Fate/stay night, Fate Route
What a ride, all 18 hours and 45 minutes of it. Assuming you’ve the desire for a real review, I’m afraid you’ll have to go here (spoiler-free) if you’re into that sort of thing. Mostly inconsequential/abstract spoilers to follow.
Makes you wonder if there's a CG dragon hiding in his 4-dimensional pocket.
As I still have to write posts about Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel after playing them, I’ll keep this short relatively short: The Fate route exceeded all expectations due to the elaborate and satisfying way in which the narratives of Shirou and Saber were closely paralleled. I went into this with 0 expectations and a few trivial-in-this-route things spoiled, and went out mostly satisfied, if you ignore my inner romantic secretly wanting a ‘better’ True End, or grouses that were mostly technical in nature like “Horrible writing”, “Redundant phrasing”, or even “Intolerable infodumps”.
With regards to its title, “Fate”, I found it to be apt in the way in which it worked to illustrate, by means of the larger picture, how going against it can sometimes be overrated. For want of better citations, I’ve noticed that this is where the East has traditionally broken off from the West when it comes to fiction–to the former, fate is not something to be resisted, merely something to be endured. Yes, you can row, row, and fight the power, but at the end of the day you’re going to be a hobo cracking open coconuts for a kid on the sidewalk, no exceptions.
Let’s take your ubiquitous star-crossed lovers as an example. What I’ve noticed–in a sweeping generalisation made for convenience’s sake to further a point–is that while Western couples in fiction desperately want to be together at all cost (even if it means a double suicide!), Eastern ones seem more pre-disposed towards making use of what little time they have left. The former is exceedingly optimistic, the latter largely fatalistic. The latter know for a fact that they’re never going to have that kind of rosy future where they grow old together; the former, in the face of that knowledge, turns away from it and hopes for a better one. The latter almost never remains unscathed, usually parting in some heart-rending manner at the end of it all; the former almost always succeeds, spitting in the face of adversity to triumph over the odds.
Which brings us to Fate, the idea of being preordained to do something, and the very rejection of that arrangement–two very recalcitrant people who have had frankly enough of this fate thing, a matter that they’re going to change like they were running for president. Not by redoing the parts of their life that they’ve left, but by going back and erasing everything like one would an equation written in chalk on a blackboard. It’s a pretty straightforward affair as far as setup goes, but what I wasn’t counting on at all was the powerful way in which the backstory of Shirou and Saber were juxtaposed, with an initially obvious parallel being their mutual desire for self-flagellation.
Women, children, and mongrels first.
Saber, aside from continually harping on how she’s a Servant and therefore supposed to Serve despite Shirou’s rather chauvinist protests, also played out the Being A King’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be card without hammering repeatedly on the Tragic Flashback button, and won points for doing so. Ditto Shirou’s past; Nasu did well to make a case for his superhero complex–one wonders if Hiro in Heroes, Season 2 was inspired by this–beforehand by presenting him as a sacrificing and servile character, which resulted in the whole thing coming off as perfectly natural, and less contrived as a result.
Saber and Shirou are continually presented with one predicament after another, and at no point do they feel like plot devices, or forced in any manner whatsoever. Would you kill someone you love, because of love (yes, Ga Rei -Zero- didn’t think of it first)? What do you do when the thing you’ve been looking for all this while turns out to be the very thing that you abhor? Is there any meaning in a love doomed from the start? Should one be allowed to re-do their mistakes? What does that say about people like those?
I liked about the way in which their narratives were slowly but surely brought together was how it was gradually revealed that it wasn’t other people or even an entire country that needed saving at the hands of these two, not when they needed saving themselves. Nasu may not be a very good writer, but his ideas certainly are, and irony/catch-22s were employed to great effect throughout the entire route. As someone who’s yet to watch the anime, I can only wonder if this particularly endearing quality of the text made the transition to the anime unscathed, and am not surprised if it didn’t.
It’s this act of joining together two halves to make a cohesive whole that I really loved. Unfortunately, however, it’s also a delicate one, and so whether or not you’re going to like this route pretty much hinges on whether you find this rather convenient method of going about Fate’s main theme to be palatable. I know I did, if only because I’m a sucker for the less-than-human-but-is-taught-how-to-be types; this also explains why I enjoyed Shakugan no Shana immensely (the first season at any rate). That trope is fleshed out very well in Fate; while Saber isn’t tsundere like A Certain Flame-Haired Burning-Eyed Hunter, her rare displays of emotion and melting Ice Queen status were made convincing in light of her past.
Crouching Saber, Hidden Shana
There’s certainly something to be said for the way in which Saber’s presented to the viewer reader vieder; obviously, as the main character and what appears to be Nasu’s favourite, being forced to go through her route before being able to play the UBW (Rin) and HF (Sakura) ones is tantamount to being forced into Nagisa’s route in Clannad before Tomoyo’s or Kyou’s, but that didn’t matter at the end of the day. Unlike Nagisa, whom you can’t help but feel being armtwisted into liking as a result of who she is, the inverse is true for Saber, and the thought that her character was written in a way that actually earned that status was a comforting one.
Last but not least, what sealed my liking for it was the additional symbolism of the sheath, and how it made both the power level battles and Shirou’s continuous whinging about wanting to protect Saber a lot more meaningful–for instance, his mindlessly charging in to take the blow for Saber on several occasions now signifies more than just misplaced bravado when it’s revealed that he’s had Avalon inside him from the beginning, which in turn raises the question of whether his attitude of wanting to help/protect everyone stemmed from the artifact rather than it being his PTSD, and if, more importantly, fate with a lowercase ‘f’ had brought them together.
(Insert jokes about sword/sheath symbolism and its role-reversal implications here)
The best part about finishing Fate? Not that I’m that much closer to HF–as much as I find Sakura’s portrayal of the girl-who-has-a-crush-from-afar to be appealing–or that I don’t have to put up with what is probably the most laughable reason in all of existence for three characters to drop their pants during a battle and do the horizontal mambo; it’s finding out that I’ve completed but a mere third of the entire text, and that the other two routes are good, if not better than this one.
Loading ...
And now you move onto UBW, from whence the internet came to know GAR. Knowing all the spoilers beforehand didn’t stop me from enjoying it. Of course, in a story whose three arcs cover “the child who wishes to be a hero,” “the teenager who becomes a hero,” and “the man who sets aside the ideal of being a hero,” it’s only natural that it’s the middle one that inspires the hotblood.
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.
saber sucks
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.
Wtf, but that’s not what I read on /jp/, so it must not be true!!2`@three
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.
Yes. It should become fairly apparent early into HF. Or not? At least by the end.
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.
In other words, Nasu is a marketing genius who knows how to appeal to both the 2Dcons and the story junkies? A VN that works in terms of romantic and fictional appeal? That’s… quite ingenious, I must say.
Sounds like I’m primed to take the ‘HF trumps Fate & UBW’ rather than the ‘ren’ai’ approach, then: whatever part of my brain it is that handles attraction has never really been partial to blondes.
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’.
I’m a little hesitant on your characterization of the role of “fate”, and responses to it in Japanese vs. Western media. As IKnight stated, it’s a generalization but I can’t help but think it feels a little off. After all, in the end, it’s still resistance to fate, regardless of whether it takes an active or passive form, and I think both types are plenty prevalent in Japan and in the West. I think the bigger difference is more on the resolution end; there seems to be a greater emphasis on open endings, or statements like “the reward was the journey”, etc. in Japanese media, emphasizing more the value of the experience gained from hardship as opposed to the payoff at the end of it (if there even is a payoff). I have to say though a topic like that probably deserves a post, if not a book, of its own…
I fail at engaging in intellectual conversation.
Anyway, I just started the game, and just finished the prologue..
The prologue alone is pretty long..lol..
Well, it’s gonna take me hours to finish the whole game.
But I got time, so..Fate/Stay Night, here I come! ^_^
Yes, I’ve never thought of it as gar before, but now that I think of it, UBW was definitely GAR to the very end.
The entire GAR meme originated from an old custom on the board which must not be named. Posters would post a picture of a manly character and say “I’m GAY for [insert name here]!”
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.
*Sigh* Four days out of town feels like an eternity when I log back online and see what I’ve missed. The Shana pic is win btw (I have the next few eps on DVD, ready to watch…funny how time off work doesn’t necessarily equate to *free* time to watch TV) and the Aria pic reminds me I need to get the box set and rewatch it (which Lolikit has been reminding me to do on more than one occasion).
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.
Omg Doraemon!
Nasu favorite characters are Rider and Kirei… or that was what he said.
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 liked the review but Fate is definitely not the main route-just happens to be the first one in the game. You should enjoy UBW which has a high GAR factor and the 3rd one I am still making my way through.
Romeo and Juliet is a good example of the former, TTGL I think serves the latter. What other examples do you have? I find this very interesting.
I also agree that the sheath symbolism/mechanism actually works as you said. It lessened my irritation at Shirou’s chauvinism. But then again, I’m not sure if it’s a subversion of the chauvinism or its protector/legitimizer/validater.