Now even foot-soldier's or fodders hyping up someone is special depiction of portrayal and image !?
As far as i know even if one of the greatest GG hype up someone, it doesn't secure or concrete that person's victory or that is going to be the absolute truth.
Kanmei being hyped as the strongest by SHK but MouBu defeats him.
Gyou'un claims to be the martial might but there's Houken, a great heaven of Zhao and also the hero GakuHakuKou.
Renpa claims to be unbeatable by Riboku but he lost.
I totally believe these dialogues are only for hype up the upcoming duel or war and more importantly used for setting up portrayal for villains/opponents of main character side. Though author's narration might be more factual than them.
Here Hara just hyped up GakuHakuKou just because he's going against main character of the series.
First of all Shin isn't the strongest nor he's stronger than every Zhao warrior individually. He still isn't one hundred percent proficient with glaive. Also about GHK forcing Shin to switch weapon that was all because of glaive weight and Shin is still not master of glaive using.
The speed while using glaive showed by Ouki, Renpa, Houken, GyouUn, SentoUn etc is quite high. While using sword, i doubt if GKH could even match with KyouKai or Tou (with him even in strength).
Shin is just not that proficient with glaive yet. As for why he switched back to glaive from sword in the end, that's because fighting against brute strength he also need the powerful force generated by the weight of weapon. He needed something to compensate the difference of brute strength.
As for the rest
@RayanOO already mentioned how Tou can best him and i will add that Tou can do that with ease. Even Kokuyou could do that with his sword skills and power but not with the ease as Tou could do.
Than
@Yo Tan Wa also mentioned about hax and other things. Any experienced with somewhat better strength level could at least see through his skills and weaknesses either before getting defeated or if better win against him. Those old martial beast or seasoned generals might actually oneshot him (if not than defeat with anything lesser than mid diff). Lol
As for the weakness, what weakness Shin found was first with being free (lol) and get faster than opponent but with that he couldn't completely overwhelm opponent or break his sword defense.
Than later he came up with his own cunning way to break that sword defense.
Someone like Gyou'un or GaiMo with there experience and brute strength can definitely overwhelm GKH with their glaive alone. No need to mention OuKi, Renpa, Houken etc.
As for blowing horses, he's having great brute strength and was using Mace so definitely he's going to blow horses and not cut them. Let's compare the great feat of tossing Shin along with horse.
Here as done by GKH who caught Shin off guard and from the side while Shin was just defending. So force is just coming one was and not countered by any opposite force :
Now against Gyou'un, against whom Shin even countered but still see this results and that's with using glaive and not a heavy weapon like mace :
- Thrown far backwards compared to GKH.
- Hadn't used heavy weapon like Mace but Glaive only.
- Doesn't have big build like GKH but still compare the results.
Now lastly about the version of Shin which already defeated Houken, at that moment KyouKai already nerfed him. Heavily injured him and if someone doesn't believe those injuries resulting in lesser strength than I'll say only one thing, with those cutted fingers and deep cut in arm, would houken be able to put full 100% of his strength !?
Going to end this post but before that i forgot about the best dialogues thing about strength and comparison with either verse or against someone :
Nothing cleared about the full strength of SHK but who might believe if MouBu is lesser strength than Ouki !? Don't make this army debate coz all knows that MouBu considers the strongest title as individually being the strongest. For Hara, at that moment Ouki was in the limelight for the story so let's Hype him up. Same as for Renpa against MouGu