And with HF True End as “canon end”… well, that’s what Tiger Dojo 39 says, as they call it “the true ending of Fate/stay night”.

I take about 6 hours of classes a Japanese a week. All day Saturday and night classes Thursday. I know how it feels to work and work at a language. It takes alot of effort. I even admit on my anime/manga/japanese culture review blog that I will not review a episode until it’s been sub because even if I watch a raw their so much I understand and don’t. I usually watch raws for listening purposes. I do this because I do not live in Japan so I do hear Japanese on a daily bases so my listening and speaking isn’t as high as my reading/writing. So I find it like a survival thing to watch it without subs.

In my honest opinion I don’t think I could even learn Japanese from scratch from raw’s because it way too difficult.

(Insert jokes about sword/sheath symbolism and its role-reversal implications here)

Only if I can do it with a recitation of “Dude, you said insert…” with a Beavis and Butthead accent! Anyway.

I really ought to at the very least watch the anime of F/S N - a blog I read used a pic from the show for its banner image, and it looks AWESOME. The idea of fate overruling pretty much everything is something I find in turns refreshing and irritating about Eastern storytelling too (my upcoming Berserk post will explain my thoughts on this better, I think) so using it in an inventive way, as you’ve implied here, sounds intriguing indeed.

One day, however, a poster made a typo. He posted a picture of Servant Archer and said, thanks to a slip of the finger on the keyboard, “I’m GAR for Archer!”

So the modern concept of GAR started with Fate Stay/Night, of all things. Yes, UBW specifically.

People in Japan don’t go around talking like an anime any more than people in the U.S. go around talking like Seinfeld or CSI.

One thing I notice is pronunciation is easier, because hearing the language, even in the unrealistic setting of a TV show helps you learn where accents fall, and what a question sounds like.

I still enjoy my subs, though.

OwenS, nice topic!

I quite like the difference you suggest between Eastern and Western approaches to fate, and I’ll refrain from proposing counter-examples as you quite reasonably admit that it’s a convenient generalisation. I’d add that it’s an idea which might apply beyond the paradigm of happy-ending romance (of the star-cross’d variety or otherwise). There are plenty of tragedies where, inasmuch as they are aware of it, the heroes rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Mind you, while I said I’d refrain from counter-examples, obligatory quotation is obligatory.)

Hercules/Herakles is sometimes a good hero and sometimes not. I have a feeling that in the Greek renderings of his legend his actions tend to be more amoral than outright good or bad in the Judeo-Christian heroism sense, but that’s the general tone of Greek myth. He goes mad now and then, too (hence Berserker, I guess) which doesn’t help matters.

The question of the hero’s characters in F/sn vs. their mythological characters, and heroism-out-of-its-context is an interesting one. I don’t have anything developed to say on that, but I’d observe that most of the time Gilgamesh in F/sn is very like he is at the beginning of his Epic, treating everything and indeed everyone as his property: ‘his lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior’s daughter nor the wife of the noble’.

So despite what appears to be a parallel-world device, they are ultimately meant to be read in that order for [spoiler reason]?

Yes. It should become fairly apparent early into HF. Or not? At least by the end.

What about looking at it from a purely ren’ai perspective where all three True Ends would be mutually exclusive?

This is the way the Japanese look at it, as Saber is the most popular eroge character ever. However… hollow ataraxia is a canon sequel with connections to other works in the Nasuverse, and hollow ataraxia takes place after Heavens Feel. Combine this with the above “spoilers,” or whatever you wish to call them, and it becomes rather apparent that Nasu intended for HF to be the true route of F/sn as a whole.

So despite what appears to be a parallel-world device, they are ultimately meant to be read in that order for [spoiler reason]? What about looking at it from a purely ren’ai perspective where all three True Ends would be mutually exclusive? Unless there’s a harem end that I don’t know about which could be debated as such.

Also, there’s a reason why you’re forced to play Fate and UBW before HF, but it’s not what you think it is.

In other words. Saber is not the main character and Fate is not the true route. Therefore, your comparison to Nagisa is invalid, I’m afraid.

Well, you’ll understand later.

I quite like how the initial idea, a battle royale among heroes from humanity’s legends and myths, serves as a backdrop to a story that directly addresses the concept of a “hero.”

I’ve got to agree with you on that–taking it a step further, wouldn’t you say that the concept of a hero is relative to its context? i.e. what might be considered heroic in one age might not be in another, so on and so forth. Saber’s a good place to start, obviously.

One thing I noticed was that Berserker’s ‘bad’ image contrasted heavily with that of Hercules, someone traditionally known for his ‘good’ deeds, as far as his Samson-esque character went. Assassin, to my knowledge, wasn’t outright evil in history, and the same goes for Lancer?

Of course, I know who Archer’s real identity is, too, but that’s not going to stand in my way of enjoying UBW. The clues are laid down quite surreptitiously in Fate, and part of why I’m eager to continue stems from the burning “How!?” question not unlike that opening scene of Gurren-Lagann.

I quite like how the initial idea, a battle royale among heroes from humanity’s legends and myths, serves as a backdrop to a story that directly addresses the concept of a “hero.”

It’s still a challenge, but it’s not as much of one as I’d feared it’d have been, given my inability to perform well in Spanish when taught on a purely grammatical basis without any impetus and experiential context in which to place the language.