#F/sf

[owochimauwu]

Lord El Melloi II in Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- Special Sneak Peek

[rubynymphyy]

happy new f/sf trailer!! francesca, for one, is very happy to be getting things rolling!

[seneon]

FATE/STRANGE FAKE: WHISPERS OF DAWN (2023)

honestly it's nostalgic myself to see enkidu and gilgamesh fight again. their scenes are animated the prettiest ngl 🗣️💯

[pollyxart]

sit back

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Checking the Fate/strange fake TV special again, and that PV from 2019 again, and wow, yep, two hours later and it’s still surreal that these are characters written by Narita who are speaking audible words against mainstream J-Pop music for a megafranchise with more fans and money that any original Narita IP could ever conceive of.

Narita characters...who are speaking and will in two months be speaking dialogue Narita has written for light novels he has published. Narita’s name in huge typeface for a TV special which may or may not be a prelude for a summer anime that mainstream audiences are going to care about.

The TV special teaser is frankly underwhelming only because the first two thirds of it is just a build-up list of Fate anime until now (2004...F/sn! 2010...title! 2012...title etc.!), except of course it’s building up to, this, “the next Fate,” Fate/strange fake, and that, I concede, is hyping F/sf up. It is treating F/sf like a big deal, or at least worthy enough to be included in the line-up of all those other notable Fate entries. 

I can see why people think it’s portending a summer TV anime. Sawano as composer, teaser as self-important for a self-important franchise...what I’m getting at is... The teaser is treating F/sf like such a big deal in a way that Baccano! never quite got (and, hell, Durarara!! was popular enough, but just...not this popular), so it leaves me with slight bittersweet wistfulness over what could have been with Baccano!

“Wow...  Imagine a 2023 twentieth anniversary Baccano! anime treating the source material with this much magnitude. wheeze”

(No, hype and magnitude never guarantee the actual product will be well-executed, but c’mon, it’s not worth being spitefully pessimistic when what the hell, that’s Narita being treated like a big deal right there.)

[mugenfinder]

Art by 鹿 (2009-11-05)

[a-total-and-complete-nerd]

Brandon Sanderson: Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi

Almost all of BrandoSando's books straddle the line between the two genres, and after seeing @approximateknowledge's post here, I wondered how they would lay out on that chart. I was also inspired by this fascinating WOB about Skyward's genre. These are just my opinions, so let me know if you agree or what you think you'd change!

[brickme]

The covers of the new edition of T.P. Bon being released next month are just so, so, so cute; I love the colors and the simple design and of course I love the characters, particularly vol 2 with Ream and Buyoyon in pink. Normally I'd just pick them up along with other things I'm getting from Japan, but they're also promising ANOTHER deluxe edition release in July so I won't be able to decide which edition to pick up until then =_= I haven't even gotten my hands on the sf short stories deluxe editions yet, all ten volumes are on a ship somewhere in the South China Sea probably.

Bon is getting a Netflix anime treatment sometime this year (hence the new manga releases). It's a sci-fi series about teen time travel agents saving the lives of ordinary people throughout history. I don't normally watch anime but I'll probably check it out; if it's anything like the manga it'll be a solid series with really good historical research, fun time travel shenanigans, and a lot of moral quandaries about human lives. Maybe if this does well for Netflix they'll do Mojako next...

[souvenir-de-florence]

you know what i really want in life? daniil medvedev revenge tour roland garros edition.

[whewchilly]

everyone join my manifestation circle 🕯️🕯️🕯️

[satansfavoritestripper]

🏴‍☠️

[newestcool]

Alaïa s/f 2023 rtw Creative Director Pieter Mulier Newest Cool

[captain-price-unofficially]

3.7 cm Pak 36(Sf) auf Infanterieschlepper UE 630(f), a very light tank destroyer comprised of a towed anti-tank gun plopped onto a French Renault UE

[uzumaki-rebellion]

My annual reminder to get into my girl Nalo Hopkinson's work, Carribean SF/F at its finest. Start with "Skin Folk" first which is her short story collection.

[70sscifiart]

S-F magazine, November 1971

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Kinda wild that the announcement teaser for Fate/strange fake's upcoming TV special (airdate Dec 31) already has nearly 1.3 million plays (views?) on Twitter. It's been up for less than a month.

Not wild because it’s a Fate property, obviously. It’s not even really wild that F/sf is getting a TV special; we all knew an adaptation was inevitable, the question was only ‘how long would one be held off?’ Nah, It’s just wild to me that this TV special will be the first major animated adaptation of one of Narita’s works since the Durarara!!x2 ended in 2016. 

<snipping speculation re: the TV special and shoving it below the cut, since this post was just supposed to be a “wow this is wild” post.>

Man, if F/sf Volume 8 does come out in, say, January or February... I’m going to think happy thoughts and not “Baccano! Volume 23 top 10 betrayals” thoughts. I’m just going to hope the F/sf TV special will spotlight Ryohgo Narita’s name for mainstream western audiences and boost LN sales. On the one hand, it’s ‘just’ a TV special’. On the other hand, it’s a special seemingly hyped up by Aniplex and, uh, y’know, part of the Fate franchise.

Wasn’t F/sf the number 1 or top 3 ‘most requested anime adaptation’ in a poll a few years ago? That might account for some of the hype. Whether the special will lead to a 2023 summer TV anime like other Fate Dec 31 TV specials have, or whether it will be its own strange thing, the sheer fact of it finally happening is a Fate/strange feeling indeed..

It’s been pointed out that some other Fate adaptations have started with December 31 TV specials (Episode 0s) and gone on to have summer TV series, e.g. Lord El-Melloi and Grand Carnival. So...should we speculate this pattern repeats with F/sf? I haven’t really consumed anything in the Fate franchise and have little interest in doing so beyond F/sf, which I’ve been slowly and sporadically reading, so I’m not exactly familiar with precedent.

For instance, Fate precedent re: adapting incomplete source material. The LNs are at seven volumes so far and (though I’m not caught up yet) in the thick of the plot, and I’m not sure how a one- or two-cour anime would tackle adapting it. A two-cour anime would make more sense than one. Definitely not sure what a 24-minute TV special could accomplish, considering that F/sf is a bit like Baccano! with tons of stuff happening in one, two, three (etc.) days. 

Maybe the TV special will be an hour long or something; that would make more sense. Aniplex announced it in a livestream, didn’t it? Hyped it up? Is it normal for Fate TV specials to get the amount of hype it feels like this one’s getting? Am I imagining the hype due to my Narita bias? A long TV special would warrant it. A long special is almost necessary if they’re planning to introduce characters with it, because the entirety of Volume 1 is character introductions and couldn’t possibly fit into a half hour.

Oh, hm, the special could feasibly function as some worldbuilding / backstory set up. I’m guessing that most if not all Fate stories review Fate’s conceit for hypothetical newcomers, which is what Narita helpfully semi-does in Volume 1 (thank God, since I’m essentially a newcomer). Narita’s twist on holy grail wars is new—I understand that pretty much every holy grail war in all the Fate derivates has gone awry / atypically since...the first series?—the setting (Snowfield, Nevada) is new... so a TV special ‘orienting’ viewers makes sense. 

Except it makes sense only if the plan is 100% to proceed with a 2023 anime, so, who knows. R.L. (from the PSA teaser) and Ayaka (character’s VA returning) are both Volume 2 material, so... either the TV special is going to blitz through Volume 1 and end with R.L. and Ayaka as a huge cliffhanger / hype teaser, or possibly the special won’t function as a story episode at all and just be a compilation of ‘hype’ moments. That sounds... I mean, wouldn’t that just be spoiler central? I don’t buy that.

Precedent, huh. Also, since A-1 Pictures is handling the F/sf TV special, is it probable that A-1 would then handle a proper TV adaptation? Based on El-Melloi and Grand C., probably. Oh, wait, I forgot A-1 did that 2019 F/sf PV for the light novels—so make that ‘almost definitely’.

One potentially major aspect is that the TV special will have a simuldub, which, from what I’ve read, will be the first 1:1 complete simuldub of a Fate adaptation? Major for us since a simuldub will cast the spotlight on F/sf and concomitantly Narita’s name that much wider, even if the dub is terrible. The sheer novelty alone of a Fate simuldub may be enough to attract viewers. Er, beyond the existing big Fate audience, of course. I’ve also read that a simuldub was greenlit because F/sf is set in America (oh, Narita, you wag), but that’s no guarantee the dub will be any good.

....it’s also wild (well, weird) that I’m thinking this actively about an anime TV special, since I’ve barely watched anime these past few years. Could be that I’m aging out of anime, though, let’s be real, when I was an undergrad I was already more discerning. Could be that I’ve been in mental limbo ever since spring 2020 with the ‘advent’ (you know what I mean) of the pandemic and its affects on my grad school.)