Before I get into the reasons why I firmly believe this to be the case with Haku Ki, I figure I should explain why I am making this thread.
I see people online a lot of the time discrediting Haku Ki as a fighting General, for a couple of reasons, and you could say that this post exists to dispel those reasons as well as state my own opinion/prediction. The two most common reasons that I see people claiming that Haku Ki was not a fighting General are as follows:
1. Ren Pa described Haku Ki as an exceedingly cautious man, and thus he isn’t someone who personally seeks out a fight
2. Haku Ki is meant to be the “old” 6 Great General parrallel to the “new” 6 Great General Ousen. In other words, Ousen parallels Haku Ki in the future Qin GG system, and Ousen doesn’t fight much and thus Haku Ki probably wasn’t a fighting General either.
I’ll address both of these points later. But first, let’s actually get this post started:
I believe that not only was Haku Ki a Martial Great General, meaning he was a Great General who could fight for himself, but I believe Haku Ki was one of the strongest characters in the entire manga in terms of his fighting prowess. Hopefully by the end of this post, I will have any disbelievers that may be here believing the hype as well.
To be clear, I also believe Haku Ki was a top tier tactician, and I’m not saying that him being a martial General means he was lacking in tactics. If you’ve got Ousen stealing moves from your play-book, obviously this means you were a top tier tactician yourself. I simply believe Haku Ki was both top tier tactically and a top tier warrior at the same time, just like Ren Pa and Ou Ki. That said, Let’s get started.
1. Explicit Confirmation
It was not only stated once, but twice:
Ko Shou was the only member of Qin’s 6 Great Generals to reach the rank through virtue of his tactics and nothing else. And let’s look at Ten’s words here closely for a second:
“Unlike the other five who built their legends on martial prowess...”
Interpret this as you will, but in my opinion the clear meaning of these words is that all of the Qin 6GG with the exception of Ko Shou, elevated themselves to the rank of Great General through their individual martial prowess and not their tactics. This isn’t to say that the other Five didn’t learn top tier tactics as they grew, but it seems to me like the Five GG outside of Ko Shou were all prodigious warriors before they were tacticians.
Regardless of whether or not you chose to interpret this scene in that manner, it’s pretty plainly obvious that Hara wants you to know that every one of the 6GG minus Ko Shou had at least some combat ability themselves.
2. Hype/Design
When Haku Ki is first revealed to us, this is how Hara drew him:
Leading his troops from horseback, Glaive in hand. While this is the only time we’ve seen Haku Ki actually wielding a weapon, this is far from the only time Haku Ki has been portrayed as..for lack of a better word, insane:
Hara is always portraying Haku Ki as a raging-eyes-blood-shotted madman, even when just drawing a casual portrait of him:
We can see that Hara wants to clearly emphasize how bloodlusted Haku Ki seems to be. And don’t worry, we’ll address how Haku Ki can be both “cautious” and also look like a raging lunatic at the same time. I believe Hara is doing this deliberately but more on that later.
Next, let’s take a good look at Haku Ki next to the other Great Generals, mainly Ouki:
Take a look at how Haku Ki compares to Ou Ki in size. We already know the true extent of Lips-Sama’s massive girth:
Joking aside, Ouki is known for his extreme stature, which in and of itself contributed to his strength. Ouki was an incredibly large and muscular man, which spoke to his extreme strength in combat.
Haku Ki looks to be roughly the same size as Ouki, maybe even slightly larger, though Ouki and Haku Ki seem (at least in my opinion) to be dwarfed in size by the massive Ou Kotsu. If Hara wants us to see Haku Ki as primarily a tactician, he sure picked an extremely physically imposing character design to emphasize that lol. I believe that Haku Ki’s massive stature points to the fact that he was an incredibly strong warrior, probably comparable to Ouki overall.
Let’s look again at this panel:
This was the page in which Hara was introducing and naming each of the Qin 6, and I believe that the illustrations of each of them were meant to convey information about each character in its own way.
-We know that Ouki was a valorous General who lead his troops from the front during the vital clashes and drew enormous amounts of morale from them, and so Hara drew Ouki charging forward with his troops by his side.
-We know that Ou Kotsu had the greatest brute strength among the Qin 6 and thus was probably a heavily martial General, and so Hara draws him slaying multiple men in one strike.
-We know that Kyou was a very talented warrior who fought with a sword, etc etc etc. you get the point lol.
So if we think that Hara was trying to communicate specific information about each of the Qin 6 in this reveal here, what does that tell us about Haku Ki? It looks to me personally that Haku Ki was a raging warrior with “the Weight of a Great General” that we have been discussing recently lol.
All of this information leads me to believe that Haku Ki will likely be one of the strongest warriors in Kingdom.
3. Explaining Haku Ki’s “cautiousness“
So like I said, I want to give my opinion on the first point I made at the beginning of this post. The claim about Haku Ki is that he was a “cautious” man who never took risks, and therefore that means he himself was not a heavily martial General and probably relied on tactics over martial prowess. Let’s take another look at the source of this quote:
Let’s reiterate what we’ve learned about him really quickly:
-Haku Ki did not take risks
-Haku Ki could not be baited
-Haku Ki would remain relaxed the more his enemies got worked up
-Haku Ki could “see right through” his opponents
And most importantly,
-Ren Pa chasing Haku Ki too far and then being countered by Haku Ki for it, became the norm in his battles with Haku Ki.
From this, we can gather that Haku Ki was a counter-offensive General who fought war by baiting his opponents whilst remaining un-baited himself, and then countering hard when his opponents got too cocky. Even Ren Pa seemingly fell for this repeatedly.
The reason it is important to clarify this, is that the people who say Haku Ki was cautious General and use this to discredit him being a martial General, fundamentally misinterpret Haku Ki’s cautiousness. Haku Ki was not cautious in the sense that he avoided fighting like Ousen does, Haku Ki was cautious in the sense that his opponents would try to bait him but he would never take that bait, and would counter-attack on his own terms and not the terms of his opponent.
How hard would Haku Ki counter attack? Well,
4. Ousen is the New Haku Ki
To address the second point that people use to downplay Haku Ki:
“Ousen doesn’t fight, and he is the new Haku Ki and thus Haku Ki didn’t fight either”
A few things:
1. Ousen can fight, he just chooses not to and relies on tactics most of the time.
2. I know people love parallels between the old and the new, and paralleling is fine for paralleling’s sake, but we can’t restrict the abilities of the old GG based on their imagined parallels. It’s not fair to Haku Ki to discredit every indication that this dude was a warrior General just because of who we might imagine his newer parallel to be.
That’s all I really have to say on this one lol.
5. Conclusion
To re-iterate,
I think we will find out that Haku Ki was both a top tier tactician and a top tier warrior. The leader of the Qin 6 deserves nothing less.
And to those of you who think Haku Ki won’t be a top tier warrior because that would make him too powerful, I’ll defer to my man Kyou En, who recall had fought 4 of the Qin 6 as well as Ren Pa himself:
Thank you guys for reading :)
@Owl Ki @Patryipe @Blackbeard @Bullet @Shanks @Dark Admiral @Guan Yu @Dovahkiin @Greenbeard @dizzy2341 @PuckTheGreat @MarineHQ62 @NeutralWatcher @RayanOO @Ninjashadow0209 @Arara @Hiragaro @Yo Tan Wa @Xione @FaradaySloth @ranady @Dragomir @Fiji @Den_Den_Mushi
I see people online a lot of the time discrediting Haku Ki as a fighting General, for a couple of reasons, and you could say that this post exists to dispel those reasons as well as state my own opinion/prediction. The two most common reasons that I see people claiming that Haku Ki was not a fighting General are as follows:
1. Ren Pa described Haku Ki as an exceedingly cautious man, and thus he isn’t someone who personally seeks out a fight
2. Haku Ki is meant to be the “old” 6 Great General parrallel to the “new” 6 Great General Ousen. In other words, Ousen parallels Haku Ki in the future Qin GG system, and Ousen doesn’t fight much and thus Haku Ki probably wasn’t a fighting General either.
I’ll address both of these points later. But first, let’s actually get this post started:
I believe that not only was Haku Ki a Martial Great General, meaning he was a Great General who could fight for himself, but I believe Haku Ki was one of the strongest characters in the entire manga in terms of his fighting prowess. Hopefully by the end of this post, I will have any disbelievers that may be here believing the hype as well.
To be clear, I also believe Haku Ki was a top tier tactician, and I’m not saying that him being a martial General means he was lacking in tactics. If you’ve got Ousen stealing moves from your play-book, obviously this means you were a top tier tactician yourself. I simply believe Haku Ki was both top tier tactically and a top tier warrior at the same time, just like Ren Pa and Ou Ki. That said, Let’s get started.
1. Explicit Confirmation
It was not only stated once, but twice:
Ko Shou was the only member of Qin’s 6 Great Generals to reach the rank through virtue of his tactics and nothing else. And let’s look at Ten’s words here closely for a second:
“Unlike the other five who built their legends on martial prowess...”
Interpret this as you will, but in my opinion the clear meaning of these words is that all of the Qin 6GG with the exception of Ko Shou, elevated themselves to the rank of Great General through their individual martial prowess and not their tactics. This isn’t to say that the other Five didn’t learn top tier tactics as they grew, but it seems to me like the Five GG outside of Ko Shou were all prodigious warriors before they were tacticians.
Regardless of whether or not you chose to interpret this scene in that manner, it’s pretty plainly obvious that Hara wants you to know that every one of the 6GG minus Ko Shou had at least some combat ability themselves.
2. Hype/Design
When Haku Ki is first revealed to us, this is how Hara drew him:
Leading his troops from horseback, Glaive in hand. While this is the only time we’ve seen Haku Ki actually wielding a weapon, this is far from the only time Haku Ki has been portrayed as..for lack of a better word, insane:
Hara is always portraying Haku Ki as a raging-eyes-blood-shotted madman, even when just drawing a casual portrait of him:
We can see that Hara wants to clearly emphasize how bloodlusted Haku Ki seems to be. And don’t worry, we’ll address how Haku Ki can be both “cautious” and also look like a raging lunatic at the same time. I believe Hara is doing this deliberately but more on that later.
Next, let’s take a good look at Haku Ki next to the other Great Generals, mainly Ouki:
Take a look at how Haku Ki compares to Ou Ki in size. We already know the true extent of Lips-Sama’s massive girth:
Joking aside, Ouki is known for his extreme stature, which in and of itself contributed to his strength. Ouki was an incredibly large and muscular man, which spoke to his extreme strength in combat.
Haku Ki looks to be roughly the same size as Ouki, maybe even slightly larger, though Ouki and Haku Ki seem (at least in my opinion) to be dwarfed in size by the massive Ou Kotsu. If Hara wants us to see Haku Ki as primarily a tactician, he sure picked an extremely physically imposing character design to emphasize that lol. I believe that Haku Ki’s massive stature points to the fact that he was an incredibly strong warrior, probably comparable to Ouki overall.
Let’s look again at this panel:
This was the page in which Hara was introducing and naming each of the Qin 6, and I believe that the illustrations of each of them were meant to convey information about each character in its own way.
-We know that Ouki was a valorous General who lead his troops from the front during the vital clashes and drew enormous amounts of morale from them, and so Hara drew Ouki charging forward with his troops by his side.
-We know that Ou Kotsu had the greatest brute strength among the Qin 6 and thus was probably a heavily martial General, and so Hara draws him slaying multiple men in one strike.
-We know that Kyou was a very talented warrior who fought with a sword, etc etc etc. you get the point lol.
So if we think that Hara was trying to communicate specific information about each of the Qin 6 in this reveal here, what does that tell us about Haku Ki? It looks to me personally that Haku Ki was a raging warrior with “the Weight of a Great General” that we have been discussing recently lol.
All of this information leads me to believe that Haku Ki will likely be one of the strongest warriors in Kingdom.
3. Explaining Haku Ki’s “cautiousness“
So like I said, I want to give my opinion on the first point I made at the beginning of this post. The claim about Haku Ki is that he was a “cautious” man who never took risks, and therefore that means he himself was not a heavily martial General and probably relied on tactics over martial prowess. Let’s take another look at the source of this quote:
Let’s reiterate what we’ve learned about him really quickly:
-Haku Ki did not take risks
-Haku Ki could not be baited
-Haku Ki would remain relaxed the more his enemies got worked up
-Haku Ki could “see right through” his opponents
And most importantly,
-Ren Pa chasing Haku Ki too far and then being countered by Haku Ki for it, became the norm in his battles with Haku Ki.
From this, we can gather that Haku Ki was a counter-offensive General who fought war by baiting his opponents whilst remaining un-baited himself, and then countering hard when his opponents got too cocky. Even Ren Pa seemingly fell for this repeatedly.
The reason it is important to clarify this, is that the people who say Haku Ki was cautious General and use this to discredit him being a martial General, fundamentally misinterpret Haku Ki’s cautiousness. Haku Ki was not cautious in the sense that he avoided fighting like Ousen does, Haku Ki was cautious in the sense that his opponents would try to bait him but he would never take that bait, and would counter-attack on his own terms and not the terms of his opponent.
How hard would Haku Ki counter attack? Well,
4. Ousen is the New Haku Ki
To address the second point that people use to downplay Haku Ki:
“Ousen doesn’t fight, and he is the new Haku Ki and thus Haku Ki didn’t fight either”
A few things:
1. Ousen can fight, he just chooses not to and relies on tactics most of the time.
2. I know people love parallels between the old and the new, and paralleling is fine for paralleling’s sake, but we can’t restrict the abilities of the old GG based on their imagined parallels. It’s not fair to Haku Ki to discredit every indication that this dude was a warrior General just because of who we might imagine his newer parallel to be.
That’s all I really have to say on this one lol.
5. Conclusion
To re-iterate,
I think we will find out that Haku Ki was both a top tier tactician and a top tier warrior. The leader of the Qin 6 deserves nothing less.
And to those of you who think Haku Ki won’t be a top tier warrior because that would make him too powerful, I’ll defer to my man Kyou En, who recall had fought 4 of the Qin 6 as well as Ren Pa himself:
Thank you guys for reading :)
@Owl Ki @Patryipe @Blackbeard @Bullet @Shanks @Dark Admiral @Guan Yu @Dovahkiin @Greenbeard @dizzy2341 @PuckTheGreat @MarineHQ62 @NeutralWatcher @RayanOO @Ninjashadow0209 @Arara @Hiragaro @Yo Tan Wa @Xione @FaradaySloth @ranady @Dragomir @Fiji @Den_Den_Mushi
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