The Anime / Manga Thread (MK2) | Beware Spoilers

Status
Not open for further replies.
I hear this a lot and it baffles me. FSN is a three act story. You don't get the option of playing them out of order. You need Fate to understand UBW, and you need UBW to understand Heaven's Feel. Which is one reason the old anime fails, but the new anime is doing the same thing again. It's better than if they had just made a Heaven's Feel anime, but what we need is a season for each route.

The primary failing of the old FSN is that most people new to the story felt it was typical shounen with a dumb protagonist who everything always went right for. Ufotable clearly will do a better of showing us just how much Shirou has to fucking struggle and just how screwed he is. Still for people who didn't really get to know Shirou in the Fate route, a lot of it won't be very meaningful. It's good for me but I was hoping to show this to some of my friends who are too lazy to read the VN.
Being a part of something better doesn't make something less bad (oh god muvluv). There are a lot of reasons why Fate is the worst route; on top of being a meme-inspiring dunce and coming off as a generic harem protag in it, Shirou basically doesn't develop (whereas his development in regards to his ideals is one of the central themes in the other routes, in Fate it's just left alone, I guess you can justify its existence by calling it a "control" route but that doesn't really make it better), both in terms of character and in how he stays as a cheerleader on the sidelines rather than really do much on his own. Fate also focuses on Saber, who is pretty bland and uninteresting, at least compared to Rin. Zero has the side effect of retroactively giving Saber a lot more development and making her a better, more understandable character, but it wasn't out when I read F/SN so w/e and Saber's not the only one to benefit from this.

Also, on a lower level Fate is the most boring route in terms of action; most/all of the big fights come down to a "good guys screwed, bust out a new ability at the last minute" formula and the Berserker one barely even makes sense. The anime improves on this, the fights it adds/steals are generally better than the ones from the route itself (Archer's fight in particular), which doesn't reflect well on the original route. Anyways, I don't think Fate shouldn't exist or anything, quite the opposite as it's the foundation that everything else builds off of, but without UBW and HF to expand on the story it really is just fairly typical shonen.

Incidentally, they did release the Fate route of the VN for free with the announcement of the new anime but iirc it was only on Android or something so unless you can read Japanese it probably doesn't matter.
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
Lots of stuff
For starters F/SN was never in any way shounen; shounen is a demographic, and F/SN is a porno game. It's thoroughly violent and depraved even in Fate, and in fact we didn't know it at the time but the Fate route is the one where the most characters get the most screwed over (it's only Saber's best route, which isn't saying much given that she fails at her goal and dies). F/SN in general deconstructs shounen and harem fiction, and this can be clearly seen through both Shirou's struggles and that fact he doesn't actually end up with the magical girl in the end. It's really an incredibly mature love story in a vacuum, and that's what most people like about it.

But still, you need to see the routes as acts in a story and not just different stories. Sure Shirou doesn't literally develop from Fate into UBW, but F/SN uses game convention to establish changing perceptions that have a vital role in how the story plays out (I would even argue that the game overs are canon). In this way the reader is almost a character of their own in the story. UBW and HF would not be good stories on their own, whereas Fate is. But also Fate improves as we get new info and our perception of the route (and the ultimate "Fate" of the key players) changes for the worse. The "Fate" in the title refers to the Fates of characters and how they change with our perceptions. Everything seems kind of nice at the end, dead girlfriend and everything, but in UBW we learn that Shirou is screwed. In HF we learn that Sakura is screwed. I didn't honestly care about Ilya at the time, but I did by HF and fuck Ilya is screwed too. Fate is thoroughly juxtaposed with the heroic stories of the mythical figures within the series. Stories that we celebrate and find faith in, but upon closer examination often end horribly.

I disagree about Rin being more interesting than Saber. Rin is the only character in the story that comes out of it favorably in every route, and that definitely hurts her. Sometimes I ponder if it would have been best to have her killed off at the end of Fate, but then Fate would be even bleaker than it already is. There's a lot to be said about her relationship with the gray area of wizardy and her father (hell, if anyone was more fleshed out by FZ it was her, my core complaint about FZ was that Saber didn't develop in it compared to the Fate route). There's also the fact that "Rin's route" doesn't develop her character much at all, I think most people will agree that UBW is Archer's route but Rin kind of gets left in the dust compared to Saber or Sakura. I'll say without hesitation that F/SN has permanently colored my perception of all of the mythical figures within it, even the female King Arthur. What a wonderful twist, what an amazing bit of speculative fiction. F/SN is a story that demands to be reread for the significance in almost every line, and the interactions between Shirou and Saber are some of the best.

I also don't understand how you could single out action in a Visual Novel, especially when F/SN's use of visual and sound effects already made it one of the best in its genre. Or when frankly Heaven's Feel has the worst action. But as for "busting stuff out", everything that is busted out has a vital plot or thematic importance for the later routes. Nothing is done in this story that isn't setting stuff up or recoloring previous scenes. The fight with Rider sets up the big Saber twist and as such changes our perception of many previous scenes in that story. The fight with Berserker calls back the iconic scene with Archer quoted in my custom title, and is a vital character development point for Shirou across all routes. The pulling of Avalon again serves as a thoroughly set-up twist that facilitates a great deal of Shirou's previous actions, and would tie into his character development further as the Fate route ended. I don't read a novel for action, so I look at these for their plot significance and not as asspulls (and even then, each one is heavily foreshadowed). As for cheerleader Shirou, he fights Lancer, Shinji, Berserker, Gilgamesh, and Kotomine. Most often foolishly, but that's part of the character that is vitally important to his development in later routes and to what I feel is the ultimate artistic message of the story. I guess an anime adaption needs some good action, but as you said of all things the show at least did a good job there.

I've danced around it and it doesn't really relate with your post, but I'll say that I think the core message of F/SN is about heroism and martyrdom. Shirou is a fool whose survivor's guilt costs him almost everything in life. F/SN asks us if such behavior should be shunned or encouraged. I don't think it has it's own answer, but I personally think that F/SN isn't a story all about edginess and darkness. Like Madoka, another deconstruction, there's also joy and light within it. Each route seems to end happy enough, and we know that's a short term farce but perhaps its the sacrifices of idealistic fools that gives us what good we have in the world. So I say we need more Shirous. Other readers might not. But I definitely think the Fate route plays a huge part in this message, giving us a nice and thoroughly well told story that we have to reexamine later with more scrutiny, just as F/SN scrutinizes old myths.
 
Last edited:
Log Horizon s2 and F/SN 2014 is gonna be (hopefully) good. Hope F/SN 2014 isn't as slow as F/SN

Looking at the pictures/plot there are some yaoi anime lol (are those normal now?)

Also for summer anime ZnK and Barakamon are da best, akame ga kill is p good 2 doe

EDIT: Also didn't they say DRRR s2 was on fall 2014 or did I miss it?
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.
Nanatsu no Taizan hype. I've been following the manga and it's a shounen like Fairy Tail, One Piece, etc. It's really good and the incorporation of the Arthurian legend is really neat. I'm really looking forward to watching it!
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.
"Let's make a show that's the polar opposite of Gurren Lagann."

"How do we do that?"

"Make the main character have no feelings whatsoever."

Thus Aldnoah.Zero was born.
 
Tokyo Ghoul is a bit on the "laying it too thick" 13-year-old-style side, but it's all good under the hood. Really. The show has good intentions.

As for ZnT, it's hilarious they've done enough research to get so many things "right" (like NEST) and still manage to screw up basic chess.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top