Prediction on faster opponents is impressive but finding out weaknesses and taking advantage of them isn't that impressive. Also you got scans?
Aren't they in his profile? Could have sworn i added them into his page but whatever. Back before the time skip when Zoro and Kaku fought, Kaku being able to utilize Soru which makes you faster than the opponent can
see, which Kaku
spams against Zoro. While at a speed disadvantage due to this Zoro uses his Prediction to keep up with attacks he can't see coming, and this gap is further increased upon Kaku's Zoan amp which greatly increases his stats. This later becomes a prediction match between the two with Zoro being able to
out predict Kaku despite the latter being faster amongst a technique that's supposed to make the user less predictable due to using the wind to move around and fight as opposed to moving yourself. His Prediction is also capable of tracking and predicting attacks that change
trajectory and several sneak attacks from Kaku such as attacking Zoro from his blind spots and spamming
danmaku amongst other attacks used in susuccession to throw Zoro off.
Also I'd argue otherwise as being able to deduce the skills and abilities of an opponent one has never faced before and being able to abuse the weaknesses of which they aren't informed about previously is indeed impressive as it's you analyzing all of their abilities, finding a weaknesses allowing one to dispatch of them quickly.
The lore itself makes it impressive. Masterswordsmen of the human race who have all lived their lives combatting have their own combat styles and techniques which Arthur can use, it isn't directly "quantifiable" but I need some feats that overshadow that.
Which is still a lot different from making outright new styles of combat from scratch, they aren't utilizing new forms of combat that are only unique to them such as creating an entirely new figtnining style such as Santoryu or Kino'mon's Fox-Fire style. Techniques are nice but being able to form entirely new systems of combat >>> making new techniques. Zoro created his style, fought a superior form of it in the form of 4 Sword Style which he still overcame, and can copy other unique forms of combat.
I still need feats of these skill based body control. Being able to manurvre and control your body isn't that impressive. Unless you mean some Ikki Kurogane shit.
It's skill based as Zoro can make himself bend in unnatural ways and has fine control of his muscle fibers. He can't push around organs and such but he can control his muscle fibers, manipulate his body to bend in ways that shouldn't be possible without injury (Such as twisting his own body to deliver flying slashes that are in the shape of an S.)
Idk what this is based on but he has the styles and techniques of thousands of master swordsmen imbuned into him. So it isn't just one style.
And he isn't utilizing all of them at once, he has their experience but he doesn't mash up all of their forms of sword play into one or utilize several at once. From what we're shown he's sticking to one style of sword play and that's the Medieval / European form of sword play.
Feats of what exactly? Zoro has feats of dodging blades coming at him from every
direction, while injured heavily he's still able to react and grab two swords coming from behind his
head, grabbing them without getting cut and proceeds to casually weave around
Hachi's attack with absolute
ease while also returning a
lethal attack back at Hachi. Hachi also stating that Fish-Men are significantly more skilled than
humans due to their ability to wield multiple weapons with grace due to their swift biology. This is the same Zoro who gets another life threatening injury and is able to do stuff like
this, where he's able to neg all of that damage and
return fire. This is because Zoro spun himself on top of the blades, aligning himself to match the rotation of the
blades while disarming Hachi by cutting his hands while he was spinning. This is Zoro as of the Arlong Saga, with critical injury and with weapons that are completely foreign and awkward for him to use. Also provides to proof that it's harder to dodge incoming attacks from Zoro using 3 swords than it is to dodge attacks coming from every direction using 6-8 swords all at once.
In terms of precision Zoro is able to intercept objects no smaller than
boogers, which explode and Zoro was able to cut it with such precision that instead of the explosion denoting on him he greaty reduced the size by pushing away the halves before it could detonate using only the edge of his blade.
Zoro also managed to utilize advanced Haki to unlock a level of durability negation in his short fight against Daz Bones, simply by remembering what his teacher taught him.
Zoro can also fight while being consistently
blinded with any of the offerings of Kenbunshoku due to lacking it at this time. Eyesight isn't much an issue for Zoro as he's fought
FTE opponents without much issue.
Fought evenly with Zombie Ryuma who has hundreds of years of experience, who at the time was nerfed due to him utilizing Brook's fencing stlye instead of his own. Ryuma in this state is so swift and precise that he can cut people several times and they'll experience the wounds only after walking 3
meters. Zoro can fight, match and surpass Ryuma even without proper
footing as him and Ryuma took the battle to the extreme by destroying the ground below them, fighting while running up walls and in air. This puts Zoro and Ryuma at a natural disadvantage since either one can fly or stay in the air so they'd need to compensate in various ways.
Important part is that everything here is from Zoro from his fodder days, after the Time Skip he can't even compare to his former self due to receiving training from Mihawl himself. After which everything he can do is significantly increased, and even gains the ability to copy other unique forms of combat such as copying Kino'mon's Fox-Fire style and even improving upon it after he used it for the first time.
You took this scan in isolation, the point with all 4 of those scans was just to prove he has all the combat experience and skill of hundreds and thousands of human heroes who all had to be extremely skilled in their own right beyond the norm to used the blade in the first place.
Yeah I'm aware and even that doesn't strike me as that impressive, because again the exact skill levels of those from before are left vague and ambiguous. They don't have feats aside from "oh these people are really skilled." aside from that there's nothing to work with, we don't see them creating new forms of combat on a whim, predicting stuff, analyzing stuff or copying stuff while improving the original usage.
We know that they had to be extremely skilled to have the sword choose them out of everyone in the first place. It chooses the most worthy human candidate to wield, so they would just be better than the rest of the candidates. Also, how do you quantify even how much they excell.
How you quantify how much they excell? Well typically we look at their fights and see how well they function from there. Mid battle growth is something good, and having feats of exceedingly getting better in one's respective discipline also works tremendously to quantify it.
I wasn't making the argument he was better, it's shown he's just comparable and can fight him whilst holding back and being pretty casual.
Point taken i guess? That still goes back to the experience thing being left vague as the heroes lack onscreen time and don't even have statements of unparalleled Mastery or surpassing human skill which are common statements in skill based Mangas and such.
Feats of FTE? that's probably the most impressive thing so far.
Read above, Kaku's usage of Soru makes him FTE to Zoro as he disappeared from his sight several times and Zoro still performed just fine. Kaku also gets an increase in stats from his Zoan boost.
But countering weaknesses isn't that impressive or unique. Creating their own unique forms of combat is not necessarily a good feat, it depends on what they can do with it. Otherwise I can say the same for Arthur that he has all the sword styles of thousands of different people, with specific techniques that Meliodas and Zeldris can remember from recollection. Copying other styles is very impressive.
I didn't say it was unique but it's certainly better than someone who doesn't have those feats. Analysis most times is impressive because the character had no aforementioned of said weaknesses and the weaknesses aren't typically something usual. "I can tell by his center of gravity, footing, breath patterns and the way he pivots that he over compensates for his movements" is definitely quite the edge to have against an opponent. Zoro's first unique form of combat is Santoryu which you already know, its a self made form of sword play utilizing 3 swords effectively to the point where he can combat styles that are meant to be superior such as 4 blade style and 8 blade style. You can't really say that due to none of the aforementioned heroes actually utilizing unique and self made ways to fight, they developed skills and techniques but as far as i know nobody has made new forms of combat entirety that nobody else can utilize. Yeah I agree especially if they can improve upon it, such as Zoro copying Kino'mon's exclusive Fox-Fire style that Zoro somehow utilized better than Kino'mon himself.
Also I can agree Mihawk is massively above Zoro in skill but he doesn't just do that to Zoro because of skill but also because he's just much faster and stronger. Any skillful enough character can body another with a breadknife and tank their attacks if they are more skilled but on top of that faster and stronger.
Mihawk was toying with Zoro and holding himself back as per his own words. He used his skill to stomp Zoro there, not his AP as he only used Yoru to "end" Zoro there. Mihawk lowered himself enough to the point where Zoro could barely keep up but wasn't FTE or blitzing Zoro.