#ubw and fate are still shit tho

[vanquishedvaliant]

Fate: okay yeah Fate and Unlimited Bladeworks are sketchy as fuck and have bad adaptations

Fate fans: but it’s all worth it for Heaven’s Feel, trust me

me, normal sensible person: yeah right lol doubt.jpg

me: how could the third route be so different to justify all of that meandering crap

HF Movies: come out

me: well might as well humour them

me, watching Presage Flower: hmm

Me, watching Lost Butterfly: oh no

Me, watching Spring Song: god damn it

Me, tearing up: god fucking damn it

Me: they were right the whole fucking time

[relatablepicturesofgilgamesh]

you can’t sit with them

[akampana]

Because of zero 10th anniversary I have a lot of people are #Remakesaberroute, and I have mixed feelings about this in one part it would meant the remake of the final farewell of saber and Gilgamesh in 4k, 144fps l, but in the other it would meant suffering trough saber x Shirou again, want do you think, would you like a remake or are satisfied with the original

Do I want a remake?

Actually, I like the idea of a remake, as long as it corrects a critical flaw the Deen adaptation had: the lack of Shirou's internal monologue.

Especially after reading the visual novel, you just realize how much of Shirou the anime, well, left out. Compared to what we get in the VN, the Deen FSN is so half-baked it's like he didn't even make it into the oven.

In the end, the anime was...well...limited by its own medium. There is so much that goes on in the VN that they just couldn't cram it all into 25 half-hour episodes. Not to say the VN is perfect, there are still some issues that I have with it and Nasu himself also said he has some issues with the way things were written, but the depth of Shirou's incredibly messed up state of being is explored there, while the anime doesn't quite get that right.

UBW did a better job of showcasing Shirou's trauma, by frequent flashbacks, Shirou's expressions when he isn't able to save Illya, how they portrayed him and Rin when inside the Blood Fort and all their classmates were unconscious etc. but I still think more can be done.

So I'm not satisfied with the original anime. (VN is better tho xD)

Ship Stuff

Also, while I don't main Shirou x Saber, I definitely realize its importance and respect it (Admittedly, that took me reading through the VNs. I went on this whole obsessive arc after Deen FSN where I was like "No that can't be it! That CAN'T BE IT!" while eating up all three routes like a starving dog.) It's got its own space on my dock, although I haven't boarded that ship in years, and only mention it in passing in most of my works. To see that relationship done right would make me happy. Shirou's relationship with Saber was the most idealistic and well, romantic in the literary sense (come on, endlessly pursuing, endlessly waiting, that shit slaps) and to see it given the justice it deserves would be great actually.

And yeah, Gilgamesh's goodbye? I'd love to see how they showcase that. Tomokazu Seki's delivery of his last words really sold the Deen version and damn I'd like to see him give it another go (FGO's similar line aside).

Other stuff

Whether or not we'd actually get a remake, though? That's the real question. It's more of a want than a need in the Fate fandom, y'know? Especially since a large part of the fanbase swears by the Deen version anyway, and anime aside Arturia and Shirou are very much beloved by the fans.

Plus, a re-adaptation would probably warrant Nasu going back to correct or improve the parts of the route he would have wanted to change. I'm not sure what his stance would be on doing that (and uh, please Nasu, get some sleep) and well, from what I see, the new LB is clearly an ode to the Fate Route. So he might not even have to go back, and instead just continue writing new things.

I would be happy to get it, but I'd be okay with not getting a remake. At this point a remake seems like the stuff of dreams. Tsukihime got its revival though, so you never know.

If anything, maybe at least a wide release of the Last Episode. I'd wanna see that. I mean we have all three routes adapted now, so haven't we unlocked this ending yet?

This?

"Yes welcome back, Shirou." The dream, finally announced its end here.

This I'd love to see.

[tainbocuailnge]

As the #1 Cu fan on Tumblr, what would be your thoughts on a FSN route where Shirou summons Cu, allowing him to fight with the full power of Protagonist Plot Armor behind him? Yeah I know, blah blah, Artoria was able to function as Shirou's Servant because she had such a huge well of mana sustaining her when Shirou was unable to, blah blah. But I'd be curious as to what Cu would be capable of when he's not being forced into the antagonist role and therefore fated to lose.

eughh honestly idk about that one chief, cu’s like... status in the context of fsn requires him to be a secondary antagonist and I can’t really imagine him outside that antagonist role in relation to the rest of the cast. I know you’re probably asking for powerlevels but all powerlevels are an extension of the story and the scenario you’re proposing doesn’t mesh with the Themes(TM) unless it’s a case of idk shirou somehow losing the contract with saber and reforming it with cu who somehow ditched kirei. 

cu is the only “real” hero in the cast, way back in the prologue already he’s basically used as the standard model hero in rin’s explanation of servants while archer is highlighted as an anomaly and he’s the only one who doesn’t regret becoming a hero. so his very nature is in conflict with shirou’s and by extension saber/archer/rin’s development in each route because he’s a hero that killed a million people to become one and by using him as a baseline the nature of that heroism is questioned through how everyone else differs but it means he has to be a third party in the actual conflicts of fate and ubw route in order to function as that baseline because he doesn’t have a stake in (re)examining that heroism at all. and he got btfo’d before hf even properly gets going bc hf does’t give a shit about heroisms and especially doesn’t need someone like cu to function as its baseline (tho i still think it would’ve been thematically appropriate if he’d joined saber alter's ranks after bc it’d have let shirou beat cu where archer couldn’t a route earlier)

in terms of power without context cu could body everyone in the fuyuki war aside from herc bc he’s a genius prodigy at martial and magic arts alike and his noble phantasm takes outrageously little energy to use while being an all but guaranteed kill and that’s exactly why they had the plot working against him 

[dailyarturia]

Instead of just rating servants, what about a rating of the different Fate storylines?

oh now THIS I can do

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. often called the most boring route which, I guess yeah because it’s the first route of the first game so it ends up being exposition central. it has its moments and it’s not bad per se but it hasn’t aged that well and the rest of the series has caught up with it since it’s not the entry point for new fans anymore so like half the route’s content and plot twists end up being stuff that is already known from other installments. I still think it’d be nice if ufotable made an ova or something just to complete the set, and also because heaven’s feel actually mirrors fate route on a lot of points so I feel the hf movies aren’t going to be at their best if you haven’t gone over fate route beforehand. if you skip over the outdated exposition you can easily fit all of it in ~10 episodes cause it’s pretty short. 6.5/10 if looked at on its own, but its importance as the base on which later routes build can’t be underestimated 

my personal favourite route even tho its heroine is the worst part of it. with fate route getting the exposition out of the way ubw can go at a faster pace and is more action oriented. the shirou-archer and related archer-lancer conflict is one of my favourites in all of fate and “here I come, king of heroes- do you have enough weapons in stock?” is ICONIC. rin got massively gimped as heroine cause nasu didn’t seem to dare actually letting her be flawed and shirou ended up too focused on his own conflict to form like a real bond with her but that’s a horse I beat to death long ago. the examination of what makes a hero is in general one of my fav themes in fate and ubw obviously delivers there but what I especially love in ubw is the theme of “don’t ‘welcome to the real world’ me asshole, the real world shouldn’t be like this”. 9/10 would be a 10 if rin had like, any character development

this one is... so stressful to read, which is GOOD cause that’s the point but that also means my reread is going at a pace of 3 scenes per 4 months. heaven’s feel throws every convention that fate and ubw set up out the goddamn window by immediately killing off like half the cast including powerhouses like gilgamesh and turning an ideological conflict into a really viscerally personal one. the final conflict isn’t a hero versus a world ending calamity, it’s a bunch of traumatised kids with bad blood between them and the rest of the world caught in the crossfire. “the embodiment of all the world’s evils was a victim” is a really powerful statement to make and where fate and ubw only really asked “what makes a hero” hf hammers in the corresponding question of “what makes a villain”. 8.5/10 it’s an incredibly strong thematic ending to the game as a whole but it’s just, not my favourite

jesus christ look what you did, you got me started. here’s a readmore to save your dashboard and rip mobile users cause I got some opinions on fate alright

this one fucking sucks if you look at it on its own it only works if you know fsn follows it otherwise its just DEATH DESPAIR PAIN SUFFERING yeah yeah we get it urobuchi. apparently he was going through a real bad depressive episode when he was asked to write zero and it was really cathartic to him to be able to write it as dark as he wants knowing that he can’t possibly ruin the happy ending of fsn so, I’ll give him that I guess. I thought it was the greatest shit when I first watched it cause uro’s really good at leveraging shock value but the flaws become more obvious with every rewatch. not really my favourite it’s mostly just asshole central and people who stan zero are usually insufferable but it’s got some good shit among the usual uro stuff. 7/10 PROVIDED you look at it in the context of fsn otherwise it’s like, a 5

BIG favourite and origin of my wife for life bazett fraga mcremitz. I read this one at the exact right time in my life to be absolutely destroyed by it. the whole game is based on the premise of ‘a second chance’ so it goes out if its way to go into the characters who got kinda shafted in fsn while also being the canon ‘everyone lives’ au. fsn has always underlined how valuable an ordinary life is that’s why we call it family dinner simulator 2004 but fha really hammers that one in. less outright action than fsn but a really strong and tense atmosphere. 9/10 would be a 10 if it weren’t for the fucking caren scene

basically revisits the themes from zero and stay night from a different angle but the cast is too large to really go into it so its clunky and a lot of characters end up sidelined. still it’s home to a lot of my favs and some of the coolest action in the whole series. I have a lot of apocrypha opinions but most of them boil down to who i want to hold hands with each other and how much I love sieg(fried) so I’ll spare you those. 7/10 thanks to shaky execution but if you take a shovel and make it that deep yourself it easily jumps up to 8 or even 9. don’t watch the anime I’m begging you.

the storyline actually suffers a lot from how linear and rigid the game structure is so its main selling point is hakuno and their bond with each of the 3 playable servants but by god does it deliver there. hakuno is one of my favourite protagonists of all time and it’s all in how they’re not going to take this shit lying down. it’s a game about forging bonds in a system designed to drive people apart and holding stubborn hope for the future. 9.5/10 the half point is as much acknowledgement of the game’s flaws as I am willing to give because we have decided to stan forever

lol what was that about linear structure? its like, super horny on main so it’s a hard sell but it basically turns everything I liked about extra up to 14. fate/extra CCC is a game about reaching out to others, how people are stronger together, how the future can be changed for the better as long as you are alive to see it, forming your own identity in the wake of trauma and learning who you are in relation to others as well as to your own past, healthy love and unhealthy love and recognising the difference between the two, and big fat anime titties. 10/10 i am not fucking kidding you if you can handle the horny CCC will be the best ride of your goddamn life.

look. i don’t want to get started on extella so just take the ratings. 8/10 concept 4/10 execution.

it’s incomprehensible garbage but it’s MY incomprehensible garbage 9/10 and 3/10 simultaneously

now we got some real mixed feelings on this bad boy here so I’ll try to keep it short. basically all the chapters up to and including london were mediocre at best with septem as the absolute peak of garbage. they actually said in interviews that they didn’t make a shift towards heavier story content until between london and america so that makes sense but it painfully shows. america camelot babylon salomon then exponentially increased in quality and were the fucking bomb. epic of remnant was a massively mixed bag thanks to all the guest writers with minimal supervision to buy nasu time to write lostbelt. lostbelt is fun again. the main story nowadays is really good quality because nasu is just doing what he does best and writing incomprehensible lore with a story around it but because of the game’s nature as mobile game that wants to make everyone appealing somehow it misses a lot of the visceral emotion that fsn had. events are often too silly even if they do end on a serious note and there’s not enough actual serious story content to balance it out so everyone kinda suffers from character erosion and I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to fix that, cause sure you can say ‘make nasu supervise it more’ but nasu’s always writing like 5 different things at once and he can’t really Do That. I think ultimately fgo has been good for fate as a whole in the story department and I also think a different direction/feel from earlier stuff isn’t bad in itself but the scale at which fgo works does seem like it’s beyond what nasu and co really expected to ever have to handle and so while the amount of successes has increased, the amount of failures has also become more glaring. 5/10 on the first few chapters, 8/10 on the later half of arc one and onwards, ???/10 overall, oh fate how I wish I could quit you (i don’t wish that i’m having a good time)

no

[anyway-i-love-vanderwood]

Do you have a set of fav Servants? And do you have a background/story for your PC, like the ones you've made for the various MM MCs?

✿ I tend to run with Heracles as my leader, since he’s a powerhouse, and I also really love Emiya (UBW represent!) Arturia/Altria and Altera are top waifus and are also monsters, so I’ll grab them for my support depending on who’s available, and Alexander/Mash/Caster Cu/Lancer Cu fill up my back line depending on typing. I just got Nero tho, so I’m levelling her up because she’s one of my favorites (I’ve loved her since Fate/Extra.)

I. OK IT’S EMBARRASSING BUT I SORTA DO. My Master is from a branch family associated with the Clock Tower, and she was born with relatively weak magic circuits so she was deemed fairly worthless by her parents. For all of her life, she’s served as a “secretary” of sorts to her older siblings - she’s focused all of her attentions on gaining a wide berth of historical and practical knowledge, making her an excellent consultant and adviser. Her manner was cold and terse, and everyone joked about her complete lack of humor, treating her more like a walking encyclopedia than a person. In reality, she’s actually pretty pleasant and highly competitive, spending a lot of her free time playing board games with servants and reading countless novels in her room, but her family never really saw that side of her.

She became aware of Chaldea due to their research ties with the Clock Tower, and - in the interests of making a name for herself - she joined up with them as a Master candidate. After all, they were desperate, and willing to grab anyone to pad their numbers. After the disaster, she proved herself to be capable and quick witted - though naturally talentless at magic - and she mainly got by through her insight into tactics (honed by her long hours playing strategy games for fun.) 

With her servants, she’s still learning that she doesn’t have to be a robotic doll that spouts out information, and it’s a total learning process for her. Once she grasps that, oh, she can be as much of a sarcastic shit as she wants, she starts sassing people like crazy, and she also teaches her Servants how to play all of the tabletop games that she loves. Mash is frequently interested in her stories about playing politics at the Clock Tower, and she’s teaching her how to be a Monopoly Demon.

i don’t actually have a name for her since my FGO username is Glitter, but I kinda like the name Garnet.

hanamayhem said to anyway-i-love-vanderwood:NOW THAT BEGS THE QUESTION; if Vanderwood was a Servant, who would they be.

✿ oh shit

Off the cuff answer? Archer, due to their independent action ability. Vanderwood is pretty self-sufficient, so that seems like a good class for them, and I can totally see them surviving and duking it out without their master watching their every move. My secondary inclination is Assassin, but I consider Vanderwood to be more proficient at combat tbh. 

[cielospeaks]

idk my relationship w cu is weird bc honestly? i dont fucking know

aight so the facts: i actually first heard abt fate cu from a cosplay upperclassmen in college who i went to a con with, id seen cu around but i was always just like “oh, hes some anime boy. hes too anime. hes too blue.” anyways i saw an ep of cp on their recommendation but not knowing shit abt fate i didnt really have any interest.

TIME SKIP to 2015ish fall, when id gotten into fgo on a whim bc it had mozart apparently! and i basically have an ahoge radar for all things mozart (esp mozart + anime, bless that). tho honestly it was easy to stick with, even with the language barrier and playing on an emulator (i was used to that from tourabu/kancolle) because of the characters- mashu, olga, dr roman especially. i liked the servants too and the whole “anime historical figures” thing- they were cute and they were historical/legend figures i was fond of already or at least could be like “oh! i know you!” (galahad, robin hood, darius, marie, and ofc mozart)

so things really heated up ish? when cascu first appeared. i thought he was cool, pretty, ect. but was terrified hed end up being a “plot twist villain uwu” (hans trauma?) ngl i was freaking out when he makes mashu fight him bc i couldnt read the heckin text. but anyways for cascu especially id fallen way harder than i thought, id gotten invested in this shit- hell id even gotten the forbidden feelings. but it is what it is, and it happened.

so naturally, i started looking into more fate series stuff. i knew of the main fuyuki storylines, at the time ubw was on netflix, so i saw it there one rainy day. i never really got super into it but it was kinda nice to see these anime versions of historical figures i knew or knew of. of course, including a certain hound of ulster

idk when it really hit off? i think i liked diarmuid more at first since he looked “less anime” somehow. haha. idk my logic. i guess bc his outfit is in more subdued colors than cu’s bright blue? but i def liked the lancers. the tragic element in their stories and kinda the angst? whump? call it what you will they have to deal with in the fate plotlines was def a draw as well.

and surprisingly enough that peaked for me in carnival phantasm. the comedy parody. the comedy parody where cu dies painfully every episode at least once. yeah, u can see where im going with this. but that was kinda the spark that got me more and more into him- cascu was still my main squeeze, he was the gateway, the one hecker responsible for getting me hooked, but lancer was certainly cute too.

honestly rn idk what my feelings are exactly, and i dont mean that the way it sounds im almost inclined to say. i kinda know, feel, something? what they are, i just dont really know how to express it in an actual cohesive way. ive tried shipping cu in canon (popular canon ships that is) but that always felt really fake to me, like i wasn’t really invested (and tbh i wasnt. maybe in individual characters, mildly, but not in the “ship”, and def more in cu than whoever he was paired with). ive tried self shipping with him (or self inserting? i suppose is more technical) but that felt bad to me too- fake, off, ect. its not that i dont like his character, bc i do- ive got a handful of cu things at my desk and i smile every time i see him. my cu in game, whos been with me since 2015, is about 30,000 points from bond level 10. would i get a body pillow of cu? absolutely.

but its.... its different from the sort of feelings i feel for a lot of the others. all the granblue cast are newer (relatively, i started it a yr after fate, but am way less active haha), heck a lot of my main faves are like super super new- sal’s been here barely a year, izou even less, and nizou i only found out abt abt 8 months ago. same goes for most of my other faves. hans is longer (longer than cu by at least a year), but its different with him- probably because i connect to his personal traumatic experiences with similar ones of my own. i feel like we both are scarred by these things and we’d heal each other from this similar experience. and unlike sal or izou, he’s someone ive known for abt 5 years now- we’ve got that history together.

cu is different tho. ive known him for almost 4 years (longer if you count the first time i saw a fate thing, even longer than that if you count the historical cu, who i first learned abt when i was a toddler by chance), but i never even considered conventional, structured “self shipping” or “self insert” things with him. i did something akin to it, in passing daydreams, if i needed someone to kind of be in his role, he was there. he was a character i cared about and had strong feelings for. he was strong enough to help me grow, but he’d still be likely to possibly need my help depending on the situation. but thats nothing id classify as “self shipping” the way its structured here for instance.

so tl, dr. i dont blame you this is way long. cu is an important character to me. its not a feeling i want to classify as “romantic” or “platonic” or anything like that, but most of the time seeing other self ships involving him isnt really for me (whether they be romantic/platonic or not), and again, like in my bio, if ive talked to you before abt this regarding lancer its not about you. its a bit misleading since i dont really have anything up about him, but i think its because the typical “appearance” of him im not very fond of, at least within how he’s viewed, especially in regards to relation with the fsn and assorted related work and their cast. i kind of feel as well that everything i said about him previously is just so fake, its borrowed words i put in my mouth to try and voice this that i felt. i honestly don’t know how to word it more than that.

[pr1nc3-ed]

Tagged by @aileenaison​ thank you, that was really fun <3 Choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions. Then tag some friends.

You choose: fire emblem, fate series, tokyo ghoul

The first character you loved:

fire emblem: idk I think it was Ike lol

fate: Archer, because he is manly af

tokyo ghoul: Probably Touka

The character you never expected to love so much:

fire emblem: Lyn, aaaand i didnt expect to enjoy Hector that much at first lol (both FE7), aaaaaaand Lute (Sacred Stones) for being probably the most powerful mage lmao, although her personality is cute though, and bonus mention for Joshua (Sacred Stones) due to cool hat™

fate: TOHSAKA RIN

tokyo ghoul: Eto, and okay I guess Touka too, also i didnt really expect to like Kaneki’s character when i started the anime (ok HE IS STILL SHIT ON THE ANIME IMO) and manga

The character you relate to most:

fire emblem: couldnt think that well but ehh Artur (FE8 Sacred Stones), idk he is just a simple, humble, genuine nice guy who is usually calm and fell in love for his childhood friend... LIKE I DID ONCE TOO IRL (no longer the case tho) LOL, and I guess i can somewhat relate to Levin (FE4) since he ran away from his responsibilities at first like i do with adult life :p

fate: i have no idea of this one tbh

tokyo ghoul: Kaneki, idk i would see myself on Kuroneki very often due to the shy nature and wanting to help others or even “hurt” myself rather than others, y’know.

The character you’d slap: (this will include more than one character in some ones lmao)

fire emblem: even though he is an amazing mage, sometimes I’d slap Soren for being racist towards a race in Path of Radiance, Eltshan/Eldigan (FE4) for doing some really dumb shit to even put his life at risk for the sake of HONOR AND SOME ROYALTY/KNIGHT SHIT, and Lyon (Sacred Stones)... idk i just think he sucks as the tragic-like character and i cant take him seriously

fate: Shirou, for being a dumbass sometimes

tokyo ghoul: i would slap (almost) the whole CCG tbh, and kanou too, fuck them

A character you liked at first but not so much anymore:

fire emblem: at first I liked Eirika (Sacred Stones), but as the game went on... idk i couldnt agree with some of her decisions lol, I kinda prefer her brother Ephraim

fate: hmmmmm I guess that could go to... Saber? I dont hate/dislike her, its just that sooo much of her in the series just made her look “meh” to me, and some of her ideals like in Fate/Zero are just... lol no.

tokyo ghoul: that would be a tough one, but i guess Mutsuki is the closest one to that

A character you did not like at first, but they’ve grown on you:

fire emblem: Anna, yes the (usually, until awakening) npc girl LOL, ok its not that i didnt like her, i just didnt care much at first :p i guess Camus and Michalis (from Marth’s games) could be included too, same for Jaffar (FE7) due to his development

fate: Kotomine Kirei... YOROKOBE SHONEN

tokyo ghoul: Tsukiyama, Ayato and Urie

3 OTPs (ok i will add some couples that i think they are nice but i dont necessarily ship instead of a certain one):

fire emblem: marth x caeda, eliwood x ninian, artur x lute

fate: shirou x rin are okay on UBW/rin’s route :p saber x diarmuid for BROTP in fate/zero tokyo ghoul: TOUKEN, this is the only actual otp in this list to me :p oh and i do like ayato x hinami tbh tagging @kurome-in-wonderland @hakuniki @s-e-l-f-i-s-h-n-e-s-s @purrsxna @yetanotherfluffyotaku @myluchanblog @mut4ti0ns @meanimes @chitogebabe @kitsunebis @riftdoor its optional to do thar or not :3 and sorry if anyone didnt want to be tagged :(

[kurozu501]

Fate complete material vol 1 (art material) reactions and thoughts below!

this art is really beautiful, like yeah we rag on takeuchi for his issues with proportions but its still pretty great. 

the selection of which lines go in next to the scenes seems a little random like literally the only line they used next to the art of fate route kirei final battle is him saying “welcome emiya shirou.” like really? you couldnt think of any better lines to take from that scene?

they included saber getting seen in the bath and saying she didn’t think her “muscular body” would be appealing to him and all i can think is how much better the entire franchise would be if that line had any truth to it and saber was actually drawn buff, with muscles, instead of the “magic power” bs they threw in to justify her being petite and soft despite also being a warrior king. 

some of the translations of the lines feels a little awkward…?

fate route section didnt include the cg of shirou punching the dagger into kirei’s chest, 0/10 

“Everything and nothing is here. That is why this place is known as ‘Unlimited Blade Works’. It is the one and only absolute answer granted to those who have lived as a blade.” NOW THATS MORE LIKE IT, GOOD SHIT. “those who have lived as a blade” shirou/archer is literally a sword person confirmed 

they translated gilgamesh’s “zasshu” as mutt instead of mongrel nevermind this translation is heresy lmao

*reaches heaven’s feel section, hoots and hollers*

*reaches the bit where sakura is shot up with swords and covered in blood, regrets everything instantly*

damn right the sakushirou hug scene gets a two page sprea-

“I promise. I will be your personal superhero, Sakura.” S C R E A M S 

i take it all back, this translation just saved all of fate by including the word “personal” in that line, im dying 

and then they lost points again by including shirou’s “lets go home sakura” line twice and having the first one be oddly translated. this translation is an emotional whiplash but im still dead over “your personal superhero” so its fine. 

theres a few elements here that look like they weren’t in the game? like theres an alternate of the shirou tracing caliburn pic where he’s got the archer arm (and his orange hair is slicked back like archers!!) that i dont recall ever being used in hf, a sasaki face that where he’s grinning and has a few pronounced veins on his forehead that makes him look lancer-ish intense, a varient of lancer’s close up from his fight with archer in ubw where he’s got the intensity lines on his face, but he’s also grinning hugely (fang showing) and his eyes are wide, looks very scary lmao. Maybe that one was his reaction to archer’s dog line, but i dont recall seeing it in the VN…?

HF’s ending and climactic scenes get huge page spreads, thank. 

im laughing my ass off, they include the pictures where you can see saber’s naked chest when she gets walked in on bathing from fate route, a picture of rin naked from the start of her ubw h-scene, sakura’s nudity after shirou rule breaker’s her at the end of hf and then NOTHING ELSE. there is no section for all the h-scenes but there is these few nude pics scattered here and there, its like type moon wanted to clean up its image but takeuchi insisted on a few nudes still being included.

each of the servant cards get their own full page and they all look beautiful. i kinda wish the archer card lady didn’t have an ass crack showing tho…

Theres a whole publicity section from back before FSN was released that is honestly fascinating to see and read. Especially with fate being so huge now, to see how it was just one game being hyped by its creators is super interesting. Saber and Illya urging people to buy first editions of the game, art of the characters counting down to the pre order deadline and then the official release, a lot of effort was put into it to make the game a success. 

fate side material cover: a beautiful picture of sakura with her arms open wide. fate side material back cover: a chibi sakura crying happy tears over finally having gotten her own solo illustration after constantly being in the bg of pics with Saber and Rin. HARD SAME. WHERE ALL THE SOLO SAKURA ART AT

apparently they held a character popularity contest before the official release of FSN and saber won first place. i feel like this was the moment saber becoming the series icon and cashcow was set in stone lmao

theres a bunch of 4koma gag comics with interesting info. takeuchi wanting to include cat ears, bunny ears and maid uniforms into the game for the heroines is one of them. Nasu’s eggplant avatar, with an anger twitch, declares “Denied!!” …thanks nasu.

Another interesting bit is that someone on the team stanned hard for yukika saegusa to get a standing cg, and when their request was granted it set off a chain reaction of all the staff wanting to get things they wanted in the game. Apparently this possibly caused the release date of FSN to be pushed back, so what im saying is yukika is clearly a secret agent of chaos

one of the 4koma’s makes a joke that sakura puts blood into her cooking (secret ingredient! she says with an angelic smile and a heart while taiga looks on in horror) im laughing but also sakura would never sully cooking like that hdu

theres not enough sakura art… never enough sakura art…

on to book 2! likely to have much more indepth reactions since this book was just art. 

[tainbocuailnge]

The fandom you're in looks really awesome, and the reason I followed you is it the cooler that comes with it, but I have no idea what it's about or what the actual game is? Is there a place I can go to kind of find out and maybe play myself? (You're so passionate about it that I'm starting to get really curious but google is my enemy)

I’m GUESSING you mean fate series cause that’s my number one thing I do not shut up about. it’s uhh kind of a spiraling mess of a series but most installments are standalone enough for it to not be a complete hell to get into, but also I’m glad you asked because getting in without help is definitely hell

fate started with the visual novel fate/stay night, written by kinoko nasu and released in 2004. as such that’s the best starting point in my opinion, because it features all the detailed worldbuilding groundwork that later installments kind of gloss over so it can be hard to go back to if you already know all that from other installments. the plot is that seven magi summon legendary heroes to fight for them in a ritual war, with the prize being the holy grail which can grant any wish. leading themes are what it means to be a hero and save someone, the way history repeats itself, and forming your own identity in the wake of trauma. it has three routes, the last of which especially has really heavy themes of physical emotional and sexual abuse so if you need detailed content warnings pm me and I’ll do my best

fsn has several releases, the original vn features infamously bad erotica but there’s a rerelease called fate/stay night [realta nua] which replaced those scenes with pg-15 content and also tightened the visuals up a bit. I’ve got downloads for both versions here. it’s like 80 hours of vn so that’s quite the investment but there’s also the anime fate/stay night [unlimited blade works] featuring the second route, and the third route is getting a series of movies the first of which is out too, called heaven’s feel - presage flower. fate route (the first route) sort of got an anime in 2006 and unlimited blade works a movie in 2010 but those are really really bad so look for the 2014 anime and 2017 movie. imo the ubw anime did a decent job and heaven’s feel is doing pretty good too so far so they’re good for seeing if you like what the series has to offer before you dive into a long ass vn.

the prequel to fate/stay night is fate/zero, a light novel series written by gen urobuchi in collaboration with nasu. as such it’s notably darker than the rest of the series but by nature of being a prequel it makes for an equally decent starting point as stay night, since both will spoil things for the other. fate/zero has an anime too. 

imo stay night and zero are the ‘standard’ fate installments, if someone says they like fate you can safely assume they’ve consumed at least one of those - is what I used to say but apparently it’s been so long that even this isn’t a reasonable assumption anymore. oh how times have changed. anyway please do start with zero or stay night cause like I said those are earlier installments so they’re at high risk of falling flat if you already know the deep lore from later stuff.

the biggest most booming fate installment is fate/grand order, a mobile game featuring characters from all other fates as well as a lot of newcomers. it’s pretty newbie friendly in terms of lore I think but you’ll get more out of it if you do know the background for all these characters since character development tends to carry over between installments. it’s infamously story heavy for a mobile game, especially in the later chapters when nasu got the hang of writing for mobage. the tone is also notably different from fsn and fz in that it’s more…. grandiose and theatrical, and obviously it waifs everyone up a bit so they can get you to spend money. still good tho. still love it. it’s got two anime specials, first order and moonlight lostroom, but first order makes no damn sense if you don’t know anything of stay night and lostroom takes place after the events of the first fgo arc. there’s anime projects of two of the chapters in progress too.

you thought that was all? you’re a fool this isn’t even half of it but I’ll briefly go over the rest under a cut cause those 3 are the big players.

carnival phantasm is a comedy OVA series featuring skits about several works from the same author. about half of it is about fate and the other about tsukihime, an earlier visual novel. watching order is after stay night. today’s menu for the emiya family is the canon domestic fsn au manga and anime where everyone’s just chilling eating dinner together instead of killing each other. 

fate/hollow ataraxia is another visual novel. it’s a direct sequel to fate/stay night and a personal favourite. it takes place half a year after stay night and features much of the same themes, but from a pair of characters who lost the war in fsn before it even started.

fate/apocrypha is another series of light novels. in terms of reading order i’d put it after stay night and zero. it features a cast twice as big as those two and basically approaches the same themes from a different angle. it’s got a finished anime and an ongoing manga but the anime kinda butchered pretty much everything about it. unfortunately one of the light novels is still not translated so the anime is still the most accessible way to get approximately the whole story. the manga IS very good though so once that’s finished I’d probably tell people to read that one if they want to apocrypha

fate/EXTRA is a psp game it’s like 10 bucks in the ps store iirc. for reading order I’d put it after stay night but not necessarily after zero. in this one the ritual for the holy grail is held in a simulation on the moon, which is a supercomputer, and it’s an organised tournament with 128 participants instead of a 7 man free for all. it’s about forging meaningful bonds in a system designed to drive people apart and finding the drive to keep going even if nothing is certain. the gameplay isn’t great but the story is $$$ it’s my other personal favourite. it’s sequel is called fate/EXTRA CCC, it’s on psp too but never got a western release, but there’s a translation of one route out there and some madmen are working on a translation patch that’ll be done in time for my grandchildren I hope. CCC is the wildest ride of my life i love it a lot but it’s very horny so not really for everyone. fate/extra CCC fox tail is a manga which follows an alternate CCC route and i hear it’s cool. the sequel to CCC is fate/EXTELLA which did come to the west and is on several platforms, and somewhere next year fate/EXTELLA link should get localised. extella is very rushed and mostly expands the extraverse world but if you can grab it on sale after you decided you like extra it’s not a bad buy just don’t pay full price. fate/EXTRA last encore is an anime which. sort of comes after extra? it’s very trippy arthouse bullshit and I ate that shit up but it’s definitely not for everyone. the last 3 episodes are missing on netflix so make sure you don’t miss those if you decide to watch.

fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ☆ ILLYA is a magical girl spinoff manga & anime which sounds great in theory until you see it’s mostly pedobait, but extremely unfortunately for us sometimes it does something legitimately cool so we all suffer. don’t get into prillya it’s bad for your health. 

fate/strange fake WAS an aprils fools story but this series has no limits so now it’s a full on light novel spinoff and also manga I think? I don’t keep up with it but it throws some wild ass lore our way sometimes. you’ll probably want to be up to date with apocrypha and everything before it before you try this one.

fate/prototype was just the original concept for fsn extrapolated a bit upon but again this series has no limits. prototype has an animated feature and some material books, and then the light novels fate/prototype fragments of blue and silver are the prequel to prototype, but it’s weird cause we never got a proper prototype so I don’t know what’s up with that. fate/labyrinth is a side story to fragments which I know even less about. I actually never see anyone talk about prototype so there’s probably no translations lol

lord el melloi II case files is even more light novels. I’m pretty sure you need to have gone over stay night, zero, hollow ataraxia, apocrypha, and strange fake before this one starts to make sense. there might be translations? i don’t know a fucking thing my guy

[dailyarturia]

So I know that the Deen Fate/Stay Night anime was a hilariously shit adaptation (I watched it with friends to make fun of), but is there anything important I'm missing from Fate route that isn't covered in that or any of the other anime adaptations?

I’ve only ever watched deen drunk so don’t quote me on anything they did but I THINK they got the key events down at least. if you have the time you should still give the vn route a shot tho because deen also threw in a bunch of ubw scenes and then like 2/3rds in they derailed it with a heaven’s feel subplot and also the vn has like, actual characterisation.