I'm almost through Fate/Zero and I'm loving it. Best anime I've seen in a while. Yeah, there's stuff I didn't understand at first and there's definitely spoilers, but that's a small price to pay.

I've been slowly trying to get through the Fate/Stay Night visual novel, but I'm finding it difficult. The format itself feels like the worst qualities of a novel and an anime combined, and while some of the content is interesting so far, it's too wrapped up in stupid high school anime bullshit, extremely unnecessary and boring details (like I really need to know the minutiae of what you're cooking for dinner, Jesus) and Shiro fucking spilling his spaghetti everywhere whenever he's near a girl. I'm hoping they can make this anime that's airing now more like Fate/Zero somehow.

I've got complaints about the franchise as a whole, mostly with the Servants/Heroic Spirits and how they represent these legendary or historical figures, but, well, I'll just leave it.

 

It takes ages to get into the VN. But once you do, it's worth it.

I enjoyed the first two arcs, but Heaven's Feel really dragged on for me. I didn't have much interest in Sakura either, and that just got icky.

 

Well, you say that, but in the VN it explicitly says the spear sucks up a huge amount of mana when he's about to use it. It's cheap for a Noble Phantasm, but it's still a Noble Phantasm.

 

Episode 1 was kind of boring for me. I've never been a fan of Shirou, and I don't think he can carry an episode on his own. But since Saber, Rin, and Archer have been introduced into his world along with the Holy Grail War, I don't think that will be a problem anymore. Now that all of the set-up is out of the way, we can get to the good stuff.

I was actually kind of expecting Shirou to throw himself in between Lancer and Saber because Saber is a woman and shouldn't be fighting. Man, DEEN and this fandom really made me cynical about this his character.

 

Give it a chance. As if any MC can carry an episode on his own in just 1 episode. It's like reading the 1st chapter of a book and saying the MC is crap.

Problem is, people want the instant gratification of "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" mentality. Whatever happened to the slow growth and progress of a character?

 

I really enjoyed this episode. It's going to be pretty sad next week when we're down to normal length episodes.

 

It's just a visual effect, you shouldn't read that far into it. Personally, I like how much larger than life the Servant battles are being shown to be, with DBZ-lite kinds of destruction just from ordinary exchanges of blows. The effects budget finally has enough to make a living environment and background and boy is it paying off.

The Archer and Gilgamesh fights are literally going to turn my dick into diamonds. Diamond swords.

Subtle props award to Sakura's voice actress for managing to pack an entire back story's level of feeling into the two syllables that compose the word 'Senpai'.

 

Yep, this episode was just as enjoyable as I had hoped.

I wish that all episodes were an hour long.

And I'm glad that while Shirou is shown to be nice, it's not cringe worthy in any factor. The VN was borderline on that front, this seems to be better. If they keep up the quality, I think this will probably turn into my favorite anime.

Oh, and the others are right. There's a lot of character development in this show, it can seem a bit weird at the start, but it only gets better really.

Some shit gets really fucking dark too, not everything is as it looks.

 

I think this is the best way to translate it. In Japanese, it seems like "onii-chan", "oji-san", and other familial terms are used fairly commonly to refer to non-family members.

We may know that Shirou actually is Ilya's (adopted) brother, but to translate it as "brother" at this point would act as a kind of spoiler to anyone actually new to the story.

I would still immensely prefer it to just be left as "onii-chan" in the subs, but it it has to be translated, "mister" is the way to go.

Then again, I'm really only basing this off of what I've observed in other anime. I could have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about.

 

It's not the same as mister though. It's the same in Turkish as well where you can refer to a male who is (slightly) older than you as "abi" say big brother/onii-san and girls who are older than you as "abla" or big sister/onee-san and it has nothing to do with being related. When the age difference is great and you are are informal you can also use aunt (teyze) or uncle (amca). So, if one is even a bit familiar with japanese culture, it wouldn't count as a spoiler, I think very few people would see the big brother in this context as a clue for an eventual relatedness. (people who have seen Fate Zero and/or know better are different, obviously)

There are 50 year olds who refer to 60 year olds as abi at times, although that is naturally dropped when you are closer.

It adds another dimension to the relationship and gives more information what type of person someone is, how they refer to other people. To leave that out is not good.

I do admit though that replacing onii-san with big brother doesn't work as well though, simply because it isn't used like that,l so, keeping the onii-san is probably better.

 

I always figured that was just the unreliable narrator of Shirou, since side materials says:

but again, it's purely pedantic bullshitting on my part, and as said above it's a cool visual effect that shows heroic spirits basically being bullshit powerful. The cause/effect fuckery from a full unleashed Gae Bolg in the new episode was p rad looking for that matter.

About the new episode:
I think it was a pretty weak episode overall. It feels like they purposefully dragged out every scene by restating whatever event had just happened with incredibly awkward dialogue (though some of that could easily be because of the translation, fuck crunchyroll/horriblesubs where my UTW at). Everything that happened in this episode could've fit into a standard sized episode, and it would've fit much better.

I like that they set the foundation for Shirou's character; him mindlessly helping others regardless of personal cost and wanting to be a superhero (which I still think is a better translation than Hero of Justice despite how awful most Westernizations are), traits that are kind of weird for a person in a normal environment which will probably be shown to their full extent in a life or death battle royale. It'll probably be a while before he noticeably separates himself from the typical shounen hero, but it looks like they're not gonna cop out on showing Shirou as the fundamentally warped person he is. I'm glad for that, given it's what makes him one of my favourite characters in anything.

Major spoilers for the entire thing in case anyone is going into this blind:

Spoiler

Do you guys think the references to Archery and the whole deal with the pendants (Archer giving one to Rin saying he picked it up before, and Shirou taking it home simultaneously) was too heavy handed?

 

More entertaining watching it than playing it (though I hesitate to call going through a visual novel "playing"), I'll say that much.

It looked like he used a Command Spell to stop Saber at the end, so I guess that's the difference that leads to this Unlimited Blade Works route.

 

I'm not sure the subbing group should be depending on the audience having even a bit of familiarity with Japanese culture. More than that, anyone relatively new to anime might not even pick up the "onii-chan" at all.

It's hard to remember exactly, but when I first started watching anime I couldn't pick out individual words at all. So if I was watching this show as a newcomer, and I read the subtitles with "brother" or "big brother", I think I would have assumed that it actually was being used in the familial way, meaning that he actually is her big brother.

 

If you hate the VN format, you might prefer this. At least one other DLPer preferred it, I think.

But it would make such a great text tone, Senpai.

 

Nah, I'm good. I turned off the voices and turned up the text speed so it's more bearable now.

 

Makes me sad that there's no decent groups are subbing this.

Was really hoping UTW would pick it up as big finale to their subbing career (it's even their namesake!). I even waited around 4 days for the Prologue before eventually succumbing and just downloading HorribleSubs (which are just CrunchyRoll rips). But looks like Fate Kaleid Prisma Ilya 2wei really was their last series to sub.

All we're left with is HS/CR, Commie and Hatsuyuki. A choice between what sucks the least.

 

I felt this episode was a bit dull as well (at least until Lancer appeared). Watching an episode full of Shirou going to school felt boring especially after the way the ep 0 ended. Still, FSN takes some time to actually get started so I'm not really disappointed.

I didn't like the effects for Gay Bulge though. It felt more like time shenanigans rather than casualty reversal.

 

...Gae Bolg? Or are you trying to be funny?

As for it being slow etc, I get the feeling that they are really trying to stay true to the Visual Novel. I've only played it through once, and im not really a fanatic, but I haven't really seen much different yet.

With that said, what's been covered now is by far the most boring part of the VN. Shit starts getting real pretty soon. We get to properly greet Ilyasviel soon.

 

What pisses me off is that thy were able to do so much in Episode Zero without falling into internal monologues, and then do an about face in Episode One. I don't want to be told Shirou's motivation and history, I want to see them.