Yari

Historical Yet Fantastical

The Yari is one of the most underrated polearms in the modern nerd powerscaling canon. While many an argument has been had by annoying chronically online nerds about the relative superiority of swords, poleaxes, halberds, spears, axes, and countless other instruments of asskicking, the Yari, despite its iconic design (most often remembered with a crossguard as depicted here, though the feature was far from universal) is almost never mentioned in those discussions.

First appearing in written sources in 1334, the Yari did not come into vogue until the late 15th century in Japanese warfare, but saw widespread usage by foot soldiers and in many cases even samurai (including notable historical figures like Honda Tadakatsu) throughout the Sengoku Period, dropping out of common usage only around the start of the Edo Period under the Tokugawa Shogunate (though many high-quality articles made by highly-regarded swordsmiths abound even from this era).

The Yari also possesses some small measure of mystical acclaim, with the "Three Great Spears of Japan" (Tonbokiri, Nihongo, and the destroyed Otegine) being regarded as spears crafted by the greatest historical blacksmiths of Japan, similar to the Tenka-Goken (Five Swords Under Heaven), which is a similar deal but with swords.

Given their popularity throughout the Sengoku Period, and the level of cultural acclaim these spears are privy to, it's a shock that we don't see them mentioned more often as mystical or mythical weapoons in fiction! Magic swords abound, be they Excalibur or Zulfiqar, and there's no shortage of legendary swords in novels, television, and film, yet polearms are conspicuously absent barring the Lance of Longinus, an absence which feels doubly glaring in the case of a remarkable weapon like the Yari.

While there's nothing particularly special about this 3D model of one, I do nonetheless feel like, to some extent, I'm being the change I wanna see in the world by making cool art of the cool thing that I wanna see more cool art of. As a final note, an interesting thing I encountered during the process of making this was just how inconsistent historical examples were in their features, especially the crossguard. Ultimately, I realized this didn't confuse me, but rather it gave me even greater freedom to design things however I saw fit, and I opted for a more "trident" style set of almost sharp "tines". It's a tad unusual, but certainly not unheeard of in the examples I could find. If you've got any other cool historical polearms you'd like me to do something with, send them my way! I'm a bigtime polearm enjoyer and I would love to have my horizons expanded by pointy things on sticks I had never even conceived of being possible before now.