General Anime/Manga Discussion 13.5: Recap Episode

[DoctorFaust]

It's more throwing a bitchfit when things aren't as they want, but you could say it's caused by an underlying entitlement to being right. It's the bitchfit that fits Kerry: he spends all his life as a murderous jackass because he once failed kill when it would've done some real good. Then FZ closes with just saying he changed in the end guys.

When does Kiritsugu throw a bitchfit? (I do agree about him being murderous for the most part, but I really can't help but like his interactions with his daughter and wife). And the entire point of his character is that he kills for the good of others, sacrificing the many to save the few. It really seems like every time that he is shown killing in the series, he does good, even if it is through an action many would consider to be evil.

Spoiler: His kills

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• His teacher: The plane she's on is full of Dead Apostates, I think is the term, and if it lands and even one gets loose, a lot of people would die. Him destroying the plane stops that possibility.
• His dad: Stops the research, albeit way too late to save anyone on the island.
• All his time spent as a mercenary: I'm pretty sure that there's actually a line to the affect that "he shows up where the fighting is worst, and fights to put an end to it"
• KFC: Honestly, the best justification that I can come up with for this is that the Holy Grail War is one giant incident of collateral damage waiting to happen, and getting rid of the Masters is the quickest way of ending it.
• Ryuunosuke: He's a ****ing serial killer that summoned a serial killer that wants to kill and eat all of Fuyuki. What excuse does he need for killing him?
• The manifestations of his wife and child: If he doesn't escape from the Grail, it'll grant his wish. By killing everyone on the planet but him and Illya, and bring back Iri to be with them. He is not willing to sacrifice the many for the needs of the few.

I would really just say that he has very strong morals, and he is willing to go to extreme lengths for them. The changing of his ideals at the end was one of the most tragic parts of Zero to me, since it really does show how broken he was by the Holy Grail War, and what getting to the Grail cost him.

Kayneth was some random smug, he wasn't really raging against anything (if he's disagreeable, it's because he's excessively neat: his whole situation fits too seamlessly into an almost exact rendition of Diarmuid's legend.

Who's the Grainne to Kayneth's Diarmuid? Because while he might be married to the girl, he sure as hell doesn't get her like Diarmuid gets Grainne. Moreover, who's the Fionn? He has no leige to betray, no geas to break, nothing to run from, no dispute that ends up being mediated, and besides the fairly tenuous parallels you could draw between Diarmuid's final hunt and Kayneth's death, the only similarities between Kayneth and Diarmuid that I see are that they're both from Great Britain and are married.

Apparently they were out of subtlety after Kariya-Berserker parallels.

Spoiler: Berserker's identity

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From either a thematic or a literal standpoint, Kariya has almost nothing in common with Lancelot. There is no equivalent Arthur, Galahad, Lionel, Bors, or Elaine, and the character that could be called his Guinevere has about as much in common as Maiya does with the boar in the Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne, and Kariya's story only ends the same as Lancelot's in that they both die. I suppose you could argue that Sakura is his Holy Grail, though it would be more appropriate to say that the Holy Grail is his Holy Grail, and the journey that Lancelot and Kariya take to get to their Holy Grail are very different ones.

He's gonna start his arc one of these weeks.

So, what, a third of the series is done and his character arc hasn't even started yet? Some would call that crappy writing.

[HMS Invincible]

That's the problem and greatness of exactingly animating a VN. The anime is matching the pace of the novel. So if you hate the pacing its the VN fault. I'm a fanboy so I ignore shirou and wait for rin and archer to show up.

[Nerd-o-rama]

So, what, a third of the series is done and his character arc hasn't even started yet? Some would call that crappy writing.

No one has ever accused a Type-Moon property of good writing. (For comparison, Fate/Zero went over a season without even presenting enough of Kiritsugu's personality to guess his motivations, let alone develop any character).

As for the problem with Kiritsugu, for me it's how very, very self-centered and ossified his "ideals" are. He's a Superhero, therefore anyone he kills is either a villain or a ~tragic casualty~ that only reinforces his worldview. He treats everyone around him like crap because of his Painful Duty. He is literally called out in-show as having absolutely no idea how to solve a problem with anything other than murder, and he is completely unable to change that - in the end, after destroying the Grail, he just gives up. He's a tragic character, alright, but the tragedy is in how he let his childhood trauma turn him into a one-dimensional killing machine instead of a human being. It's not a terribly compelling thing to watch.

Also, I was thinking last night about Terra's comments about a Rin/Saber team as the protagonists for Fate/Stay Night, leaving out Shirou's plot entirely. I have to wonder how the theme would work there; maybe contrasting Rin's attempt at absolute cynicism to Saber's attempt at absolute idealism, and showing how both of them struggle to suppress and eventually accept human emotions?


EDIT: and I think cnsvnc was referring to Diarmuid's situation as a Servant paralleling his legend, with Kayneth playing the role of Fionn and Sola-Ui playing the role of Grainne.

[Terraoblivion]

On a slightly less argumentative note, Railgun is pretty impressive so far. I'm liking Biribiri and Uihara quite a lot.

It is. Basically it's a show with only one significant problem, which is how Kuroko treats Misaka and even that isn't consistent as there are lots of scenes of her being a dedicated, understanding friend. Other than that it's a beautiful, beautifully directed show about interesting, likable characters that manages all three sides, slice of life, investigative thriller and action, well and balances them well against each other. Also, you still haven't met the character who I think is my favorite yet since they don't show up until the second season. Also, Saten is great, especially as time goes on to give her more focus and attention.

[DoctorFaust]

No one has ever accused a Type-Moon property of good writing.

I would. Hell, even going back as far as Angel Notes or Kara no Kyoukai, I think they tell pretty good stories. EDIT: I realized I was kind of making my point badly here. It seems that a lot of the criticisms against Zero have been that the characters are flat (or just bad), and fairly static throughout, and that Stay Night is better because the characters are more dynamic. Would that be fair to say?

Well, we're almost done with the first cour of Unlimited Blade Works, and there has been basically NO character development. At all. TWO, out of SEVEN, of the Servants have gotten screen time enough for them to actually have even the beginnings of a character, Shirou is still your basic idiotic hero protagonist, as far as I can tell, Rin's only defining character trait is that she's a tsundere, and all in all, the characters seem much less developed than they were at this point in Zero. Hell, even Gurren Lagann, which has a pretty weak plot if you really think about it, had better paced character development. And this is coming from someone who enjoys both Zero and UBW

Also, I was thinking last night about Terra's comments about a Rin/Saber team as the protagonists for Fate/Stay Night, leaving out Shirou's plot entirely. I have to wonder how the theme would work there; maybe contrasting Rin's attempt at absolute cynicism to Saber's attempt at absolute idealism, and showing how both of them struggle to suppress and eventually accept human emotions?

I have no idea what this comment is about, so I'm just going to assume it's spoilers and ignore it.

EDIT: and I think cnsvnc was referring to Diarmuid's situation as a Servant paralleling his legend, with Kayneth playing the role of Fionn and Sola-Ui playing the role of Grainne.

I suppose there are a few more parallels that could be drawn if you look at it like that, especially between his death and Episode 16, but I think Kayneth and Sola-Ui fit badly into either of those roles. Well, actually, on a very basic level, I suppose they do kind of, since Kayneth ends up betraying him to his death, and Sola-Ui's love is the cause of his downfall, but those are fairly common tropes in media. But then again, on a very basic level, every single story about star-crossed lovers is the same.

It is. Basically it's a show with only one significant problem, which is how Kuroko treats Misaka and even that isn't consistent as there are lots of scenes of her being a dedicated, understanding friend. Other than that it's a beautiful, beautifully directed show about interesting, likable characters that manages all three sides, slice of life, investigative thriller and action, well and balances them well against each other. Also, you still haven't met the character who I think is my favorite yet since they don't show up until the second season. Also, Saten is great, especially as time goes on to give her more focus and attention.

I'm assuming you're either talking about Accelerator or Last Order. Considering they're the reason that I started watching it, I too am looking forward to their appearance.

[deuterio12]

As for the problem with Kiritsugu, for me it's how very, very self-centered and ossified his "ideals" are. He's a Superhero, therefore anyone he kills is either a villain or a ~tragic casualty~ that only reinforces his worldview. He treats everyone around him like crap because of his Painful Duty. He is literally called out in-show as having absolutely no idea how to solve a problem with anything other than murder, and he is completely unable to change that - in the end, after destroying the Grail, he just gives up. He's a tragic character, alright, but the tragedy is in how he let his childhood trauma turn him into a one-dimensional killing machine instead of a human being. It's not a terribly compelling thing to watch.

Kiritsugu doesn't give up. He recovers his humanity by finding an orphan child in the mid of the destruction he unleashed, rescuing them, and raising them as his own child. Without killing anybody else. Settling down to start a family is probably the most human thing you can do.

And now I want to watch "Fate/Stay Night: Dad Kiritsugu".

Kiritsugu:Ok son, this is how you make Miso soup.
Shirou: Why are there five loaded machine guns in the middle of the ingredients, father?
Kiritsugu: Ah...Eerr... Well...
Shirou: Just put away those things and let me handle the cooking.


And that's how Shirou became such a good chef.

Also, I was thinking last night about Terra's comments about a Rin/Saber team as the protagonists for Fate/Stay Night, leaving out Shirou's plot entirely. I have to wonder how the theme would work there; maybe contrasting Rin's attempt at absolute cynicism to Saber's attempt at absolute idealism, and showing how both of them struggle to suppress and eventually accept human emotions?

Or lesbian route. Saber was married to a woman after all back in her day. And considering Artur's legend, Saber somehow got another woman pregnant, leading to Mordred's birth.

We all know that Rin's cynism is mostly because while despite all her hard work, she got a cynic Archer who can't kill anything at range, Shiro the noob mage somehow got the hawt bimbo that's also the strongest hero as his personal servant. I'm sure Rin's personality would be a lot different if she got Saber as her partner.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I would. Hell, even going back as far as Angel Notes or Kara no Kyoukai, I think they tell pretty good stories. EDIT: I realized I was kind of making my point badly here. It seems that a lot of the criticisms against Zero have been that the characters are flat (or just bad), and fairly static throughout, and that Stay Night is better because the characters are more dynamic. Would that be fair to say?

Well, we're almost done with the first cour of Unlimited Blade Works, and there has been basically NO character development. At all. TWO, out of SEVEN, of the Servants have gotten screen time enough for them to actually have even the beginnings of a character, Shirou is still your basic idiotic hero protagonist, as far as I can tell, Rin's only defining character trait is that she's a tsundere, and all in all, the characters seem much less developed than they were at this point in Zero. Hell, even Gurren Lagann, which has a pretty weak plot if you really think about it, had better paced character development. And this is coming from someone who enjoys both Zero and UBW

I honestly remember exactly two characters in Fate/Zero who grew or changed in any way before the last episode - Waver and Kirei - or three if you count the "how he got to be this way" backstory on Kiritsugu, which I don't, since I consider character exposition different from character development.

Also, a cour is 12-14 episodes, so we're only halfway through the first one. I will admit, it's pretty much all been character exposition (Shirou's demeanor and hints at reasons for it, Rin's conflicted attitude toward fighting to kill, Archer's...Archerness, etc.) and fights. I'm coming from the perspective that both shows are pretty terrible at characterization, though. My only point is that Shirou and Kiritsugu are developed at very different paces, not that one's a better character than the other, or one's a better story than the other.

Kiritsugu doesn't give up. He recovers his humanity by finding an orphan child in the mid of the destruction he unleashed, rescuing them, and raising them as his own child. Without killing anybody else. Settling down to start a family is probably the most human thing you can do.

And now I want to watch "Fate/Stay Night: Dad Kiritsugu".

Kiritsugu:Ok son, this is how you make Miso soup.
Shirou: Why are there five loaded machine guns in the middle of the ingredients, father?
Kiritsugu: Ah...Eerr... Well...
Shirou: Just put away those things and let me handle the cooking.


And that's how Shirou became such a good chef.

The parts of Prisma Ilya that aren't disturbing loli fanservice or sparkly magical girl battles are apparently this. I wouldn't mind an interquel starring these two idiots though.

And you do have a point, I just mean that Kiritsugu abandons his ideals entirely and takes only the first small step in rectifying the horror his moral shortsightedness helped unleash. But at least it was a first step.

Or lesbian route. Saber was married to a woman after all back in her day. And considering Artur's legend, Saber somehow got another woman pregnant, leading to Mordred's birth.

We all know that Rin's cynism is mostly because while despite all her hard work, she got a cynic Archer who can't kill anything at range, Shiro the noob mage somehow got the hawt bimbo that's also the strongest hero as his personal servant. I'm sure Rin's personality would be a lot different if she got Saber as her partner.

Spoiler: Saber's Backstory and Fate/Apocrypha spoilers

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From what I've heard of supplementary material and Fate/Apocrypha, Saber was magically turned physically male for the duration of her kingship. Her relationship with Guinevere was mostly celibate, and Mordred was actually a homunculus/clone rather than a natural born child, which is why Saber of Red is female and has a huge complex about it, since he/she thinks he/she is a failed copy.

And Rin's entire deal (also addressing DoctorFaust here, since he dismissed Rin as a flat tsundere) is that she wants to be a perfectly cold-blooded ambitious mage like Daddy appears to have been, but she can't. She cares too much about "innocent" people, including people who are too dumb to not be innocent, to manage it. That's the core of her character conflict right there, and her arc in every route (UBW particularly) is her coming to grips with the fact that she's a human who cares about people. I could mark this spoilers, but really, it's pretty apparent from her conflicted actions toward Shirou already.

(There's also other motivations behind her wanting to protect the moron, but they're only hinted at in this particular adaptation so I'll leave them to the imagination for now.)

[Pronounceable]

Whee, wall of quotes:

When does Kiritsugu throw a bitchfit?

His whole life is a bitchfit. He spent all his life in that shed, killing that girl over and over. Except he was a grown ass dude out and about in the world and none of the people he killed could save the village. He only noticed he wasn't in the shed anymore when Grail mashed his stupidity right in his face.

Kayneth

Kayneth is the lord whose fiancee/wife was "seduced" by Diarmuid. Team Lancer played out a close adaptation of Diarmuid's legend. Sure it's not that exact but I' prone to exaggeration as everyone on the internet. Making parallels to original legends is a cool idea but it was done heavy handedly.

Kariya

Kariya is a worse version of the legend. He wanted another guy's wife too but unlike Berserker, he was a Nice Guy who never meant much for the woman in question, yet ruined her life with his whiteknight complex. It's inspired from legend, not mirroring it like Team Lancer, so I consider it subtlety.

No one has ever accused a Type-Moon property of good writing.

Typemoon (Nasu) is very good at writing though. He's not great and has some blind spots, such as his utter inability to refrain from vomiting pages upon pages of magicbabble, but Far Side routes of Tsukihime is objective proof that the dude can write. Fate franchise is his most incompetent work that somehow became the most famous.

As for the problem with Kiritsugu, for me it's how very, very self-centered and ossified his "ideals" are. He's a Superhero, therefore anyone he kills is either a villain or a ~tragic casualty~ that only reinforces his worldview.

There's that too. Kerry is working too hard to paint himself as "the hard man making the hard choices", despite just being a murderous jackass. It's pure 90s comicbook crap.

Also, I was thinking last night about Terra's comments about a Rin/Saber team as the protagonists for Fate/Stay Night, leaving out Shirou's plot entirely.

That could work. But Rin can't develop as dramatically as Shirou, she's not immature enough.

Well, we're almost done with the first cour of Unlimited Blade Works, and there has been basically NO character development. At all.

It just passed the quarter mark.

It seems that a lot of the criticisms against Zero have been that the characters are flat (or just bad), and fairly static throughout, and that Stay Night is better because the characters are more dynamic.

Yes. Also FZ is a derivative work written by another author, one who seems a bit too fond of grimderp, built from scratch to reach a predetermined ending. It's above average, far as prequels go.

And considering Artur's legend, Saber somehow got another woman pregnant, leading to Mordred's birth.

Let's not pay attention to that.

And now I want to watch "Fate/Stay Night: Dad Kiritsugu".

-No Shirou, you can't go see Avengers.
-But daaad, everyone is going.
-No means no.

The parts of Prisma Ilya that aren't disturbing loli fanservice or sparkly magical girl battles are apparently this. I wouldn't mind an interquel starring these two idiots though.

It had some awesome action scenes but they didn't justify the crap. Has best rendition of Emiya theme though, they got that going for them.

Saber's Backstory and Fate/Apocrypha spoilers

I said let's not pay attention to that.

And Rin's entire deal is that she wants to be a perfectly cold-blooded ambitious mage like Daddy appears to have been, but she can't.

That's not too clear without all the inner monologues so we can't blame the filthy casuals (too much).

[DoctorFaust]

'Nother wall of quotes, yaaay.

Also addressing DoctorFaust here, since he dismissed Rin as a flat tsundere.

I'm dismissing her as a flat tsundere because so far, she is a flat tsundere. Her actions thus far can be summed up as alternatively trying to kill Shirou and and denying that she likes him.

His whole life is a bitchfit. He spent all his life in that shed, killing that girl over and over. Except he was a grown ass dude out and about in the world and none of the people he killed could save the village. He only noticed he wasn't in the shed anymore when Grail mashed his stupidity right in his face.

Okay, it's very obvious that we have very different interpretations and opinions about him. I enjoyed his character because of many of the things you are citing as bad things about him, so let's just chalk it up to subjectivity, neh?

Kayneth is the lord whose fiancee/wife was "seduced" by Diarmuid. Team Lancer played out a close adaptation of Diarmuid's legend. Sure it's not that exact but I' prone to exaggeration as everyone on the internet. Making parallels to original legends is a cool idea but it was done heavy handedly.

By that reasoning, KFC's arc is also ripped from Romeo and Juliet almost exactly.

Kariya is a worse version of the legend. He wanted another guy's wife too but unlike Berserker, he was a Nice Guy who never meant much for the woman in question, yet ruined her life with his whiteknight complex. It's inspired from legend, not mirroring it like Team Lancer, so I consider it subtlety.

Spoiler: BAHSAHKAH!!

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If you rip out every single thing about Lancelot and replace it with jackassery, yeah, Kariya is totally a worse version of Lancelot. Except for the not being deemed worthy of the Grail part. Or having reached the Grail. Or having "cheated" on his Guinevere. Or, well, everything that happens to Lanelot in the legends, besides going crazy when he was rejected.

It just passed the quarter mark.

A third of the whole anime is now over, and there are four, maybe five, episodes left in this cour, or season, or UBW. Regardless, I feel like correcting my math isn't a very good argument against Stay Night, or at least Unlimited Blade Works, having as **** of character development as you claim Zero does.

Yes. Also FZ is a derivative work written by another author, one who seems a bit too fond of grimderp, built from scratch to reach a predetermined ending. It's above average, far as prequels go.

Again, I like Urobuchi's writing, so let's just chalk this up to a difference of opinion.

Let's not pay attention to that.

I said let's not pay attention to that.

So because we don't like something, we get to pretend it's not part of canon anymore?

That's not too clear without all the inner monologues so we can't blame the filthy casuals (too much).

So because some people haven't gone out of their way to watch, read, and play every goddamn thing related to Fate, their opinions about this adaptation are invalid now?

Spoiler: Archer's identity

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And speaking of Fate, some hijo de puta on Reddit decided that it would be fun to spoil Archer's identity for me, and since I really am coming to dislike Shirou, I'm considering dropping UBW. Best girl be damned, I do not want to put up with Shirou's idiocy for another 16 episodes only for him to end up turning into Archer.

[Sallera]

Spoiler: Archer's identity, Fate spoilers

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Archer is (effectively) Fate Shirou, not UBW Shirou. While this isn't exactly a good thing for him, there are significant differences in what kind of people they end up as.

That's not too clear without all the inner monologues so we can't blame the filthy casuals (too much).

So because some people haven't gone out of their way to watch, read, and play every goddamn thing related to Fate, their opinions about this adaptation are invalid now?

I'm, uh, pretty sure that's the opposite of what cnsvnc was implying, i.e. no, the adaptations don't make it that clear, so one shouldn't assume it's apparent to first-time viewers.

[Eldariel]

I'm liking UBW thus far. The animation is beautiful, but what I really like about it are the adjustments to the story; most of them are somewhat logical and introduce the central struggles and characters to the story more obviously than the VN. Many adaptations fail at altering the source material meaningfully to suit the medium and improving upon the original, but I think UBW is doing a relatively good job at it. Most of the added scenes have been meaningful and while they alter certain characters (Ilya in particular) and states (Archer's actions in the latest episode), I feel it's probably a net neutral or even a positive change. It did seem odd that Ilya had no offensive magecraft available to her in the original (though being actually able to take on Rin seems a bit farfetched).

Considering how early in the story it is, I don't really see much room for character development yet; they've barely got around establishing the characters in the first place (given the number of relevant characters this takes quite a while, but I think so far all the servants that have gotten screentime as well as the Masters and side characters have been done justice to). For what they're doing, I think the pacing works superbly - the focus is on the war, not the characters but the characters come along as catalysts. The central ideological conflicts of the various characters have been presented quite well and that's really all that the story requires. Unlikable protagonist, I'd say, is a feature, not a bug. I think this kind of a start is necessary to handle such a broken being - his neuroses have to be introduced before they can really be considered in the story.

So because some people haven't gone out of their way to watch, read, and play every goddamn thing related to Fate, their opinions about this adaptation are invalid now?

Spoiler: Archer's identity

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And speaking of Fate, some hijo de puta on Reddit decided that it would be fun to spoil Archer's identity for me, and since I really am coming to dislike Shirou, I'm considering dropping UBW. Best girl be damned, I do not want to put up with Shirou's idiocy for another 16 episodes only for him to end up turning into Archer.

If that's your central fear, I wouldn't worry: I doubt that will stop you from enjoying the rest of the show.

[deuterio12]

Spoiler: Saber's Backstory and Fate/Apocrypha spoilers

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From what I've heard of supplementary material and Fate/Apocrypha, Saber was magically turned physically male for the duration of her kingship. Her relationship with Guinevere was mostly celibate, and Mordred was actually a homunculus/clone rather than a natural born child, which is why Saber of Red is female and has a huge complex about it, since he/she thinks he/she is a failed copy.

Spoiler

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Actually the wiki says Merlin turned her into a "pseudo-male".
And the original story says Saber looked so girlish that they had to spread the story she was actually a young bishonen man blessed with eternal youth.

Soooo... Futa Saber is cannon basically.

But wait, there's more on the wiki!

Morgana Le Fay was Saber's sister. And she was the one getting pregnant from Mordred.

I'm gonna stop here. Congratulations typemoon, you manage to make your plots more disturbing than the hentai doujin authors.

Spoiler: Archer's identity

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And speaking of Fate, some hijo de puta on Reddit decided that it would be fun to spoil Archer's identity for me, and since I really am coming to dislike Shirou, I'm considering dropping UBW. Best girl be damned, I do not want to put up with Shirou's idiocy for another 16 episodes only for him to end up turning into Archer.

Actually, one of the interesting things about Fate/Stay night is that there's multiple alternate realities.

Spoiler

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It's heavily implied that Shirou meeting Archer actually means this reality's Shirou will not become Archer.

In the original work, Archer himself says at one point he could kill the Shirou of this reality, and would still exist afterwards, because the Shirou that turned into him was from another alternate timeline.

[Eldariel]

Actually, one of the interesting things about Fate/Stay night is that there's multiple alternate realities.

Spoiler

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It's heavily implied that Shirou meeting Archer actually means this reality's Shirou will not become Archer.

In the original work, Archer himself says at one point he could kill the Shirou of this reality, and would still exist afterwards, because the Shirou that turned into him was from another alternate timeline.

Spoiler: FSN-spoilers

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According to Nasu, Archer is from something between Saber and Ilya's routes, so a never-published route. It explicitly states it in the end of the UBW route that it would be unlikely for Shirou to become Archer with Rin by his side.

Archer's goal, actually, is to specifically kill Shirou himself. That's the one thread he held onto for his existence on the Throne of Heroes that exists beyond time and worlds - that he would eventually get called to this war and get a chance to cease. The death of an individual Shirou would never stop the Counter Guardian Emiya from being born since he already exists outside time on the Throne of Heroes. His only hope is that by being the one to kill his past self himself, he would cause a paradox that would cause his existence to be eliminated. That's his ultimate plan and that's why he goes through such great lengths to make sure he's the one to kill Shirou. All his jockeying for position across UBW is really built around that goal, with Rin being probably the greatest obstacle to his plan.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Do we actually know how many episodes are left in this cour of UBW? Because the numbering was really weird at the beginning. We're officially at Episode 7, but since we had a double-length Prologue episode and a double-length first episode, maybe we're actually at Episode 10. Or maybe we're at Episode 8 because the cour designation is just counting the consecutive weeks that had an episode.

[Mx.Silver]

Well it's not that it doesn't get darker, it's just that there is more fighting. There still isn't really any of the "power up by yelling" stuff or anything like that (this is why I didn't want to get into this argument ).

I wasn't assuming 'powering-up by yelling' (if something is generally regarded as reasonably well-written, it probably doesn't take too many cues from DBZ). Nor is it really a case of getting darker, so much as the overall form it's taking. From what I can tell, Bortherhood places rather more emphasis on fight scenes and the spectacle thereof than the first series does, because the first series doesn't treat fights as being that important in and of themselves. The other big element is the first series' homonculi (both in terms of how they work and who they are as individuals, especially Sloth and Wrath who don't really have equivalents in Brotherhood*), who are closely tied to the series themes and also, from what I've read, significantly different from their mange/brotherhood incarnations.
I can't really comment on how other differences might play out, because I don't know how much Brotherhood sticks to the first series' eschewal of a fair few shonen conventions - although hazard a guess that the plans of Brotherhood's main antagonist are rather more concerned with 'the fate of the world' or similar than is the case in the first series.

On small thing I did note on comparison so is that, with the exception of their first seasons, the first series does seem to have the better opening songs
On the other hand, if Greed's 'chimera squad' feature more prominently in Brotherhood that would be a point in its favour


*To be clear, I know Brotherhood has characters called Wrath and Sloth, but they bear no relation to their FMA namesakes.

plus there's actually a key plot point of the original (manga) story that gets foreshadowed early on, but isn't used in the 2003 anime (I wasn't perceptive enough to notice it, but others were).

I wouldn't know, on account of not knowing enough of the details of Brotherhood's plot.

[Pronounceable]

So because we don't like something, we get to pretend it's not part of canon anymore?

Always. The only real canon exists inside one's skull. What anyone else says is a load of bunk.
Also Nasuverse is explicitly multi so even the ****tiest fanfic I can write with a self insert marysue protag winning the war and getting all the girls is "canon". So is Round Table Dating Sim. Gotta draw the line at some point.

more Saber's Backstory and Fate/Apocrypha spoilers

I would be skeptical about the wiki. They seem to be not entirely trustworthy and the hardcore Nasufans that do all these translations are known to make up fake crap to mess with them. Not to mention Japanese fans sometimes trolling the fantranslators. Though it's likely to be correct, there's never a guarantee wiki is right about a thing.

Do we actually know how many episodes are left in this cour of UBW?

It's supposed to be 24 or 26 total, gotta break at 12 or 13. Prologue doesn't count far as I know, which could be wrong.

I feel it's probably a net neutral or even a positive change. It did seem odd that Ilya had no offensive magecraft available to her in the original (though being actually able to take on Rin seems a bit farfetched).

Yep, this anime has largely been great at adapting and streamlining the novel itself, aside from Rin getting too cuteanimegirlified sometimes. The few deviations are all fine unless you're the worst kind of neckbeardy Nasufan (A rank! Three slashes! boo hoo!).
Ilya losing a mage duel would be even odder, she's always been a midboss.

[Prime32]

The parts of Prisma Ilya that aren't disturbing loli fanservice or sparkly magical girl battles are apparently this. I wouldn't mind an interquel starring these two idiots though.

Prisma Ilya has Irisviel show up for a while and she's pretty fun, but Kiritsugu has been "away on business" for the entire series and his only (brief) appearances have been as a satellite to Iri. Shirou exists pretty much only to be the butt of jokes though.

As for the fanservice I'd say it's significantly better about it than, say, Nanoha ViVid, in that it's generally played for comedy rather than just throwing it into random panels for the heck of it (and male characters are not immune). There are one or two... questionable outfits, yes, but they show up less as time goes on, and in general the story is pretty self-aware.

I'm liking UBW thus far. The animation is beautiful, but what I really like about it are the adjustments to the story; most of them are somewhat logical and introduce the central struggles and characters to the story more obviously than the VN. Many adaptations fail at altering the source material meaningfully to suit the medium and improving upon the original, but I think UBW is doing a relatively good job at it. Most of the added scenes have been meaningful and while they alter certain characters (Ilya in particular) and states (Archer's actions in the latest episode), I feel it's probably a net neutral or even a positive change. It did seem odd that Ilya had no offensive magecraft available to her in the original (though being actually able to take on Rin seems a bit farfetched).

Well the biggest change is that it's not told from Shirou's perspective any more, and they're making the most of that. Stuff like Rin fighting Ilya and investigating Caster's familiars could very easily have happened in the VN, but wasn't shown because Shirou wasn't there to see it.

[Nerd-o-rama]

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Actually the wiki says Merlin turned her into a "pseudo-male".
And the original story says Saber looked so girlish that they had to spread the story she was actually a young bishonen man blessed with eternal youth.

Soooo... Futa Saber is cannon basically.

But wait, there's more on the wiki!

Morgana Le Fay was Saber's sister. And she was the one getting pregnant from Mordred.

I'm gonna stop here. Congratulations typemoon, you manage to make your plots more disturbing than the hentai doujin authors.

I know we're both citing the wiki here, but this sounds a lot more like seriously questionable or, more likely, overly-literal translation. Nasufans tend to be extremely prone to the latter, which is why I consider the VN unreadable in raw English form and where we get the famous "people die when they are killed" bit.

[DoctorFaust]

Always. The only real canon exists inside one's skull. What anyone else says is a load of bunk.
Also Nasuverse is explicitly multi so even the ****tiest fanfic I can write with a self insert marysue protag winning the war and getting all the girls is "canon". So is Round Table Dating Sim. Gotta draw the line at some point.

Bull****. Fanfics are just that, works of ficiton done by fans set in someone else's work. What the author says is canon, is canon. The only things fans determine is their own headcanon. And I recall reading somewhere that all of the endings to Stay Night are canon, so it seems to me like Hollow Atraxia is as well. Despite how much you dislike it, whatever the author says, goes.

EDIT: Okay, I misread Apocrypha as Atraxia, so my bit about the canon endings seems a bit stupid now.

[Nerd-o-rama]

The way I understand it, all three Fate/Stay Night routes "happened" somewhere out there in the universe, as well as

Spoiler: We're still spoiling Archer's backstory, right?

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whatever hypothetical "route" Archer originates in.

All of them have Fate/Zero as a background, at least one of them has Fate/Hollow Ataraxia as a future, and they're all "canon". So are Fate/Extra and its sequel, Fate/Apocrypha, Prisma Ilya, and Carnival Phantasm. "Canon" stretches to basically whatever's officially released when you bring alternate universes into it.

Fate/Apocrypha is a completely divergent timeline to the Fate/Stay Night visual novel, though, so in fairness, who's to say Saber of Red's background affects good ol' Saberranger Blue's "true" history?

[Eldariel]

The way I understand it, all three Fate/Stay Night routes "happened" somewhere out there in the universe, as well as...

Nasu's general stance is that infinite parallel worlds exist (indeed, it's even a plot point in some works such as FHA and FSN) and everything is true in one of them so literally everything from gag products like Prism Ilya to weirdness like Apocrypha apparently takes place. And then things like the second sorcery and world-spanning existences can cause the parallel worlds to interact with one another, sometimes quite violently.

[Pronounceable]

And I recall reading somewhere that all of the endings to Stay Night are canon, so it seems to me like Hollow Atraxia is as well.

They are canon. As are all 40 bad ends of VN with various states of dead Shirou. As are all the unwritten routes, including Ilya's and Rider's. Along with Ataraxia, Prisma, Takemoon, Carnival Phantasm, Extra, Apoca, Prototype, Strange Fake, Melty Blood, FUC, Fatal, BMW and every other spinoff game, fanproject and fanfiction. Everything is officially canon: the dating sim is real. And of course when everything is canon, it means nothing is canon.

Fate/ is Japan's answer to Star Wars, they don't care what anyone else does in the extended universe and are rather chill about the whole mess stemming from this weirdass canon concept. Which is an admirable attitude that everyone should take about everything fictional.

e:

how do you extend the logic of "everything that TYPE-moon has created is canon" to "ERRYTHING ERR WRITTEN IS CANON"?

Zelretch.

[DoctorFaust]

They are canon. As are all 40 bad ends of VN with various states of dead Shirou. As are all the unwritten routes, including Ilya's and Rider's. Along with Ataraxia, Prisma, Takemoon, Carnival Phantasm, Extra, Apoca, Prototype, Strange Fake, Melty Blood, FUC, Fatal, BMW and every other spinoff game, fanproject and fanfiction. Everything is officially canon: the dating sim is real. And of course when everything is canon, it means nothing is canon.

Fate/ is Japan's answer to Star Wars, they don't care what anyone else does in the extended universe and are rather chill about the whole mess stemming from this weirdass canon concept. Which is an admirable attitude that everyone should take about everything fictional.

Except there is a definite canon for Star Wars. Hell, not to long ago, they declared that the only things still canon were the movies and TV shows. And how do you extend the logic of "everything that TYPE-moon has created is canon in the TYPE-verse" to "ERRYTHING ERR WRITTEN ERR IS CANON"?

[Terraoblivion]

I'm assuming you're either talking about Accelerator or Last Order. Considering they're the reason that I started watching it, I too am looking forward to their appearance.

**** Accelerator. He's just a generic brutish, bully who kills people. He's a really generic edgy bishounen guy who we're told is somehow somewhat of an antihero and that we should feel sorry for him, but he's really just a brutish thug without either intelligence or emotional complexity who went way beyond any kind of acceptable behavior for antiheroes. He's not as bad as the worst Kuroko gets, but since he's consistently bad, as in boring and uninteresting, I feel pretty okay calling him the worst character in the show. I'm talking about the awesome character who is introduced in the Sisters Arc and whose very existence is spoilers.

[DoctorFaust]

I'm interested in Accelerator because I want to see if he ever uses his power for anything other than the obvious stuff other people have mentioned to me.

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My only other guess would be Worst, then.

[Terraoblivion]

I'm interested in Accelerator because I want to see if he ever uses his power for anything other than the obvious stuff other people have mentioned to me.

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My only other guess would be Worst, then.

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There's nobody in the Sisters arc called worst. It introduces ITEM, the high school prodigy who had a change of heart after seeing her work first hand, Accelerator and major spoilers. I'm talking about major spoilers. It should be pretty obvious who is major spoilers and why if you know the character. They have a very distinctive speech pattern and initially creep Misaka out for obvious reasons. They're also the work the prodigy saw and had a change of heart over.

Also, Accelerator is quite uncreative, at least in his Railgun appearances. He might be more clever in his own spinoff.

[DoctorFaust]

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There's nobody in the Sisters arc called worst. It introduces ITEM, the high school prodigy who had a change of heart after seeing her work first hand, Accelerator and major spoilers. I'm talking about major spoilers. It should be pretty obvious who is major spoilers and why if you know the character. They have a very distinctive speech pattern and initially creep Misaka out for obvious reasons. They're also the work the prodigy saw and had a change of heart over.

Also, Accelerator is quite uncreative, at least in his Railgun appearances. He might be more clever in his own spinoff.

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Misaka wa Misaka has no idea who else it could be if it isn't Last Order or Misaka Worst.

Damn. I was kind of hoping to see him do something with Coulomb forces.

I've really enjoyed the Thundere for the first twelve episodes, the use of Only my Railgun was one of the best uses of an OP I've seen outside of TTGL, and the Saten/Uiharu antics were pretty damn funny. Good show so far, tempted to watch Index once I'm done with it and S.

[Prime32]

@Terra: The characters DoctorFaust is talking about are from the Index series, and don't show up in Railgun (even the manga IIRC).

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Last Order is a child Sister who serves as a control terminal for the Misaka network. Her speech tic is "doubled" from the standard model, says Misaka as Misaka displays it by way of example.
Worst, aka Misaka Worst, is an adult Sister who's been upgraded to level 4 strength; she's only appeared in the novels, so I don't know a lot about her.

Accelerator's spinoff is pretty new, so he hasn't done much in it yet. He is a major character in Index II though.
Long story short: Touma's Imagine Breaker destroys all illusions. Not just magic and esper powers, but things like disassociation and kegare. Accelerator was evil not because he was born that way, but because he'd convinced himself he had to be a monster to survive. His defeat by Touma let him look at himself objectively, free from excuses, and he didn't like what he saw. Accelerator then decided that he had to devote his life to saving people, because it was the only way he could make up for a fraction of what he did to the Sisters. However, due to a life of violence and horribly undeveloped social skills, he tends to come across as pretty damn villainous even when he's trying to help. His interactions with the Sisters are particularly interesting - Accelerator seems extremely disturbed that they don't blame him for the experiment, but can't manage to express his feelings on the matter.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I'm assuming you're either talking about Accelerator or Last Order. Considering they're the reason that I started watching it, I too am looking forward to their appearance.

Sorry

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Last Order appears for like 2 seconds in all of Railgun.

**** Accelerator. He's just a generic brutish, bully who kills people. He's a really generic edgy bishounen guy who we're told is somehow somewhat of an antihero and that we should feel sorry for him, but he's really just a brutish thug without either intelligence or emotional complexity who went way beyond any kind of acceptable behavior for antiheroes.

He's not supposed to be an anti-hero in his first appearance, just a villain. They just put a bit of not quite sympathetic stuff into Railgun to make his latter anti-hero characterisation make more sense. All it really does is make him kind of pathetic though.

[DoctorFaust]

Sorry

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Last Order appears for like 2 seconds in all of Railgun.

Well crap. I'll definitely be watching Index after this, then.