I don’t know much about Aka Saber besides having watched her Niconico stream, playing Kantai and having her as a support in Fate Grand Order. I really like her personallity from what I’ve seen and her saying “Umu” is great XD
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She’s pretty hardcore ( F/E “spoiler?” http://i.imgur.com/XbnsLEZ.png )
Actually, when you first get her she’s pretty much femGil, but once she starts to like you she even has an adorable side, quite the gap-moe^^
I’ve seen her April’s Fools stream, but only a few min of the KanColle one because no subtitles and I barely understand any japanese (which is also why I haven’t played a whole lot of CCC, only up to where Saber gets her bride outfit)
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Man, how’d it take me so long to discover this thread?
I haven’t played or read much of the “extended universe” Fate stuff. I’ve read the VN, Hollow Ataraxia, and am currently reading through Fate/Apocrypha. For animes I’ve seen Fate/Zero, UBW, and Deen’s adaptation shudder.
I’m a huge fan of the lore and worldbuilding done in Fate. I especially liked Hollow Ataraxia and all of the ridiculous bullshit that it brought to the table. Fragarach OP, man.
Is anyone here a member of /r/fatestaynight on reddit? That subreddit has some awesome fanart and lore discussion, would recommend.
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This is news to me, or at least I don’t remember anything of the sort. Please elaborate.
Weaved as a sub-narrative in Fate/Zero’s plot is Kirei’s inability to find purpose. The only life he identifies with is the one of a monster, and he tries everything he can to avoid it. Although a good man of the church in virtually every respect, faith in God has not satisfied his need for a purpose. Meanwhile, his Father remains blissfully unaware of Kirei’s inner turmoil and is satisfied with Kirei’s seeming devotion and obedience to God’s laws.
I believe inherent to these plot threads is commentary on religion itself. Urobuchi believes that religion is a necessary social construct, but unlike Christians like me, does not believe it is a “one size fits all” deal. Some people will be captivated to become better for religion, while others will dislike or just not understand why someone would devote their lives to following such a thing. It’s not a central theme, but it plays into the apparent contradiction of how Kirei (at the start, anyways) could be both a man of God, and yet, one utterly unsatisfied with himself.
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I doubt religion is even a factor there. Or to be precise, it doesn’t have to; it can be substituted. To me, it seems more like Kirei , despite fully devoting himself to fulfill the expectations of the organisation he has been born into, could not find himself. He could not be a person. He could not live according to his nature, which he only truly discovered after acting on his own desire and going against his organisation’s principles.
My point is, it would have been mostly the same if Kotomine was born into, say, a family of policemen.
Though I can’t seem to find the right section in the LN to dig deeper.
I understand your perspective, but I think it’s relevant to note that the church is very significant to Nasuverse lore. In addition, Fate Stay Night uses the church to emphasize how disparate Kirei’s true self is to his status in society. More significantly, however, Kirei chooses to ironically quote The Lord’s Prayer as Kiritsugu prepares to confront him. This is more relevant to his character then, say, Shinoa using the Lord’s Prayer before meals.
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That’s one of my favorite scenes in Zero. It fits so well with the montage of everything happening, especially the grail scene. I like how many ways you can interpret it too. It’s hard to tell if he is being sincere in his quotation, or if he’s saying it in a mocking way.
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Before the Camelot chapter in fate/grand order I would’ve said Extra Saber or Saber of black but now my favorite would have to be Bedivere
Cool Fate/Grand Order AMV I found
Also Fate Grand Order anime was announced
Anyways apparently I missed some of the discussion
Favorite series: I’m not that invested into the universe but I’d have to say UBW just cause of it’s nice animation and the way the episodes led up
Favorite Class: There’s a lot of Casters that I like (ie Nursery Rhyme, Medea Lily) so probably Casters
Favorite Servant: Someone like Kiyohime(From Fate Grand Order) I normally wouldn’t like but there’s something about her I have found appealing
Favorite Master: Does Gudako count?
Servant I hate the most: Rider of Black just cause[quote=“Takafumi, post:3, topic:1783”]
What’s everyone’s favorite Saber?
[/quote]
Sakura Saber. I like both Sakura Saber and the Demon Archer pair
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I fairly rushed through the first part of F/Z anime, enjoyed it a lot although some parts of certain episodes felt a little slow. I’m just wondering if my early opinions will change in the second part.
Don’t really like any of the servants except Saber, and er, some of that is a particular tingle I get when she says “Irisiviel”. Caster really annoys me but at the same time he is actually quite interesting to watch because of his unapologetic brutality and the VA (Japanese) is fabulous. Strangely I don’t hate Archer that much. And I’m not fond of many of the masters either! Yet despite that the interactions are making it very compelling…
Gil-Archer is one of the best characters in Zero. He is more of a straight antagonist in other Holy Grail Wars, but he probably got most of his fans from Zero since you get such a better sense of his motivations and stuff.
You don’t like Rider though? Zero Rider is the best :0 Even if you have to deal with Waver being dumb and immature, by the end I think they have the best character arc
I don’t remember everything about how it was split up, but you will probably be happier with the pacing of the second half. It kind of has more momentum from the start (I still remember the wait between the two seasons with that bloody cliffhanger). There are two episode that kind of breaks the pacing a bit, but it is also needed for character development so it is hard to be too critical of that I felt.
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Yes I just reached that point, it did feel a bit odd to be pulled out of the ongoing story, but since it does add necessary context and background I can see why they paused it. There isn’t really anywhere else where it could have been slotted in and clearly could be missed if they were just OVAs and not inserted into the series.
I don’t really like “large” and overbearing characters so I guess that is why Rider grates a bit with me.
EDIT:
Right, finished Part 2 now - very good with many themes to think about - and all of them dark it seems. TBH I probably need to watch it again before I could put any meaningful thoughts together…
So now it’s back to F/SN which will probably seem a bit lightweight by comparison now.
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Finished F/SN now too, a shame that each series spoilers the other…
How is it that although F/SN is inferior in almost every way, particularly visually as well as the characters and servants, to FZ that I actually enjoyed F/SN more? Go figure…
Well I think it’s because although Shirō Emiya isn’t an especially interesting protagonist, there is something about the three way relationship of Emiya / Rin / Saber that made it more enjoyable than the grimdark of FZ (not that I dislike grimdark at all)
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The price of UBW on DVD came down a bit recently so I decided to treat myself…
Finished the series and although the pacing is a bit uneven at times ( it gets rather talky at times but I don’t mind that, and VNs are by nature full of that anyway) I really got immersed into this alternate storyline . I’m sure that it lacks some depth compared to the VN but the prologue episode was a helpful addition in establishing Tohsaka 's older character more than in the first F/SN. It does cover some of the same ground as the original but at least that means you can choose UBW only and not miss out on anything important (but still watch F/Z first). Needless to say the art and animation is on a completely elevated level compared to the original F/SN and quite stunning at times. VA ( as normal I listened to Japanese dialogue with subtitles ) was excellent. The epilogue, although the series needed one, was a little mediocre.
My acid test is always to be anxious to get to the conclusion but at the end to be disappointed that there isn’t more and that you can never repeat that first time experience - and it passed with flying colours.
Oh, and Tohsaka RIn is a goddess who in a perfect world, would exist.
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My favorite series is Fate/Zero. The story is more dynamic and has a more interesting cast. I can’t stand Shiro at either and the way Saber is in FSN vs Zero is like night and day. Gilgamesh is my favorite character, period.
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I need to watch F/Z again, I’ve already forgotten virtually everything about it… I actually do like Saber in FSN, she’s just so serious and unemotional it’s quite funny - and that Team Yellow Raincoat looks so absurd it’s great…and I love the scene where Shirou and Rin go on a date and Saber along like a third wheel just sitting there eating
If I ever win an absolute fortune, I must buy one of these figurines ( £150 on import! )
Wow, my take on Fate is so different from yours, it’s funny.
I read F/SN several years before Fate/Zero came out, and I was incredibly surprised when I enjoyed Zero, because I haaated F/SN. One of the reasons why, funnily enough, was the characters. I completely understand why it was done this way, but almost none of the characters in F/SN were enjoyable to me. They were all ready to backstab the reader at any moment, and that makes sense, but it doesn’t make me like the characters. The only exceptions to this were Illya and Taiga, because of their little segments throughout the game.
See, that description is (excluding the “pointless”) pretty much exactly what I like about Zero. All of the characters’ opinions are badly thought out for sure, but they are fuelled by a life-long passion that makes them seem dedicated and developed to me. So many of them are good people, just not from the perspective of a modern culture, and that’s suuuper interesting to me.
First of all, monologues suuuuck.
Second of all, despite hating F/SN, I actually quite enjoyed Ufotable’s UBW. It’s still generic and full of nonsense, but it cuts out a lot of the extraneous rubbish and gives us the core conflict born from an interesting premise. It’s a very streamlined experience.
Shirou’s character arc feels a lot better to me in Ufotable’s adaptation. I don’t entirely agree that it was subtle, the show relies on some pretty blatant visual and musical manipulation, and if a viewer is too dumb to recognise that, that’s their problem. And it’s really interesting, because you say that anime viewers will think that Shirou is “some dumbass who doesn’t know what self preservation means”, but he’s been renowned for being such a character ever since the VN came out. Shirou is an idealistic idiot, and a big point of the Visual Novel is to see how that imperfect idealisation of life changes under mass pressure. Heck, whenever people struggle to dodge bad ends, common advice is to throw away common sense and just act how this dumb Shirou dude would act.
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I’m not gonna respond to this whole post since my experience of the fate franchise is admittedly lacking, but I’d like to address the argument about monologues. I don’t think monologues suck, but I honestly think ufotable omitting them was the right choice.
My reasoning for this is because anime is a predominantly visual medium, as opposed to VNs which are predominantly text based. I’m in the camp that in a visual medium, showing is always superior to telling. I don’t watch an anime to hear the protagonist babble to himself what he thinks, while we waste frame upon frame of animations doing nothing. I’m there to see the immediate actions that result from his thoughts. Yes, translating monologues to pictures is no easy task. And did ufotable pull it off perfectly? Certainly not. But I still think in the context of being an anime, imperfect visual clues are still better than using monologues.
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I recently finished reading the Fate/Zero light novels, thus completing the trinity of Fate properties I actually care about, including Stay Night and Hollow Ataraxia. Fate/Stay Night in particular has become somewhat of a baby of mine, and quickly became my third favorite visual novel just because I think about it a lot and resonate with it on a level akin to AIR or Umineko, perhaps even more so.
Something I really love about Fate/Stay Night is how easy it is to get into. Of course, actually obtaining the visual novel isn’t easy, but understanding what it’s about is something I subconsciously found within the first hour of playtime. Romance? It has that. Action? It has lots of that. Ideological differences? It has that too. People say Nasu’s prose is hard to read, and I understand where they come from. What it all boils down to is this, however: Fate/Stay Night is not about summoning historical figures to fight for the Holy Grail to grant a miracle. It’s about what it means to be a hero. Shirou Emiya portrays his ideal entirely straight (Fate), through reconstruction (Unlimited Blade Works), and deconstruction (Heaven’s Feel). It is something so simple that anyone can resonate with it.
Saber was my favorite fictional for a good while until I found Aigis. She is such a good example of the holy trinity of good character writing, in that she has a flaw, a motivation, and develops throughout the story. Her relationship with Shirou in the Fate route is why I love that route the most, despite being the weakest thematically. Their relationship reminds me a lot of Asako in Yuuji from The Labryinth of Grisaia, in how they are just exactly what the other person needed to both validate and vindicate themselves. This is especially powerful with context from Fate/Zero, and the very tense and antagonistic relationship she has with Kiritsugu. I love her, and I feel that she is an unsung hero because she is attached to the Fate route. Nasu does a great job at reconstructing established character archetypes and he succeeds pretty well here.
Shirou and Archer are the true power players. I absolutely love thematic reconstructions, and UBW is the only story that does it that I know of, alongside Rewrite with Chihaya’s route. Archer is such a great character, and is justified in his actions to where I sympathize with his actions, like I should with any good character. The role he and Shirou play is a tune I can dance to. I think Shirou gets a bad rap, but I really love him. I’m just a sucker for the idealism he represents, predominantly in Unlimited Blade Works.
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