Much of the reason the Japanese developed their highly involved process was because there was very little iron and that iron which did exist was full of impurities. However, the end result was free of virtually all impurities and much higher quality than most western blades.
The Katana's tendency to break compared to most European swords isn't a matter of iron quality, but the fact that Japanese blades were very hard and sharp, which has the trade off that a duller blade would be less fragile.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.
Not necessarily. War hammers often had a spike on one end, and the Lucerne hammer is essentially a halberd with a hammer instead of an axe, and I've never heard of either referred to as a pick.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.
I'm going to assume that the seven most powerful swords in the Naruto world were hand crafted from the finest iron.
You really think a Katana would break parrying, say, a longsword?Why, there are swords, and there are swords. I'm not among people who count blades that break when you parry them with real sword to the second category
Katanas were not made for thrusting and could not pierce superior European armors. Neither could a longsword save by thrusting. That advantage would be irrelevant in a world like Naruto without armor. Again, I'll admit the Katana isn't the be all end all, but the Japanese smithing process is the highest quality process that has survived to the present day, and historically was compared to Damascus steel.Exhibit one - chainmail. Simple piece of wargear that made katana virtually useless yet was beatable by longsword's superior thrusts. You need even more superior armour, plate/chain combination to defeat longsword to smaller degree than chain did to katana.
Well, if it had been said at the time "oh I don't have my sword because I lost it when I tried to perform a coup" or something then it would work, but what's his name already made a big deal out of trying to take Zabuza's sword.
As for averting the Sorting Algorithm, it kind of works because it was Kakashi and not the main characters that defeated Zabuza.