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

We get it. Its 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 doesnt 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.

Heres what you can expect from Cool Sword Day: some cool flippin swords!!!!! You will find us dissecting the big-boi magnitude of Final Fantasy 7s and Monster Hunters 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 thats what weve done.

You wont find much Cool Sword Day coverage on other sites, perhaps because theyve 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.

• Top Stories in Cool Sword Day
  • ByPatrick GillMay 21, 2024 What makes a greatsword great? Image: Capcom

    In Elden Ring, that means sprinting — woefully underleveled — into the hellish, blighted wastes of Caelid and sneaking past mobs of rotting zombies and gigantic mutant dogs to plunder the caravan that holds the greatsword.

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  • ByPete VolkMay 21, 2024 The best movies to watch on Cool Sword Day Image: Beijing New Picture Film

    Watching movies with cool swords in them is a time-honored Cool Sword Day tradition, and for good reason. Its a perfect match of activity and holiday, naturally, but also ... who doesnt love a movie with a cool sword?

    For this years Cool Sword Day recommendations, weve tried to keep away from some of the Cool Sword Day classics you probably watch every year on this great day — the Lord of the Rings movies (on Max), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Prime Video and Tubi), The Princess Bride (Disney Plus), the Kill Bill movies (Netflix), Gladiator (Paramount Plus), and any King Arthur movies. Theyre all still great, and feel free to watch them, but we want to dive just a little bit deeper this time (with a few too-good-to-deny exceptions).

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  • ByCharlie HallMay 21, 2024 I talked to a swordmaker about the coolest swords he makes Photo: Sabersmith

    Weapons maker Sabersmith is a unicorn, according to general manager Mark Lienhart. Founded in the 1990s by Tim Lawler, the manufacturer does all of its own work in its well-equipped 15,000 square-foot facility located in Sunfield, Michigan. That makes it the single largest manufacturer of 100% American-made swords in the country.

    “Last year alone I think we built over 2,500 swords,” Lienhart said. “It was over 7,000 weapons total, including knives, swords, polearms. The whole kit and caboodle.”

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  • ByPete VolkMay 21, 2024 Dual-wielding is cool but tri-wielding is even cooler actually Image: Netflix

    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.

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  • ByTasha RobinsonMay 21, 2024 Sword Loser gives adults a terrific excuse to play like kids again Image: Tasha Robinson/Alice Steuer

    “So this is the tale of how Tyngauld the rake acquired his beloved mustache-sword. No, it isnt a sword for trimming mustaches, its a sword hilt with a mustache sticking out of it where the blade would normally be. Whats the point, you ask? Why a mustache-sword? Youre about to find out.”

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  • ByAna DiazMay 21, 2024 Majoras Mask brought us the coolest swords in The Legend of Zelda Graphic: Polygon Source Images: Nintendo/Nintendo EDP

    Celebrate Cool Sword Day the Polygon way: Were going all out for the biggest holiday of the year

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  • ByMichael McWhertorMay 21, 2024 Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree trailer is part lore dump, part war recruitment ad Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco

    FromSoftware released a new trailer for Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree on Tuesday, giving fans of the open-world fantasy adventure a fresh look at the DLCs story. That includes new details on its imposing new villain, Messmer the Impaler, a powerful demigod who appears to have a strong connection to characters from the original Elden Ring story.

    Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtrees new trailer also hints at what sent the demigod Miquella to a new land, one that was crushed under the tyranny of Messmers flame, and for which Miquella sacrificed himself. The trailer ends with the followers of Miquella joining forces and beckoning new warriors to join them on their journey to depose Messmer and his burning legions.

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  • ByNicole CarpenterMay 21, 2024 Can you pull Disneys Excalibur sword? Probably not Photo: Paul Hiffmeyer/Disney Parks via Getty Images

    You, too, can try your hand at pulling King Arthurs Excalibur sword from the stone where its stuck in three different Disney parks — Disneyland, in front of King Arthur Carrousel; Walt Disney World, near Prince Charming Regal Carrousel; and at Disneyland Paris, by Le Carrousel de Lancelot. The Sword in the Stone attraction is a small but popular experience at the parks largely because its so mysterious. Many try to pull the sword from the stone, but not many can get it out.

    Photo: Adam Berry/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    And it makes sense: Excalibur is the sword in The Sword in the Stone, and as the movies story (and Arthurian legend) tells it, only the rightful king of England can pull it out. The parks used to do a little show everyday where Merlin would choose several people from a crowd to test their might, and, maybe, one of them would pull out the sword. The show doesnt run anymore, but the swords stuck in their respective anvils remain.

    Pulling the sword out is so elusive, so rare, that people have started analyzing videos of park-goers attempts, drumming up theories on how to up your chances as one of the worthy ones. I know this because, despite never seeing The Sword in the Stone, this park attraction is somehow all over my TikTok feed. 

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  • ByCass MarshallMay 21, 2024 League of Legends coolest swords, ranked Image: Riot Games

    The cast of League of Legends is so vast that the best way to find a character of interest is to just scan the roster of champions, looking for a distinctive feature. One easy archetype for gamers to understand is someone with a cool sword; that makes sense, because “cool sword” is basically on the bottom pyramid of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. 

    There are fifteen champions who wield swords; we excluded characters who just use very big daggers. We also didnt include skins; this is all mainline Runeterra lore. With such an arsenal of swords to admire, we realized that we needed to rank them, so we could determine which of these blades reigns supreme for Cool Sword Day. Here they are, from least cool to coolest.

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  • BySusana PoloMay 21, 2024 A meteorite sword is inherently cool, and Terry Pratchett knew it Image: Netflix

    Roll the phrase around your tongue with me: Starmetal sword. Starmetal sword. The lost secret to Damascus steel could totally have been meteorites! Attila the Hun had a sword like this, right? Or Excalibur was one, yeah? Tutankhamun was definitely buried with one. Blue Eye Samurais heroine has a starmetal sword, and so does Sokka in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the Redwall series practically revolves around whoevers got the meteorite-forged sword of Martin the Warrior in their paws. 

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• ByAustin ManchesterMay 21, 2025 Its actually wild that Frieza died to a sword Image: Bird Studio/Toei Animation

  Early in Dragon Ball, Master Roshi destroys the moon, setting the stage for many more absolutely wild feats to come in the various Dragon Ball anime and manga series. Planets get blown up left and right, perhaps none more consequential than Frieza destroying Namek — which, of course, took longer to blow than the five minutes he threatened.

  Its a dramatic climax to perhaps the best saga in the entire franchise, and when it was done, both viewers and in-universe characters were left thinking the series biggest threat to date was done for. Frieza, already sliced in half by his own Destructo Disc-like attack, was blasted — and seemingly killed — by Goku (“You fool!”) and was unable to escape Namek before it went kablooey. And yet, somehow, Frieza survived in a remarkable display of resiliency.

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• ByTasha RobinsonMay 21, 2025 Bring back the coolest animated series (and coolest animated sword) of 1981 Image: Filmation

  And so it went, year after year, with the announcements about 2018s Netflix reboot of She-Ra: Princess of Power, 2021s He-Man reboot Masters of the Universe: Revelation, the CG version of Inspector Gadget, the American Voltron update Voltron: Legendary Defender, half a dozen new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers projects, a little-loved second Thundercats series, and every single Smurfs movie. I get it — the kids of the 80s are producers and writers and showrunners now, with enough clout to get their childhood memories turned into new shows. But apparently none of them watched Blackstar, easily one of the coolest animated series of the 1980s, built around the coolest sword.

  Theres a direct genetic line between the success of 1977s Star Wars and the wave of space-set, fantasy-themed Saturday morning cartoons that closely followed. Star Wars beget ABCs popular Thundarr the Barbarian, a post-apocalyptic dystopian-future fantasy about a muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains while wearing a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and more or less carrying a lightsaber and traveling with a Wookiee. Thundarr helped inspire Blackstar, CBS equivalent show, about a muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains while wearing a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and carrying his own form of laser sword. (No Wookiee, though — instead, series hero Blackstar got to ride a dragon.)

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• ByOli WelshMay 21, 2025 Swordcrafting stories are always cool, but Blue Eye Samurai pushes the idea into new territory Image: Netflix

  Twenty years later, another female assassin got her own version of a Japanese swordcrafting story, in Amber Noizumi and Michael Greens Netflix animated series Blue Eye Samurai. Mizu (Maya Erskine) is a half-white, half-Japanese warrior in the Edo period, filled with bitterness at her rejection by Japanese society, posing as a man, and seeking vengeance against four devilish white men, any of whom might be her father. In flashback, we learn how she was taken in as a child by the blind swordsmith Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), whom she calls Swordfather. She learned smithing from him, and swordfighting from his customers. She forges a sword using metal from a meteorite, and sets off on her murderous quest.

  [Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Blue Eye Samurai.] 

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• ByAri NotisMay 21, 2025 Halos coolest weapon isnt a gun — its the energy sword

  Halo is ostensibly a series about using guns to shoot aliens and defeat organized religion. But the coolest weapon in the series isnt a gun. Its a sword — specifically, its the energy sword.

  You may have encountered an energy sword for the first time in 2001s Halo: Combat Evolved. Certain classes of Elites would wield what looked, at the time, like a cyan lightsaber drawn in Microsoft Paint. Youd quickly discover that these iridescent color splotches in fact killed you in one hit, tearing through the Master Chiefs super future space armor like paper. Those feelings of frustration were likely followed by feelings of “Gimme that,” but sadly, developer Bungie did not allow players to use the energy sword in Halo: Combat Evolved.

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• BySamantha NelsonMay 21, 2025 Only Brandon Sanderson could invent a sword that needs therapy Image: Brotherwise Games

  [Ed. note: This article contains major spoilers for Brandon Sandersons Stormlight Archive series, particularly the most recent book, Wind and Truth.]

  Grappling with mental health issues is a major theme in Brandon Sandersons epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive. As the series heroes fight hostile armies and the machinations of a god bent on controlling the entire cosmere, they also have to confront their own depression, imposter syndrome, and repressed memories in order to grow and gain new magical powers. But its not just the people who need therapy — its just as valuable for the series sentient swords.

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• ByMichael McWhertorMay 21, 2025 Is there any sword cooler than a living sword? Image: Bandai Namco

  In the pantheon of Cool Swords, massive slabs of metal, blades made of space rock, and icons like the Master Sword and Phantom Blade steal much of the attention. But the living sword, a blade that houses a soul or living being within, or is simply just a sword-shaped creature, may be swordings coolest sword.

  Demonic or otherwise cursed swords, weapons that thirst for blood or hunger for human souls, are not necessarily living swords, though they too are cool. Who doesnt long to equip a weapon that slowly drains ones health, with the promised trade-off of immense power, and be slowly corrupted by a malevolent force? We all do. The sword that is alive, and has purpose, is an intoxicating trope. There should be more souls trapped in swords, not fewer. Thats my platform.

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• ByMaddy MyersMay 20, 2025 The length of Sephiroths sword in FF7 actually changes, says Tetsuya Nomura Image: Square Enix

  Ive been both fascinated and amused by the ostentatious appearance of Sephiroths sword ever since I first saw cosplayers brandishing their versions of it at conventions in my teen years, and Ive always wanted to know what went into its supremely impractical design.

  So who better to ask than designer Tetsuya Nomura, the Square Enix visionary who first put this sword into Sephiroths hands? And so, in honor of Cool Sword Day, heres Nomura explaining the swords backstory, its surprisingly variable length, and more.

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