I occasionally enjoy watching martial arts Youtubers. They run the gamut from professional fighters to dedicated practitioners to, well, scam artists, so they can easily devolve into a whole lot of nonsense. I’m the furthest thing from a competent fighter, though, and my interest goes more towards those who exhibit a desire to actually spread knowledge and understanding while avoiding macho posturing. 

One person I watch is Adam Chan, and while I don’t agree with some of his beliefs about how the world works, he comes across as someone who tries to check his ego at the door. He tries to communicate that a martial art is not “a way of fighting” in itself but rather a recipe or set of tools that should be adjusted for the situation or goal you desire. Self-defense is not sport fighting, and neither are combatives: The first is about escaping harm, the second is about a mutually agreed contest, and the last is about prioritizing maximum force and even concealing your weapons (both metaphorically and literally).

The categories can be easily conflated, and they commonly are. In the past, I wrote about out how the series Mashle highlights these distinctions. However, there’s actually another example that demonstrates these differences even better, and it can be found in the anime The Daily Lives of High School Boys, of all things.

The Daily Lives of High School Boys is a comedy about dumb teenagers, and it occasionally has a spinoff at the end of episodes called High School Girls Are Funky. These shorts feature a trio of girls: two loud and mean-spirited girls named Yanagin and Ikushima along with Habara, the meeker one. But it’s revealed that Habara used to be an absolute terror who had to be subdued by an alliance of the strongest kids in school. In one short, Yanagin and Ikushima decide to see who’s stronger in a fight. Habara tries to get them to stop, only to have her plea ignored.

However, when they try to establish the parameters for their bout, the “normal” Habara earnestly asks them why they would need rules in the first place for a fight. In this moment, the two realize what a mistake they’ve made: While they’re trying to compare skill in a fair contest, Habara doesn’t comprehend the very notion of limiting one’s violence. The other girls back down, anxiously claim it was all a joke, and avoid disaster in the end. Right as the third girl breathes a sigh of relief, though, the other two notice her tossing aside a large rock.

In this scene, you have the two girls approaching the situation with a sporting mindset, trying to agree upon the rules of engagement. You have the third girl thinking purely in terms of combatives and looking for ways to inflict maximum violence without compromise, including hiding a crude but effective weapon. And when the two de-escalate the situation, you have self-defense of a less flashy kind.

Even the best martial arts anime and manga tend to assume that all fighting and conflict is essentially the same, so it’s funny to see a gag series represent such subtle yet profound distinctions.