YMMV / Fate/Prototype

• Adorkable: Surprisingly, Manaka can be this as seen during one scene in the prequels where Saber gives her a kiss on the forehead, to which she reacts with embarrassment befitting a girl her age.
• Awesome Music: From the Fragments Drama CD soundtrack comes Knight of Sky Silver, a melody that basically serves as the main theme of Fragments and of Arthur's story during it.
• Base-Breaking Character: Fans either love or hate Manaka, there is no in-between. Either she's a badass and refreshingly fun Big Bad (and Villain Protagonist in Fragments) who spins around many typical tropes and whose child-like craziness makes quite the contrast with the usual angsty villainesses who need tragic reasons to ever turn to the bad side, or she's a stupid and flat Villain Sue without any qualities to compensate for how much of an asshole she is to anyone not named Saber and who gets away with way too many things. Might have been a reason for why her character was cut in the final draft that became Fate/stay night.
• Complete Monster: Manaka Sajyou is the 12-year-old heir apparent of the Sajyou magi family whose prodigious possession of many incredible talents led to a secret inability to see other people as more than insects. Becoming enamored with the vision of an ideal "prince", Manaka would later summon Arthur Pendragon, aka Saber, as her Servant and obsessively devoted herself to him. During the First Tokyo Grail War, Manaka commits acts such as having Assassin poison the entire Isemi clan and cursing Lord Reiroukan's daughter, prompting Arthur to question his Master despite her insistence otherwise. Aiming to grant Arthur's wish, Manaka compels over 600 young girls to commit suicide in the Greater Grail to summon the Beast of Revelations. Although once a loving older sister to Ayaka and dutiful daughter to Hiroki, Manaka would later drag Ayaka to the Grail site to be sacrificed in a jealous fit of rage, gleefully demeaning her whole existence in the process, while commanding the Beast to slaughter their father in front of them. While slain, Manaka still lurks in the Grail determined to fulfill her twisted, self-appointed fantasy.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Take note that for this series, even main characters can attain this status because of how overshadowed this installment is compared to the original, to the point of probably inflicting Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros." when they get into Fate/Grand Order.
  • Proto-Saber King Arthur himself, naturally. His arguably more immediately endearing character with its elements from Shirou coupled with his updated design, greater presence as the central protagonist and his Anti-World grade Excalibur granted him an almost overnight Wolverine Publicity. He's so popular that Grand Order entirely held off on bringing him in until they could give him both his own dedicated event as well as what's seeming to be a sizable role in the main story!
  • Fragments-Rider (Ozymandias/Ramesses II) as well as Proto-Archer (Gilgamesh) have both been extremely well received. The former for being the very first Egyptian Servant, his personality involving more than just his surface-level arrogance, and powerful abilities, and sometimes bringing in mind to a legendary anime/manga villain, Dio Brando, right down to the same voice. Proto-Archer for being... Well, being another less dickish version of Gilgamesh.
  • Berserker (Jekyll/Hyde) became one because of his Pretty Boy looks and personality (Well, the former that is) that is totally unfitting for the Berserker class. Even the author of the prequel novels admits that she regrets killing him off so soon. He was then later made into one of the promo Servants for Fate/Grand Order.
  • Archer (Arash): Ironically, since he debuted in Fragments and Fate/Grand Order at roughly the same time. At first he was more popular as a Memetic Loser for being a servant with the lowest rarity and his Noble Phantasm. It wasn't until he appeared more and had his part of the spotlight in Fragments that people warmed up to him, on top of his gameplay role being heavily reassessed with time and becoming popular as a low-rarity farming superstar with surprising utility in harder fights. His Nice Guy attitude and later Heroic Sacrifice in trying to take down Ramesses basically sealing the deal for some (and him getting similar spotlight heroics in GO helped this even more).
  • Lancer (Brynhild): owing to her awesome design by none other than Miwa Shirow. Her tragic character cemented the fandom's liking for her. Helps that she's the only female Servant in a Cast Full of Pretty Boys that are the Prototype Servants that is not a Saberface or a Hassan-style Assassin. That being said, this current Assassin (Hassan of Serenity) also gained a sizable fanbase on her own, mostly because compared to other Hassans, she's serenely cute.
  • Merlin (Prototype) is perhaps the second biggest example of this on this page, after Arthur, of course. Proto-Merlin wasn't a player in the original Fate/Prototype story and wasn't mentioned until the Arthur's debut in Fate/Grand Order as a playable unit where he confirmed that in contrast to that games Merlin, she's female. Her only other appearances were as voiced cameos, and she went years without receiving an official design, but none of that deterred fans from being excited for her eventual reveal with the help of her male counterpart being extremely popular and people taking a liking to the characters from the Prototype universe in general. On September 23rd, 2020 when she was finally given a design, it's only natural that the fandom exploded.
• Fan Nickname: On some forums, you'll hear it referred to as any variation of "Otome Fate/stay night" due to the Cast Full of Pretty Boys and the relationships between some of the characters (particularly between Ayaka and the servants and Saber with Manaka).
• Fanon: It's a popularly accepted theory that Elza Saijo is possibly Shirou Emiya's biological mother, based on Shirou's resemblance to her son Luca◊ and how we never really get to see what Shirou's biological parents look like except in the Heaven's Feel manga◊.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • From Prototype:
    • Proto-Saber/Ayaka is popular enough. But some fans prefer Proto-Rider/Ayaka instead. That or with Proto-Lancer.
    • Proto-Saber/Proto-Archer is also well-liked. Although it's very much different from the dynamic that their FSN-Counterparts have.
  • From Prototype Fragments:
    • Some like pairing Archer with Assassin. His immunity to her poison makes him one of the few people who could get near her.
    • Berserker and his Master are very often paired up together, unsurprising considering that they're one of the Master-Servant pair with the best relationship in the war.
• Fridge Brilliance: In Fate/hollow ataraxia, Rider/Medusa talks negatively of Perseus, stating that he would essentially be a "successful Shinji". Here, we discover he's a Nice Guy, the complete opposite of what Shinji is. Given that Perseus skated Medusa, she'd obviously hold a grudge against him.
  • Also when Saber uses Excalibur Proto to defeat Gilgamesh's Enki, while in the Fate Route Excalibur couldn't defeat Ea. If you think about it in the Nasuverse older existences have more power and mystery. Excalibur Proto is the origin of the Fate/Stay Night Excalibur so of course it's stronger.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The depiction of King Arthur as a beardless young man with a bit shorter, more "modern" hair than he's usually depicted with may raise eyebrows, but then BBC's Merlin came out with such an Arthur years after the Prototype concepts were first revealed - with both being blond, to boot. In turn, the later official art of Proto-Arthur leans more and more into his handsomeness, akin to the Arthur of Merlin being a heartthrob.
• Ho Yay: With a Cast Full of Pretty Boys, who's even surprised?
• Jerk Ass Woobie: Misaya is shown to be a cruel and sadistic master who with the exception of Ayaka and Lancer will probably never be mourned for, but the thing is unlike everyone else in the war she was never even given the choice of whether or not to participate. Being given a curse that would kill her if she doesn't get the Grail as a child by her father's own servant who betrayed them thus forcing her to grow up the way she did just to stay alive, oh and the curse had a time limit for her to get the Grail so it killed her during the middle of the war despite the fact that she still had her servant and wasn't close to being eliminated. Meaning that she wasn't even given a chance at victory.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Saber is a Yandere magnet^* Taken from the fact that Saber has both Manaka and Brynhild in love with him, and in his backstory Lucius Tiberius and Proto-Mordred are both shown to have an obsession with him, with the latter having started his rebellion for the sole purpose of keeping his father to himself. Some have even joked this might have extend to Camelot as a whole and the reason why it fell.
• Moe: Ayaka is beautiful and bespectacled, with a shy personality that makes her huggable.
• Never Live It Down: Rider/Perseus has been shown to have more sympathetic background, more normal personality and better fighting prowess in this installment, and yet he really never escaped the stigma of being a 'successful Shinji Matou' as Medusa coined him in Fate/hollow ataraxia (and never mind that in Fate/Grand Order, they already showed another Greek hero that fit that term better than Perseus: Jason). Doesn't help that his head is somehow a modified head of Shinji with more purplish hair.
• No Yay: From Fragments, Assassin and Zombified-Tatsumi
• The Scrappy: Paracelsus. While other Casters were indeed on the side of evil, the former Jumping Off the Slippery Slope one too many times made him just detestable. It doesn't help his case that he is not as over the top evil as Gilles, or as flamboyant as Shakespeare, making him less interesting or fun, and far easier to hate despite his very pretty looks.
• Tear Jerker: Much of the ending of Fragments. It's not that Arthur killed Manaka because he found out her true intentions, and he hadn't been fighting his way to reach her with that in mind, either. But when he arrived just in time to witness her father butchered, scores of young girls throwing themselves to the mouth of the Grail and a young Ayaka screaming and crying in fear as her own older sister dragged her by the hair to throw her to her death as a mere sacrifice, there was just no other way. Unusued stills from the Prototype OVA hammer home his misery at what he had to do by showing his face after running Manaka through, cast in shame by his hood with a look of the purest melancholy emptiness. This action would even cause him to slip off the wagon somewhat in becoming an a shade nihilistic.
  • Brynhildr is a tragic heroine whose entire legend centers around her love, and in turn, any man who matches the quality of her lover, Sigurd, in life, she will call Sigurd and desperately try to kill them. So, why is this tragic? There is one man she doesn't call Sigurd. In the climax of the battle for Tokyo, Brynhildr's rune is going out of control and, in a moment, of clarity, she calls Arthur by name and begs him to kill her. He accepts, but as she fades away, her affections haven't daunted — but she's not calling him Sigurd. Cut to years later in Prototype, and the Servants who were trapped in the Grail are risen by Manaka as undead Alters, Brynhildr included. Her goal, just as ever, is to kill the man she loves...but this time, the name firmly in her mind is Arthur. Against all odds, against the very foundation of her existence and legend, Brynhildr truly fell in love, with a man she honestly saw as himself...and no one will ever know it.