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"The English longbow is estimated from surviving examples to have had 50 - 60lbs draw weight and was unable to penetrate the french knights armour at Agincourt. Partly of course this was due to the poor quality of of the iron in the English arrowheads but you'd still have to have an extremely powerful thrust to penetrate quality armour from this time."
Bows are irrelevant, and act in a completely different manner to penetrate armor. And the Armor the Italian mercenary cavalry were wearing was the very best in the world.
With a sword, if the tip penetrates(as the arrows did mind you), you have the full weight of your body and all your muscle strength continuing to push it home.
Once the KE from an arrow is expended, it's gone. A melee thrust does not suffer from that limitation. And remember, with a double handed bursting thrust attack every ounce of your body mass is in forward motion, delivering a massive KE impact when compared to an arrow. Do the math on a 170lb warrior bursting in at 15fps(a lion attacks at 18fps, so 15 fps seems reasonable to me for a highly trained Samurai, or whoever).
That's 557 foot-pounds of energy bro(more than a .357 magnum at the muzzle), all focused on the very fine point of the tanto tipped Choku-To.
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