Cool Sword Day

Happy Cool Sword Day to all who celebrate. What, you forgot?

We get it. It’s easy to forget Cool Sword Day, the No. 1 holiday dedicated to cool swords in all walks of media, because it arrives in the lead-up to the “more legitimate” national holiday of Memorial Day. But that doesn’t mean it deserves any less effort or observation. After years of overlooking Cool Sword Day ourselves, Polygon is here to step up and do Cool Sword Day right.

Here’s what you can expect from Cool Sword Day: some cool flippin’ swords!!!!! You will find us dissecting the big-boi magnitude of Final Fantasy 7’s and Monster Hunter’s greatswords, writing love letters to World of Warcraft blades, rattling off some need-to-know sword trivia, talking to real-life swordmakers, and cementing lists of swords for the history books. Cool Sword Day demands cool sword coverage, so that’s what we’ve done.

You won’t find much Cool Sword Day coverage on other sites, perhaps because they’ve gone all in on [checks notes] Talk Like Yoda Day? With all due respect to the Jedi master, there are more cool swords out there than just lightsabers, and the world needs to know. Polygon is on the case this Cool Sword Day.

• It’s actually wild that Frieza died to a sword
• Bring back the coolest animated series (and coolest animated sword) of 1981
• Swordcrafting stories are always cool, but Blue Eye Samurai pushes the idea into new territory
• Halo’s coolest weapon isn’t a gun — it’s the energy sword
• Only Brandon Sanderson could invent a sword that needs therapy
• Is there any sword cooler than a living sword?
• The length of Sephiroth’s sword in FF7 actually changes, says Tetsuya Nomura