Romance (ロマンス)
Overview
Perhaps the most famous Wotagei wazas of all, you will most likely see the stereotypical Uchishi performing Romance. While Romance is mostly used during the sabi after performing at least one sabi waza, the movements learned and used in Romance can be applied to all aspects of wotagei, in particular OAD and Muramasa.
Starting Stance (Romance Keihou)
Your starting stance in basically every case when going into Romance will be the Romance Keihou. With your body slightly leaning to your right, your left arm should be completely straight and at about a 45 degree angle with your right arm bent at about your waist level, spinning in a clockwise circular motion.
Hai, Hai, Hai-Hai-Hai
When you’re on your third beat of Romance Keihou, you want to bring your left arm around in a big clockwise circular motion and bending to your right. You want to bend to the point that your leg and side of your body make a straight line. With your left arm fully straight in the air, you want to pump your right arm down and back up. After you complete the arm pump, you want to make the same swinging motion into Romance on your right, doing the same thing as on the left. After your Romance on the right, you go into the Romance set transition with your arms swinging in front your body from left to the right and left again. On the second left swing, you want to once again transition into your Romance.
2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3……..
The number of Romances during a set can be confusing for some. One set of Romance are the Romance you do between the Romance set transitions swing motions. After your Romance Keihou, you go into two Romance and then go into the Romance set transition. After the first Romance set, every set after will always have three Romance.
One Point Advice
- When doing your Romance, always keep the arm that is in the air as straight as possible. Having your arm as straight as possible while in the air makes your Romance look really tall and firm.
- You want to try and pump your lower arm right when your straight arm stops and swing into your next Romance or Romance set transition right after you end your pump. This makes your Romance flow nicely.
Next
After learning all of the above mentioned wazas, you have learned all of the fundamental wazas. From here it is about further researching wotagei and performing wotagei. Details about recording and further research in wotagei will be discussed in the Post-Fundamentals section.
For the ambitious, they could move onto the Torch Waza section, which details the fundamentals for some of the hardest wazas in wotagei.