Prediction Blog: Thorfinn Karlsefni VS Miyamoto Musashi (Vinland Saga VS Vagabond)

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“Living for the future is more important than trying to avenge the past.”

-Kentaro Miura

Thorfinn “Karlsefni” Thorsson, the viking warrior on a quest for redemption and explorer of Vinland

Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman shaped by the discipline of the way of the sword

Both stand as towering figures of seinen manga, heavily fictionalized versions of historical men, forged by the pursuit of true strength and marked by self-discovery, each reaching a moment of profound emptiness before being reborn into more than they once were. Though masters of combat, both seek to abandon meaningless violence in pursuit of a deeper purpose, yet even the most devoted to peace cannot always escape conflict. Now they stand in a duel where strength and skill matter less than the struggle to preserve their newfound convictions, facing not only each other but the inner demons that once defined them. Will Thorfinn prove himself to be the true warrior, or will Musashi’s blade show who's the invincible under the sun?

Before We Start…

You might be wondering: “Are they fighting to the death or not?” It's extremely obvious for anyone that has read Vinland Saga beyond the War Arc that Thorfinn would NEVER kill anyone again. Likewise, anyone that is up to date with Vagabond knows Musashi doesn't like to kill anymore, and even if he feels stuck in the spiral of death and killing, he feels like he's stabbing himself. While Vagabond didn't properly finish, and the novel Musashi (Vagabond is an adaptation after all) ends right after his final duel, we have an epilogue in “Vagabond: The LAST Manga Exhibition”. Some debate whether its contents are canon, with certain readers treating it as a “what if” scenario, yet its existence is telling. Inoue’s health struggles already led to multiple hiatuses, and it is not a far fetch to believe he wanted to leave a form of closure in case he could not complete the story. Interestingly, Musashi himself lived his final years under similar circumstances in real life, which only reinforces this notion. Within the exhibition, Inoue reframes Musashi’s path, with the violence in his life no longer portrayed as its true purpose, but as a sorrowful stage with lessons to offer.

We want to respect the journey of these characters, so we don't want to force a bloodlusted deathmatch that goes against the themes they now stand for. After all, this connection is literally the heart of the matchup, so why throw it out? With that in mind, and to stay true to their morals, we'll be treating any form of incapacitation, like simply knocking out, as a valid win condition in this blog.

Sorry Thorkell, not today, we hope

“But you guys enjoy doing versus blogs, isn't it a bit contradictory to even enjoy these characters? Wouldn't make them fight still be a bit tone deaf?” Well, quoting Yukimura Makoto, the author of the Vinland Saga manga, “we regard violence as something cool. I thought we shouldn’t ignore this fact. We understand violence is bad, but it’s really cool. We have to accept that.” Both Vinland Saga and Vagabond use violence in their stories a lot, and under pressure, both Thorfinn and Musashi are tempted and enter situations where they see themselves as not having another choice as a last resort. Even Vinland Saga, which is way more explicit about pacifism and no-violence ideals, consistently uses violence a way to criticize it. It’s also not impossible to see these guys having a fight, having the right setting and motivation, like Thorfinn trying to disarm Musashi and things getting worse due to misunderstanding, especially considering their language barrier.

And of course, there will be SPOILERS for the entirety of both the two available seasons of the anime and all of the 220 chapters of Vinland Saga, to all of the current 327 available chapters of Vagabond + the epilogue featured in THE LAST and the ending of the novel Musashi (yes, it’s relevant versus wise). You’ve been warned. We also gladly ask you to please read the Afterwords of this blog as well, proper credits to everyone who contributed will be there too.

Background

Thorfinn

"The spell of war is powerful. To the point where even a man who hates war as much as you ended up raising a weapon."

Once counted among the fiercest of the Jomsvikings, there was a warrior named Thors whose very name struck fear into his enemies. Yet the endless cycle of battle left him disillusioned, and he chose to abandon war, faking his death to begin anew in Iceland. There, he devoted himself to peace and family, determined to shield his children from the bloodshed that had scarred his own past. It was in this spirit that Thors, hoping to guide his son Thorfinn away from violence, once told him, “You have no enemies. No one has any enemies.” This sentence doesn’t make sense, does it? It sounds like a blatant lie, the wishful words of a man who had laid down his sword, and to the young Thorfinn, it felt exactly that. After all, the world had already revealed its cruelty: Askeladd’s band had slain his father before his very eyes. From that moment, Thorfinn enslaved his life to vengeance, chaining himself to the very man who had taken Thors from him. He followed him, fought for him, killed at his command, a captive of his own rage, clinging to the hope of one day facing him in a fair duel.

That day, however, never came, for Askeladd fell to another’s hand, and in that instant the boy who had built his entire world on the promise of revenge was left hollow. “What are you going to live for after I die, Thorfinn?" Askeladd asked him with his dying breath. It was a question the boy could not answer, and so he sank into darkness. Years later, Thorfinn worked as a slave on a farm in Denmark, owned by a man named Ketil. He wasn’t held by chains, but by guilt, plagued by nightmares of the people he had killed and weighed down by his sins. In those moments, his father’s words came back to him: “You have no enemies.” Words he once dismissed as weakness now began to ring as a noble teaching, and from then on he swore to do right by those words and never to take another life. On Ketil’s farm, he met Einar, who became his closest friend. Through their friendship, they began to dream of a land free from hatred. If there were a land across the horizon, a land without war or slaves, a land of peace... that’s not here... somewhere... they would find it, build it, and devote the rest of their lives to it. In time, their hard work granted them freedom, but the farm itself was torn apart by violence when King Canute’s forces moved against Ketil. Thorfinn, no longer the vengeful boy he once was, chose words over blades, stepping before Canute unarmed and offering himself to be beaten if it meant ending the bloodshed. His resolve and refusal to fight swayed even the king, marking the first true test of his vow and the first step toward their dream.

Thorfinn finally returned home, and for the first time in over sixteen years, he reunited with his family and old life. To fund the dream he shared with Einar, Thorfinn set sail eastward with Leif and his stepson, “Bug-Eyes.” Along the way, they were joined by Gudrid, fleeing a forced marriage; Karli, a baby orphaned in the Faroe Islands; and Hild, a woman struggling to let go of vengeance. But their journey toward peace was disrupted as they became entangled in the violent Jomsviking succession war in the Baltic. There, Thorfinn uncovered that it was the Jomsviking commander Floki who had ordered Askeladd to kill his father, and soon became a target himself, pursued by assassins and hunted by the killer Garm, as Floki plotted to secure the Jomsviking chieftaincy for his grandson, Baldr. In a turn of events, Thorfinn was entrusted with the leadership of the Jomsvikings, with the authority to decide the fate of Floki, Baldr and the entire warrior group. When he finally stood before the man behind his father’s death, he chose not to take revenge, but used these new powers to dismantle the order entirely, sparing their lives while ending the conflict for good.

As time passed, Thorfinn Karlsefni became a leader, not of warriors, but of families, farmers, and dreamers. He guided settlers across the sea, chasing the vision he once only imagined, a place far beyond the horizon, where no power could reach and no slaver’s hand could follow, somewhere they called “Vinland”. But peace is not a place, it’s a choice, a choice to harvest. A field that must be protected, nurtured, and replanted again and again, in the face of storms and scars. Even in Vinland, old grudges threatened to return and blood was spilled. When Thorfinn saw the signs of war taking root again, he made a choice: he left. He who once came to build a land without war chose to step away from it, to protect the very dream that brought him there.

Thorfinn’s voyage was one among many attempts to reach the land called Vinland, but his expedition became the largest of them all. Why did he travel to the ends of the earth? For him, it would have been simpler to seek fortune in Europe. He could also have made a name for himself by going Viking. But he chose instead to carve a future in a new world. Why? To what end? It wasn’t just about finding land, it was about starting something: a voyage that couldn’t be finished in a single lifetime, a journey that could stretch a thousand years. And like a cenotaph that must be raised again and again, the dream he planted would need hands willing to rebuild it every time it fell. In that new land, what took root were prayers for the future, prayers that must not be allowed to die out, calling for something stronger than swords. They called for people who would not surrender to hatred, who would hold on to hope, who would keep rowing forward, determined to build a lasting monument to peace. People like Thorfinn.

Musashi

“Even if someday you lose your way, you've always got this 'cave'. You must carve that joy into this moment right here.”

Late in the Sengoku period of Japan, there lived a boy for whom from a young age, only one thing mattered. No matter what the cost, no matter who he would find in his way, the only thing that could keep this boy from his goal was death. The goal? To become invincible under the sun, and he’d fight and kill whoever it took to accomplish it. That boy’s name was Takezo Shinmen.

Living in 1600s Japan, Takezo led a hard life. He would often go days without food or water and had few friends due to his anti-social nature. Because of this, he was very aggressive and would lash out at authority, getting into fights often. Unfortunately for his aggressors, he was a natural prodigy at the sword, with no qualms for killing, none whatsoever, and he was good at it! He would go around the country, challenging whoever had the best reputation as a fighter, and would fight hours long battles with some of the best martial artists in the world until he eventually came out on top, adopting the moniker, “Miyamoto Musashi”.

Musashi would fight the highest ranking members of some of the most renowned schools in the country, he would travel the world looking for the next battle, so devoted to the blade it consumed him and every part of his life. Because of this, he struggled to develop relationships, and every time he grew close to others his bloodlust, taking the form of a demon enveloping his body, would always draw him back to the battlefield. However toxic that force may have been, it also kept him in peak fighting condition, allowing him to beat some of the top masters of the Yoshioka school, killing them and forcing the entire body after him.

That night, he was warned: the next morning, 70 armed and trained samurai would go after him and end his life by any means necessary. His inclination was to throw in the towel, accept his death and move on to the next life, but that demon, that force, pulled at him, dragging him back into the battlefield, he ambushed them. After a long, painful, damaging battle that lasted hours on end, Musashi killed all 70 men, almost crippled for life from the battle damage.

It was in the aftermath of this slaughter that something inside Musashi began to break. For the first time, killing no longer felt like victory. Though violence still followed him and he was forced to cut down a few more men, the act brought no satisfaction, only emptiness. The weight of the seventy corpses pressed on him, and every swing of his blade from that day forward felt less like cutting down an enemy and more like stabbing into his own flesh. While recovering, Musashi began to question whether his pursuit of strength was worth the endless bloodshed. He could no longer pretend that killing was simply part of his path; each life he took hollowed him further, leaving scars he could not heal. Seeking something different, he left behind the battlefield and tried his hand at farming, working the soil alongside villagers. For a time he lived quietly, even taking in the orphan Iori as his disciple, teaching him not only the sword but how to survive through labor and resilience. Though still wrestling with his devotion to the way of the sword, Musashi started to glimpse another kind of strength, one rooted in creation rather than destruction.

The manga later went on indefinite hiatus, leaving this journey unfinished. But Inoue’s LAST Manga Exhibition offered a glimpse of an intended conclusion, showing an older Musashi long past his duel with Kojiro. Now dwelling as a hermit in Reigandō Cave, Musashi has retired from battling for good, his inner demons have been finally laid to rest and he lives his life as a vagrant monk offering advice to whatever young travellers come his way. He reflects on his path, no longer trapped in the spiral of death and killing, but carrying within him the lessons of both sorrow and light. He finds peace with old companions, greets visitors who come to honor him, and is finally accompanied to the afterlife by a young Kojiro on the shore. For after all, it was not invincibility that he sought, but inner peace.

Skills and Experience

Thorfinn

From the age of six, Thorfinn was forged in battle, forced to become a warrior long before he was a man. His instincts were sharpened against mercenaries, knights, and warlords across Europe, each clash etching new lessons into him. It’s likely that he killed hundreds of people in the past, if his nightmares are anything of reference. Driven by the constant presence of death and his unyielding thirst for revenge, his skills grew sharper than any master’s training could provide. Even with Askeladd’s indirect influence shaping his path, the ceaseless years of struggle also contributed to transform him into one of the most dangerous warriors of his time. In fact, given Askeladd’s death only happened after he completed 18 years old, it means he stayed around twelve years under the baldy’s band. His skill was acknowledged by Thorkell, stating he was a great fighter and had the fight skills comparable to his father, who could take on most members from Askeladd’s band on his own, including Askeladd himself.

Thorfinn’s greatest talent is his inhuman reflexes and speed. In combat, his reaction time borders on the impossible, letting him slip past blades, arrows or fists with movements too fast for most eyes to follow. His agility defies physics, as he’s able to hurtle himself through the air onto another rider’s horse in the middle of a violent crash. Paired with his precision in knife fighting, Thorfinn could cut down enemies by striking joints, gaps and weak points with great accuracy. Thorfinn is so skilled that, even when he cannot avoid a strike, he developed a technique that keeps him alive. Just before a fist or blade connects, he shifts his body slightly, twisting his neck, shoulders or back so the attack does not land clean. The impact spreads across him instead of crashing into one spot, turning what could be a crushing blow into something his body can endure. The movement is so subtle most onlookers never even notice it, yet it lets him withstand punishment that would break other men. He also showed this technique in other instances. For example, against Askeladd, he jumps backwards to lessen a blow. Against Thorkell, he uses his own legs as a spring to negate the impact that yeeted him in the air.

Even having turned away from bloodshed, those skills remained as a scar of the life he had survived, as we can see for the most part of the manga. When faced with no option but to use his “last resort”, he was still able to fight barehanded against very skilled warriors, even some swordsmen with the same speeds like Snake. His speeds didn't falter him an inch while older, and is even able to quickly analyze and adapt to initially faster opponents, and he is extremely good at incapacitating strong warriors in a single strike, via breaking arms, attacking necks, poking eyes, whatever means necessary so he doesn’t need to kill a person.

Musashi

Born from the great swordsman Shinmen Munisai, Musashi was trained since he was a child in the art of combat. Thanks to his father’s insecurities, he internalized a desire to be the best swordsman in Japan very early, which led to his journey of improvement through battle. After years of training with sword and jutte techniques, Musashi killed his first man at the age 13. When he turned 17 years old, Musashi joined the battle of Sekigahara, only after which he killed many soldiers of the Shogun’s army, impressing legendary swordsman Itto Ittōsai with his ferocity. After this, Musashi was on his own, and began his journey to be the one “Invincible Under the Sun”. From his early exploits, we can see Musashi’s skill in his fights against bandits and soldiers, in which he usually fights and easily slaughters entire groups of much more experienced men by himself, which led him to be considered a demon by his opponents.

But you don’t build a resume as impressive as Musashi’s by just fighting nameless fodder, and that’s why he started aiming for the big leagues, the great martial art schools of Japan. Musashi battled with several dozen students and masters of the most prestigious schools, including Yagyu, Yoshioka and the Hozoin Temple. Said Hozoin temple was the first school Musashi came to defeat, in the form of beating the spear master Inshun. In his duels with Inshun, Musashi was at first overwhelmed by his agility and speed, dodging his attacks through sheer instinct,  but still managed to adapt to them in a later battle, showcasing his incredible talent for adaptation and his battle instincts that allow him to see through his opponents. Eventually, Musashi defeated Inshun. Inshun’s master, Inei, a legendary spearman, considers Musashi in a league of his own. His instincts developed so much you could say he has a "sixth sense”, and a talent for analysis that lets him read the opponent’s moves two steps ahead and judge what’s the correct step further, even predicting dangerous steps from the enemy and avoiding them, or just running the entire fight in his head . That is also how he defeats high profile opponents such as the brothers Seijuro and Denshichiro from the Yoshioka school, the former who was so fast his sword was invisible to the untrained eye. He took on four of the greatest swordsmen of the Yagyu school by himself at once, managing to fight them all and survive. Perhaps his greatest showcase of skill was taking on 70 swordsmen of the Yoshioka school in a row, killing ALL of them in a frightening display of tenacity and technique. Musashi’s style is often described as wild and unpredictable, with no set form. Despite the fact he can see through others, his own technique cannot be seen through, as if it had a life of its own. This self-taught dual sword style combines offense and defense, using jutte and sword techniques together in harmony, leaving no openings, despite himself being extremely adept at looking for openings on enemies, his preferred strategy, something he adopts as his main combat method around the most recent published chapters.

His last duel with a sword in the manga as of this date is against no other than Itto Ittōsai, a legendary wandering swordsman that mentored Sasaki Kojiro. Before a one strike duel where Musashi deals almost fatal damage to Ittōsai in a slash so fast he couldn’t see (even though he’s technically still defeated), he was stated to be a treasure worth seeking for a fight, having accumulated 20 years worth of experience in the 5 year gap between their duel and the last time they met. By the end of his life, Musashi is considered a legend, and his teachings have been shown to change the life of many people, even if not through combat doctrine.

Skillset and Abilities

Thorfinn

Short Sword Mastery

During his time at Askeladd’s band, Thorfinn’s go-to weapon was these two short swords, one of them being previously from his father. In truth, any type of knife would work for his skills. The entire point is that small size and lightweight weapons combined with his natural footwork made him very hard to dodge for most fighters, which is part of why he was very dangerous even as a child. He also learned to throw his short swords from a good distance with precision into the right target, even if there were multiple. It’s likely he learned this skillset from Askeladd himself, given he performs the same feat right after. 

Misc. Weapons Usage

Apparently, Thorfinn learned how to use normal-sized swords during his period at Askeladd’s band, but we barely see him using it in the manga, so there's really not much to comment. The same could be said to his archery skills. None of these weapons were his in fact, all were borrowed. There’s also this sword from this official artwork you see above, but we don’t see it in action besides the fact this art was used for a Variant Vol 1 cover for MangaYo!.

Hand to Hand Combat

Thorfinn’s hand combat is self taught, but also not even remotely close to being mundane, given it is actually a non lethal variation of his short-sword fighting style. In fact, he even became a better fighter after “maining” his fists, because we see how Askeladd’s teachings started to kick in and helped him survive his later years. What might surprise is that he also shows a bit of his hand-to-hand skills even during the War Arc, being able to pluck Thorkell’s eye out. It’s likely he’s as skilled as his father when it comes to hand to hand combat, given Thorkell compared their skills more than once.

Analytical Observation

Since he was under Askeladd’s band, Thorfinn had great observation to quickly analyse all of his opponents weak points and strengths, so he could work around his own disadvantages. This was vital to survive both of his encounters with Thorkell. Hell, he can even analyse opponents faster than him quick enough to adjust his perceptions. He’s also very quick to observe how his surroundings could help him in a fight.

Enhanced Senses

Thorfinn is by far one of the fastest warriors in Vinland Saga, and much of this comes from his sharpened senses working together with his reflexes. His eyesight is so keen that he can spot hidden arrows, notice the faintest movements from living beings at a distance, and even catch a rabbit under the snow with a well-thrown knife. He has no trouble detecting soldiers hidden in a dark room ready for an ambush, or detecting spies observing him without giving away his awareness of the situation. In some cases, he can use his vision to observe a person’s character, like if they feel guilt, if they are lying or even read their aggressiveness (or lack of it) from afar. Thorfinn’s audition is so sharp that he can detect the faint stirrings of movement from humans and animals afar, going beyond what he can see. He is able to hear the approach of warriors far away, and his perception is so refined that he can still pick up on enemies through the acoustic insulation of a house or hear screams from miles away. In terms of taste and smell, he once identified the lack of poison in an arrow simply by taste, showing that even his lesser-mentioned senses are heightened beyond the norm. It’s worth noting that his father Thors could distinguish who Askeladd was the first time they met just by his smell. Beyond the usual senses, Thorfinn displays an uncanny awareness of danger, suggesting some sort of sixth sense for incoming threats. His body reacts instinctively, distinguishing lethal from non-lethal strikes without conscious thought. It goes to the point that, when fighting for the first time against Garm, he managed to adapt to attacks that moved faster than his eyes could follow, eventually seeing them and matching them in speed. When they had a rematch, Garm couldn’t land a single strike on him. It’s also worth noting he almost won against Hild in a fight, a woman with a near-sixth sense, able to perceive countless living beings around her in the forest, and see clearly under the dark, even when Thorfinn himself couldn’t.

Extreme Pain Tolerance and Stamina

Thorfinn has the stamina to keep fighting Thorkell consistently during a fight, even when he’s so hard to hit. In his second fight, he also got his arm and ribs broken, but was still able to fight. After that, he kept training and pulling stunts with his short swords despite the pain of his broken ribs and arm. In fact, Thorfinn can take countless slashes without caring about pain. During his fight with Hild, he had a broken foot and had taken 5 bolts into his body. What’s even more impressive is that one of them was shot into his leg, and he was still standing after the shot. He managed to perform some of his fastest feats in the series while still recovering from a stab, so it makes you wonder if his peak could go further. He also managed to dodge arrows and spears, knock hostile Lnu, all after having his ribs pierced, only getting stopped after being hit by six arrows, but he still managed to survive with the help of some friends.

Stealth

Thorfinn is sneaky enough to follow a man without being noticed, and while we already mentioned this on analytical observation, Thorfinn detecting the presence of spies without betraying the slightest hint of awareness is also a great sign of his stealth. He manages to sneak even under the high-skilled Jomsvikings and knock them over.

Jump Good

He can leap over very large distances on different occasions, even when it’s physically impossible. Must have learned from that other samurai…

Climb Good

He can climb well, using his short swords to pierce a wood wall.

Swim Good

Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming! Swimming, swimming! What do we do? We swim, swim, swim! Oh, ho, ho, ho! How I love to swim! When you want to swim, you want to swim!

Messing with People’s Minds

As stupid as this seems at first, it’s worthy to mention because this is a fight strategy Thorfinn learned well from Askeladd, which was useful to defeat Garm.

Horse Riding

Altho a rare sight, Thorfinn is very good at riding horses. Even under tense scenarios he manages to easily ride them up.

Military Tactics

Even under mundane activities, Thorfinn’s able to plan ahead advantageous scenarios due to his warrior mentality having not fully worn off of him.

Dog Taming

He is very good at calming down these lil guys. Awwn.

Farming

An important activity that helped Thorfinn to replace his obsession with vengeance with patience and self-discipline, he developed strong farming skills during his years on Ketil’s farm, much of it gained alongside Einar. His strongest experience is with wheat, which becomes his main crop after the hard work of clearing forest and preparing land. Their work there involved cutting trees and digging out stumps, plowing fields with a horse and simple tools, and using sickles for harvesting, axes for cutting, and plows for tilling. This continues into the Vinland settlement, where wheat fields are a cornerstone of their cultivation and used for bread, which the settlers are shown making and eating. Beyond planting and harvesting, Thorfinn takes part in preserving food and caring for tools and animals. He also shows his leadership in managing resources like water: he helps dig wells, checks for safety in drinking, and plans for tributaries from rivers to ensure fair access across the settlement.

Musashi

Master Swordsmanship (Niten Ichi-ryū)

Thanks to his intensive training since a young age, Musashi is adept in combat with katanas. While his experience was mostly limited to bokkens up to a point, it was with his pair of blades that he developed his technique to new levels. Musashi’s self-taught style is called the Niten Ichi-ryū, which can be translated as “Two heavens as one”. It utilizes a longer blade (odachi) and a short blade (kodachi) for simultaneous attack and defense, based on Musashi’s father’s expertise with the jutte and the sword. Musashi’s style is often considered wild and unpredictable by his opponents thanks to its natural flexibility and his talent for finding openings and avoiding damage. Musashi’s swordsmanship is frequently evolving with each enemy he defeats, adding new techniques and maneuvers after training and studying new enemies. Thanks to this, Musashi became a legendary Sword Saint, defeating hundreds of opponents in duels and cementing his status as a true master of the blade.

Hand to Hand Combat

Despite being mainly a swordsman, Musashi is no slouch at throwing hands. He knows human weak points and can target them without weapons, being able to gouge eyes and knock men unconscious by punching them in the throat, crushing their windpipe with his bare hand and kicking them in the groin. He can also grab opponents to make stabbing them easier.

Enhanced Senses

When someone makes a good MU

Musashi possesses superhuman senses (and is even stated to have a sixth one), which he can use to detect hidden enemies and have perfect awareness of his surroundings. His senses are so good he can detect a needle thrown from his back fast enough to dodge centimeters away from his neck, even if he’s standing next to fire. During a duel, his senses and consciousness can become spread through him, transforming his body with a heightened sense of awareness, completely focused on the enemy.

Analytical Prediction

Musashi has battle insight and observation level that allows him to see through opponents and anticipate their every move, reading into their attacks way ahead and countering them accordingly. This is described as Musashi leaving no openings at all, even when he’s completely open. This is showcased whenever he sees a move that would deal mortal damage to him and pictures that scenario taking place, only to stop it from happening in real time. This happens many times in the series.

Instinctive Reaction

Musashi is capable of instinctively reacting to attacks even if they were previously too fast for him to even see and his mind is clouded with hatred and fear.

Extreme Pain Tolerance and Stamina

Musashi displays very high levels of stamina and pain tolerance both inside and out of combat. An early example in the series would be when he survived for several days on end without food or water while hanging from a tree and exposed to the heat and the rain. It is shown in combat in the very common occurrence of Musashi fighting groups of several men and slaying them all without getting tired. The most notable example being when he fought and killed 70 swordsmen by himself without any pauses, sustaining battle injuries and then getting stabbed in the stomach. He was fine later. Speaking of stabbing, he can handle spear thrusts from Inshun Hozoin, whose attacks could put men out of commission for days, and just keep fighting with sheer tenacity.

Aura

Musashi emanates a powerful aura of bloodthirst when engaged in combat with his opponents. It briefly intimidates certain opponents, leading them to be more prone to making mistakes, although it doesn’t work on everyone.

Farming

During the Farming Arc, Musashi immerses himself in practical agriculture and community life, gaining knowledge far beyond mere labor, teaching him patience and responsibility. He learns to prepare and cultivate land for rice harvesting, including activities like plowing, digging, and tilling soil, while also mastering water management by constructing canals and ensuring proper irrigation. Musashi adapts to challenges like pest control, protecting crops from locusts, and works alongside villagers to understand their techniques and coordinate collective efforts.

Weapons and Equipment

Thorfinn

Thor’s Short Sword (and that other one)

(Inapplicable)

Thorfinn first received a short sword from his father, later claimed another from a fallen soldier, and for much of his youth relied on the dual wielding of short blades as his main fighting style. He lost the pair of short swords when he was captured and sold as a slave by Canute.

Throwing Knives

(Inapplicable)

Thorfinn also used these with less consistency when under Askeladd’s band. He never used them again after he was captured and sold as a slave by Canute.

Frankish Sword

(Inapplicable)

He stole this sword from a soldier and threw it away after decapitating their captain in Chapter 1.

Frankish Bow and Arrow

(Inapplicable)

The Frankish army gave this bow to him so he could alert Askeladd in Chapter 1. It was just borrowed.

Gudrid’s Knife

(Inapplicable)

He got this knife borrowed from her when trying to kill a bear. This blade wasn’t sharp enough to damage its skull, even with Thorfinn’s physical superhumanness, and he faced bear-killers before. The blade kinda just sucks, really. Also, there’s no reason to assume he would keep this on him at all times, else he would have pulled it off.

Jomsviking Sword

(Inapplicable)

Finally a weap- he broke it in half. And Thorfinn also hates swords. Moving on..

Baldr’s Knife

(Inapplicable)

Thorfinn used this knife while faking to kidnap Baldr and… oops, he threw it away… What kind of weapon would he even use in combat?

Wooden Play-Sword

(Inapplicable)

Come on now, lol. Also, no, he didn’t keep this.

A Smoking Pipe?

The good ol’ pipe he got from Lief as a present. He actually kept this… we think. But this won’t help him to smoke Musashi in this debate, at best they get high together.

His… fists?

Yes! Haven’t you been paying attention to how dangerous Thorfinn is with his fists? Enough to damage and incapacitate, but without the sharpness to kill. Nice.

Musashi

Bokken

(Inapplicable)

A common wooden training sword. Commonly used to train sword techniques, but in Musashi’s hands it’s a deadly blunt melee weapon that can crush skulls and kill people with a single strike. As the story progressed, Musashi left it behind and just stuck to real swords.

Ueda’s Smoking Pipe

(Inapplicable)

Musashi gets Ueda’s pipe under his day-dreaming reflections from “The LAST”. He shouldn’t really have this, but Thorfinn got a pipe so we wanted to mention something similar for Musashi lol.

Katana and Wakizashi

A pair of steel swords gifted to Musashi by Inei Hozoin after the defeat of Inshun, featuring a long and a short blade, respectively. In Niten Ichi-ryu, the long sword is used to control the fight, leading offensively, while the short sword is used defensively with Musashi's off-hand. Thanks to their sharpness paired with Musashi's strength, these blades can easily cut through flesh, bone and wood. The shorter blade can also be used as a throwing weapon.

Feats

Thorfinn

Overall

• Is considered one of the few who can face Thorkell
• Thorfinn's workout paid him a new build

• Gets even buffier later

• Married Gudrid and managed to have a happy end with his wife and kids
• His expedition to Vinland was successful for quite some time, even if he ultimately failed to take root there
• Fulfilled his father’s teaching of “having no enemies” by never killing again

• …but if he has no enemies, what is Musashi doing here?

Strength

PS: Given Thorfinn’s strength and overall durability varies a lot during his growth, we will be separating his feats according to his age

Child

• Thorfinn could break the arm of a kid and best older children
• Thorfinn carves his knife into wood
• Thorfinn manages to disarm a soldier

Young

• Thorfinn could break a man's finger with ease
• Thorfinn could behead a skilled soldier chief
• Thorfinn stabs Thorkell's eye away with his fingers
• Thorfinn had the skill and strength to knock a soldier with a single strike

Adult

• Thorfinn knocks out a farmer in a single punch, breaking his teeth
• Thorfinn matches Snake in strength while blocking his attacks
• Thorfinn strikes Einar hard enough to snap him out of his rage
• Thorfinn manages to damage a bear, besides his skull
• Thorfinn hurts and KOs Jomsvikings very consistently
• Thorfinn disarms and cuts Floki’s fingers
• Thorfinn breaks a sword in half 
• Thorfinn one-shots Garm
• Thorfinn KOs hostile Lnu

Speed

• Thorfinn reacts to a wolf
• Thorfinn runs through a barrage of arrows - (32.76 to 47.33 m/s)
• Thorfinn FTEs a Viking - (105.73 m/s to Mach 3.17, Check Verdict)
• Thorfinn catches a running rabbit - (11 to 15 m/s)

• Could do it even as a kid

• Thorfinn hears soldiers from afar and dashes to the door 
• Thorfinn FTEs Thorkell - (58.84 m/s)

• Thorfinn is still untouchable for Thorkell even later on

• Thorfinn FTEs Snake - (104.3 m/s)
• Thorfinn blitzes Einar
• Thorfinn is faster than Drott
• Thorfinn can consistently dodge and block Siggy's chain swings
• Thorfinn manages to fight a bear
• Thorfinn dodges a crossbow bolt - (21.43 m/s)

• Thorfinn can dodge crossbow fire, again 
• Thorfinn dodges a crossbow shot by tilting his neck 

• Thorfinn dodges a sledgehammer
• Thorfinn FTE's a Jomsviking - (46.3 m/s)
• Thorfinn creates afterimages 
• Thorfinn adapts to Garm’s speed after being FTEd
• Thorfinn blitzes a Jomsviking
• Thorfinn blitzes Floki
• Thorfinn manages to outspeed Garm, dodging his spear and a bullet-hell of arrows 
• Thorfinn dodges lances 
• Thorfinn reacts to a fleeing arrow 
• Thorfinn dodges a spear 

Durability

PS: Given Thorfinn’s strength and overall durability varies a lot during his growth, we will be separating his feats according to his age

Young

• Survived being ragdolled - (Check Before the Verdicts)
• Survives being yeeted to sky-high - (Check Before the Verdicts)

Adult

• Thorfinn can take a hard kick from Snake
• Thorfinn takes Einar’s blow
• Thorfinn could take more than 100 punches from Drott
• Kept standing after a bolt shot
• Survived after having 5 bolts into his body
• Thorfinn uses his ribs as shield
• Survived being hit by six arrows

Musashi

Overall

• Defeated several Kendo schools across Japan, including Yoshioka and Yagyu
• Defeated Inshun, the most skilled monk and spearman from the Hozoin Temple
• Invented a new school of swordsmanship by himself
• Slaughtered 70 men in a single battle in one of the coolest chapter sequences in manga
• Killed Sasaki Kojiro (Check Before the Verdicts)
• Became a living legend and wrote the Book of Five Rings, being considered a Sword Saint

Strength

• Can hit a man so hard with a bokken his eye pops out of its socket
• Can send a man flying with a light push
• Can break a sword in half with his own, more than once
• Overpowers Baiken’s chains, with the latter commenting that Musashi’s strength is incredible
• Is stated to be able to cut through bone with his sword
• Can very casually cut off arms and heads with a sword
• Cut a man’s hand off
• Kicks a man so hard he’s sent flying
• Is stated to have the strength to easily crush a man’s skull with a direct hit of a bokken
• Throws a child at a man so hard he gets knocked out
• Cuts off a man’s entire arm
• Cuts a man in half from shoulder to waist
• Cuts Denshichiro Yoshioka’s hand off and then guts him with his wakizashi
• Kills a soldier by tossing a big rock at his head - (1 kilojoule)
• Cut Seijuro Yoshioka in two diagonally - (1.36 kilojoules)
• Can cut through two small logs holding a scarecrow very easily - (2.6 kilojoules)

Speed

• Dodged a sword swing centimeters from his face
• As a kid, dodged a knife thrown by his father
• Somehow avoids spear thrusts that were too fast for him to see
• Can see Seijuro’s sword swings, even though they should be normally too fast for anyone to see
• Swung his sword so fast Ittōsai couldn’t react while hitting him, in an exchange that happened faster than an elderly couple could perceive
• Threw a wakizashi so at a man’s neck so fast he couldn’t even see it and only realized it moments after - (76.5 m/s)
• Moved so fast he created afterimages, killing a samurai - (115.61 m/s)
• Narrowly dodged a sword swing by Murata, which was so fast his disciple Jotaro couldn’t even see it - (23.4 to 126 m/s)
• Dodged a needle shuriken thrown by Seijuro only centimeters away from his neck from behind - (113.8 to 126 m/s)
• Dodged and attack and moved so fast he disappeared in front of a group of women, and put a flower behind of them’s ear without her noticing it - (29 to 156 m/s)

Durability

• Survives gets stabbed in the stomach by a dagger
• Endures hanging from a tree for several days without any food or water
• Endures getting stabbed multiple times by Inshun Hozoin with a wooden spear, a single being stated to be able to put a man out of commission for days
• Gets slapped and flung meters away by Ittōsai
• Gets shot in the leg but later flees the scene

Scaling

Thorfinn

Jomsvikings

While canonically highly-skilled warriors and stated early on to be the mightiest men of the north sea, Thorfinn consistently surpasses the average Jomsviking in strength post time-skip, and even dominates the commander Floki in a fight, which is relevant given only exceptional members of the Jomsvikings are made commanders. In this section, we’re not including feats performed by Thors and Thorkell, given they are an outlier to their general prowess.

• Jomsvikings are so powerful and independent that even the King of Wendland (their nominal ruler) cannot impose taxes on them

• In medieval terms this is huge. Kings were expected to hold authority over their subjects, yet the Jomsvikings are portrayed as untouchable. Their military strength leaves the king with no choice but to let them be, since any attempt to tax them would be met with resistance. Narratively, it shows how the Jomsvikings are feared and respected as a force beyond royal control, almost like a state within a state.

• The average Jomsviking can easily slash through people's heads
• During the Ketil Farm Battle, Canute had 70 Jomsvikings and 32 of his royal guard

• A man from Canute's army throws deadly coins
• Canute's attack kills 122 of Ketil's men, and only 8 of his soldiers died
• One very muscular Jomsviking named Drott is known as a bear-killer

• Vargar, an ex-Jomsviking, knocks Ivar out
• Vargar's Nord Rage 

Slave Arc Characters

Snake and Thorfinn fight as equals, so it’s only natural to compare Thorfinn to what Snake can do. It also means scaling to others from the Salve Arc, at least in their majority.

Applicable

• Snake one-shots Fox

• Fox killed 13 people, including the son of a Jarl

• Snake strikes a horse
• Snake is faster and one-shots Gardar

• Gardar crushed a human skull
• Gardar can bite a large part of people's neck off

• The anime confirms Snake was a warrior from “Miklagard”

• This means that he was likely a member of the Byzantine Varangian Guard, an elite unit of bodyguards employed by the Byzantine emperors and composed mainly of Norsemen and Rus in the city of Constantinople, which in Old Norse is named Miklagard

• Snake stops Ketil from being Arnheid to death
• Snake decapitates a Jomsviking

Debatable

• Snake was the one who gave Thorgil fight lessons, altho it’s unclear if they match in strength or speed

• Thorgil slices heads, limbs and intestines with ease
• Thorgil overwhelms Canute's forces

Askeladd

(Check Before the Verdicts)

Thorfinn matches Askeladd in strength and speed simply by showing comparable stats when they dueled, possibly being even a bit faster. We suggest reading the Before the Verdicts section for a more in depth explanation.

• Askeladd blocks Thorfinn's dagger from close range
• Askeladd blocks an arrow from a crossbow 
• Askeladd can consistently throws axes far away, killing men
• Askeladd decapitated three vikings at once  
• Askeladd managed to survive fighting 50 of his men for some time
• Askeladd slices a helmeted viking in half
• Askeladd decapitates Sweyn and kills hordes of men
• Like mentioned above, Askeladd held his own against Floki
• Askeladd tries to catch his shield at the shots of longbows - (21.62 to 31.23 m/s)
• Askeladd swings fast and can react to Thors' attacks - (Mach 1.6, Check Verdict)

Bjorn

(Check Before the Verdicts)

Thorfinn scales to Bjorn in speed and strength, given Thorfinn upscales the average Jomsviking. For more details, check the Before the Verdicts section.

• Bjorn spear throw 
• Bjorn breaks the floor - (15 kilojoules)
• Fought 10 of Askeladd’s men and won

• Bjorn throws someone through a sledge - (23 kilojoules)
• Bjorn removes someone's eye with a punch
• Bjorn smashes a skull with his bare hands 

Garm

Thorfinn one-shots Garm in their rematch. For why Thorfinn scales in speed, be sure to read the Before the Verdicts section, it’s a longer explanation.

• Garm easily identifies and kill a disguised assassin
• Garm avoids being smashed by a large hammer
• Garm can keep and catch up to Thorfinn
• Garm fights Thorkell - (Check Before the Verdicts)
• Garm evades a bullet-hell of arrows 
• Garm sprints so fast he manages to pull a SMW in a wall 
• Garm dodges longbow arrows 
• Garm FTEs Thorfinn - (Mach 2.69, Check Before the Verdicts and Verdict)

Sigurd and Old Halfdan

While Sigurd is a good fighter, Thorfinn consistently dodges and blocks Siggy's chain swings, Hild is strong enough to knock him out in one go, and clearly can’t face multiple Jomsvikings on his own. Given Sigurd is stronger than his old father Halfdan physically, Thorfinn would upscale both.

• Siggy destroys kitchen utensils with his chains
• Sigurd's surprise attack kills two Jomsvikings
• Sigurd can take four arrows into his body
• Siggy's chain swings are strong enough to damage the surface of a wooden bridge - (3 kilojoules)
• While fighting his son Siggy, Halfdan breaks some barrels - (57 kilojoules)

Vinland Arc Characters

All of the characters introduced in the Vinland Arc are narratively inferior to Thorfinn, especially Ivar. This one is a no brainer.

• Ivar cuts the hand of Miskwekepu'j down to the bone in a single strike
• Ka'Qaquj cuts Ivar's hand off
• Ivar cuts some Lnu down before dying like a bitch
• Ka'Qaquj beheads Styrk
  
  

Thors and Thorkell

(Partially, check Before the Verdicts)

To keep it short, Thorfinn scales in speed due to having similar stats to Askeladd, who could react to Thors, and is consistently faster than Thorkell. That being said, there’s no solid proof to scale them in strength. Given it’s a long explanation, keep sure to read the Before the Verdicts section.

Applicable

• Thorkell's ridiculous spear throw (speed edition) - (39.67 to 79.34 m/s)
• Thorkell TKOs a moving horse - (11.17 m/s to 13.4 m/s)
• Thorkell can react to a bear 

Inapplicable

• Thors is able to knock-out countless members of Askeladd's band, including Berserker Bjorn, and could take out at least 30 more
• Thors dominates Askeladd in strength
• Thorkell makes a dane sushi
• Thorkell's ridiculous spear throw (strength edition) - (4 to 18 kilojoules)
• Thorkell blinds Thorfinn with a snow wave and yeets him
• Thorkell breaks a pillar
• Thorkell can slice up a tree in a single strike
• Thorkell breaks a wall - (3245 kilojoules)
• Thorkell can one-shot a bear 
• Thorkell stops large logs rolling and is set on fire
• Thorkell plays human baseball with a wood log
• Thorkell uses a log as a beyblade and breaks a house
• Thorkell's insane limb cutting AOE
• Thorkell destroys the pillars of a house and it collapses
• Thorkell is a fan of The Shining
• Thorkell outmuscles Ymir

Musashi

Yoshioka School

Musashi killed Seijuro and Denshichiro Yoshiyoka in close duels, the two most talented and notorious swordsmen in the Yoshioka school. Add that to the fact he has also slain all the remaining 70 swordsmen of the school in a single battle and… yeah, the scaling is pretty self-explanatory.

• Denshichiro can throw his bokken hard enough to embed it into a concrete wall
• Denshichiro can split a large rock in half with his bokken - (Inapplicable, check Before the Verdicts)
• Denshichiro can swing his sword hard enough to cut bone
• Seijuro can swing his sword so fast that an early Musashi can’t even see it - (Mach 1.35 to Mach 1.53, Check Verdict)

• Seijuro later confirms that his sword swings are normally too fast to be seen, meaning he’s not just blitzing Musashi’s reactions, but his perception  

Yagyu School

Musashi fought all of the top swordsmen of the Yagyu school at the same time in a close battle, matching their strength and speed, so naturally he’d scale the feats performed by them.

• Kizaemon Shoda cut a small wooden beam on a bridge
• Murata can swing his sword so fast that Musashi’s disciple, Jotaro, can’t even see it - (23.4 to 126 m/s)

Hozoin Temple

Musashi has defeated Inshun Hozoin, the greatest disciple of the Hozoin temple, so naturally he should scale to feats performed by him and other monks.

• A normal monk can stab his wooden spear into a concrete wall
• Agon can send a man flying and tear a wooden door off its hinges
• Inshun can swing his spear faster than an early Musashi can see, with other monks being completely unable to see what happened too - (Mach 1.12, Check Verdict)
• Inshun could dodge a sword slash so fast he created an afterimage and his attacker didn’t notice he did it - (107.3 m/s)
• Inshun could dodge a sword slash centimeters away from his eye - (Mach 2.54, Check Verdict)

Shinmen Munisai

Musashi’s father, Munisai, was highly regarded among the sword school of his time. Since Musashi went on to slaughter the entire school, it’s clear he surpasses his father’s skill, making the scaling chain to Munisai straightforward.

• Cuts multiple tree branches with a small knife
• Blocks a knife thrown by a young Musashi with his forearm - (24 to 26.6 m/s)
• Was the only man to ever defeat Kempo Yoshioka, the founder of the Yoshioka school, being awarded with the title of “Invincible Under the Sun” by the Shogun

Sasaki Kojiro

(Check Before the Verdicts)

This one is harder to explain in a single short sentence, so just read the Before the Verdict section covering this scaling chain.

• Cut off the hand of master swordsman Fudo as a kid, who was a retired high ranking army officer
• Is a natural master of the sword due to being in perfect sync with his own body
• Has slain 10 to 50 men while still fairly young
• Launches a man back with a stick, making him feel as if he was being stabbed by a sword
• Dodges so fast he disappears in front of a man and nearly kills him with a twig
• Cuts a man’s hand off
• Casually sends a man flying several meters into a wall with a training sword, and then does it again
• Slaughters a group of dozens of men by himself
• Can open an opponent’s stomach and create an after-image while he swings down his sword, only perceiving that Kojiro vanished after he was already behind him - (99.5 m/s)
• Dodges a man’s attack faster than he can see, moving instantly from his position to behind him after cutting his neck open - (134 m/s)
• Can close the distance between him and his opponent and kill him faster than the eye could see, with two samurai confirming it was so fast they couldn’t see him do it - (136.8 m/s)

Weaknesses and Mental Stability

Thorfinn

Before the time-skip, Thorfinn had a noticeable problem with his anger, making him become way more simple-minded and easy to read, which is why Askeladd could always win against him. After the time-skip, Thorfinn manages to contain this rage way more properly, but he keeps fearing he might leak it again. Ironically, he learns from Askeladd and his own past mistakes to use this tactic on others, which you might have seen in the Skillset and Abilities section. Another point worth noting is that Thorfinn continues to suffer heavily from PTSD caused by his past life and actions. While this shouldn’t be taken as a sign of weakness, it’s significant that these experiences still haunt him as recurring nightmares, even after he began to ease his view of himself.

To finish this section, it would be wrong to call Thorfinn “naive” for believing peace could be maintained with the Lnu, but he did overestimate what he could achieve on his own. The Vinland arc showed him that while he was right to never let go of his conviction that peace is the only way, violence cannot be erased overnight, and fear and misunderstanding run deep. Even with the best intentions, tragedy can still happen. Instead of letting this break him, Thorfinn came to accept that his role is to inspire others while showing the patience, resilience, and humility to understand that the dream may only fully bloom generations from now.

Musashi

 

Musashi, for most of his journey, is prone to giving in to his violent instincts of bloodthirst. While it turned his fighting style borderline animalistic early on, he later learned to focus this violent explosiveness in a more calculated way, demonstrated in his battle with the 70 of Yoshioka. Despite his best attempts, as of now, Musashi has constantly failed to fully mute this side of his emotions.

Musashi can sometimes overthink and become too focused on his enemy, which led him to forget to draw his sword before attacking Denshichiro and missing a surefire opportunity to end the fight immediately.

Musashi has sustained a leg injury during his battle with the 70 of Yoshioka that severely limits his mobility and bleeds if he makes sudden movements, which led him to adopt a more defensive style of waiting for the opponent to come into the range of his sword. While it has not fully healed, it is slowly getting better by the time of the Farming Arc. This should not be considered when talking about Musashi at the peak of his capabilities.

Before the Verdict

Is the “true warrior” necessarily the strongest?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, Thorfinn clearly doesn’t scale in strength to Thorkell, much less to Thors, during the War Arc. The whole reason why Thorfinn is able to fight Thorkell in the War Arc is because he’s much, much faster than Thorkell, and he explicitly needs to aim for weak spots to keep fighting him. Given the more “realistic” nature of the series, piercing damage arguments, which are usually seen as “cope” for most series, are actually pretty consistent within the narrative of Vinland Saga, especially since Thorfinn directly states that one solid hit from Thorkell would kill him instantly. Given Thors is much stronger than Thorkell, it’s also nonsense to scale Thorfinn to him into this point in the series.

Okay, but Thorfinn clearly got much stronger after the timeskip, isn’t it reasonable to justify the scaling to both of them? Well… While Thorfinn clearly scales above the average Jomsviking and even commanders like Floki, there’s still zero scaling chains for Thorfinn to scale to Thors, given he was way above them. In fact, most of the times father and son are compared, it’s that Thorfinn inherited his heart and will, his courage, or his ability to fight well, not his superhuman strength. To be more precise, the series actually uses the idea of “inheriting the blood of Thors” while being clear that this means inheriting the Troll’s strength, but they are about Ylva, who is visibly stronger than Thorfinn. When the same expression is used for Thorfinn, the context changes a bit, they are either talking about Thorfinn’s skill as a warrior being comparable to his father or, in one specific instance, just a taunt from Thorkell wanting to test his great-nephew. Speaking of the Tall, what about scaling to him? A popular argument is that Garm would provide a clear scaling chain to the tall man, but there’s a catch. Most of the fight is off-screen, and all we see is that they both cause a lot of superficial wounds onto each other with bladed weapons, with no indication either received a full power attack from the other. Just because Garm drew against Thorkell, it doesn’t prove any grounds for scaling, as it was displayed earlier that you can wound someone vastly stronger than you with blades in Vinland. But let's analyze this scene further, is there any hint to determine if their strength matches? Yes, there is! It comes from Thorkell’s minions. They mention that “those little slippery guys are the ones he has the toughest time against”. Does that sound familiar? It’s because the minions comment the exact same thing when Thorkell fought Thorfinn all those years back in the War Arc. Garm only managed to draw because his speed and skill are a perfect counter to Thorkell's mighty strength. If you think about it, this entire fight (and Thorfinn’s) is kinda like the Mountain VS Red Viper from Game of Thrones, if Oberyn wasn't an arrogant dumbass.

But let’s say you really want to argue Thorfinn just downscales from Thorkell and Thors, due to Thorfinn not immediately dying when getting ragdolled by Thorkell… The problem is that there’s not a reliable way to quantify how much. Playing devil’s advocate, there’s a scene very early on where all 5 boys from the village are needed to compensate for Thors' strength while they are rowing. Could it mean Thors is 5x stronger than the normal human? Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this argument. First, that they're not even warriors, they're just teenagers from the village who are very weak. Given the amount of narrative upscaling Thors gets in strength from average warriors, then the Jomsvikings, it would be very silly for Thors to be only 5 times stronger. The other problem is that, quite clearly, Thor isn’t using his full strength here. Not only that, the boys are almost dying from rowing while he is completely fine, like it was an effortless job.

Moving to feats where Thorfinn scales to in AP, you might be surprised (or not) that we’re scaling Thorfinn to Askeladd and Bjorn. For Askeladd, we went with this reasoning: Thorfinn could match Askeladd in a duel, and Thorfinn was always losing because Askeladd could get under his mind and Thorfinn became easily predictable. We discussed a lot about if the instance of Thorfinn disarming him already implied scaling in strength, and we were mostly favorable to this notion. On the other hand, you’ll see we're avoiding VS Brainroting this blog so much, with every higher value being highlighted to be discussed at a BtV or into the Verdict. With that in mind, we considered this: even if one chooses not to treat the disarming moment as direct AP scaling to Askeladd, despite Thorfinn being relatively strong compared to his looks, at the very least he should scale to Askeladd’s AP feats from the Slave Arc onward. This is because Askeladd, while still able to hold his own against Floki, did so with noticeably more difficulty than Thorfinn later displayed in terms of raw strength, who easily disarmed and cut his fingers with a single strike. Okay, now let's discuss Bjorn. He is a strong warrior, but narratively inferior to the high-skilled Jomsvikings. When the idea of one former Jomsviking facing an entire Jomsviking squad is raised by Askeladd, Bjorn dismisses it outright as a joke. For him, the Jomsvikings are so overwhelmingly strong that even imagining such a scenario is impossible. The fact that he reacts this way makes it clear he sees them as far beyond what he himself could handle, especially considering Bjorn can face multiple vikings on his own. The irony is that Thors may have been capable of such a feat, but that only reinforces the point, setting him apart from both Bjorn and the Jomsvikings. Thors also highlights Bjorn’s limits: while Askeladd managed to at least block all his blows, Bjorn was easily knocked out, suggesting that Askeladd was likely a bit stronger than Bjorn, even if neither rivaled Thors. There’s also an interesting comment where Askeladd suggests Thorfinn and Bjorn are equally deadly, but to be safe, given it could just be due to Thorfinn’s speed, we’ll only consider Thorfinn scaling to these feats narratively from the Slave Arc onward, since he would be upscaling both the Jomsvikings and Askeladd. Btw, we didn’t treat Berserker Bjorn (under mushrooms) stronger than normal, he realistically would just get altered perception, dulled pain, heightened aggression, and reckless stamina. It’s meant to be a realistic real-world effect rather than a “Super Mushroom” from Super Mario Bros. Regardless of what you think about these arguments, it’s not really that important, given that (surprisingly) old Halfdan gets a calculable feat with a higher number than them.

What about speed? Thorfinn is certainly one of the fastest, who can blitz Thorkell, match Snake and Askeladd, the latter being able to match Thors in speed, who can also blitz Thorkell… Okay, okay, he scales to everyone… but wasn’t Garm faster when he showed up? Can he scale to Garm in speed? Surprisingly, yes, he easily can. You might be slightly confused, given one of the feats in question is about Garm being faster than Thorfinn’s eyesight could catch, but something actually consistent with both Musashi and Thorfinn is that they both have feats that they adapted to someone who blitzed them initially, and it’s the case here. In their first fight, right after this strike, Thorfinn managed to dodge all of Garm’s other spear thrusts via quickly analysing what he was doing, and then managed to keep up. Huh, didn’t Garm manage to still surprise him and could have delivered a fatal blow? Sure, but he was still managing to dodge the thrusts, and while caught completely off-guard by the spear being divided, he actually is shown reacting to Garm unfolding the spear, he just couldn’t avoid it. Garm himself comments that Thorfinn is the first person able to dodge his attacks, which was clearly impossible a few seconds back. You might still think it’s a little dubious, but Thorfinn and Garm’s rematch fight cements that the scaling is justified. Not only Thorfinn is shown managing to outspeed Garm’s attack, he is consistently dodging every single one of Garm’s other strikes, including his special technique called “Beehive Thrust”. Hell, Garm even comments again how Thorfinn “sure can dodge”, all of this when Thorfinn is also trying to avoid a wave of Jomsvikings shooting at him with longbows and coming at him with swords. Garm also states Thorfinn wasn’t even trying his hardest when doing all of this. All of that while he still hasn't healed from their first encounter, so you do wonder how he would react under perfect conditions. Thorkell being able to fight Garm at all could serve as more support for the scaling.

Where is Ganso Ylva-chan and Animalland Saga?

Some might be wondering: What the f- are you guys talking about? Basically, in addition to the main series, two comedic side projects exist under the same intellectual property: Ganso Ylva-chan and Animalland Saga. The first follows Ylva, Thorfinn’s sister, turning her household chores into a shieldmaiden’s quest in the style of a slice-of-life manga. The second is an animal parody of the story, which speaks for itself in terms of tone.

While amusing in their own right, neither of these spin-offs is suitable for a serious analysis. Even Ylva’s story is presented as a gag manga rather than a serious extension of the narrative. Using material from either work in the hopes of buffing Thorfinn’s stats on this blog would be disingenuous. At most, could instead be reserved for matchups that intentionally embrace a comedic or exaggerated tone, where the use of spin-off material of this magnitude is acceptable under the established rules, but certainly not when comparing him against grounded works like Vagabond.

How much strength do you need to break a rock?

Perhaps the most notorious AP feat in Vagabond, and what many use to justify the verse being Wall Level™, would be the one time when Denshichiro thwacked a boulder with a bokken and split it in half. It makes sense, as it is the most visually impressive AP feat in the series and the single thing where double to triple digit kilojoules levels of power hinge on. Unfortunately, the feat has quite a bit of context behind it that makes it unusable.

In chapter 211 of the Vagabond manga we’re shown a sequence of pages of Denshichiro training for his duel with Musashi. The training consists in hitting a boulder over and over with a wooden training sword. After at least 10 swings, the boulder cracks and splits in two. Off to a bad start, we have a direct statement from Denshichiro that this very boulder has been used for training by his family for generations. As stated by him, day after day people chiseled away at that boulder doing their fair share of damage, even Denshichiro himself since he was a child. This alone should disqualify the scaling, as calculating the destruction would imply dividing the energy by the number of swings, and we’d have DECADES worth of swings to divide the feat by, not just the 10 onscreen ones. Another element that supports this interpretation is the context of the scene itself: they placed their faith in the rock to decide the outcome of the future battle, treating it almost as a matter of luck, rather than suggesting this was the very first time in his entire life he had struck a rock with such force. After all, it would be quite unusual to assume that a training rock had never been subjected to a similar level of strength from him before, wouldn’t you agree?

This notion is supported by real life, as rocks often split thanks to accumulated internal pressure in fissures. Decades and decades accumulating damage would make this rock prone to splitting eventually, so it’s impossible to assign the energy value necessary to fragment it to the last dozen swings.

Does Musashi scale to Kojiro?

(and other Musashi/Epilogue questions)

As you may know, Vagabond is intended to be a manga adaptation of the famous novel Musashi. Is it that faithful? Well… it’s very loosely adapted from it, as it is a deeply personal reinterpretation by Takehiko Inoue. It’s part of why this matchup works, in fact, given Yoshikawa’s novel offers a romanticized, episodic journey of a man becoming “invincible under the sun,” but Vagabond deconstructs that myth, exploring what it truly means to seek strength and peace in a violent world. In that sense, a lot of characters end up suffering countless changes from the novel to the manga, and one of the main examples is Kojiro himself. Instead of the despicable, sadistic and bloodthirsty person from the novel, Kojiro becomes a quieter, almost ethereal presence, contrasting Musashi Miyamoto’s chaotic search for meaning. His famous child-like personality and his disability are also inserted by Inoue. Even figures like Takuan are used less as moral authorities and more as philosophical provocateurs. More importantly, key events like the Yoshioka duel are portrayed not as triumphs, but as brutal trials that push Musashi closer to the brink of collapse.

Why are we talking about this? Because scaling Musashi to Kojiro, just taking what we currently have with the manga that is on a hiatus, it’s a bit flimsy. While Ittōsai claims Kojiro is superior because he managed to sever his arm, his own victory over Musashi only came after Musashi sustained a severe injury on his leg. There’s a case to be made, but we would still lack a concrete chaining scale to Kojiro. That being said, if Inoue gets better and continues adapting the novel, it’s very likely it would feel more justified. One of the biggest lingering questions surrounding Vagabond is how it will ultimately depict the fated duel between Musashi and Kojiro. As the climax of both their arcs and the philosophical core of the story, this confrontation holds immense weight, and people question if Inoue intends to portray the duel faithfully to Yoshikawa’s novel or take it in his own direction. The reality is that we don’t need to worry so much about what Inoue will change, because his epilogue, THE LAST, actually gives us a hint that yes, Musashi and Kojiro will have a fight and Kojiro will die in this duel. Like we mentioned in the Background section, in the epilogue, old Musashi starts reflecting in his life and he starts having visions, so he makes peace with old companions, but not only that, he does as well with the rivals he killed, and the person who calls him to the afterlife is a young Kojiro on the shore. We think it’s safe to say the scaling is justified, unless Inoue decides to change the outcome of the most famous duel in the history of Japan, which we find very unlikely.

 

Would Musashi think about killing Thorfinn?

This is a relevant question that relates a lot to the themes of the matchup, and consequently to the last section. By the end of Vinland Saga, we know that killing is something Thorfinn will NOT do, under any circumstance whatsoever, and this is very explicit by the author. Musashi, however, is a different beast. Early on we are already introduced to the fact Musashi’s bloodthirst is a bad thing, with Inei even directly stating that it is what attracts violence towards him. Later on, even though we see Musashi’s regret and attempt to change his ways after the battle with the 70 of Yoshioka, it is still difficult for him to escape the spiral of death despite his attempts. In the manga, we see this bloodthirsty instinct that draws him to violence manifested as a demon shaped shadow with a consciousness of its own that reflects Musashi’s pride and violent impulse. Musashi is capable of controlling up to a certain extent, but it’s impossible to say it has completely vanished, as the manga is in hiatus and we know as per the last section that it’s very likely the intention that he is still meant to kill Sasaki Kojiro in the end of his journey, which would mark his true shift towards non-violence. Considering that we do not see the story between the current latest chapter and the duel with Kojiro, and that current Musashi still has an injured leg and is leaving severe malnutrition from the Farming Arc, we will consider that Musashi at his peak would be represented by his state right before the duel with the 70 of Yoshioka, before his leg injury and with before losing his second sword.

With all of that in mind, we decided to consider that it is a strong possibility that Musashi at his peak would still try to go for lethal force against Thorfinn if provoked, or at least try to incapacitate him with his swords.

Verdict

This verdict is gonna be a long one, so bear with us and stick through everything we cover here. Every section matters for how we reached the result, and skipping any of them would miss part of the bigger picture. Don’t just skim-read a section, you will be confused and miss details (even under stat ones), so please read everything. Thorfinn vs Musashi is easily the closest matchup we’ve ever done, maybe the closest we’ll ever do, so it deserves to be looked at from every angle. We’ll be breaking it down step by step, going through strength and durability, speed, stamina, mobility, and of course skill and experience. Only by putting all of these pieces together can we really figure out who comes out on top.

Strength/Durability

This one is very straightforward to answer. The best valid feat Musashi could scale to is him cutting through two small logs, which we estimated to be worth about 2.6 kilojoules of energy. Impressive, but regardless of your standards over scaling Thorfinn to Thorkell, which we commented above on the problems with said logic, he would still be upscaling feats performed by Bjorn, which would give him an AP of 15 kilojoules to 23 kilojoules. Most surprisingly, a feat performed by Halfdan way beyond his prime gets around 57 kilojoules, and Thorfinn is massively upscaling old Halfdan in strength. Not only that, he can also receive punishment from beings way above his paygrade. This means Thorfinn is at least 21x stronger than anything Musashi could deliver, so he very easily takes Strength and Durability.

Taking off the VS lenses for a second, it’s still easy to see why Thorfinn takes this category. Fundamentally, Vinland Saga is far more… anime than Vagabond, for lack of a better word. Battles are significantly more stylized and flashy, so by consequence the characters from the manga end up far more physically impressive. Ignoring the math, Musashi can cut someone in half diagonally. That’s impressive, but Askeladd can cut someone in half vertically, with an entire metal helmet on the way, which requires a far superior level of strength. Vagabond also notably lacks object destruction feats, something Vinland Saga has by lots, with wooden barrels, planks and sledges being splintered left and right. With this in mind, even ignoring VS numbers, it’s easy to see how Thorfinn could easily overpower Musashi physically, and even take him down with a single punch.

…wait, didn’t we say it was a debatable matchup?

Yeah, the debate doesn’t end here. Like we said in earlier sections of this blog, Vinland Saga consistently uses the logic of piercing resistance and weak points against massively stronger opponents, and it would be very stupid to say Thorfinn couldn’t die from a sword attack, especially considering the gap between him and Musashi (21x) is far smaller than the gap between him and Thorkell (57x), and yet Thorfinn could cut his fingers and stab his eye. If by your standards that’s invalid due to the AP difference, we can’t do much about it, but we want to follow the rules presented in the series we are analyzing. All this should mean is that, physically, Thorfinn is much stronger, and he would easily break Musashi’s bones if it came to hand to hand combat, knock him out in a single blow, even though a well placed sword slash from Musashi could incapacitate or even kill him instantly as well. The strength gap is still very much relevant, given if Thorfinn has the speed to do it, he could grab Musashi’s swords and break them in half, making him defenseless. A simple kick from Thorfinn could also send them flying or shatter them, easily disarming him as well. That being said, is he fast enough to pull that off?

Speed

Both combatants scale to blinding levels of speed, far exceeding what one would expect for such “grounded” manga series, moving in blurs, dodging attacks from centimeters away and completely blitzing the perception of peak humans with their moves. Starting with Thorfinn, he has casual direct feats in the subsonic range, starting from 21 m/s and going up to 105 m/s. Taking scaling into account, matching characters like Askeladd and Garm should grant him speeds of around Mach 1.6 and 2.7 respectively, into the low supersonic ranges. If you’re willing to just go by the manga’s interpretation of his feat of dodging an axe swing at close range instead of the anime, he can get up to Mach 3, again still comfortably in the supersonic range. Musashi is no slouch either, with casual direct feats in the subsonic range of 76.5 to 124 m/s. Taking scaling to other characters Musashi has defeated into account, he also enters the supersonic range, going from a Mach 1.12 feat performed by Inshun to even one ranked at Mach 1.54 performed by Seijuro. Curiously, Inshun also has a feat of dodging a weapon swing from a few centimeters away, ranking at Mach 2.54. While it appears Thorfinn would have a slight advantage, it’s important to remember that Musashi has adapted to being completely blitzed before, and both have instincts that would lead to a minor speed difference not being that notable in the grand scheme of things.

Please note that a lot of these calculations have a lot of caveats, as human eye perception feats are frequently contested due to lack of evidence for outspeeding perception instead of reaction, but both characters end up with similar speeds regardless. It is possible to argue that these grounded characters should not break the sound barrier at all, which is a reasonable stance. Without taking the supersonic calculations and FTE feats into account, both would still scale to leaving afterimages with their movements, which is possible at subsonic speeds, something consistent for more “objective” feats that both have, with Musashi’s 112 m/s Shuriken dodge and Thorfinn heavily upscaling Thorkell throwing a spear at 79 m/s, a gap again very small and mitigated by upscaling and Thorfinn’s own adaptation, like how he adapted from getting blitzed by Garm to matching his speed.

No matter what, speed is going to be consistently very close if you’re fair to both combatants, so we consider this category a tie.

If both have pretty much an equal chance to incapacitate the other if we were to consider stats alone, we will need to analyze all of their tertiary factors individually to determine which of them has a bigger chance of winning.

Stamina

Both of these guys fight through damage, stay focused, and keep going when anyone else would already be done. Musashi’s stamina is flat-out terrifying. He survived days tied to a tree with no food or water, and in battle he kept carving through groups without slowing down. His biggest feat is the seventy-man slaughter, where he never stopped, took several sword slashes, and still managed to finish the fight while vastly outnumbered. The fight should logically have lasted for several hours. On top of that, he powered through spear thrusts from Inshun, the kind of hits that cripple other men for days, and just kept swinging.

Thorfinn, on the other hand, shows his toughness in a different way. He can hang and keep pressing against Thorkell, who’s insanely hard to hit. He fought with a broken arm and ribs, then went straight back to training and pulling off stunts while still injured. He took slash after slash without flinching, fought Hild with a broken foot and five bolts in him, one in his leg, and still didn’t drop. He even managed some of his fastest movements while recovering from a stab. Even after having his ribs pierced, he was dodging arrows and spears, knocking out hostile Lnu, and only stopped once he was hit by six arrows, and even then he lived thanks to help. Considering Askeladd could stall fifty men and Bjorn could beat ten, and Thorfinn consistently fought above them, the baseline checks out.

Their superhuman pain tolerance is honestly very similar, since both keep outputting while heavily injured. The real difference comes down to who can last longer in a drawn-out fight, and the clearest metric is how many opponents they can handle alone. While Thorfinn can take on multiple opponents alone and scales above someone who stalled fifty, Musashi is shown more consistently cutting through larger groups without tiring, and even outright killed seventy in one go. That gives Musashi a slight edge in Stamina, though it’s still closer than it looks.

Mobility

This one is very straightforward. Both characters are really good at running fast, dodging fatal attacks, showing a lot of great reflexes and movement that are combined with their speed. Musashi has quite a few feats where he moves so fast he leaves afterimages, indicating that he can zoom around the battlefield running or jumping in short horizontal bursts. That being said, Thorfinn is visually way more athletic, not only he can leave afterimages but he’s capable of making big leaps very consistently, sometimes even defying physics, climbing, swimming etc. It takes a single snippet from one of Thorfinn’s early fights with Thorkell to see how superior he is here, and he only got better as time went on. His better agility and movement should give him the edge here, which is relevant because in a fight, it can often matter just as much as raw stats.

If strength and speed are equal, the fighter with better agility controls the fight by gaining superior position, cutting angles, forcing misses while staying in range, making strikes more effective, conserving energy, adapting quickly, dictating rhythm, and using even small movements like steps or pivots to decide whether a blow lands or fails, which is relevant considering how much he jumps around in his fights with Thorkell and Snake, the latter being especially relevant given they were in fact fighting under equal stats. So while both may share similar speed and reactions, Thorfinn’s superior athleticism and movement variety make him harder to pin down and harder to predict. Thorfinn takes Mobility.

Skill

Perhaps one of the most important sections and one of the hardest to pinpoint, but still there isn’t much to be said regarding who takes it if you just compare what we wrote in their respective skill sections. Both of these characters are extremely skilled in their own right, with feats of exploring enemy openings to their advantage, managing to avoid lethal damage through raw instinct, defeating seasoned warriors with superior experience, basically what you’d expect. Both have superhuman senses capable of making them predict danger and a talent for finding enemy weaknesses, but that’s where the comparison shifts in Musashi's favor. While Thorfinn senses are capable of warning him from danger and focusing on enemy movement to predict their moves, Musashi’s are just vastly more complete. Musashi’s battle instincts are so good he can basically run entire fights in his head, always staying two or even four steps ahead of his opponents, and seeing through their movements. Thanks to the inherent unpredictability of his style, and the fact it mixes attack and defense while leaving little to no openings, Musashi can analyze his opponent more easily too, while avoiding their attacks with his own superhuman reflexes and borderline precognition.

Thorfinn is no slouch, and is also capable of absurd skill feats such as matching someone as initially overwhelming in speed like Garm, or basically dodging mortal shots blind like in his fight with Hild, but Musashi’s more generally impressive showings of skill should grant him the edge. It’s closer than people usually give credit for, but Musashi should take skill between the two.

Relevant Experience

We want this to help us to be an effective category in setting up who should win in a fight, and unfortunately, we have a tendency of making the “Experience" sound like a pity point most of the time. Of course, having more years in the field might be what makes a difference when their skill and types of opponents are so close, but the variety of opponents they fought and how much they learned from these experiences, or how much they used their quick thinking to win against someone completely new, will always speak way more. You probably see where we are going, just counting their years in the field doesn’t mean that much if they don’t come with baggage. What we want to determine isn’t who fought for longer, but whose experience actually helps them to realize how they can beat the other opponent.

And, quite frankly, even if we wanted, it is difficult to determine superiority based on years of experience alone, given our reference point is unclear. Thorfinn killed countless people between the ages of six and eighteen. We are not shown every fight, but the narrative makes it clear that he was highly active during this period. From eighteen until around twenty-seven at the end of the story, he continued to face conflicts, though the focus shifted. There is also a vague timeskip between the Eastern Expedition and the Vinland arc, where Thorfinn traveled as far as Greece. It is possible he encountered minor conflicts during that journey, but these events are never detailed. Taken together, Thorfinn has roughly twelve years of very active combat and an additional nine years of sporadic encounters, the latter marked more by subduing opponents. Musashi’s timeline is also ambiguous. His first kill occurred at thirteen, and by the start of the series at eighteen he had already accumulated several fights. By twenty-two he famously defeated seventy men. In the later Farming Arc his exact age is uncertain, so we only know Musashi had experienced in total at least nine years of intense activity, with countless duels in between. Even then, Musashi is compared to having learned over 20 years of experience under 5, showing how all of this is vague for us to be counting. It would also be misleading to rely on Musashi’s final years from THE LAST to imply greater experience, as by then he is quite literally dying, no longer in his prime. Thorfinn is not fighting an old man, and experience cannot be composited in such a simplistic way. Ultimately, it is difficult to measure either character’s strength by number of kills or length of combat activity, especially since the comparison assumes they meet in their prime. Under those conditions, it becomes too nebulous for a definitive conclusion of who defeated more people and who fought for longer.

 

The idea, then, it’s look into all their known fights and see if any of the many enemies they faced have similarities to how their opponents fight. Well, neither had a 1:1 experience, but it's worth a try. Let's look at Thorfinn first. He fought against bow users, spear users, and specially sword users, all of these usually being trained soldiers, pretty much his entire time since. Regardless of his smaller range and needing to come closer to these warriors, either using short swords or barehanded, he managed to win or at the very least come out alive in all of those scenarios. If we're talking about coming close, we don't need to restrict it to sword users, Thorkell has impressive range with his axes and is much taller than Musashi, and even then Thorfinn manages to avoid them consistently. But perhaps the most similar experience will come from Snake. After all, not only he was one of the few characters who could win against a Jomsviking, which are in-lore very skilled, we know he was likely from an elite unit of bodyguards from Constantinople, which only hyped him up even more. Minus the superficial scar on his face, Thorfinn not only managed to avoid hits from this guy pretty much for the entire fight, but land some kicks and block quite a few sword strikes as well, which is relevant because, besides matching in skill, this is the closest we have from an equal stats fight in Vinland Saga. The fight ended short only because Snake was able to reach Gardar, but without this abrupt interruption, it's possible Thorfinn could have won here.

In Musashi’s case, there basically isn’t anyone comparable to Thorfinn in his duel resume. 99% of his fights are against other swordsmen since he was a child, who fight completely differently from Thorfinn’s short range style. The single time Musashi dueled someone that fought him barehanded was… when he fought Itto Ittōsai, who rushed at him from a very predictable angle and attacked with a single arm. Thorfinn has shown vastly superior hand to hand skills than Ittōsai, and uses both his arms and legs to fight, not to mention that he has shown to be way more agile as well. Surprisingly enough, as this may come as an upset, it's Thorfinn who should have the most relevant experience out of the two, in terms of specifically knowing how to beat the other here.

Farming

Both of them spent part of their journeys farming, something that might seem small compared to duels and bloodshed but ended up shaping them more than any fight. For Thorfinn, the years on Ketil’s farm were punishment and healing at once, the place where vengeance finally died and where he learned to value creation over destruction, every harvest of wheat pulling him further from the killer he once was. We don’t know if Musashi’s time in the rice fields last as long, but it sure hit him just as hard, because bending his back to the soil, carving canals, fending off locusts, and working in step with villagers forced him to swallow his pride and see that persistence, patience, and care for others carried as much weight as any duel.

The fields gave them what battle never could: the chance to be empty, to be reborn, and to fill that emptiness with patience and humility. In that emptiness they found room to grow, to take in new meaning and new life, and the very act of working the land became proof that starting over was possible, because both realized that bygones are bygones, that the self of today is made only today. They became like water, shaped by their terrain yet free in their own flow, no longer lashing out in fear or cutting themselves off from others, but opening up to people, becoming kinder, gentler, the kind of strength that doesn’t need to prove itself.

What came out of the farms were men unrecognizable from who they once were, to the point where others could look at them and marvel, saying the fields had produced someone beautiful. In the end, they both reached the same point, living proof that all truly strong people are kind. This one is a tie.

Be aware this section doesn’t actually impact the results tho. We were just really inspired to write it.

Summary

Thorfinn

“I want to be a kinder, gentler person. I want to be a stronger person.”

Advantages:

• Vastly stronger
• More agile and mobile
• His experience is more useful to discover how to beat Musashi
• Reasonably progressive for his time
• Had a better dad
• Had a better best friend

Equal:

• Around the same speeds with lower and higher interpretations
• Similar pain tolerance
• Farming was equally important to both

Disadvantages:

• Not as skilled
• Slightly worse stamina
• “It’s a small price to pay”
• “You got teats”
• Emphasis on had

Musashi

“Musashi, you’ve become kinder. You’re getting stronger, I see. All truly strong people are kind.”

Advantages:

• Has more stamina to fight for longer
• Slightly better skill
• Takuan Sōhō

Equal:

• Around the same speeds with lower and higher interpretations
• Similar pain tolerance
• Farming was equally important to both

Disadvantages:

• Vastly weaker
• Far less agile and mobile
• His experience was slightly less useful to discover how to beat Thorfinn

Conclusion

This one could really go either way at first glance. Musashi has plenty of efficient ways to close out a fight, and with their speeds being about equal, it’s not like Thorfinn can simply run circles around him. The problem for Musashi is that the few advantages he does hold, like slightly higher stamina and skill, just don’t tilt the scale enough to secure a win. Thorfinn brings too much to the table: sharper mobility, more relevant experience to take Musashi out and a massive edge in raw strength. Those factors give him plenty of reliable options to shut down Musashi’s offense before it becomes dangerous, whether by breaking his blades, knocking him off balance, disarming him, or just overpowering him outright. And while Musashi might be the more refined swordsman on paper, Thorfinn isn’t so far behind in skill or endurance that he couldn’t consistently pull this off. In the end, a true warrior needs no sword. The winner is Thorfinn Karlsefni.

Final Tally

Thorfinn Karlsefni (4) - Flip, Kaiser, Alex, Lunge
Miyamoto Musashi (0)

Afterwords + Alt Matchups

(drawing by SirusStuff)

Flip: Wow, this finally ended. Also yeah, it’s me Flip who’s starting this section. It feels a bit weird… but I hope you guys get used to it. This blog is on the shorter side compared to some of our other projects like Ryu vs Kenshiro, but it still has a lot of love and dedication from all of us. I always wanted to do this project, cuz while it isn’t a MU that is the most ideal for the DEATHBATTLE! show, it is still my secret favorite matchup, even if it's not my most wanted for obvious reasons. I love both of these characters, both of their mangas and I feel this is a MU that tells a really cool story about who these characters are and their journey. They helped me a lot in terms of my own self-esteem, so I really wanted it to feel special. I tried pulling a DDB for this on the official server some time ago, but I didn't have my memory so fresh on all their best feats and it ended up that no one really repped Musashi much, it was a total disaster lol. There’s also quite a number of arguments I made there that I already didn’t agree with anymore, I still had a very casual mind on some stuff and didn’t have the same standards or sense of what’s bullshit I have today, so after a while I felt like fact checking everything I said and compiling their list of feats… so when Kaiser said he picked this one up I got so happy, it was finally the time to give a fresh look into, and we only didn’t do it sooner because we were waiting for Vinland to end. Truth be told, differently from how the DDB went, we were expecting Musashi to win this one for the majority of the blog, lol. I was very surprised that even with the scrutiny we pulled over their feats, they still managed to be… way faster than we were expecting, depending on your standards for FTE feats. In the end, Thorfinn surprisingly still pulled off, albeit for very different reasons. That being said, I don’t mind if some people think Musashi would win, he’s also very dear to me and you can definitely argue for him. Before talking over some MUs people comment about their series, I want to thank everyone that helped in this project, directly or indirectly. Even though you couldn’t stay for the entire time, thank you, Alex, for helping us clear the Vagabond research with both quality and in a timely manner. Thank you, Sirus and L.A.D. for helping us with some of the custom images, so I didn’t get overloaded with them. Thank you, Rina, for giving some guidance to Kaiser over how to calc some of the trickier feats. Thank you, Migue, for helping us with one of the calcs we needed. Thank you, Lunge, for helping me with the Vinland Saga anime research. And of course, thanks Kaiser, for not only picking this up as a blog, helping not only on Vagabond research but to revise both series feats, making almost 100% of the calcs we used, and being my best friend in this community. Thank you all for making this dream come true.

Well… it’s hard to avoid mentioning alternative matchups for these characters, and one in particular has always been very popular in the community. At the same time, we recognize the problem when it comes to giving that series any spotlight in the show. Rather than debating that issue too much here, our focus is on the characters themselves. Truth be told, some of us who regularly contribute to this blog, myself included, appreciated them long before the controversy came to light. Some fans of the blog have even asked why we were not covering this particular matchup instead, so there is really no way to avoid it. We trust that readers can understand that distinction, or at least respect it and simply scroll past if they would prefer. With that out of the way, let’s rip the bandaid off and start talking about…

Thorfinn VS Kenshin

Flip: Honestly, besides the gigantic pink elephant in the room, the only “problem” with this MU is that you would need to not go super over the top with Kenshin to make it work, but given there’s already adaptations that do that inside the series, like the live-action movies and the old OVAs, it’s not really that big of a deal. The matchup is also extremely thematic, both characters are great and they have some connections being unique to these two, like the family aspects, their short statures, their no-killing oaths being extremely similar, you name it, I don’t think you can do much better for Kenshin in terms of themes. The debate is inexistent tho, so I think it’s kinda obvious why there’s not really a good reason to make a blog out of this, especially when Rurouni Kenshin is sorta researched, at least compared to Vinland Saga and Vagabond. Does that mean Kenshin is out of the picture for any blog? We don’t know yet. It’s a complicated circumstance, and while we enjoy the character, there is always the problem of bringing him up. We do not want to be insensitive about it, nor do we want to come across as complacent regarding the author’s actions. Who knows. Apparently the show wants to bring Kenshin on, and this is probably the MU they would go with. I hope the writers for said episode understand you can’t really write a death for this matchup, as making Kenshin kill a pacifist would be the peak of character assassination in the show, making Aang having “no choice” or Batman hanging Cap feel like child’s play. It’s not even that pussy attitude of wanting respectful deaths or some shit, it just doesn’t work and goes against the entire point of the MU. Watch the Trust and Betrayal OVA by the way.

Kaiser: This is a perfect matchup with a lot of potential for meaningful storytelling but it’s such a shame there’s so much baggage attached to it. If there’s one episode where they can break the death rule, it should be this one. Watch the Trust and Betrayal OVA by the way.

Seinen Royale

Kaiser: It’s basically the same thing! With Guts! It’s not too complex beyond the obvious appeal, but I do like that Guts still has very solid connections with both still, and that this is basically Viking vs Knight vs Samurai in a way. Zero debatability, unfortunately. Guts sweeps even if we limit him to the Golden Age.

Hild VS Enishi

Flip: Compared to Thorfinn vs Kenshin, this one’s a bit more straightforward. You don’t have the no-killing rule weighing it down (tho yeah, the elephant in the room’s still there), so the matchup flows a lot cleaner. Both of them are characters running on grief and revenge, their whole arcs built around losing the people they loved most because of what the protagonists did and then throwing all that pain back at the world. That parallel alone makes the fight heavy as hell. What really sets them apart is the contrast, since Hild’s story is about slowly letting go until she forgives Thorfinn, while Enishi just keeps sinking deeper into obsession until he finally breaks, ending up in the same kind of depression Kenshin once went through, leaving an open note if he can crawl back like Kenshin did. In their most iconic fights, they act more like schemers, setting traps and making the heroes stumble and causing both to mentally break down. Even if Hild leans heavily on her crossbow instead of direct fighting, it mirrors Enishi’s first main battle with Kenshin. That makes this fight feel really different from Thorfinn vs Kenshin, but still true to who they are. It just sucks that Hild would lose.

Thorkell VS Ren Pa

Kaiser: Easily one of the most natural Vinland Saga vs Kingdom matchups, and one that would go crazy. Both are larger-than-life forces who flip entire battlefields just by showing up, swinging massive weapons like they’re nothing. Just like Thorfinn and Musashi, Thorkell and Ren Pa are both based on real figures. There’s more stuff you can talk about like their melancholic side, and honestly, the more you dig themes and how much of a cool fight it would be, it just makes sense.

Flip:

Thorkell VS Mountain

Lunge: A matchup that actually becomes very intuitive once you get over the whole “animated guy vs live action guy” thing. This matchup has a strong medieval theme, with this being one of the rare “Viking vs Knight” matchups. Ironically, despite Thorkell being from an action anime, it’s Mountain whose setting is more fantastical, with all the dark fantasy themes in the Game of Thrones. Just as Thorkell, Gregor is known as the strongest of the strong, and still his actor is at least 6 to 12 inches shorter than his book counterpart is supposed to be. This fight is the definition of “hype moments and aura” as it pits two ginormous warriors viewed as superhuman within their settings, even though they are just naturally that strong. It is also a good contrast, with Thorkell being notably quite chill outside of battle and Gregor being always cruel and aggressive. I would assume Thorkell takes this without much difficulty, given his feats are just less grounded and Gregor lacks speed feats to match him, plus Thorkell’s unorthodox fighting style would only make it harder. Even then, I still believe the Mountain shall give the Jomsviking a run for his money.

Flip:

Askeladd VS Jaime Lannister

Flip: I kinda see this MU using Jaime as a mix of the show and books, and honestly this matchup writes itself, easily my favorite from all under this Afterwords batch. Both Jaime and Askeladd are men defined by their contradictions, Jaime’s the golden boy knight everyone spits on for stabbing his king, and Askeladd’s the half-Welsh schemer hiding his noble blood while running with killers and liars. What makes it click is that neither is just about swinging a sword, they win fights with wit, manipulation, and always being one step ahead, while hiding it behind arrogance or flair. There is also a really cool parallel between Jaime striking down Aerys to save King’s Landing and Askeladd killing Sweyn to protect Wales, both kings struck down for the sake of something bigger. Also, a very important aspect of these characters is how their family ties shape everything they do. Jaime’s whole life is wrapped around Cersei, while Askeladd’s is rooted in his mother’s suffering and his split loyalty to Wales and Denmark. At first, both come off like monsters, but the longer you follow them the more human they get, you get to empathize with them even if they aren’t good people. And the irony is, as that monstrous image fades, so do they: Askeladd’s death closes his arc in both versions of Vinland Saga, while Jaime meets his end in the show. It’s peak I’m afraid.

Kaiser: Jaime and Askeladd are my favorite characters from their respective series so this gets bonus points from me. I really like the themes and the fight is simple but cool. Jaime fighting someone with a real claim to be a King that never fulfilled this role effectively is really fitting for his character. I also assume he loses, which is also extremely thematic, for the Kingslayer to be defeated by a King who never was. Man, I miss reading the ASOIAF books.

Lunge: What I really like about this is that this is a mind battle more than anything else. Both of these characters are defined by guile and wit. Even though they’re swordsmen, you can make the animation focus on their attempts to trick and outsmart each other, as neither are above fighting dirty. Interaction potential is very strong too considering their infamous attitudes, and the death can be very brutal considering the way violence is in both series’. And as with most Vinland MUs, visual connections are really strong too. Good stuff.

Kojiro VS Zatoichi

Kaiser: Really cool matchup for my favorite Vagabond character. The theme is that they’re both wandering swordsmen with a disability that use their other senses to guide them in combat. Kojiro is deaf, and Zatoichi is blind. It’s very interesting how each uses the senses the other doesn’t have the most, with Kojiro having developed his eyesight to absurd levels and Zatoichi using his hearing. Zatoichi is a very cool and important character in Japanese film so it’s cool he has a matchup, especially against a character as cool as Kojiro.

Flip:

Kojiro VS Garm

Flip: This one is interesting, but a bit lamer than the MU we just talked about. I like that both approach battle with some sort of playful side of them. Even the way they fight feels alike, wielding weapons that are different from the norm. What really makes this work is how they bounce off the protagonists, as Kojiro is Musashi’s opposite, raised in a completely different way but just as consumed by the sword and the search for rivals, while Garm does the same for Thorfinn, showing the darker path a young warrior could take, where Thorfinn turns away from violence, Garm dives headfirst into it, laughing into these death battles… wait huh. That being said, I think Kojiro is too much of a character compared to the few times Garm shows up, he’s not really as complete, which is ironic given we are talking about a guy who is stuck in a manga hiatus forever. Garm probably doesn’t have the same AP advantage as Thorfinn, there’s not really any way to prove he matches a Jomsviking in strength and he clearly folds to Thorfinn, so I imagine Kojiro would solo him. Kinda fitting, given Garm always wanted to fight a stronger opponent to end his life in fashion.

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