Does Not Illustrate: Fountainof Expies

The current image is Saber from Fate/stay night surrounded by four characters, all of whom have issues:

• Alice Synthesis Thirty^note Who is... not exactly the same person as Alice Zuberg, the name she's listed under (Sword Art Online) predates Saber, and was apparently redesigned to less resemble Saber by the time the Animated Adaptation came out (her armor used to be silver rather than gold). In fact there was a one-shot manga released by SAO's writer in 2000 which is clearly a prototype for the series, where proto-Asuna has a design described as "Arcueid wearing Saber's clothes" despite predating both.
• Aliceteria February (Re:CREATORS) goes beyond Expy into being a Captain Ersatz... of Guts from Berserk (down to her writer being a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Kentaro Miura). She also shares the VA of a blonde female knight from Berserk (who is nothing like Saber).
• Darkness (Kono Suba) is based on a porn Undead Horse Trope - the kukkorose ("K-kill me") female knight. Specifically she's a Too Kinky to Torture/Aren't You Going to Ravish Me? parody of it. She and Alice above have the same VA, which might have something to do with why they were both included.
• Female Knight (Maoyu) I can't say much about her inspirations, but she doesn't seem to have much in common with Saber beyond her hair colour.

As far as I know, both Saber and Alice were modelled primarily on Agrias Oaks from Final Fantasy Tactics.

Edited by Prime32 on May 6th 2021 at 11:28:31 AM

The current was selected here. No real thoughts one way or the other.

Edited by Willbyr on May 9th 2021 at 7:42:19 AM

Current is fine. I'd like to see an actual image of the suggestion before I can make a judgement.

Edited by petersohn on May 9th 2021 at 7:53:37 PM

Keep until better image is suggested.

The caption clarifies that they're not expies of Saber, just a pattern of blond lady knights with aesthetic similarities. From the image alone it's not clear who the originator is, and I like it that way.

kubis

Man, I am really starting to dislike Fountain of Expies as a concept.

But w/e, This Image Is Not an Example and the image of similar looking lady knights is illustrative, so I will say Keep Until Better Image Suggested barring a concrete replacement.

Keep Until Better Image Suggested.

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call this one. I'll update the tag; locking up.