#fateblogging

[mozillavulpix]

Anyway I finished watching Strange Fake

A few random thoughts

one is that it is quite possibly the worst thing to watch if you are not a hardcore type-moon fan and even if you are you will probably get confused at points because I certainly did

Seeing Richard's hardcore admiration for Artoria even seeing what happens in Fate/Zero just makes me feel like, no offence to Nasu or anything, but that she's far bigger than just "Shirou's love interest" to the point it almost feels like it invalidates Stay Night. There's so much to her and her ideals and her legacy that it feels a bit too small to have her issues and doubts all be resolved by just one suicidal Japanese boy, even if they try to thematically relate them to each other.

Like at the end of the day Nasu loves Shirou too much (and Takeuchi loves Saber too much) to not try and make everything go back to him and how he's her final and perfect partner and they'll live together in Avalon or whatever because that's the foundation the franchise built from, but man I feel like her character deserves more

What's fun about me consuming this franchise is I think there's cool stuff and I also think there's stuff that shows its age and really doesn't work as well as other approaches they could do

While writing this I suddenly remembered "what was that scene when the girl was getting stressed and she got a vision of her partner in the future and that helped calm her down" and then I remembered it was from the Torna DLC in Xenoblade 2. Man that had some good anime bits

[mozillavulpix]

crazy to think people's first exposure to fate is fate/zero

I can understand how it happens; ufotable polish, yuki kajiura OST, it's like proto-Demon Slayer. And then add in Gen Urobuchi and it's suddenly also proto-Madoka (although Madoka is Shaft)

but like story and theme-wise

like, Kiritsugu Emiya is a flawed and complex character, but he is also very much not much of a Mage. Rin's dad and Waver's teacher are the Proper Mages, but they get Sayaka-d to show how their mindset isn't going to get them far in This War.

But if you want to understand what a Mage is supposed to be, the best way is to read the prologue of Fate/Stay Night, where the start is told from Rin's POV and she's explaining how a Mage is supposed to do things even when she sometimes falls short.

There's just so many levels of "this story is not the simple battle royale you expect from the concept"

Like, in practical terms the whole reality of the Holy Grail War is everyone is trying to cheat as much as possible because Mages are psychopaths

so really it's kind of weird Fate/Zero came out and was like "what if a guy came to the Holy Grail War with guns. what if they didn't play by the rules of honor and was willing to do whatever it took to win" like it was a big shocking twist when really Mages already do that. They just do it from the sidelines through the power of decades of preparation instead of going out there with conventional weaponry

the Einzberns cheat. they've been cheating for decades. the Makiris cheat as much as they can for a declining bloodline. I'm sure Rin would cheat if she knew how to. I guess her managing to get Zeltretch's sword in HF is practically cheating

there is no point to this, i just think this franchise is interesting to think about

[mozillavulpix]

also while I'm here and thinking about it, I'm just reminded I really didn't like how the ending to Fate/Zero went, at least in the anime. Maybe it's different in the LN

where Kiritsugu uses his Command Spells to force Saber to destroy the holy grail because he rejects it, but that just causes the thing to explode and rain the black mud everywhere which causes the great Fuyuki fire

first of all it's kinda weird because you'd then think Saber in FSN would have been like "no I can't destroy the Holy Grail, last time I tried and it exploded into mud instead"

but also I think it's a much more interesting scenario if what Kirei tells us was the truth; that he was trying to separate Kiritsugu and Saber and the Holy Grail answered his wish by setting the whole place on cursed fire

having (conveniently naked) gilgamesh just gaslighting kirei into believing he caused the fire instead just doesn't hit the same. feels like a retcon

[mozillavulpix]

flat seems like a cool character in the nasuverse

it's like if magecraft is Weaponised Autism and Psychopathy, Flat is like what happens when they have to deal with Actual Autism and they realise they have absolutely no idea what to do

(really a lot of the el-melloi cast seem especially wild but maybe that's because i think makoto sanda is a powerscaler)

[mangocurist]

so why is kirei kotomine a prolifer. LET SAKURA ABORT THAT THANG

[kiqilinn]

I miss rin tohsaka

[kiqilinn]

Finishing fate stay night prologue I have feelings

[kiqilinn]

Ouurhdhhhrghhh