User blog:SPARTAN 119/Saeko Busujima (Highschool of the Dead) vs Mai Kawasumi (Kanon)

Saeko Busujima, the schoolgirl turned sadistic, katana-wielding zombie slayer who takes out her sociopathic urges on the living dead

VS

Mai Kawasumi, the longsword-wielding girl whose "extracurricular activies" consist of battling mysterious "demons" in her school after hours.

WHO IS DEADLIEST?!

=Combatants=

Saeko Busujima
Saeko is a third-year in high school and president of Fujimi High School's kendo club. She is extremely skilled with a sword and close combat. Not much is known about her family except that her father had traveled abroad on a self-defense conference before the advent of the Outbreak. It is also mentioned in the manga that the Busujima family has been protecting the throne for ages, therefore all Busujima members are skilled in combat.Saeko is shown to be a kind, caring, strong and very reliable person, which is pointed out by other characters. Saeko often considers the feelings of other members of the group and often ensures their well being. Later on in the series, Saeko reveals her sadistic side while fighting "them", and she explains to Takashi that she was this way before the start of the story.Four years prior to the start of the story, a man had attempted to assault her. Armed with her bokken (wooden sword), she easily disposed of the would-be assailant, breaking several of his bones before the police came. This experience revealed her sadistic tendencies; she enjoyed holding the power to inflict pain on another human being. In addition to her reliance on killing the undead in order to survive, Saeko continually struggles with this part of herself, which causes momentary weaknesses in her otherwise strong demeanor.(from HOTD wiki)

Mai Kawasumi
Note: Spoilers are marked by black spaces, highlight to reveal text:

Mai Kawasumi is a major character in the visual novel and later anime Kanon. Mai was girl from an unspecified city in Japan, who possessed mysterious healing powers. As a child, Mai spent time with her mother, who was hospitalized with an unspecified disease, praying for her recovery and at one point crying on her hand. Mysteriously, Mai's mother recovered, and in so doing, Mai discovered the her tears in particular have mysterious healing powers.

During her teenage years, Mai was feared by most of her classmates as mysterious accidents seemed to occur around her, specifically damage to school property. Because of this, Mai has a quiet, shy personality and has few friends, except for her best friend Sayuri Kurata and protagonist Yuichi Aizawa. In truth, Mai is involved in the damage to school property, namely, she spends her nights at the school fighting mysterious formless "demons" in the building, armed with a longsword, though it is not clear where she got a hold of the weapon. Mai always keeps the sword somewhere where she can easily access it, feeling weak without it.

These "demon" attacks become more intense when Mai meets Yuichi Aizawa in the school building after hours, and observes her fighting the demons. During the course of the series, Mai is invited to school dance by Yuichi, which results in an attack by at least one "demon", which Mai is forced to fight, resulting in severe damage to the gymnasium. Mai only narrowly escapes expulsion for this, and later Sayuri Kurata is attacked by one of the "demons", with Mai finding her unconcious in a school bathroom. Around the same time, mysterious black marks start appearing on Mai's body, and Mai starts to feel pain after killing a "demon".

Mai fights a final climactic battle with the "demons", in which Yuichi attempts to aid her armed with a bokken, but ends up only being attacked by a "demon". Mai successfully defeats a group of demons, but the "black marks" keep growing on her body. Mai and Yuichi are then confronted by another demon, and Yuichi finally realizes it is in fact a "dark side" to her powers. The reason Mai feels pain after slaying a demon is because she is literally killing part of herself. At this point, Mai attempts to commit suicide by stabbing herself with her sword. Mai is saved, however, by a manifestation of healing powers, which save her life. At this point Yuichi remembers that he had met Mai before during their childhood ten years earlier. Yuichi and Mai used to play in an empty lot, until the high school Mai and Yuichi would attend was constructed on the site of the field. Mai made up story of demons, actually construction machinery, destroying the field, and phoned Yuichi to come help "battle the demons", but Yuichi replied that he was moving that day, and Mai never saw him again until they met ten years later. Because this, which Mai viewed as something of a destruction of her childhood memories, the "demons" manifested in her school years later. Mai is shown to be a lover of nature and animals, and wishes to be a veterinarian. =Weapons=

Katana (Saeko)
The Katana is a curved, single edged sword originating from Japan, and are one of the nation's most iconic weapons. Originally used by the Samurai of Feudal Japan, the weapon has also come to be commonly known as a "Samurai Sword". The length of the blade is often somewhere between 60 to 73 centimeters in length. The metal of the blade is created from Tamahagane, a hard, high carbon steel for the cutting edge and sides, and the tough, low carbon steel for the core and back, giving the blade a hard edge, while allowing it to absorb blows without shattering. The gentle curvature of the blade adds to the weapons cutting power by focusing the force of the blow on a smaller area. This curve is achieved during quenching: the sword maker coats the blade with several layers of a wet clay slurry, putting a much thinner layer on the front of the blade. When the blade is thrust in water, the front of the blade cools more quickly and hardens, while the slower cooling in the back of the blade reduces lattice strain on the spine, causing the blade to curve backwards. The Katana was not designed at all for penetrating armor. It was designed to make quick and decisive slashes at weak points in armor. Specifically the throat. This required extreme speed and accuacy to wield. And that required an extreme amount of training and discipline to wield. It is generally considered to be one of the greatest sword designs ever.

Longsword (Mai)
The term "longsword" refers to a longer sword than the arming sword, while having the same basic shape of the arming sword, but having a length of up to about one and a half meters, designed more for thrusting, but still capable of cutting. The weapon could be used in either one or two handed, using two hands for powerful slashing attacks, and one hand for faster thrusts and cuts. The sword was used from the mid 1300s to the mid 1500s.

=Combat Style/Technique=

Saeko Busujima


Saeko Busujima's sword technique seems to be based on traditional Japanese sword fighting, including kendo and kenjutsu. Saeko seems to favor mostly slashing attacks, notably a kendo-style downward strike aimed at the top of the head, as well as various diagonal slashing attacks and horizontal strikes to the neck, easily capable of decapitation. Saeko has also been seen to at times go for low leg strikes to knock an opponent off their feet. She will also use thrusting attacks, but mostly to finish off downed enemies. Saeko is also capable of drawing her sword and performing a lethal slashing attack in one fluid motion. Saeko is supremely agile, proving herself capable of sidestepping an attacking zombie and then striking the back of the head in a spinning motion, and even evading attacks with flips, rolls, and other maneuvers. Saeko also combines her sword techniques with karate-style kicking attacks, including a jump kick that allows her to position herself on top of an enemy for a finishing blow, as well as judo-style throws, using the enemies momentum against the to flip them over her head. Saeko has performed a few different "special techniques" in her time fighting the zombie apocalypse, including a spinning jump attack propelled by the momentum from a motorcycle driven by Takashi Komuro, capable of mowing down a group of zombies, as well as a jumping attack from an pedestrian overpass and, perhaps most impressively, a "front-flip slash", in which she jumps and performs multiple front flips while holding her sword, resulting in a circular vertical slashing motion.

Mai Kawasumi
Mai Kawasumi takes full advantage of the fact that her longsword can be used with both a one and two-handed grip. In general, her sword attacks consist of powerful, two-handed slashes, and quick, one-handed slashes and thrust. Mai backs up her sword attacks with practically superhuman agility, being able run very quickly and jumping up to about six feet in the air and push off walls for additional momentum, allowing her to jump about twenty feet horizontal distance down a corridor. Due to her great agility, combined with the fact that her adversaries are amorphous "demons" ranging from about seven to (in one case) thirty feet tall, Mai tends to favor jumping attacks, both slashes and downward thrusts. In one case, Mai uses the higher plain of a table to reach a jump height of about ten to twelve feet, and then attack with a downward thrust. In another instance, she attacks a 30-foot tall "demon" by jumping from a second or third story window and attacking with a "front-flip slash" similar to one used by Saeko, slicing the "demon" clean in half. Mai also seems to have near-superhuman strength, in one instance cutting through road signs, a storage tank, a bicycle, and even breaking a small, roughly waist-high cinder block wall with her sword.

=X-Factors and Statistics=

Explanations
As far as physical size is concerned, Saeko is taller and has a greater mass, given the physique of both girls, this mass is likely all muscle, meaning that Saeko might be slightly stronger, and definitely more difficult to knock off her feet. As for the measurements, those mean... absolutely nothing for the purposes of this match, I simply placed them in for "teh lolz" after noticing that both girls had official measurements (though, if you average them out, you will notice that Mai is a slightly wider target... by all of 2.6 centimeters, so yeah, meaningless). Now that were through with that aside, Mai takes a slight edge in agility due to her six-foot jumping and wall jumping abilities. As for brutality and killer instinct, Saeko's violent, sadistic personality give her a definite edge, as, while Mai has never attacked an actual human (not counting taking a thrust at another girl when she surprised her, and threatening to stab Yuichi in the neck if the player chooses to try to grope her breasts in the visual novel), Saeko has beaten a man who attacked her nearly to death and killed countless zombies, which while not fully human as far as sentience, still bleed etc, and is known to take great pleasure in causing others pain and injury. Mai takes intelligence as well, as, assuming she has any change of actually achieving her ambitions of becoming veterinarian, she must have above average intelligence. Mai's also possesses healing powers that allow her limited regenerative abilities, however they do not work on every injury Mai sustains, it has saved her life when she attempted suicide by falling on her own sword. However, she will still be disabled for some time by the wound, and for the purposes of this match, will not save her from things like decapitation or destruction of the brain. Saeko takes a slight edge in swordsmanship, due to her related edge in training, having taken martial arts classes, while Mai simply practices with a bokken, at one point accompanied by Yuichi and Sayuri. While Mai's physical strength is shown more prominently, when she goes berserk and destroys a bunch of objects, most of them, with the possible exception of the cinder block wall and the bicycle could possibly be destroyed by a trained swordsman (depending on the weight of the blade). Also, one must take into account the "stylization" present in anime, which no doubt embellished Mai's destructive capacity. Finally, Mai takes mental health, as while she is troubled by the appearances of "demons" in her school, especially after they start attacking Yuichi and Sayuri, Mai does not have near the mental issues that Saeko has, with her sociopathic personality, which she sometimes struggles to control.