there's also a sitewide freeleech right now for a week. so you can leech what you like and then just continue to seed and as long as you keep seeding you won't get hit and runs and will prolly get buffer, and since AB has bonus point system just seeding will accrue bonus points which can be exchanged for more upload buffer anyway.
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The Anime / Manga Thread (MK2) | Beware Spoilers
- Thread starter Acklow
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if i'm not concerned with watching new anime like the hour the subs are released then am i okay sticking with nyaa.se, or does animebytes have some other perks that i don't know about
That implies that I'm not downloading them the day they're released anyway.
I swear Jotaro and DIO are flying from sheer hype alone.
the kyoani yuri bait is so strong that i'm probably going to die from being too salty when kumiko and reina don't end up together
The show is so adorable and light-hearted and the romance actually develops. Even if you aren't into shoujo or romance this one is worth checking out.
Cause you've only seen half of his character even before factoring in Fate/Zero (and again, like most things in UBW, it does a piss poor job as an expansion of F/Z). There's also a lot of subtext involving his background that (unlike with Caster/Kuzuki) Nasu hasn't felt the need to make explicit. I could give a pretty lengthy character breakdown later.
RODAN
K so I'll try to avoid going into what goldie does for the Fate route, or his many parallels to Shirou, as those don't really determine whether or not he's a good character in this show. But suffice it to say we're skimming the surface.
All but the most minor characters in FSN are extraordinary in that their actions are almost completely informed by their detailed, and yet sometimes subtextual, backgrounds. You can even figure out why Shinji is such an extreme shithead, and why Shirou would have been friends with him in spite of it. Gilgamesh is a figure of myth, and while the novel provides a short blurb about him, it never makes explicit the connections between his legend and his actions (Nasu added scenes for Caster to that effect in UBW).
If you don't know the legend of Gilgamesh, here is what is relevant to FSN. Gilgamesh is one of the oldest legendary figures on Earth, supposedly ruling when even Egypt was a fledgling kingdom. Half-god (aren't they all), he treated his kingdom like his garden. To him, all the lands of the world and his people were nothing but his possessions as king. He used and abused his possessions whenever he saw it interesting to do so. The gods saw this and frowned upon it, but rather than punish him, they sent him a friend named Enkidu. Enkidu convinced Gilgamesh that it might be more interesting to protect his possessions from harm, and that there was more fun to be had as a hero.
Gilgamesh was never a character who went from being evil to being good, as he largely predates that popular dichotomy. One day it was interesting to be an asshole, then someone showed him it was also interesting to be a hero. He's never simply greedy; he already owns everything. He's never simply wrong; his place as king of heroes entitles him to be the law of the world. All the world is his garden. He craves experience and we see him sympathize with the unique experiences of others, while detesting those he finds boring. Even FSN insists that the heroic spirit Gilgamesh, who has gone slightly mad through contact with the grail and a decade living among people he finds insufferable, is not evil.
The true grail, Angra Mainyu, represents all the evil of the world. The combined three part story of FSN pits the meager and often self-sacrificial efforts of Shirou, Rin, and Saber against the sum total of all bad things in the world. In UBW, Gilgamesh represents a different force pitted against that evil; cynicism. He wants the world to restart and be built up again "as good as it was in the old days". You can probably see how this is a popular enough feeling that it might be worth addressing if FSN is to be the definitive work on heroism in the modern era.
So while Gilgamesh shares many of his actions with more generic characters, those characters are generally not interesting because they never have a reason for their actions. In Gilgamesh, we can see why a character would conspire to commit murder, attempt to force marriage upon another character, hope to wipe out humanity, and yet also at times show mercy and sympathy for others, and none of this is inconsistent as long as the character's actions are informed by their personality and background rather than being the bad guy or evil.
In general FSN wants us to look past old notions of villainy and see the world's problems as societal rather than anthropomorphised. Gilgamesh in this story is less like a typical villain and is almost a rival antihero; in both Fate and UBW, his goals are perversions of things that Shirou wants (and it's already clearly no coincidence that the two are so similar in terms of fighting). Ok, I am really risking segueing into the Shirou stuff here so I'll stop.
K so I'll try to avoid going into what goldie does for the Fate route, or his many parallels to Shirou, as those don't really determine whether or not he's a good character in this show. But suffice it to say we're skimming the surface.
All but the most minor characters in FSN are extraordinary in that their actions are almost completely informed by their detailed, and yet sometimes subtextual, backgrounds. You can even figure out why Shinji is such an extreme shithead, and why Shirou would have been friends with him in spite of it. Gilgamesh is a figure of myth, and while the novel provides a short blurb about him, it never makes explicit the connections between his legend and his actions (Nasu added scenes for Caster to that effect in UBW).
If you don't know the legend of Gilgamesh, here is what is relevant to FSN. Gilgamesh is one of the oldest legendary figures on Earth, supposedly ruling when even Egypt was a fledgling kingdom. Half-god (aren't they all), he treated his kingdom like his garden. To him, all the lands of the world and his people were nothing but his possessions as king. He used and abused his possessions whenever he saw it interesting to do so. The gods saw this and frowned upon it, but rather than punish him, they sent him a friend named Enkidu. Enkidu convinced Gilgamesh that it might be more interesting to protect his possessions from harm, and that there was more fun to be had as a hero.
Gilgamesh was never a character who went from being evil to being good, as he largely predates that popular dichotomy. One day it was interesting to be an asshole, then someone showed him it was also interesting to be a hero. He's never simply greedy; he already owns everything. He's never simply wrong; his place as king of heroes entitles him to be the law of the world. All the world is his garden. He craves experience and we see him sympathize with the unique experiences of others, while detesting those he finds boring. Even FSN insists that the heroic spirit Gilgamesh, who has gone slightly mad through contact with the grail and a decade living among people he finds insufferable, is not evil.
The true grail, Angra Mainyu, represents all the evil of the world. The combined three part story of FSN pits the meager and often self-sacrificial efforts of Shirou, Rin, and Saber against the sum total of all bad things in the world. In UBW, Gilgamesh represents a different force pitted against that evil; cynicism. He wants the world to restart and be built up again "as good as it was in the old days". You can probably see how this is a popular enough feeling that it might be worth addressing if FSN is to be the definitive work on heroism in the modern era.
So while Gilgamesh shares many of his actions with more generic characters, those characters are generally not interesting because they never have a reason for their actions. In Gilgamesh, we can see why a character would conspire to commit murder, attempt to force marriage upon another character, hope to wipe out humanity, and yet also at times show mercy and sympathy for others, and none of this is inconsistent as long as the character's actions are informed by their personality and background rather than being the bad guy or evil.
In general FSN wants us to look past old notions of villainy and see the world's problems as societal rather than anthropomorphised. Gilgamesh in this story is less like a typical villain and is almost a rival antihero; in both Fate and UBW, his goals are perversions of things that Shirou wants (and it's already clearly no coincidence that the two are so similar in terms of fighting). Ok, I am really risking segueing into the Shirou stuff here so I'll stop.
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Hibike! Euphonium Seasonal Progression
- It's just like my high school band
- Budget
- Baiting: The Anime
so i finished fate/zero last night and i'm pretty confused due to not reading the VNs or watching UBW
- why exactly does the grail reveal itself to kiritsugu before all the servants / masters are dead? I'm aware it only needs a few of them to die to "fuel" it, but why did it choose to reveal itself to Kiritsugu at that moment?
- why does the grail revive Kirei and Archer when it seems to be trying to grant Kiritsugu's wish after Saber destroys it
- what exactly is angra mainyu in the context of the holy grail? I've read stuff online about how it's linked to the events of the third holy grail war, but the site didn't do a very good job of explaining things
I'm in the same boat and just finished F/Z and have a friend watching UBW first - I would recommend watching UBW first.
Jebus McAzn Notes in bold under the hide tag
And again, while the above post said it better, Amaura, READ THE VN. JUST DO IT. Questions like these are a fraction of why you should.
- why exactly does the grail reveal itself to kiritsugu before all the servants / masters are dead? I'm aware it only needs a few of them to die to "fuel" it, but why did it choose to reveal itself to Kiritsugu at that moment? Cause when he killed the shit out of Kirei he won. Archers are specifically resilient when they don't have a master, but Kiritsugu def won the grail war and that's what the grail cares about.
- why does the grail revive Kirei and Archer when it seems to be trying to grant Kiritsugu's wish after Saber destroys it It wasn't fulfilling Kiritsugu's wish at all. It was fulfilling Kirei's subconscious wish. Maybe. The grail kind of just warps people's desires so that the result ends up being killing people. Monkey's paw! But either way when Kiritsugu rejected it the next best candidate was chosen, and as that candidate was dead, it fulfilled Kirei's wish without actually having a chat about it first.
- what exactly is angra mainyu in the context of the holy grail? I've read stuff online about how it's linked to the events of the third holy grail war, but the site didn't do a very good job of explaining things Angra Mainyu IS the grail. The grail made through blood sacrifice by unscrupulous wizards turns out is not quite the genuine holy article, but a representation of all evil in the world. Again, Monkey's Paw. Now if you go by Fate/Hollow Ataraxia it gets more complicated, but that story is SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT so I'll spare you.
And again, while the above post said it better, Amaura, READ THE VN. JUST DO IT. Questions like these are a fraction of why you should.
Unless you care enough about the Fate/ series to play the VN, just go Zero -> UBW. I've marathoned up to UBW EP21 yesterday and frankly it spoils plenty of major plot events in Zero.
Ufotable put in a few other nods to Zero in UBW too. They assume you've watched Zero before watching this.
Obviously fans of the series will tell you to get into it as much as possible, but if you only care for watching the anime (and don't care for all the technicalities surrounding magic) there's really no reason to watch UBW first.
I guess you could say the reverse about Zero spoiling UBW but those same plot points are a lot more important in Zero and UBW doesn't dwell on them too much (other routes do?) so off the top of my head I can't think of Zero spoilers that'll ruin UBW for you.
Kiritsugu 'betraying' Illya & Iris.
Kirei killing Rin's dad and being fucked in the head.
Kiritsugu and Saber destroying the grail, stopping Gilgamesh, and a few other consequences.
Kirei killing Rin's dad and being fucked in the head.
Kiritsugu and Saber destroying the grail, stopping Gilgamesh, and a few other consequences.
Ufotable put in a few other nods to Zero in UBW too. They assume you've watched Zero before watching this.
Obviously fans of the series will tell you to get into it as much as possible, but if you only care for watching the anime (and don't care for all the technicalities surrounding magic) there's really no reason to watch UBW first.
I guess you could say the reverse about Zero spoiling UBW but those same plot points are a lot more important in Zero and UBW doesn't dwell on them too much (other routes do?) so off the top of my head I can't think of Zero spoilers that'll ruin UBW for you.
You can't fucking spoil a prequel jesus christ
It mattered to exactly 0 readers that we knew how F/Z was going to end because it's the only prequel in the world that is good at what it does. So why do you give a shit? The events of F/Z aren't twists, there were never written to be, it was written for readers of the VN. So why the fuck wouldn't you read F/SN first which actually does have twists?
"I don't want to read A Song of Ice and Fire because I don't want Game of Thrones spoiled for me". Fucking absurd.
It mattered to exactly 0 readers that we knew how F/Z was going to end because it's the only prequel in the world that is good at what it does. So why do you give a shit? The events of F/Z aren't twists, there were never written to be, it was written for readers of the VN. So why the fuck wouldn't you read F/SN first which actually does have twists?
"I don't want to read A Song of Ice and Fire because I don't want Game of Thrones spoiled for me". Fucking absurd.
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Fate/Zero first vs Fate/Stay Night first is a tossup, you'll be spoiling stuff for yourself either way. I'd say start with Fate/Zero personally, it fleshes out a couple characters that come across as really uninteresting in Fate/Stay Night otherwise, but Fate/Zero was written long after Fate/Stay Night and it's not as though the experience of Fate/Zero is hurt too much by knowing how it ends.
And unless ufotable bungles the Heaven's Feel movies, there's not that much reason to read the VN anymore unless you like reading. It's not perfect but the new anime has been a really solid adaption and cuts out a lot of the VN bloat. It doesn't include the first part, Fate, but Fate is kind of bad anyways. It's interesting for comparison's sake but not much else, there's a reason ufotable decided not to adapt it.
And unless ufotable bungles the Heaven's Feel movies, there's not that much reason to read the VN anymore unless you like reading. It's not perfect but the new anime has been a really solid adaption and cuts out a lot of the VN bloat. It doesn't include the first part, Fate, but Fate is kind of bad anyways. It's interesting for comparison's sake but not much else, there's a reason ufotable decided not to adapt it.
We're never going to agree on that, and in fact if you insist on seeing FSN mangled and cut apart, I'd have to say that Fate is my favorite part of that mangled corpse.
But really there's a ton of reasons that UBW doesn't work without Fate, esp as a "sequel" to F/Z. Why is Shirou suddenly shitting swords halfway through it? What's Saber, the most prominent recurring character, doing at all (and good god this will only get worse in HF)? What's the deal with Shinji and Rider? Why does the encounter with Assassin in the latest episode feel epic when it wasn't set up at all? If someone is coming into this after F/Z, what at all links the important events/characters of that show to this one? They all either matter in Fate or HF. Conversely, if you haven't seen F/Z and are just watching UBW/HF to "not read", who the fuck is this Saber anyway and what is this ultimate weapon stuff that just got dropped on us in the 2nd to last episode? UBW is just littered with stuff I've seen new viewers scratch their heads over that would be covered in Fate.
Aside from F/Z you don't even get a good feel for the Grail War itself without Fate. UBW consists of team Shirou getting jobbed relentlessly and HF is the act where things just get weird. Fate has the mystery, it has the progression of threatening opponents, and it spends the most time developing characters and relationships. This isn't crazy mind-blowing wrap up stuff like HF has, but in comparison on its own UBW is nothing but a decent thriller with rushed character development and character powers that seem like complete deus ex machina. If I had never seen any other Fate stuff and seen it, I doubt it would end up on my favorite anime list.
Honestly, I'm just gonna quote someone else on this subject as if it were me, I'd break down Fate bit by bit and explain exactly why it's amazing but that's hardly fitting given that I'm trying to get people to read the original over an abridging.
If this were the only ending to Fate/Stay Night ((in regards to UBW)), it could be construed that it–and the character of Emiya Shirou–are the children of superhero comics Revisionism. In fact, there is one ending where Shirou chooses the lives of everyone else over that of the woman he loves and he lets her die. At that point, it seems to kill every kind and empathetic part of him. This Bad Ending, ironically enough, is called “Superhero:” another brutal jab at the trope. But given that Fate is a visual novel and a video game, Shirou’s life need not end there.
For instance, in the Normal or True Endings of the first arc, through helping his own Servant come to grips with her past, Shirou seems to understand that he can take a middle-ground in pursuing his ideals and actually valuing his life. In another arc, where he actually talks with, fights and even overcomes and moves on from Archer–his warped Platonic ideal–and he is resolved to pursuing his ideals but he has another person help him along the way and so far does not alienate her.
Finally, in the last arc, he makes the decision to save the woman that he loves–realizing that he can love others and himself–and becomes a whole other kind of hero. Even Archer comes to some sort of peace with the decisions he made as Shirou’s future self and accepts that he did what he had to do: and perhaps even goes on to do what good he can given his choices.
It is not an original thing for a superhero to face their doppelganger, but for them to make some sort of peace or understanding with it is an entirely different story that is either from some good Reconstructionist comics or from something older altogether. Nasu Kinoko creates a dark world in Fate/Stay Night, with Emiya Shirou as a very deconstructed figure in keeping with that universe, yet he and the staff at Type-Moon generate enough humour, enough fun, many epic moments, and light, and love, and character-interactions–and choices for the player-reader of this visual novel video game–that there is still hope for humanity and happy endings even for the most realistic of wannabe superheroes, and for the superhero trope to influence many new stories in comics, film, and interactive worlds.
For instance, in the Normal or True Endings of the first arc, through helping his own Servant come to grips with her past, Shirou seems to understand that he can take a middle-ground in pursuing his ideals and actually valuing his life. In another arc, where he actually talks with, fights and even overcomes and moves on from Archer–his warped Platonic ideal–and he is resolved to pursuing his ideals but he has another person help him along the way and so far does not alienate her.
Finally, in the last arc, he makes the decision to save the woman that he loves–realizing that he can love others and himself–and becomes a whole other kind of hero. Even Archer comes to some sort of peace with the decisions he made as Shirou’s future self and accepts that he did what he had to do: and perhaps even goes on to do what good he can given his choices.
It is not an original thing for a superhero to face their doppelganger, but for them to make some sort of peace or understanding with it is an entirely different story that is either from some good Reconstructionist comics or from something older altogether. Nasu Kinoko creates a dark world in Fate/Stay Night, with Emiya Shirou as a very deconstructed figure in keeping with that universe, yet he and the staff at Type-Moon generate enough humour, enough fun, many epic moments, and light, and love, and character-interactions–and choices for the player-reader of this visual novel video game–that there is still hope for humanity and happy endings even for the most realistic of wannabe superheroes, and for the superhero trope to influence many new stories in comics, film, and interactive worlds.
tl/dr it's all important baby
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I'll throw my 2 cents in on this. Disclaimer: this will be pretty incoherent because it's just random thoughts.
Background: Read F/SN, watched Deen's UBW (Deen uh... finds a way), watched F/Z, watched ufotable UBW.
This is definitely one of those situations where the adaptation doesn't do complete justice to its source which is mainly due to the way that the source was structured. F/SN employs a mandatory playing order where you don't unlock UBW until you beat the Fate route. Because of this, it builds off of the knowledge that the reader learned in the Fate route in order to show how the characters grew differently and the change in their thought processes. This makes it an insanely hard task for ufotable to accomplish because it has to write the story in a way that new people to the franchise will understand.
Obviously the easiest way to do so would to say fuck it, we're doing all 3 routes. Evidently, it's not the way things turned out. I don't fault them for doing it the way that they did (focus on UBW but making nods towards Zero and Fate route). However, it does lead to missing satisfaction from both routes. From people that read the VN and don't like a non-faithful adaptation and from people that are starting the franchise and don't get to understand the depth of what's going on because they don't understand the full story.
As for F/Z into UBW, there are people that disliked the fact that UBW wasn't as serious as F/Z. This can mainly be attributed to the age of the protagonists: adults vs protagonists. Furthermore, F/Z was written by Gen Urobuchi, known for such stories as Madoka Magica and Saya no Uta. Therefore, the timeline itself is much darker. For those people who disliked UBW, I doubt that they would've liked the visual novel either as the SoL components in that are much more prominent.
There are the people that get into the franchise because they heard it's a good franchise. However, I will say that the franchise is hyped by people that started from the visual novel. I dare say that people that started with Zero would view it overall as slightly better than people that had started with the visual novel. Take hype with a grain of salt.
There are also people that just don't like reading VNs. F/SN does takes quite a while, I think I 100%ed it in 2 days of in game playtime using the walkthrough but I do read fairly quickly. They like watching animes more than reading. For those people, if they want to get into the franchise, I honestly think that F/Z into UBW is the best way to do so. They won't understand the full depth of the world and that's fine, not everyone has to. If they enjoy it for what it is, great.
I'll draw contrasts to another anime I'm watching this season: Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches. How the fuck do you cram 80 chapters of manga into 12 episodes? By cutting out all the growth and development. I haven't read the manga but two of my friends has. One watched a few episodes of the anime with me. He did say that it's rushed but as an anime only watcher, I didn't care. How am I supposed to know what I'm missing if I didn't read the source material? I enjoyed what was there and didn't critique the unknown parts because I didn't know about it.
Background: Read F/SN, watched Deen's UBW (Deen uh... finds a way), watched F/Z, watched ufotable UBW.
This is definitely one of those situations where the adaptation doesn't do complete justice to its source which is mainly due to the way that the source was structured. F/SN employs a mandatory playing order where you don't unlock UBW until you beat the Fate route. Because of this, it builds off of the knowledge that the reader learned in the Fate route in order to show how the characters grew differently and the change in their thought processes. This makes it an insanely hard task for ufotable to accomplish because it has to write the story in a way that new people to the franchise will understand.
Obviously the easiest way to do so would to say fuck it, we're doing all 3 routes. Evidently, it's not the way things turned out. I don't fault them for doing it the way that they did (focus on UBW but making nods towards Zero and Fate route). However, it does lead to missing satisfaction from both routes. From people that read the VN and don't like a non-faithful adaptation and from people that are starting the franchise and don't get to understand the depth of what's going on because they don't understand the full story.
As for F/Z into UBW, there are people that disliked the fact that UBW wasn't as serious as F/Z. This can mainly be attributed to the age of the protagonists: adults vs protagonists. Furthermore, F/Z was written by Gen Urobuchi, known for such stories as Madoka Magica and Saya no Uta. Therefore, the timeline itself is much darker. For those people who disliked UBW, I doubt that they would've liked the visual novel either as the SoL components in that are much more prominent.
There are the people that get into the franchise because they heard it's a good franchise. However, I will say that the franchise is hyped by people that started from the visual novel. I dare say that people that started with Zero would view it overall as slightly better than people that had started with the visual novel. Take hype with a grain of salt.
There are also people that just don't like reading VNs. F/SN does takes quite a while, I think I 100%ed it in 2 days of in game playtime using the walkthrough but I do read fairly quickly. They like watching animes more than reading. For those people, if they want to get into the franchise, I honestly think that F/Z into UBW is the best way to do so. They won't understand the full depth of the world and that's fine, not everyone has to. If they enjoy it for what it is, great.
I'll draw contrasts to another anime I'm watching this season: Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches. How the fuck do you cram 80 chapters of manga into 12 episodes? By cutting out all the growth and development. I haven't read the manga but two of my friends has. One watched a few episodes of the anime with me. He did say that it's rushed but as an anime only watcher, I didn't care. How am I supposed to know what I'm missing if I didn't read the source material? I enjoyed what was there and didn't critique the unknown parts because I didn't know about it.
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