Even after 7 years since the gaiden release, reading that people are still convinced that El Cid's training was in Japan leaves me baffled. On what basis would they be so sure of that?
Instead, there are a few indications corroborating the opposite hypothesis:
He was clueless when Lacaille's father gave him that advice about the differences between Amagire and Nagagire types of blade, like he never heard of them before. If he had really trained in Japan to become the perfect blade, together with a sword sharpener who was Japanese, it would be absurd for him of all people to know nothing about it. Kid El Cid, Mine and Felser did live isolated in the woods, okay, but would they have heard an adult naming the swords at least once in six years of training, wouldn't they? Considering that we are talking about the most sword-obsessed man of all time and the country where the swordsmanship is almost sacred, how could he not even have an idea about it if he had lived there for years? Take Shura for example: in episode g assassin, we see him showing a certain deal of knowledge of blades and oriental stuff in general, but it was because his master, Izo, was a Japanese samurai before becoming the Capricorn gold saint of his time. The same could have been applied to El Cid if he had really trained in Japan, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
The main point. When he tells Lacaille about Mine's death by tuberculosis, Capricorn says that it happened during the season when her oriental flowers (Sakura) vanished. In other translations, he directly speaks about flowers brought by Mine from the east, where she was from (more accurately, her father, as we'll see in point 3). If he really trained there, how could she have brought Japanese plants from a more oriental land than Japan itself where they supposedly lived in at the time?
Again, some moments before she expired, Mine told El Cid that in her father's land women weren't allowed to wield blades because it was believed that a woman's touch'd bring them to ruin, then almost pleads El Cid to tell her that the illness that'll kill her isn't some sort of cruel punishment for having broken that "rule". Of course it wasn't, but apart from that (quite heartbreaking) scene, the part which interests us is the bit "in my father's country". Now, sadly, that belief was a very rooted and worldwide spread prejudice, so her father's country could be a clue of little help to my thesis. But both of her training companions often highlighted her Japanese origin, so there's no doubt about what the country in question is. So, I ask you, what was the need for "my father's country -> Japan" named as a distant and remote land and not a simple "here, in this country (implied, where you and I are living and speaking to each other in this precise moment)"? The answer is obvious: 'cause they weren't in Japan.
The stupidest argument, actually, but for all of its uselessness I'll still mention it. Like I said, both Felser and El Cid repeatedly spoke about Mine's oriental origins like a rarity (not a surprise, of course, except for Yoma there weren't Japanese people you could actually see in the west of the 18th-century-world). If they trained in Japan, they as strangers would be the ones to be seen as a rare sight by a majority of oriental people, not her. Apart from the fact that the villagers speaking about these kids (Mine and El Cid) trapped in the burning forest seemed to be everything but Japanese. But details.
Anyway, what's the point of it all? Nothing, actually, but I felt like it was something to be accurately analyzed in order to have clear ideas about one of my favorite gaidens, and mainly to remember that one thing is Shura, another is El Cid. Like each and every LC saint, they are not the same as the original series knights, so I think that copy-paste them just because is faster than actually reading their manga only gives a result of banality in the representation of the characters. This thing of the training place is only a detail, not really relevant to the story, that's true, as it was the fact that I started talking about them only because I felt like it, and it's still plausible for my hypothesis to be wrong, who knows, nothing was confirmed by the authoress, after all. It's still true that saying that he trained in Japan defies logic. Regardless, it's still annoying seeing well built characters like the ones depicted in Lost Canvas being flattened by some just because they think these characters are only a copy of Kurumada's, and I'm not talking only about these ones. Even regarding details which are so little or insignificant like a training place. It's in the attention to the details that you can see the care for everything above and around, after all. So, read their own manga when creating stories about characters, experience it, absorb it as its own world, different or similar to the ones it's related to, and regard each character as their own person. And then, create your own world, your headcanons, your ideas about those same characters, ideas that maybe you like more than the very author's way of handling his/her own creatures.
Feel free to write and create what you want, but always make sure to remember who and what you are writing about.
I just re-read this and it seems like a speech for an election campaign 🤣 but I needed to say it. Good afternoon to you all, people! 😁
