Cruel Angel Theses

A newly-minted enmity of mine is the Fate/stay night anime, especially when those watching it have yet to read the visual novel in all its glory; as all adaptation purists are so disposed to argue, the quality of the former when juxtaposed against the latter forms a significant portion of that criticism, and is not unlike a South-East Asian Chinese’s scorn for American Chinese food, where, as far as the second is concerned, does not constitute so much food as they know it as it is a mere parody of their reality.

I mean, cream cheese wontons?!

(This analogy conveniently ignores China Chinese cuisine, for while China may be homogeneous in race, their cooking is anything but, and varies from region to region in comparison to South-East Asian Chinese cuisine, which, while spread out over several countries, are not so far removed from each other as the hilarious pandering of American Chinese cuisine, or steeped in the over-salted/immensely spicy paradigms of  some China Chinese cuisine.)

The food diaspora is deep. And if you can’t appreciate that, you obviously suck at eating! There is an inherent weakness with this analogy, however–it assumes that Chinese cuisine, like F/sn, has an original prototype by which to measure levels of value, and it also introduces a new variable of location which has more impact on the final product than anything. Surely, each translation of F/sn could not be more different from the next, assuming competent translators in each one?

Metanarrative Defined

But let’s get back on track. What I do think is a valid criticism of the F/sn anime is its failure to convey the strength of the original’s metanarrative. Don’t try and look up Wikipedia, for this is going to get confusing, as I’m using the term in a literary manner more than sociological, although these links might be slightly more helpful in helping you gauge the general idea behind the term.

An easier way of describing a metanarrative in this context is to look at similiar visual novels-turned-anime of the sort. Kanon, regardless of which version you watched, had the metanarrative of ‘repetition’, if I’m not mistaken. Air had ‘ephemerality’, Clannad had ‘family’. ef – a tale of memories had ‘memories’ (a no-brainer, that), and ef -a tale of melodies had, well… ‘melodies’.

It’s no different in anime. 5 Centimeters per Second had ‘distance in/half-life of relationships’ by means of the sakura petal, its seasonal appearance, and its falling speed. Bokurano had ‘ours’ in the sense of a shared reality, whether it was an entire world at stake, a shared fate, the distinctly human desire for survival in the face of death, an existence defined by family/friends, or a co-piloted mecha. And so on.

In each instance, the entirety of the anime, visual novel, or adaptation can be encapsulated into a single word, phrase, or idea, if one were pressed to explain it thus. It’s this type of metanarrative that I’m going to talk about; the Big Ideas that make F/sn as a visual novel what it is, and why what it does is so important towards deepening your understanding of why it is.

Is this even worth writing about, you ask? Why not? In fact, I like the idea that metanarratives are what separate the good works from the great ones–take Code Geass’ usage of irony, nationality, race, and how they play off each other; Kaiba’s emphasis on various kinds of memory (the title also means ‘hippocampus’ in Japanese); true tears and the moments of/reasons for each girl’s crying; Honey and Clover’s four-leaf clover motif; all of these lend a much needed structure to their respective works, and are all the better for it.

Fate

For the record, Fate/stay night as a title is nothing more than the offspring of a brain fart and bastardised English, for the only thing I can think of that explains it coherently is this. Unlike Tsukihime (月姫, Moon Princess) or Kara no Kyoukai (空の境界, Boundary of Emptiness) which make for straightforward translations, F/sn as a title is written in English, as is the route from which it presumably lends its namesake.

Maybe it’s Nasu’s frustration at Japanese having a ridiculous number of alternatives for the word itself, each of them subtly differentiated by means of context–there’s the ubiquitous 運命 (unmei), the more formal 定め (sadame), the Known To Be Translated Erroneously As ‘Fate’ Due To The Limitations Of English 必然 (hitsuzen)–and that’s just the more common terms that I’m listing down here. Don’t take my word for it though, look it up in WWWJDIC to see what I mean.

Compare this to English, where fate becomes less of a question of “Which one are you talking about?” and more of a concept that anyone with a decent vocabulary can easily grasp. The general understanding behind it is that of something so steeped in unavoidable inevitability that nothing can change it, an irreversible force of nature that only superhuman feats or deeds can overcome.

And what manner of feats and deeds happen! That it has to begin with a 2 day prologue is no mistake, for it’s through the prologue that we’re familiarised with the rules of the world, establishing the intentional and the unintentional through a very eccentric (Rin talking to herself definitely qualifies for schizophrenia) yet effective introduction. Summoning is intentional. Having a Servant appear in front of you for no reason is unintentional… or is it?

More importantly, ‘fate’ as a metanarrative allows us to examine the concept of free will within a universe whose boundaries have been so clearly delineated but with such blurry precision at the same time. What is free will, anyway? Is it the freedom to have a choice? Or is it the freedom to react to the consequences of your choice, assuming that you can’t pick your choices? What if it’s an entirely different thing altogether?

I’ve always wondered if Judas, that poor sod, had free will of any kind. It’s this kind of innocent wonder that will fill you upon reading F/sn, for it’s a superhuman resistance, whether active or passive, towards fate with a capital F that its characters demonstrate time and again.

Can someone be born evil? Is it presumptuous to assume we’re all born good, for that matter? Is it nature or nurture that determines one’s character, vis a vis Kotomine and Sakura? Re: Shirou, are you fated to be the person you’re fated to be, or can that very core of your personality be changed ala Heaven’s Feel? If your fate is already present in the flesh like in Unlimited Blade Works and wants to kill you with a vengeance, is it possible for you to not walk that path?

Then there’s the Servant/Master system, in which the metanarrative of the Nasuverse itself paints as some sort of overriding godhead figure. Would that be fate embodied? Are Servants fated to be with a particular Master because they’re particularly attuned/similar to them, or was it already fated from the time that said Master picked up the relevant summoning artefact? Was said Master fated to have a particular artefact, even?

Evil’s paired with evil, evil with neutral, neutral with neutral, neutral with good, and good with good. Yet it’s through this multi-layered narrative that almost every character is painstakingly fleshed out until they no longer resemble your first impression.

Heroes and Heroics

And such an impression do the auxiliary characters leave on you. This is also where the anime stumbles, for the Servants go from three-dimensional characters to one-dimensional fighting constructs in the blink of an eye. This is not a fault of the anime per se as the proper development of, say, Caster or Rider only happens in UBW or HF, which the anime doesn’t touch, but it’s yet another reason to favour the VN more than anything.

There’s a reason why Nasu uses legendary heroes like Arthur or Cuchullain, and it’s not because he’s trying to ape Gaiman or Moore, either–unlike the latter two and their decidedly dismal, fanfiction-esque (and therefore horrible) efforts, Nasu brings real emotional weight to F/sn in how he treats them as more than mere allusive/novelty appearances; they stay true to their legends in a way that brings out the best and worst in their characters, humanising them as a result.

I’ve mentioned this before, and would like to backtrack on it a little due to its now-embarrassing inaccuracy; I think that the reason heroes were used as Servants is simple, for a hero is heroic by virtue of what he or she is, not what he or she does. It’s interesting to see how despite the questionable morals or desires of a few Masters, which range from outright evil (Kotomine) to Gollum evil (Shinji) to neutral evil (Caster’s nameless mage Master), the Servants remain true to themselves.

Saber-as-Arthur is a particularly- no, make that a very easy example to cite, but for all purposes, Rider-as-Medusa completely won me over in HF, as did Caster-as-Medea, all the more for the way in which she went from dark antagonist to sympathetic (but still dark) antagonist during UBW.

Rider’s existence in Fate when compared to HF is a rather glaring pothole, I’d admit–why or how does she manage to release both her Noble Phantasms in the former while being reduced to a weakling in the latter is something I’ve got no explanation for, but for what it was worth, she was the Orange-kun of the series. In particular, what endeared me to her was her dedication towards Sakura’s well-being at all costs, even at the expense of being controlled by Shinji.

Her development works retroactively in the sense that while you do feel animosity towards her in Fate as the result of her being the secondary antagonist, she’s also the one that allows to you save the girl and the world in HF by fighting alongside you when the odds are turned.

Then there’s Caster, who goes from Evil Wizard Stereotype to Misunderstood Girl That Just Wanted A Bit Of Love. Her characterisation, while brief, explained volumes about her character and motivations–Saber and Gilgamesh aside, her strong connection to her canon past made her almost sympathetic in light of what she had to go through, and Kuzuki brings out the best in her through this context.

Are Caster’s deeds heroic in any sense? No. Were they justified? Yes. Nasu’s purpose of carefully arranging chronology so that characters are cast as villains first and then heroes in another is, I think, part of his plan to ensure that we see both sides of the coin–while slowly exterminating an entire city is bad and all, it’s not wrong if you’re doing it for the one you love. Isn’t that what Shirou has to face with Sakura in HF?

In the same way too does Lancer-as-Cuchullain do the same. He has an unflinching sense of honour taken from his legend that’s evident in Fate, and this carries over to UBW to the point where not only does he team up with Rin and Shirou and battle Archer he turns on Kotomine to the point of killing him after being order to suicide. I mean… stabbing your former superior in the heart after stabbing yourself in the heart on his orders, with a lance that never misses? If that isn’t heroic, I don’t know what is.

(An) Superhero

Finally, Shirou deserves a point of his own, assuming that mirror-moon’s translation of both ‘hero’ and ’superhero’ are contextually accurate and faithful to the meaning of the original (literal translation purists can get stuffed). I’ve always thought of him being designed in a decidedly contrary manner as a foil to Western superheroes, from the way he assumes the traditional mannerisms of superheroes like a strong sense of justice, a desire to save others, and so on.

In case you’ve forgotten what Western superheroes are like, with generalisations:

• They don’t die when they’re killed.
  • Sometimes they’re resurrected when they’re killed.
  • When they die for real it’s always in an alternate, non-continuous/spinoff/crossover reality.
    • Either that or it was a clone/cyborg impostor/alternate universe version.
• They get to save the world and the girl, no strings attached.
  • When the girl they love dies, there’s another one waiting for them.
  • ‘The girl’ and ‘The evil that must be destroyed’ are never the same entity.
• If their sidekicks/friends die, sometimes they come back to life
  • Sometimes said sidekick/friend wasn’t dead in the first place.
    • They also never give in to the dark side.
• The ends always justifies the means.
• AKU. ZOKU. ZAN. All criminals are equal.
• Conflict never escalates with each successive encounter due to a need to make money story continuity purposes.

As opposed to Shirou:

• Shirou dies when he is killed.
  • Shirou dies when he saves the world (HF, Normal).
  • Shirou’s wounded when he’s killed, but for a reason (Fate).
    • He genuinely dies sometimes, i.e. “The reality where you chose X option and not Y.”
    • There is a Fake Shiki, but that’s Tsukihime.
• Shirou saves the world, but not the girl (Fate).
• Shirou saves the world, the girl, and himself, but decide to stop saving the world so much after that (UBW).
• Shirou gets to save the world and the girl, with a lot of collateral damage (HF).
  • There is not much of a future post-Sakura death, as per the HF Bad Ends.
  • ‘The girl’ and ‘The evil that must be destroyed’ are one and the same.
• Saber dies in all but one end, period.
  • Saber dies in another time and land (Fate).
  • Saber dies in another time and land (UBW, True).
  • Saber dies by Shirou’s hand in a heartbreaking scene (HF).
    • Ilya also dies in a lachrymal sacrifice.
• The ends did not justify the means (HF).
• All criminals are equal, but some criminals are more equal than others if you love them (HF).
• Conflict escalates with each encounter in each route; money is made from merchandise and fighting games.

A lot of Shirou’s guilt isn’t merely survivor’s guilt, but something more–you could say that he’s a product of his society in that he feels guilty for merely being the one who survived, and feels the need to atone for living when no one else did. It’s pretty misguided, yes, but also reinforced in part due to his father, and when put in contrast with, say, a 9/11 survivor, comes off as plain silly.

Isn’t that what it is, really? One boy, his silliness, and how he takes on the world? It’s specifically stated that he wants to be a superhero, not a hero, and superheroes don’t live for themselves, they live for others (well, Eastern ones; Western superheroes have their cake and eat it). Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking at best, and the first two routes go into detail about how this way of thinking was formed.

Then HF happens. It’s the better of the three routes in terms of The Moral Of The Story™, for it doesn’t reinforce Shirou’s beliefs like Fate, or merely tone them down like in UBW–it utterly destroys them by first having him give up what he truly believes in for the sake of Sakura, before making him kill Saber and letting Ilya sacrifice herself for his sake.

This, I think, is the point of playing F/sn in order, if you wanted closure for Shirou; closure for Saber means you play it in reverse. It builds Shirou up as an idealistic individual, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in Fate, before proceeding to tear him down not once but twice. But it doesn’t end there.

Saber dying in HF is more than just another character death of no significance–it symbolises his giving up of his ideal, for, as we’ve seen in Fate, they’re pretty much like each other, only that Shirou isn’t the king of a country or a girl pretending to be a guy. By killing Dark Saber he acknowledges that he’s no longer the boy he once was, and he’s killing a part of himself, so to speak.

In the same vein, Ilya’s sacrifice in HF True is also more than just another teary-eyed moment where you start to tear every time you listen to her theme–it symbolises Shirou’s human failings and impossibility of the task he’s always set out to do, namely “Save everyone.” He explicitly promises to save Ilya at one point, and she knows this–but still sacrifices herself for him anyway, as if telling him how futile such a desire is.

In Closing

I’m confident that a lot of the above aren’t present, or don’t present themselves as well in the anime format. I think it had to do with the fact that the anime only presents one of three facets by which F/sn is meant to be viewed, but that’s just me.

In a sea of homogeneous fiction, the metanarrative separates the chaff from the wheat. It isn’t because it’s just better, it’s because it adds so much more to the story by means of structure, while showing the reader/viewer the larger picture in the process. If the resolution of conflict is the ‘How’, then the metanarrative is the ‘Why’.

Fortunately, reverse-engineering is pretty easy once you know how the process goes.