ufotable's Fate/Stay Night

Strange Fake.

Not the original summoner but Enkidu bonded with it

One guy made a chimera out of a wolf and then tried to use it as a catalyst. Enkidu showed up and is like 'I like the dog more, he's my Master now' and killed the mage. Or something like that. It's technically not a normal wolf.

So... I guess I have to watch Fate/Zero.

I have literally heard nothing bad about it.

I can help you there! The cast is largely unlikable, especially the protagonist, and it tries way too hard to be dark and edgy. As a wise man once said, Urobuchi is a hack.

Also, it has some really annoying fans, but that kind of applies to most fandoms so I don't hold that too much against it.

Untrue. While a lot of the cast are iffy on the morality scale discounting the clear villain protagonists, most of the protagonists are humane, bearable & sympathetic.

Subjective statement there Arha.

You have a very generous definition when it comes to humane or sympathetic.

But yes, most of the cast is bearable. They're just not likable.

Yeah. Uh, I found Zero to be a solid watch. Its front-loaded with some heavy exposition, but once you get past that the characters and scenarios are interesting all the way through. It kinda slows down at the end, but the last real fight is spectacular so that kinda makes up for it.

I found most of the cast to be likable. Not admirable, but entertaining.

Iskander and Gilgamesh stole the show, though.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:00:32 AM by Zeromaeus

At the risk of alienating myself from the thread... is that really that different from UBW?

Mind, I don't like the term "edgy." Especially when f/sn itself is a pretty dark series Sakura the girl who was raped by her sibling because magic initiation rites.

I mean, I didn't care for UBW's anime or the Fate anime either. Part of the reason I watched UBW was to finally know why someone kept linking to the Archer vs Lancer fight in the RWBY thread - I came out significantly underwhelmed and relieved I wouldn't have to listen to dub!Archer talk anymore. The only characters I ended up liking were Rider's master, Lancer, and Saber.

So I was kind of hoping Zero was somehow largely different. I know Saber and Gilgamesh are involved somehow.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:15:42 AM by Soble

Also, I wouldn't really call Urobuchi a hack. While I enjoyed Kamen Rider Ghost, I'd say the last actually good Kamen Rider was Urobuchi's Kamen Rider Gaim. Also I like Madoka Magicka.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:15:15 AM by Zeromaeus

Ah, that too. I like Madoka too. Unfortunately it's the only "Urobutcher" work I've looked at.

So through my powers of deductive reasoning (Aka Google) Gen Urobuchi had a hand in Fate/Stay Night, or at least the Fate/Zero anime? See that's interesting, that makes me want to watch it more.

Most of the stuff Urobutcher writes usually gets positive reception. I haven't heard or seen anythong he made that has gotten overtly or majority reception. Sure hype-backlash & all with calling his works masterpieces being very subjective but the guy is at least a good writer in general.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:55:20 AM by slimcoder

Urobuchi had no hand in Fate/Stay Night, but he wrote Fate/Zero with some lore supervision from Nasu.

Soble: Zero is a lot darker than FSN. I mean, have you watched Madoka at least? Just think of that kind of 'everyone must suffer as much as possible, hope and idealism are for losers' type plot and you've got the idea. Like midway through there's this cute little part of the story where Tohsaka goes out to save her friend from school and it all turns out well in the anime, but in the original story the friend was brutally killed along with a number of other small children who were tortured to death. Like one little girl who was disemboweled while alive and all her organs stuck around so that this one asshole that everyone seems to love could prod them and make her scream, comparing it to playing a musical instrument. Magic kept her alive so that she could keep being tortured. Not a really important spoiler but maybe you don't like ANY spoilers, so I'll be careful on that.

The protagonist is a terrible person. Not just in terms of morals, but he's just kind of a failure. Also a huge asshole that's cheating on his wife, who is a nine~ year old child, even if she doesn't look it. Some people think he's cool, though.

Whatever, you'll probably like it, I just came here to tell you that there are large parts of it that really are crap.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:59:34 AM by Arha

x4 Fate/Zero, yes. Stay Night, not so much.

The main criticism I've heard levelled against Zero is that the Waiver-Iskander dynamic is the only one in the show worth investing in. And that for all the praise UF Otable gets about their high budget fighting scenes, most of Zero, like UBW, is just talking heads (well, nicely animated talking heads, but still). There's this unintentionally hilarious bit where they tried to add some movement to a particularly long exposition scene, and the best they could come up with was have the two expositing characters walk in a circle around the exposition recipient.

That's...not what Madoka Magica was, but it describes Fate/Zero pretty well. So...yeah.

edited 25th Jan '17 11:10:17 AM by Elfhunter

I think that's really only if you watch Rebellion. Yeah, Rebellion's depressing. The series ends on a bittersweet note but it's not pure nihilism.

This already sounds more interesting than Shiro. And Rin's also a terrible person but she's a staple of the series, isn't she?

Ah, well that's... that's a little disheartening.

Heh well Kirei & Gil's relationship is pretty good too. Prolly cause things don't end with either one dead.

Though the lead protag Kiritsugu, Shirou's father is an interesting, tragic & pitiable lead, certainly more visible character than his kid Shirou. Theres this one scene where the dudes palying with his daughter & he has this sad look on his face like a lost puppy despite smiling a little, its so sad, heh... I prolly shouldn't be chuckling about that, the entire show is a bastion of tragedy & just overall shit falling apart for near everyone involved.

edited 25th Jan '17 11:26:40 AM by slimcoder

If you plan to watch Fate Zero, then there's one thing I'm gonna say to you in regards to Kiritsugu Soble:

He never left that god damned shed.

Wanna know what I mean? Then watch it for yourself.

...Also, the Einzbern family are a bunch of fuck ups.

Elfhunter: Yeah it was. Madoka, I mean. You could predict pretty much every 'twist' by thinking 'how could I make the characters suffer as much as possible in this situation?' But I don't really want to get into it right now.

Soble: After Madoka and Fate Zero I'm pretty much Urobuchi'd out.

In what crazy world is Tohsaka a terrible person? She's exceedingly moral and generous.

edited 25th Jan '17 11:52:37 AM by Arha

It's puzzling how Rin could be so nice having Tokiomi for a father and Kirei for a replacement father. She beats nature and nurture.

Tokiomi isn't a bad guy, really. It's not like he knew what he was getting Sakura into.

But anyway, Tohsaka idolizes daddy but doesn't fully understand the values he and other mages live by. Word of God is that if he hadn't died in the Fourth War Tohsaka would have grown up and either killed her better nature in order to be a perfect magus or rejected being one altogether and walked away from the whole thing.

Tokiomi, best parent in Zero by virtue of dying too young to fuck his kids up. The older one, anyway.

I liked Zero. The characters aren't (with few exceptions) nice people, but they all make sense in their own way, and most of them have sympathetic, or at least understandable, motivations. The series does a great job of having a lot of different characters with incompatible worldviews all interacting with each other.

Plus, business suit Saber is best Saber.

As I was saying earlier in the thread, my main complaint about Zero was that it didn't really let Saber, in particular, defend herself in a way that I felt fit the character. The show is basically "Saber Gets her Ass Kicked (literally, emotionally, and philosophically): The Series". Which is fine, but towards the end I felt like it was more "Saber gets her ass kicked because the plot requires it" than "things happen in a reasonable fashion that results in Saber getting her ass kicked". But we've already had that discussion.

Ultimately, Fate/Zero was worth watching. It's not a feel-good fun series, but it's not misery porn either, despite a lot of bad things happening to a lot of people (not all of which really deserve it).

I resent that statement. I'm a girl.

Yeah, that's actually something I want to bring up in this thing I plan on writing: a bunch of former (and younger) members of the Mage's Association rebel and kick off a new Holy Grail War as they try to destroy the Association due to the horrific practices that it not only condones but encourages.

Lu: I wasn't quoting you! I was quoting someone from BL.

Having only seen FS/N and F/Z, what exactly horrific things do they get up to? I mean, they killed everyone on the island in Kiritsugu's backstory, but that was more I Did What I Had to Do than For the Evulz. Kayneth is personally a dick, but not really evil. There was some mention of them dissecting magically-interesting people in this thread, but I got the impression that that was as much as a means of controlling people with immense and unknown power as it was For Science!. All in all, from what I know of them, the Mage's Association could easily be seen as the least bad option when faced with a series of horrifying consequences.

I mean, I get that they're probably not just because that's not how the setting usually rolls, but still.