Quote Originally Posted by Drolyt View Post
"Best" is a matter of opinion. I'll agree Katanas are somewhat overacted, especially the shape, but as far as the quality of the iron Japanese swordsmithing was rivaled only by Damascus steel.
Quality of the iron? Japanese iron deposits were of practically lowest value possible. All that workmanship and man hours put into the sword not even entirely compensated for poor materials and resulted in extremely impractical to repair blade.

People who sunk workmanship into actual improvement of the weapon produced blades of massively better quality - say, Japanese smith used 4-5 kinds of steel; his Viking contemporary used 8-12 producing a blade that didn't needed fat, dull back to ensure sword didn't broke on anything harder.

Hammer is more egregious.
Again, weapon being a combination of hammer and blade is a pick, not hammer, specific kind of pick being decided by nature of the blade.

Not that it isn't extremely dumb as drawn.