neko's thinkbox

No, it’s not a new series, nor any kind of new info; it’s just a review, rest assured.

I know I am years behind. In reality I had planned to watch this series long before it even aired. TYPE-MOON, need I say more? Tsukihime, Melty Blood, made of win and gold, so Fate/stay night obviously had to be a must. Yet the huge mystery always remains the same though: “Why, didn’t neko watch it right away, if he was so interested?”
Well, neko was pondering whether he should play the game or watch the anime first to get a better understanding of the story. Eventually he simply went idle and did nothing, and kept postponing it. He already would have forgotten it, if he hadn’t read some crossover doujin from Crazy Clover Club a week ago, involving a highly thrilling Tsukihime x FSN plot which suddenly made him squeal for MOAR, Bricks etc. And since there were quite a lot of spoilers, he then decided to watch it.

Uh, back to first person narration. This breaks (once again) my oh so frequent relapsing of my anime hiatus; it almost made me think about dropping another series, since I haven’t been following at all, but since Baccano hasn’t progressed much anyway I will just try following it at my pace… Did I ever mention Kiss Dum in a previous, or any other series? Oops, never mind, I think i’ll just forget about those. You know, with my rather chaotic and gaping blogging schedule, I am thinking of making Rule 7 the absolute rule of this blog. (To those who already have forgotten it: Rule 7: “Thou shalt not download anime until thy series hath been finished”) – because I probably am disappointing and annoying many people with my fruitless (and noisy) comebacks only to return to my hiatus afterwards…

Actually, I had started an introduction a few days ago, after I had watched the first episode. My weakness is that I need a LOT of time to convey my feelings into a complete and meaningeful text, such that it had taken me almost an hour to write a few paragraphs about the first episode only. This already had thrown me off my watching flow, and— if I had done that for all the episodes, I would only end up summarizing it, and only give an incomplete image of my feelings. So I simply decided to marathon the anime, and… yeah, I don’t regret any single bit of it.

Shirou sounds familiar…

I think I still have some leftovers from my past Naruto addiction which goes back several years ago… It’s been like ages since I last watched an episode (Japanese dubbed) but still, can you imagine? After only a few seconds I immediately recognized Noriaki Sugiyama’s voice in Shirou, who incidentally is the seiyuu for… Sasuke. I knew it was him – I still did check up on ANN though because I didn’t want to believe it (which by the way reminds me I also heard him in Code Geass… duh). Never forgot that voice, and I have to admit, it’s a really great voice that would befit any cool, elitist, perhaps even mischievous character. But SHOCK!?! Emiya Shirou? Gawd… But after 5 episodes in a row, I already forgot that fact and really enjoyed it, although some expressions sometimes reminded me of Naruto… ARGH, no more ninjas!

Now, what am I going to write? That is what I have been asking myself for almost half an hour, idling in my room between IRC, Pangya and TV. There are so many things I would like to say about FSN, so many feelings I want to convey, but that probably would make my entry as long as longcat… erm, looooong. Tl;dr long, if you catch my drift. I will simply go with the basics. Note that I will be comparing it a lot to Tsukihime, I hope that it will not be too annoying or too intrusive in my analysis… then again, the FSN experience has already been influenced by Tsukihime beforehand, so.. bah, just read XD

As implied in my introduction, I knew that TYPE-MOON stuff simply could not be bad in any way. Nasu Kinoko has once again demonstrated that he could create a beautiful story just like he did with Tsukihime. And like Tsukihime, the FSN anime is an anime adaptation of the game – however, FSN has twenty-four episodes, so the story wouldn’t have to be squeezed into twelve episodes like in Tsukihime.
I haven’t played the game yet, for I am not motivated to play only one route with Revolve’s translation Patch. But I can imagine once again that, like Tsukihime, the anime covers the first route of the game (presumably the ‘Fate’ route?). With that said, I do not know how much of the original feel the anime has lost in comparison to the game. But if it has lost a lot, then I really will be looking forward to playing the full game very soon, because I indeed loved the story.

Probably the most memorable picture of this series.

The plot was quite well-paced and developed throughout the twenty-four episodes, and there were absolutely no disturbances in the flow of the story. From the carefree and funny days at Shirou’s home (usually involving Fuji-nee) over to the serious Holy Grail War battles, the many plot twists full of suspense – I was hanging on the edge of my seat every time Shirou was able to secure the victory for himself by imaging a new weapon – and, the inevitable romance between Shirou and Saber: all of these points got me hooked so much I couldn’t wait for the endings of each episode to already fire up the next episode. I can not remember any single moment of boredom during my marathon, except… the first episode. Well it wasn’t really boring, but a bit disappointing; it somewhat threw me off at first, because at that point I was a bit dumbfounded that Saber didn’t appear right away, while she is the most important character after Shirou. At second thought though, the introduction of the characters took quite some time, and to squeeze the info about the Holy Grail War, Saber’s summoning, and all the other stuff into one episode definitely would have been awful.

About the characters, I immediately sympathized with the cheerful and easy-going protagonists of Fate/Stay Night. First off, I’ll have to compare once again: unlike Tsukihime, the character design of the anime now looks almost identical to the game design (I’ve seen some pictures of it), which is very pleasing. In Tsukihime, the difference was quite blatant, Arcueid, Ciel, and all the characters looked much more mature – not that it was bad, but it was quite less appealing (and cute) in that aspect (but I will still always love my Hisui XD).

Awww… *melts* Tsunderekkos…

Again, I don’t know how much of the protagonist’s characters were developed in the game, and how much they have lost in the anime adaptation, but I found that a lot of characters have been omitted. Fuji-nee was so funny indeed, I really enjoyed each and every of her slapstick appearances; however, they were pretty rare. I wish she’d have been more present. Same for Sakura, who just seemed to play a huge role when Caster was using her as a vessel for the holy Grail. Even Illya, despite her main role as an opponent, was kicked off the main stage soon after she got defeated and started living at Shirou’s house. I could even bitch around that Rin’s past wasn’t as detailed as I wanted it to be (as it was meant to be?), and I didn’t even mention all of the Servants’ stories, except Saber’s. But in the end, that’s just useless ranting and stating the obvious. I know that this series is only twenty-four episodes long and thus needs to focus primarily on the main protagonists, so it’s pretty normal that the secondary characters, no matter how interesting they are, need to give way. It’s already great like this: had it been twelve episodes, like Tsukihime, I definitely would have had much more to complain about.

I grew very fond of most of the characters: Shirou really impressed me with his devotion to help others, while totally ignoring himself. Sometimes I recognized myself in his character (yes yes, I really like to help people out), but I think I would have been more selfish and more love-struck in most my decisions, and thus screwing the whole story up. Saber was a great character too, really liked her, but… I don’t know, perhaps she was a bit too easy to figure her out. I do prefer Sakura over her, because she’s so affectionate it makes me go “aww”, and she can cook quite well!! – I hope Hisui can learn lots from her XD erm… NOO NOT THE CHAIR *gets beaten up by Hisui*
Umm. Yeah, Rin… Always knew she was a tsundere, and it is confirmed in this series. However, I thought she would be more tsun than dere… She went soft on Shirou so often, such that it made me believe she always wanted to support him, maybe even… loved him? Haha, I’m thinking too far. But, wait, what? Why do I read everywhere that Rin only likes girls? Is that some kind of detail from the game, or some people taking that one scene in this picture below in a different way as it was meant to be? Hey, after all I heard, I almost suspected she’d start kissing Saber and fondle her…

LAWDS. MOAR Rin x Saber ploz.

About the other Servants, well, most of them bluffed me a great deal. Archer was dead cool, and I think he and Shirou are very much alike (which most likely is also implied in the second opening, where both are fighting). Too bad he lost that one battle though (the modified ending was quite touching T_T). What I never understood is why he and Shirou were battling in the second Opening though. To emphasize their resemblance, perhaps? Rider went pretty easy on Shirou as well, and she even told him he was a good person. Caster, despite being another of the reckless “villains”, still proved to be grateful and caring about her savior, Kuzuki-sensei.
At least for some Servants, I can imagine that if we were able to see the things from their point of view, that there most probably wouldn’t find only malicious or some sort of perverted, grotesque thoughts as the cliché supposes them bad guys to have.

Moving on to the end, since I don’t want to be spoiling ‘too much’… who knows. Maybe I already did, hah. I was so damn excited when Shirou was able to image the Avalon, I think I couldn’t sit still until Saber disappeared. So, was is a good ending? Yes. Happy ending? Depends on the viewer. The good guys have defeated the evil guys, and life goes on as usual. But something… or rather, someone’s missing. Saber wasn’t there. She disappeared, to return back to her era. Now… is that a bad thing? Remember Tsukihime, Arcueid has literally crashed into Shiki’s life, and she eventually disappeared as well.
To me, I would say it’s a sad ending. I am aware that it probably would be too good to be true to keep Saber alive until the very end, but my greed for the ultimate happy end would require her to remain alive – and we finally got closer to her… “You cannot have all the good things in life”, eh?

I love my lolis like I love my Whiskey: 12 years old and mixed with coke. -Pedobear

Hah, I remember I was moved to tears when I played Arcueid’s True Ending in the Tsukihime game. I was eventually able to overcome this ‘loss’, because I could play the Good Ending afterwards and soothe my frustration, haha. Meh, me and my failed comparisons. It’s obvious though, FSN is much different from Tsukihime. Saber did disappear indeed, but who knows what the “continuation of the dream” actually is… Did she perhaps return to Shirou’s era? Did she die for good? Who knows. Once again, that’s up the viewer (especially to the doujin creators).
I need to play the game in order to find out if there is the parallel Good Ending to this story. Then again, apparently there is also a sequel, or something of that kind, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia… And looking at this chart with all of the characters of the Nasuverse (Kinoko Nasu’s universe where all of the stories, Tsukihime, FSN, Kara no Kyoukai, etc take place), there is a LOT I have yet to discover…

Well, now something just came in mind. I had read in many forums, blogs and random comments all across the net that Fate/Stay Night anime wasn’t good, that they have had higher expectations of this anime. Somewhat tainted with this knowledge, I started watching the series with that expectation of getting disappointed at the end. Sounds familiar? Yeah, it’s almost the same as it had been for Gundam SEED Destiny.
But in the end, I could not help myself clapping my hands after finishing FSN. I simply wonder where it failed so much; perhaps people were simply annoyed that they had to wait weeks for their episodes… Haha, behold the power or Rule 7.

Gao~~ Erm, wrong anime.

But seriously, it’s true, I don’t have much anime experience anymore, for I have been on a hiatus for so long, and let some anime jewels slip away, so my references, or ’standards’ if you will, are most probably much lower. Nevertheless, and I will be repeating myself, I adored FSN.

Perhaps I haven’t said even one thing of what I originally had planned to say… Well, most of it wouldn’t make sense anyway to other people except myself. So basically I just got stuck with stating the obvious instead of giving some meaningful input, something which might not have been said elsewhere. That is probably the factor which slows the whole writing process down, because, I could have finished this entry about 4 days ago, heh.
I will of course try to improve, which is why I will try to write more often. No promises as always, because I am the saiprocrastinator! Uh… what a bad pun to finish off this entry x_x To you who dared to read everything to this point, I admire your endurance.

As I finish…

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