This truly needs to seen to be believed: A man who calls himself a modern-day samurai warrior has been videotaped slicing a speeding pellet in half with a sword.
Isao Machii accomplished the seemingly superhuman feat in a video filmed at a firing range outside Los Angles last year. The clip was recently recirculated by Oddity Central. The filmmakers used a special camera to slow down the film by 250 times. Viewers can see Machii's blade slicing into the pellet, which was moving at 200 mph.
Witness Dr. Ramani Durvasula, an associate Professor of Psychology from California State University, said she heard the blade connect with the bullet, but could not see it.
“This is about processing it at an entirely different sensory level because he is not visually processing it," Durvasula says in the video. "This is a different level of anticipatory processing. Something so procedural, something so fluid for him.”
Machii's skills with a blade are well-documented.
The Daily Mail notes that the swordsman began studying the ancient art at age 5 and is now the leader of his own samurai school.
Machii also holds multiple Guinness World Records, including one for most sword cuts to straw mats in three minutes. Machii's record of 252 cuts was achieved on the set of Lo Show Dei Record, in Milan, Italy, in April 2011.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, YouTube is filled with videos of the talented samurai's various feats. Machii has been filmed cutting an egg in half, slicing the delicate top of a mushroom and cutting clean through an iron pipe.