Tag Archives: visual novel

Fate

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I guess I should do what the cool kids are doing and break it down by route. I guess it’d be easier that way too, especially now that my plans to go through HF have been pushed back.

So obviously, with so many people talking about Fs/n and so many opinions about it, it was hard to get into this thing and give it a fair shake. We’ve got the whole Fate/stay in the kitchen thing, CG dragons and mana transfer, and the impression that Fate is the worst route and is terrible and is an abortion. I mean, I’d intentionally avoided the anime because I’d heard Bad Things, and so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to suffer through Fate before getting to the really good stuff.

To my surprise, Fate was actually fairly interesting. I’m actually sort of baffled by the GRAAAAGH WORST ROUTE stuff I’d heard. I mean, I guess it’s vacuously true in that it is the least good of the three routes, but I’m not sure why it inspires the sort of impassioned fury and disgust that I’ve seen. Maybe the anime really was that bad?

I’d heard beforehand that Saber was actually King Arthur and I’d expected this to be a random, thoughtless twist on something that we were familiar with. And it turns out that this twist is the thing that we spend pretty much the entire route exploring. The complications that would arise if it turned out our hero was secretly a girl, if you thought about it hard enough, are actually really interesting. And I’m really glad that the implications that arise from this premise are a pretty big part of Saber’s character.

Here, we have a heroic figure who, through her amazing powers, saved her country at the cost of her own life, both metaphorically and literally. And then we have Shirou, who wants nothing more than to have and do everything that Saber had and did. And when he finally has her power at his disposal what does he do with it? Well, nothing, because she’s a girl.

It turns out the two of them are exactly like each other. Both of them desire to save everyone at any cost, even their own lives. Shirou tells Saber to stop doing that because she’s a girl. Saber tells Shirou to stop doing that because he’s a scrub who can’t do anything. Both of them refuse because it’s the only thing they could do. Saber felt indebted to her country after she pulled the sword out of the stone. Shirou felt indebted to everyone after he alone was saved by Kiritsugu. It took the two of them watching each other act in a blaze of self-destructive glory to realize that they were actually the person they were watching.

So, Fate/stay night started off pretty well for me. Well, by the end of the first route at least. Much like Umineko, I found the introductory stuff really tedious to get through. But again, much to my pleasant surprise, when things got rolling, the payoff in the interesting parts was worth it. But I have to wonder just how bad the anime is to cause such loathing for this arc. I can’t really imagine Fs/n without it.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

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I’ll say it in red: Umineko no Naku Koro ni is awesome.

So I haven’t watched or read anything in the past few weeks because I’ve been busy going through Umineko no Naku Koro ni episodes 1 to 4.

I really liked the Higurashi anime, so I was super excited to discover that Umineko was being made into an anime as well. Of course, I’d heard nothing but good about the Umineko sound novel, but I never thought to play them until pretty recently. The reason for this was because I played through act 1 of Katawa Shoujo, which made me want to try out other visual novels. The other reason was that I discovered that ONScripter can be run on a Mac.

To be honest, EP1 started off really slow, having to introduce and set up the massive initial cast and all. Even when things started to get rolling, by the end of EP1, I felt like it was alright, but it was nothing mind-blowing yet. Of course, that’s because EP1 really is a setup for everything that follows.

And the episodes that follow really deliver. As expected, they’re able to develop the characters that we were given from EP1, but each episode really does a lot expand the world and the story. I would liken some of the reveals to be like in Gurren Lagann, when we find out what we’ve seen so far is a small part of a much larger picture.

Working through each episode, you can see more and more of the influences from Higurashi. The brutality and the true nature of the story ramps up and goes far past Higurashi levels very quickly. And even though it’s not a sequel to Higurashi, there are a few familiar faces, although not in the way you’d expect.

I’m pretty glad that I decided to play through these instead of waiting for the anime. Even with the crappy drawings (yeah, they really are) and very little animation, the text and the music are able to deliver some really powerful moments. And because of the sheer amounts of text, it’s probably impossible to adapt without losing a lot.

If you can, you should definitely play it. The anime can work, but it’s a much shakier prospect than the games. And if you do, you’ll be treated to an epic horror/psychological murder-mystery, a grand battle between anti-mystery and anti-fantasy, that has no peer and is unlike anything else.

When the seagulls cry, there are no survivors.

This week’s old animu: ef – a tale of memories

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So I noticed that I’ve been finishing the old animes at about a pace of one per week in addition to whatever I’m watching that’s airing right now, especially since I learned to manage my bandwidth better. I guess that makes it a good excuse to make this a weekly feature, at least until I start 3A and get beat’d by a triumvirate of CS courses. I guess when that happens, I’ll just not-stfu about everything all the shows that I’ve wanted to talk about but missed. There are a lot of those drafts sitting around. Since Clannad, I’ve gone through Kanon and Spice and Wolf. So this week is the fourth since then, which brings us to ef – a tale of memories.

ef is another one of those visual novel adaptations that I’ve tried to avoid but am now getting around to them for lack of anything else to watch. The VN that it’s based on is divided into four different stories and ef goes through two of them. Notice that this season, ef – a tale of melodies is airing, which goes through the other two stories. The entire thing has a very different feel from Key VNs, which at this point, together with School Days which I would prefer not to bring up, are the only points of reference I have to this genre.

Actually, the entire thing isn’t really comparable. Yeah, there’s drama and romance and they try to make you BAWWWW, but that’s about it. The structure of the plot is completely different, focussing on several different stories going on instead of going through several arcs with the main character at the centre of everything. The real striking difference is in the presentation.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, which was done by the same studio, had a really crazy artistic and visual style for a comedy. Just take a look at the OP and ED. Now take that style and add some symbolism, some significance and importance to the plot, and apply it to a show with drama and romance. There are tons of jarring cuts to scenes of seemingly random stuff that grow into something very powerful. Like SZS, the best way to get a feel for the show is by having a look at the OPs and EDs.

And part of the presentation package is music. Let’s be honest, the Key VN anime’s strong points do not include their music, save for the occasional fluke. But in ef, the music fits right in with the crazy visuals. The entire thing is finely tuned and deliberate.

Thematically, ef is a lot heavier than Clannad. Because of the visuals, there’s a lot of symbolism going on. Because of the circumstances of the characters, there’s a lot less focus on them and just being in school or walking around the shopping district. Clannad and Kanon were very similar in that there was a guy that just went around solving the problems that the girls they met had. Eventually, the focus came down to only one girl. Here, we’re able to see how the different themes play out at about the same pace, since we’re focussing on more than one relationship progressing.

Basically, it’s an impressive, fairly thoughtful drama filled with tons of symbolism and imagery in crazy ZETSUBOUSHITA style. I’ll be watching ef – a tale of melodies, but I don’t know if I care about the other two characters’ stories as much. But, I will have to amend my post about this season’s OPs, because ef melodies has an awesome OP, ebullient future, that places second, in between Hakanaku mo Towa no Kanashi and Toki wo Kizamu Uta.