Skip to main content

YouTube blacksmiths forge real-life version of Genji’s sword from ‘Overwatch’

Genji's Sword - Overwatch - MAN AT ARMS: REFORGED
One of the components that has helped make Overwatch an enormous hit in 2016 is the fact that each member of its roster is very distinctive, each possessing their own set of skills and specialized weaponry. Now, the popular YouTube series Man at Arms: Reforged has taken on the challenge of crafting one character’s signature sword.

While it’s broadly accurate to call Overwatch a first-person shooter, many characters don’t use guns at all. Genji, the game’s resident cyborg ninja, pairs a sword with a set of throwing stars to fulfil his role as a damage-dealing offense hero.

Genji’s primary weapon is an odachi that he calls Ryu-ichimonji. According to Overwatch lore, the character has never allowed anyone else to examine or repair the blade — but that didn’t stop the Man at Arms team from taking a stab at creating their own version.

The challenge of this particular build is bringing together its more traditional elements with the glowing green strip that runs the length of the blade. Genji is a member of a centuries-old ninja clan who is turned into a cyborg after a near-fatal fight, so the balance of old and new is a prominent motif in his character design and his weapon of choice.

Traditional blacksmithing processes are combined with more modern techniques to make sure that the sword is as accurate as possible. After the blade itself has been forged, it’s outfitted with LEDs under a plexiglass diffuser for an effect that’s very close to its appearance in-game.

This isn’t the first time that the Man at Arms crew have attempted to recreate a weapon from a popular video game. Previously, the team has made Poppy’s Hammer from League of Legends, the trench club from Battlefield 1, and Pyramid Head’s great knife from Silent Hill 2, among many other projects inspired by the world of gaming.

Editors' Recommendations

Brad Jones
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…
You can now use Pokémon music in your YouTube videos
The player character standing in a field with her Pokemon.

Nintendo has announced Pokémon DP Sound Library, a web-based service that allows users to listen to and download the music and sound effects of the original Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. 

Listeners can play individual tracks as much as they want, including iconic songs like Champion Cynthia and the Lake theme. Users can also choose from a variety of developer-made playlists based on mood as well as musical collaborations, only one of which has been revealed so far.

Read more
The Weather Channel is coming to YouTube TV
YouTube TV on Apple TV.

The Weather Channel -- which previously had seen relatively small reach on streaming platforms in the United States -- is starting to branch out. YouTube TV will gain the 24-7 weather service this year, according to a press release from Allen Media Group and Google.

The addition is a big deal because The Weather Channel had been limited to two of the smallest streaming platforms -- FuboTV and DirecTV Stream. It also fills a pretty big void in the YouTube TV lineup, which doesn't currently have an all-day weather channel. YouTube TV is believed to be the second-largest streaming service in the United States. It last announced a ballpark figure of "more than 3 million subscribers" in October 2020. It hasn't given any sort of update since then. For context, Hulu with Live TV has a publicly announced 4 million paid subscribers.

Read more
Why you may still be missing ESPN and other Disney-owned channels on YouTube TV
YouTube TV on Roku.

ESPN, ABC, FX, and other channels owned by Disney have returned to YouTube TV. But if you reorder your live listings so that the channels you actually watch are higher up than the ones you don't, you likely don't see those channels at all.

The problem is a bit of a glitch in that not only have the channels in question been pushed to the bottom of the listings in the custom view -- they're actually not even enabled in the first place. And that's not a new phenomenon. It's the way it has always worked when new channels are added to YouTube TV and you're using the custom sort, and so it makes sense (in a perverse, broken sort of way) that it's the case with the Disney-owned channels as they've been added back to YouTube TV.

Read more