ufotable's Fate/Stay Night

Speaking of which, hasn't Sakura been relegated more and more from the Fate series? I swear she's getting it worse than Satsuki.

Which Satsuki?

Yumizuka, I mean there hasn't been a word on the HF movie if they haven't left it on hiatus.

edited 4th Feb '16 7:47:53 PM by raziel365

...Who?

It's not like she does anything in the first two routes anyway. She's also the least popular of the main heroines. Still, she did basically get CCC.

And Prism Illya as of late.

Prisma Ilya doesn't really count. It's its own continuity and isn't produced by Type Moon, so anything it does doesn't actually mean anything for Fate

edited 4th Feb '16 10:51:02 PM by Arha

They're still acknowledging her existence, in the same way Saber's story has been long over but gets all these AU, clones and such.

Apparently nobody knows who Satsuki is. Poor Sacchin.

Satsuki isn't even a heroine, so I don't know why you're bringing her up now!

Isn't she getting a route in the maybe-they're-serious-this-time Tsukihime remake?

edited 5th Feb '16 4:57:20 PM by DarkHunter

Yes, but until then she doesn't count.

Don't forget she got far more spotlight in Carnival Phantasm than Sakura ever did.

I assume the writers didn't just think Sakura was sin, but flat out hated her.

Then again, Sakura has nothing about her that can be used for jokes anyway (and they still decided to use those damned worms), which isn't good for a comedy show.

Sakura being really boring and not showing enough personality to justify Shirou's love and sacrifices for her is one of the most common complaints I see about Heaven's Feel anyway. I guess the fact that it's so hard to make material for her that's not Black Comedy Rape is kind of a testament to that.

edited 5th Feb '16 11:09:35 PM by AlleyOop

Sakura in Carnival Phantasm had the "stalking Shiro" running joke that I found pretty funny. But I don't hate her, so I guess I start from a different point of view. :P

Sakura was just a flat character for Fate and UBW but in Heaven's Feel she is given more depth and character. Sakura isn't very liked by the fandom and it seems as though that it is because she doesn't have as much presence as Rin and Saber.

I think it's because the side we see of her Heaven's Feel shows up in a way that's less likeable or charismatic than Saber or Rin's. Even if she is The Woobie and has a backstory which justifies her behavior, being a bitter and possessive Hero Killer doesn't make you popular with readers.

Her character design might also have something to do with it too. Even with Art Evolution fixing the weird anatomy on her sprites she looks bland next to the other female characters.

edited 6th Feb '16 12:23:11 AM by AlleyOop

Well, I finished up through episode 14, Archer's fight against Berserker.

Goddamnit, I thought I had the rules of the setting figured out. Now I'm not so sure anymore. (Note: the following questions are rhetorical. Please spoiler tag things if you're going to say anything spoiler-y in your replies.)

Illya said that Archer killed Berserker five times in the nifty Field of Blades he conjured up. Or teleported them to. Or something; I'm not entirely sure. So, maybe this is a silly question, but if Berserker died five times, why the hell isn't he, you know, dead? It's either something to do with the Unlimited Blade Works ability that Archer used (also, given the name, I'm sure that won't be important later in the franchise), something to do with Illya (who certainly seems to be more than your average homicidal little girl), or something to do with Berserker himself. Not really sure. I also don't know why Archer decided to fight to the death, given that he always seemed like the pragmatic type. But then, the last few times he decided to talk shit to Shirou, I got more of a Stealth Mentor vibe than his usual "I'm just a huge dick" vibe. Or maybe he just knew that he wouldn't be able to escape Berserker with Rin, so he decided to go down fighting instead of running away and getting caught anyway. I'm really not sure.

More general thoughts on the series: I'm definitely enjoying it. I can see why people said I'd change my mind about Shirou not being an idiot, but I don't really agree. Rin herself explains it best. It's not that he's dumb, he just puts everyone else before himself. If that means throwing himself between two superpowered ultra-badasses, then so be it. To call him stupid would suggest that he hadn't thought things through or wasn't considering the consequences of his actions, which isn't the case. You can certainly take exception to his priorities, though. I'd also figured that he was going to learn how to use his reinforcement ability better and turn into an Indy Ploy master, turning everything and everything around him into impromptu weapons and shields, but now it seems more like he's got some sort of mental block holding back his true power, which could end up being either more or less interesting than learning to work within his natural limits, depending on how they handle it. Either way, I look forward to him tag teaming with Saber.

On other characters: Saber is... King Arthur, or something? Not what I expected. (I was guessing Joan of Arc, personally.) I do hope she starts doing something unexpected soonish, though. The "consummate honorable warrior who never spends any time or energy on her own happiness" schtick is starting to wear a bit thin, she needs some actual character development soon. Rin is Tsundere incarnate. Taiga is awesome and I hope the series isn't done with her yet. Sakura is like a puppy; kind of annoying when she's bugging you for attention when you're in the middle of something else, but making her sad makes you feel like a colossal dick. I'm half expecting her to secretly be another Master or something (we haven't seen Lancer's Master yet, for one, and there should be one or two more Servants that we haven't seen yet either) but I'm not sure. Shinji was a prick and my only regret is that they let Illya deal with him instead of making Shirou do it himself.

edited 6th Feb '16 12:30:00 AM by NativeJovian

Regarding Berserker's deaths: he has the ability to resurrect himself 11 times. It's one of the Noble Phantasms that he has as a Servant.

I'm almost completely certain this has been explained in the show already, but I'm spoiler tagging it just in case.

edited 6th Feb '16 12:57:26 AM by DarkHunter

I believe it gets explained in the next episode or the one after. It's very much a mystery up till this point.

^^^ I think they're going to answer your question about Berserker in the next episode if they hadn't already, but it's just that his Noble Phantasm allows him to regenerate from death, meaning he has twelve lives. The anime doesn't get into it and it doesn't matter much, but Ilya actually does improve this ability of his because she's just so good as a Master that she allows him to slowly regenerate lives.

Archer wouldn't have been able to get away from Berserker anyway. Berserker is faster and stronger. How Archer managed to inflict that many lethal injuries in that time span and last that long is a matter of contention among the fandom, especially because it happened mostly offscreen. Also, Archer has some personality quirks that you'll learn more about later.

If you realize that Shirou isn't dumb but is doing dumb things for weird psychological reasons, then yes, you're right. The next anime will spend more time on that.

Joan of Arc is one of the most common guesses for Saber's identity for people going in unspoiled, yeah. As a side note, if Shirou's overprotective sexist behavior bothers you in this route, it's actually something that embarrasses Nasu in the present. The gist of it is that he didn't know if people would accept a genderflip for King Arthur so he kept emphasizing it, which made Shirou look like a complete moron.

Taiga is just a third string character, unfortunately. I think she gets a bit more screentime in Heaven's Feel given that she's a Shirou/Sakura shipper. The next route has more Tohsaka and Archer in it, as you've guessed. Sakura plays a large role in the final route, though I'm not saying what that role is.

edited 6th Feb '16 9:48:07 AM by Arha

Shirou's "but you're a GIRL!" stuff hasn't particularly bothered me, because no one actually agrees with him, so it comes off as a character flaw of Shirou's rather than something the work agrees with. I'm also hoping that that attitude will fade away as he gets some character development. With luck, by the end of the series we'll see Shirou and Saber (and Rin, maybe?) working together as partners, rather than Shirou trying to protect Saber or Saber trying to take everything on herself.

I'm honestly not all that interested in Rin and Archer. Rin's a Tsundere, Archer's a dismissive jackass who worships at the altar of pragmatism. I have no idea who Archer's pre-Servant identity is supposed to be, so I guess there's that, but otherwise I can't see either of the two of them being all that interesting as main characters.

In other news, the "class" names of the Servants are silly. So far the only ones that actually fit are Assassin and Rider. Saber uses a longsword rather than a saber, Lancer uses a spear rather than a lance, Archer uses a shitload of swords rather than archery (he was seen with a bow exactly twice, and only actually used it once), and Berserker strikes me as more The Stoic than The Berserker. Even Rider is odd, as she only fights mounted when she's using her noble phantasm — and even then, ninja-chain-sword-things are a really weird weapon for mounted combat (well, they're really weird even for fighting on foot, for that matter). The last Servant (they said there were seven, right?) is probably Caster, which Rin mentioned in an early episode but as far as I know hasn't actually shown up yet.

Well, if you're past Archer vs Berserker then it's safe to assume you've noticed that Archer and Shirou don't really get along, right? UBW spends some time on that conflict. It shows some pretty interesting things about both characters. So if you're interested in Shirou watching Archer play against him might help explain more about what makes Shirou tick. The story you're on now only briefly touches on that.

So you're one of the people that doesn't like Tohsaka then? That's too bad, really. She's quite funny and one of the nicer and more moral characters in the story, much as she tries to hide it.

The class names are more of a kind of rough guideline. Like the Archer class has a surprisingly large amount of non archers, but they're all really defined by their ranged attacks. Just because Tohsaka's Archer has a weird fixation on melee combat doesn't mean that's really what he's best at. In general though they're more like rangers with a lot of tricks and whatnot.

Berserkers aren't necessarily all berserk, but they are all insane. They all have a class skill called Mad Enhancement that raises stats in exchange for higher reasoning. The higher the rank, the harder it is to do anything complex with them or sometimes even control them, though you generally get higher stats as a result. At the rank of Ilya's Berserker, he's basically running entirely on instinct while the Berserker in Fate Zero is slightly more rational, but harder to control as a result.

Riders are kind of defined by having a powerful noble phantasm which just happens to frequently be a mount. FSN Rider has that pegasus while Zero Rider has a lightning chariot, for example, while the Rider in Fate Extra is actually a ship's captain who can't really 'ride' her ship in combat but instead uses it to bombard the enemy.

edited 6th Feb '16 11:14:55 AM by Arha

Ah, yeah, getting more into the Shirou/Archer relationship I could see as interesting. And it's not that I dislike Rin, it's more that I feel like she's so completely archetypical that there's not much to her. Maybe a Seinfeld Is Unfunny thing? She's sort of the Tsundere, isn't she? (She's the page image for it, at least.)