Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia

How dare he not fight barehanded against Servants and Gods, the coward!

Edited by Lyendith on Oct 22nd 2019 at 2:24:56 PM

Of course, could have something to do with Gudako summoning Shadow Servants and looking like a complete badass in the Shimousa manga.

It's like something out of a "Chad vs Virgin" meme template.

And for those unaware, Shimousa is the fourth chapter in the Epic of Renmant anthology that takes place after the game's first major arc. It's essentially a retelling of Samurai Resurrection with the usual samurai fantasy trapping: honorable duels, massacres, kenjutsu zen bullshit straight from the pages of Samurai X, it's great!

The virgin Fujimaru

vs.

The CHAD Gudako

I mean. Shirou made an effort to fight. Kiritsugu and Iri both got involved in the action. Almost all of the Apo masters were badasses in their own rights, as were the Last Encore masters. Gudao here is actually an outlier, at least for the anime

On another note, I appreciate the fact that Rin remains a tsundere even when she's a goddess.

Shiro at least had some magic know how.

Ritsuka ain’t got shit at all. He’s the most useless master & this is taking into account the 2 brainless serial killers.

Erice is established as a fighter from the start, Ayaka is implied to become more competent as Prototype goes along, Manaka is a wunderkind princess, Norma piggybacked on Manaka, and strange fake's Masters are all pretty ridiculous because Narita

yeah Guda mainly is an outlier as far as Fate protags come in the action department

After insulting him for 3 days I rewatched the last episode and my heart skipped a beat hearing Gil's voice and now I feel infected.

Since Guda has no history with magecraft, something even Shirou has, it can't be helped. Guda's job after all is to provide support and befriend the heck out of our enemies. The Ayaka in fate/strange fake also doesn't fight, her job is to be a mana battery for Richard

Edited by Mami on Oct 22nd 2019 at 1:50:56 PM

Of course Ritsuka being an outliar makes sense when one remembers his origin as a viewpoint character in a mobile visual novel game.

Of course he can't do anything, he was never designed to do anything at all. The man has no character or much of any narative relavence. All the important shit is handled by the Servants leaving him as just an observor who either busts out the occasional wacky/straight man line or being fawned on by the other Servants fod no actual reason.

He is literally every critique directed at Sieg made real.

@Muffin: You are implying that those people aren't secondaries who have no idea that these mangas even exist.

Also to note is that canonically we can't do much until there is some kind of connection to the leylines. So Fujimaru couldn't really do anything until this episode. Then again none of the mangas besides Shimousa shows the while shadow Servant thing because Shimousa wanks everyone.

Gudao's suffering ptsd from genociding timelines now so that's something

also the friendship thing is cheesy but it works, especially with the climax to Part One.

Edited by Nouct on Oct 22nd 2019 at 6:15:16 AM

x3 You dropped the game pretty early, didn't you?

Define early on.

I dropped it right before Babylon started.

Regardless I devoted over a years worth of time then already.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 22nd 2019 at 6:48:46 AM

It's only really starting on Camelot that Gida starts being more than a blank state, and by Epic of Renmant that they become a defined character.

Not the deepest character in the world, true, but they're endearing enough that I'm actually invested. Shimousa is a particular highlight on that front.

I played Camelot, I saw literally none of what your talking about there especially since as said the narrative of that arc was handled by Bel & Ritsuka's most notable role is just getting Serenity wanting to suck his dick.

Ritsuka is just the bare minimum. He's about Sieg level of compelling character.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 22nd 2019 at 6:55:32 AM

It's also mostly the story structure too; every Fate protagonist, the story is about them. FGO isn't about Ritstuka at all and Nasu was pretty upfront about it being Mash and Roman's story.

Ritsuka is pretty inconsequential outside of being the medium between players and the servants.

He's referring to a part of the game that you never played.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 22nd 2019 at 10:06:23 AM

Ritsuka was not designed to be anything beyond a blank slate to have us projected into the story at the start. To be an Audience Surrogate, it also meant that he/she could not have any trait that could disconnect from the escapism factor such as being trained in martial arts, magic or simply knowing how to use a gun.

There's also the unfortunate fact that gameplay wise there was no way for Ritsuka to be incorporated into the fray beyond being The Strategist or the occasional spellcaster with the Mystic Codes.

Though that makes me wonder, could it have been possible to have Ritsuka learn all of the Mystic Code spells as he/she leveled up so that we can use all of them but with higher cooldown while not using the corresponding cloth?

While I started disconnecting from Ritsuka around the time I realized that it would be a male master no matter how much I delude myself on it being neutral, Guda was certainly conceived rather barebones. Even with the slight differences in attitudes between the mangas all version have the baseline "nice and brave" with maybe one or two things sprinkled on top and they're all noncombatants (though Shimosa Gudako gets to look more dignified since the artist really knows how to make her look badass as she deploys the shadow servants).

Ritsuka does get to actively do something in Babylonia though, and it's gonna be the funniest shit ever.

We got a trailer for the Camelot movie.

Premier date is 2020 so it should be right after the show ends.

I'd say something about how ADF ruined the reveal that Galahad is the Heroic Spirit possessing Mash, but that was hardly much of a reveal in the game, thinking about it: it was datamined from day one.

The real nature of this Artoria, on the other had.

Edited by HailMuffins on Oct 25th 2019 at 11:55:38 AM

Honestly, I don't blame Ritsuka/Gudao for not doing much in fights.

Most of the combat-capable Masters are either geniuses (Rin and Kayneth), freaks of nature (Shirou, Flat, and Illya), or combat veterans (Bazett, Kirei, Kiritsugu). And even then, most of them can't do jack against a serious Servant aside from having a trick or two up their sleeve. Heck, they're still doing better than Waver due to being somewhat able to defend themselves and help out while providing upkeep for their Servants.

Gudao is also facing more powerful Servants and more harrowing odds than pretty much any previous Fate protagonist even though they're only an Ordinary High-School Student. They're not totally helpless either, Lostroom shows them doing two-finger pushups and kicking away a Roman soldier in full armor.

Yes, they're not the most defined protagonist or the most active one (which they admit in Lostroom), but they're arguably the best Master of all due to their ability to get along with and bring such wildly disparate Servants together.

Rits isn't the master who doesn't fight. They were preceded by Hakuno Kishinami of Fate/EXTRA. Only the (terrible for other reasons) Fate/EXTRA Last Encore did anything to change that for Hakuno. The actual problem is that Rits is a Super Saiyan-Pokemon Trainer, but doesn't have the means to show how great he is at it because Gameplay things don't exist here.

In terms of abilities I think Ristuka knows basic magecraft (Gandr, body strengthening) but for the most part they just stand back and act as a mana battery for their Servants, with occasional casts through their Mystic Code.

After all, basic magecraft isn't going to do shit against a Servant or a Phantasmal Beast.

It's not a role that's very active in combat. I'm fine with that; it makes sense given the mechanics of the Master-Servant dynamic.

Edited by DarkHunter on Oct 25th 2019 at 10:37:18 AM

And hey, Waver used to do even less, and no one holds that against him.

Fujimaru cast Rain of Isis once in Shimousa and they we're good enough at it to dispel a ritual by supposedly one of the best Casters out there.