is because they use a lot of attacks are inspired by Bajiquan.
very dope video
only concern is that the "quan" is pronounced like "chuen", since it is fist in Chinese. Primary reason I care is because my dad was actually raised with bajiquan and even taught it.
開門八極拳; Kāimén bā jí quán; (English: Gate-Opening Eight Extremities Fist)
Love the content as always though, thank you for the rep, mr fighting game animation man.
Interesting thoughts
I think it's mainly cuz of its very disciplined-looking strikes, they make for easy and distinguishable key poses
Also cuz of the nature of extremes being romanticized in Japanese culture... The idea of One Strike is very appealing
Love the MK shot there; they just assigned fighting styles in those games without even considering what they are or even trying to research them in order to accurately portray them
When I see this I immediately think of Long in Bloody Road.
Remember that classic gem?
Most definitely
This was pretty cool to see. I didn't know where that iconic shoulder charge came from, but I can easily see why so many animator use it. It's got a great end pose, and it's a full body motion so there can be a good amount of anticipation frames before it comes out to indicate power. And from the video, I can see there were plenty of other eye-catching poses that Bajiquan utilizes too, making it very good for video games and animation. I'd be interested in seeing you cover other styles of martial arts. If Bajiquan is summed up with "I do not know what it's like to hit a man twice," Wing Chun must be "I don't know what it's like to hit a man less than 100 time a second." At least, that what the Ip Man movies left me thinking, haha.
Recommendation, could you cover Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid on your channel, eventually?
Seeing that clip from Symphogear XV reignited my desire for a Symphogear fighting game just so we could see Hibiki and Genjuro doing Bajiquan techniques left and right.
Now, this was a blast. Seeing Bajiquan in games makes me wanna find a school that teaches it.
Do you plan to make similar videos with different martial arts?
You forgot about the "other" Akira...
Akira Kazama from Rival Schools and SF5! Plus her biker aesthetics were really cool! Great character development too.
This was excellent! This was always one of my favorite styles to behold in any form of media! Beautiful...
Yea. Fun fact akira kazama was originally name of main heroine in kenji manga, which also a biker, tho she doesnt do any martial arts.
Capcom basically just make new character with same name, and made her a biker also lol, but this time she can do the baji compared to akira kazama in kenji.
I think Akira Yuki do the most realistic and accurate portrayal or Bajiquan then again his movement was captured and based on a real life famous Bajiquan practioner in the 90's
For the most part, I only knew this as Kokoro's "Baji dance" in Dead or Alive, but it's nice seeing all the history behind it!
My absolute favorite tracks from SC, perfect
Also I'm pretty certain the Q in Quan is pronounced like "tch", making it "tchu-ahn" and not "kwahn"
Yeah. That's what I thought
4:30 Oh hey, there's Meiling. Always glad to see Touhou 'round these parts.
Really fun and interesting video as always, love ur content!
If you noticed, most Bajiquan fighters have their feet perpendicular to each other in a fighting stance. We usually call this a 60/40 stance, in which the back leg is holding more of the body weight, while the front foot is lighter, being able to get off of the ground for an attack. For the stomping, we don't necessarily 'STOMP' onto the ground with force, but rather raise the foot and drop/fall our body weight onto the foot, making the signature 'STOMP' sound. This allows for a larger force to be applied to to the strikes while using the spine as the 'handle of the whip'. You would in a way 'explode', having your limb come out to strike with control. Do take this with a grain of salt, since these applications come from my Sifu's Wu Tan Lineage of Bajiquan. There are 9 lineages in total and I'm not sure if they all go in the same methodology, but the form does stay the same.
Bajiquan is believed to be one of the bases for what would become Karate.
There are some similarities, to be sure, and Japan really seems to like the style ()the Kenji manga definitely helped with that), But you will find that the style that shares the most in terms of origin material for Karate is 5 Ancestors Fist. Check out the earlier Okinawan forms, and 5 Ancestors Fist, and you'll see what I mean.