Dual-wielding is cool but tri-wielding is even cooler actually

Cool Sword Day gives us plenty to celebrate each year. Meteorite swords. Video game swords. People commissioning swords from local swordsmiths. There are so many cool swords, you might be tempted to use two of them at the same time.

But to paraphrase Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker in the (sword-less) masterpiece The Social Network: You know what’s cooler than two swords? Three swords.

Roronoa Zoro understands this. The One Piece legend has never been content to let something as trivial as “only having two arms” hold him back from greatness. That’s what your mouth is for (another sword).

(One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda has said that making Zoro a tri-wielder was a way to one-up legendary Japanese swordsman Musashi Miyamoto, considered one of the greatest to ever wield a blade. “He was known for using two swords. My childish idea was to simply make Zoro even greater by giving him one additional sword.”)

Nightcrawler understands this. Ain’t nothing in the Bible says you can’t wield a third sword with your tail. Nightcrawler would know, he reads that thing every night.

General Grievous, the overachiever, understands this, using not two, not three, but four lightsabers. He gets eliminated on a technicality from this discussion — lightsabers aren’t swords, and having four arms makes this a whole lot easier — but his effort is appreciated nonetheless.

Shout out to these heroes (and villain) for their efforts in moving the sword game forward in fiction. It’s a tragically underserved character choice, but Zoro and Nightcrawler are more than happy to shoulder that burden. Please, if there are more characters you love who wield more than two swords at once, tell me in the comments. I anxiously await your response.