I'm going to be breaking down, bit by bit, how Zoro's fights work because I feel there's a general misunderstanding of this topic in the community.
I'll start with Zoro's finishers or finishing moves for this thread. And I'm mainly going to focus on Post time skip here.
Why you ask? Because post time skip Zoro is the most consistent Zoro in terms of techniques.
Pre time skip is the wild West when it comes to this guy. Things like Ashura, or "Breath of all things", or that one time Zoro created fire from nowhere are to name a few things. There's even things like Sanzen sekai disappearing for 400 chapters since East blue yet Zoro kept getting into tough fights. Point is, pre time skip Zoro is too inconsistent in this topic.
For post time skip, I'm going to focus on three fights. The Hyouzo, Pica and Killer fights.
The main topic I'm going to discuss with regards to finishers is whether Finishers determine Difficulty of the fight or opponent strength. By that I mean does the strength of the finishing move determine how hard the fight was or how strong the opponent was?
My answer to this question is, it's complicated.
For example, the Pica fight ends with a Haki Sanzen Sekai. This move is CONSIDERABLY stronger than the two finishing moves Zoro used on Hyouzo and Killer, those being, Purgatory onigiri and Haki Purgatory Onigiri respectively.
Now does this reflect the "difficulty" of the fight? Well let's see. Pica failed to scratch Zoro throughout the fight. Including the times Zoro uses fewer swords than three. Killer on the other hand was actually able to tag Zoro, and yes there was a number of nerfs and outside interference but consider that Pica had complete control over the battlefield as well and still never got that far. And on the other side, Hyouzo was COMPLETELY DOMINATED.
Based on the assessment, the fight difficulty should be Hyouzo <<< Pica < Killer and yet the strength of the finishing moves are Hyouzo <<< Killer << Pica. Strength here btw is determined by speed and AP (Attack Potency) of the technique.
Therefore we are caught in a situation where the actual amount of energy spent finishing a fight doesn't correspond to the difficulty of the fight.
And a number of you might have caught on by now why there's such a discrepancy. It's because the mechanics of Zoro's fights are complicated compared to luffy or sanji.
As sword fights, there's a discrepancy in how much Attack and defense can be utilised in combat. For example, luffy or sanji brawl with their direct bodies so if luffy can punch a wall with his fist and Sanji can kick the wall, that directly translates into their defense. Luffy fist must have the defense to tank a wall breaking punch and Sanji's leg must have the defense of tanking a wall breaking kick. Their attack and defense are automatically distributed.
This is NOT the case for Zoro. Zoro cutting a wall does not mean Zoro can tank a wall cutting slash on his body. It doesn't even automatically mean that he can tank a wall cutting slash with his swords because blocking with swords is a technique in and of itself which requires you to measure distribution of impact force or else the block will be unsuccessful.
Like I cannot say definitively that Zoro can tank a mountain cutting slash either with his swords or body just because he can produce a mountain cutting slash . Yes even with his swords, he could just as easily block with a bad angle and the force doesn't get dissipated properly. (His best Alternative would be to Parry the attack but I digress)
Of course Oda sort of fixed this with the introduction of Haki but he made sure even Haki couldn't automatically break the rules of sword combat. If Zoro wants to tank his own Mountain cutting slash with his body, he still needs to actively activate Haki on the body part he wants to tank and this is surprisingly a skill Zoro doesnt utilise as of yet. I'm assuming since he has fought for so many years with the principle that swordsmen shouldn't anticipate getting tagged at all, he never really tried practicing the whole putting Haki on your body to tank hits. (Though theoretically he should be able to)
But this principle still applies to Zoro's fights whether he wants it or not and it's what leads to the discrepancies we came across before.
Pica Abandoned a sword clash at the end and put all his Haki into body tanking Zoro's attack. Killer DID NOT do this and instead tried to clash with Zoro.
Killer is presumably more powerful than Pica and yet he was taken down with a much weaker move. Of course. He wanted a clash. Pica gave up and focused on tanking because of the environment advantage he had. Pica just needed to tank the hit and stop Zoro's momentum so that Gravity can take over and Zoro would fall to his death.
And so Zoro used a much stronger attack on Pica since the mechanics of the fight switched to pure attack vs pure defense whereas with Killer, it was a clash where pure attack was verses pure attack and so Killer's defense was lower.
Therefore as we've seen in these three cases, unlike most other fighters in the story, Zoro's sword fights have mechanics that prevent statements like "X used a stronger attack in situation A than situation B so situation A is more difficult than B" from being automatically true.
That's about it on this analysis of finishing moves when it comes to Zoro.
I'll start with Zoro's finishers or finishing moves for this thread. And I'm mainly going to focus on Post time skip here.
Why you ask? Because post time skip Zoro is the most consistent Zoro in terms of techniques.
Pre time skip is the wild West when it comes to this guy. Things like Ashura, or "Breath of all things", or that one time Zoro created fire from nowhere are to name a few things. There's even things like Sanzen sekai disappearing for 400 chapters since East blue yet Zoro kept getting into tough fights. Point is, pre time skip Zoro is too inconsistent in this topic.
For post time skip, I'm going to focus on three fights. The Hyouzo, Pica and Killer fights.
The main topic I'm going to discuss with regards to finishers is whether Finishers determine Difficulty of the fight or opponent strength. By that I mean does the strength of the finishing move determine how hard the fight was or how strong the opponent was?
My answer to this question is, it's complicated.
For example, the Pica fight ends with a Haki Sanzen Sekai. This move is CONSIDERABLY stronger than the two finishing moves Zoro used on Hyouzo and Killer, those being, Purgatory onigiri and Haki Purgatory Onigiri respectively.
Now does this reflect the "difficulty" of the fight? Well let's see. Pica failed to scratch Zoro throughout the fight. Including the times Zoro uses fewer swords than three. Killer on the other hand was actually able to tag Zoro, and yes there was a number of nerfs and outside interference but consider that Pica had complete control over the battlefield as well and still never got that far. And on the other side, Hyouzo was COMPLETELY DOMINATED.
Based on the assessment, the fight difficulty should be Hyouzo <<< Pica < Killer and yet the strength of the finishing moves are Hyouzo <<< Killer << Pica. Strength here btw is determined by speed and AP (Attack Potency) of the technique.
Therefore we are caught in a situation where the actual amount of energy spent finishing a fight doesn't correspond to the difficulty of the fight.
And a number of you might have caught on by now why there's such a discrepancy. It's because the mechanics of Zoro's fights are complicated compared to luffy or sanji.
As sword fights, there's a discrepancy in how much Attack and defense can be utilised in combat. For example, luffy or sanji brawl with their direct bodies so if luffy can punch a wall with his fist and Sanji can kick the wall, that directly translates into their defense. Luffy fist must have the defense to tank a wall breaking punch and Sanji's leg must have the defense of tanking a wall breaking kick. Their attack and defense are automatically distributed.
This is NOT the case for Zoro. Zoro cutting a wall does not mean Zoro can tank a wall cutting slash on his body. It doesn't even automatically mean that he can tank a wall cutting slash with his swords because blocking with swords is a technique in and of itself which requires you to measure distribution of impact force or else the block will be unsuccessful.
Like I cannot say definitively that Zoro can tank a mountain cutting slash either with his swords or body just because he can produce a mountain cutting slash . Yes even with his swords, he could just as easily block with a bad angle and the force doesn't get dissipated properly. (His best Alternative would be to Parry the attack but I digress)
Of course Oda sort of fixed this with the introduction of Haki but he made sure even Haki couldn't automatically break the rules of sword combat. If Zoro wants to tank his own Mountain cutting slash with his body, he still needs to actively activate Haki on the body part he wants to tank and this is surprisingly a skill Zoro doesnt utilise as of yet. I'm assuming since he has fought for so many years with the principle that swordsmen shouldn't anticipate getting tagged at all, he never really tried practicing the whole putting Haki on your body to tank hits. (Though theoretically he should be able to)
But this principle still applies to Zoro's fights whether he wants it or not and it's what leads to the discrepancies we came across before.
Pica Abandoned a sword clash at the end and put all his Haki into body tanking Zoro's attack. Killer DID NOT do this and instead tried to clash with Zoro.
Killer is presumably more powerful than Pica and yet he was taken down with a much weaker move. Of course. He wanted a clash. Pica gave up and focused on tanking because of the environment advantage he had. Pica just needed to tank the hit and stop Zoro's momentum so that Gravity can take over and Zoro would fall to his death.
And so Zoro used a much stronger attack on Pica since the mechanics of the fight switched to pure attack vs pure defense whereas with Killer, it was a clash where pure attack was verses pure attack and so Killer's defense was lower.
Therefore as we've seen in these three cases, unlike most other fighters in the story, Zoro's sword fights have mechanics that prevent statements like "X used a stronger attack in situation A than situation B so situation A is more difficult than B" from being automatically true.
That's about it on this analysis of finishing moves when it comes to Zoro.