- Location
- Patriarchova
When the QQ mod told us to take this discussion to the appropriate thread, I assumed they meant "on this forum." But I guess this works too.
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Top Level Canon Reviews - relaunched!
- Thread starter Leila Hann
- Start date
- Review
tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
- Location
- The Center of the Universe: Toronto, Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Clearly to counter it, Goku will have to unlock the form of Super God Saiyan Super God Justice Blue Green Red Saiyan.
The Just Saiyan.
That was what I meant yeah. But as you say, this works too. As long as no spoilers are involved.
To be more topical, I do think your reviews are entertaining. You take note of far more than I would from what you watch, sometimes this can seem nitpick-y and sometimes you reach conclusions that are odd to me, but nobody is perfect. Then again, most of the stuff you review that I have seen before is stuff I haven't seen in years so my memory of it and my reactions to it isn't the most accurate.
And therefore I generally don't comment because I'm not re-watching things as you watch it so remembering what's happened yet or not is a bit difficult.
Wow, blast from the past there.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Frankly, I'm still laughing at the whole 'So being an unltranationalist military junta with a dictator for life is 'fascist' now, just because the leader is called 'Fuhrer'?' thing over there.
Next thing you know, people will be taking umbrage at calling El Presidente from Tropico a dictator, lol.
Next thing you know, people will be taking umbrage at calling El Presidente from Tropico a dictator, lol.
E73S
I've updated my journal.
- Location
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fukken what.
- Location
- Albion
- Pronouns
- They/Them
There are quite a few very Right-wing posters on Questionable Questing. Naturally, they do their very best to normalize their beliefs, and ridicule opposition.
The "No politics" rule is enforced in such a way as to allow such nonsense, regrettably.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is your brain on "apolitical"
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
See, apparently Leila gets caught up on checks notes irrelevant minutia, such as the leader's title, so as to make batshit conclusions while ignoring the actual situation.
Or so I hear.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To be more fair then the idea that Amestris is not a facist state deserves, they are unusually racially inclusive.See, apparently Leila gets caught up on checks notes irrelevant minutia, such as the leader's title, so as to make batshit conclusions while ignoring the actual situation.
Or so I hear.
Edit: To be clear I am just working off of what Leila has reviewed so far when I say this.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Unless you're an Ishvallan.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Except for all the racially based genocide.
Turns out, enforcing a "no politics" rules means deciding what is and is not political, which is itself a political statement.
Macros
omnisciently vague councilman
- Location
- Dirac Sea
Well, I'd say that in that regard, Amestris seems more in line with how the Roman Empire could act rather than Nazi Germany. Amestris seems fine with minorities, as long as they completely give up on their cultural identities and embrace the obviously superior Amestrian way of life. And then if you dare resist that, it's time to burn your cities, salt your fields and put most of your population to the sword to teach you what's what.
So yeah, the end result isn't all that different, but the ideas behind it kind of are?
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Well, after 7 years of resistance anyway.
But really, they're not that different.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Yeah. It's noteworthy that they allowed the Ishvalans to live on as a dispossessed ultra-minority in slums and shantytowns after wiping out most of them. Which is more Roman than Nazi, as you said.
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Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works S1E1: Prologue (part one)
- Location
- Patriarchova
This review was commissioned by @Suzu.
The awkwardly titled "Fate/Stay Night" is yet another show I'll be going into blind. All I knew about it until today was that it's an anime that's very popular on SV, which if precedent is anything to go by means that it's going to be terrible. Today, before starting the watch, I learned that it was originally based on some hentai-lite visual novel, which...well, let's just say that it doesn't do much to raise my expectations.
Still, I'll go into this with as open a mind as I can, and will be quite happy to have my initial misgivings proven wrong.
The first episode seems to be a special of sorts, with a length of around forty-five minutes. Might end up splitting this review if there's much to talk about along the way. Well, let's start!
Slow, wistful piano music over an artistically blurred childhood scene. A preteen girl in a gated mansion garden in the company of what I assume are her parents. The man who I assume to be her father pats her on the head, hands her a hardcover book (or maybe it's a briefcase? Something hard and rectangular), and then walks away into a blinding white light that may or may not be metaphorical.
Ah, okay. We get a voiceover from the girl, and yeah, its her father. "Come home soon, Father." I'm guessing, from the music and framing, that this was the last time she saw him. Cut to a late teenaged version of that girl being woken up by her alarm clock, which presumably pulled her out of her dream about the last meeting with her father.
...
Is it just me who finds this tendency in fiction kind of weird? I'm pointing it out now because FMA:B just did this as well a couple episodes ago, so it's been on my mind. Anime is especially fond of this, but I've seen it in books and movies from other countries as well often enough.
Basically, I can't remember a single time that I've reenacted a memory in my dreams. I've had dreams that used or combined elements of real life memories, but I can't recall ever experiencing a 1:1 reliving. Protagonists dwelling on their difficult pasts tend to repeat those pasts at night with some frequency, but is this actually a thing that other people do? Have any of you had dreams like this?
Like I said, it may be that I'm the odd one out here and most (or at least some) people do have dreams like this. So yeah, interested in hearing from you guys about this.
...
Anyway, girl comes downstairs from her bedroom and starts her day. The house looks pretty lavish, so this is probably the same manorial place we saw her in the garden of in her dream/flashback. The art style of this show actually retains just a bit of the ethereal blurriness of that sequence, giving it an oil painting sort of aesthetic. It's a pretty nice look, to be honest. I kind of wish more anime went for this sort of pseudo-impressionistic style. Anyway, she puts on a striking red dress and what looks to be a school bookbag, but then stops at the door before going down into the creepy basement to recover a creepy jeweled amulet.
Interesting. I guess she knows that she's going to have supernatural stuff happening to her at some point, and is keeping this magic jewelry around for when it does. Nice change from the usual for female protagonists in urban fantasy anime, who tend to get blindsided by the weirdness and flap around uselessly for a while until they figure their shit out. Even if this girl DOES end up flapping around uselessly when "it" starts, at least she won't spend the first half an episode in stunned disbelief. We've all seen that enough times already.
The first sign that it is, in fact, starting, is the lack of other people on the street as she walks to school. No cars, no pedestrians, nothing. When she arrives at school and finds the courtyard empty despite it being a weekday morning, she starts having serious misgivings, though she tries to convince herself that everything's fine.
The solitude really is building a tense, oppressive atmosphere, and the beauty of the girl's scenic hometown in its oil panting-ish art style throws it all into much harsher relief.
This solitude finally ends when she sees a somewhat older woman (a teacher or other staff member, I assume) at the vending machines by the school entrance. Said woman (who is named as Mitsuzuri) tells our protagonist (who is named Tohsaka, it seems) that she's nearly an hour early, and asks her if she's okay when she seems confused by this. Tohsaka looks skeptical.
In context, that look says "the thing pretending to be Mitsuzuri is totally about to rip off its human skin and start spitting acid at me, isn't it?"
The clock on the school wall says it's the time Mitsuzuri says it is, but that would mean that every clock in Tohsaka's house - mechanical and computer based alike - would have to have been one hour late. She wonders if her taking the amulet today somehow caused that. Which suggests that she didn't take it on any previous days. Wonder what made her decide to start now in particular?
Anyway, Mitsu isn't actually an adult it turns out, her outfit just makes her look older. She's a classmate, and here early herself in order to get everything ready for her archery team's morning practice session. Mitsu is the captain of this small, but serious, club. Another team member arrives, and greets Tohsaka in a weirdly reverent way. Tohsaka looks uncomfortable and excuses herself, only to be accosted on her way out by That Guy who helps run the club.
She tries to be polite as he intrusively hits on her for what's implied to be the millionth time, but when he starts invading her personal space she loses patience and tells him to fuck off. Cue That Guy screaming at her in outrage, and Tohsaka GTFOing.
More people start showing up and going about a normal schoolday, so it seems that it really is Tohsaka and not the rest of the world that's off. As one might expect from a rich, attractive girl with good fashion sense, Tohsaka seems to be quite a popular student. Even the teachers like her. However, things seem to be slightly off kilter this morning. She notes that everyone's behavior seems slightly off. People who she doesn't particularly know are paying a weird amount of attention to her, moreso than usual. Other student beg for permission to sit with her during lunch, and get nasty behind her back when she brushes them off.
She spends lunchtime alone, in contemplation, in an empty sportsball field. She recounts that the booklike object her father gave her that day was actually a sealed box with a Hellraiser-esque puzzle lock that she only managed to solve very recently. Inside, there was some broken "catalyst" (???) and the amulet. When she picked the amulet up, all the clocks in her house went crazy for a moment.
Um. If touching the amulet messed with the household clocks last time, why would she have not checked after doing it again?
Although...no, wait. She only went back and got the amulet after she was already about to walk out the door. So it must have messed with the clocks/rewound time around her/whatever again on its own. Weird. Wonder why it did that?
She then thinks to herself that she still has no idea how to use the amulet to summon Saber, the most powerful of the servants. And that, according to the Dubious Priest, there are only two Masters left to go. End scene.
I get the impression that I'm only supposed to be watching this after having seen some other Fate/Stay Night series, which would give me some idea of what the hell she's talking about. As it is, while it is still refreshing to have a protagonist who knows her way around the occult underworld from the outset for once, the information is coming out way too fast and with way too little context for me to follow. Which, again, is totally forgivable if I'm meant to already know the setting, but if that ISN'T the case then this is a pretty bad introduction for the audience. As it is, all I can gather is that she knows that her wizard dad left her an amulet that can summon some sort of familiar, and she's going to need to do it by a certain time before some other supernatural thing happens.
Tohsaka returns home late that afternoon to what seems to be an empty mansion. Does this teenager actually live all by herself in that big place? I guess in a family of wizards anything is possible. We did see a mother in the initial dream/flashback though. Is she just not home at the moment? She sees that there's a voice message on the home phone (a fairly old fashioned looking one too. I'm guessing this is set in the eighties or nineties, by the look of the appliances?), and listens to it. A deep male voice reminds her of what she already knows: tomorrow is the deadline by which all of the Servants must be summoned and bound to their masters before the Holy Grail War begins. If Tohsaka really does want to participate, she needs to figure her shit out by then.
I'm guessing that the voice message is from that "Dubious Priest" character she mentioned before (she's not excited or even surprised to hear the voice, so it's probably not her long missing father).
Okay. Still a lot of context-free magibabble, but I'm starting to put the gist of it together. This dubious priest guy is putting together an army of amulet-wearers to fight in this Holy Grail War that's about to start. Her father was presumably the wielder of the Saber amulet himself before passing it on clumsily to her. She mentions that the only other one that hasn't yet been activated is the Archer amulet, which I can only imagine her shooty friend Mitsu is going to claim at some point. As the "servants" bound to the amulets are meant to act as components of some sort of army, they're each associated with a weapon. Something along these lines, at least. No hints yet about who they're going to be fighting against, but I imagine we'll learn that soon enough.
As she listens to the message and grumbles to herself about still not having any idea how to summon Saber (it's not totally clear how much she WANTS to participate in this Grail War either), a glowing mark appears on the back of her hand without her noticing.
I guess something activated in response to hearing or thinking about this, but it's not clear just what. The fact that Tohsaka has a glowy rune on her skin indicates that there's something special about her in particular, which at least explains why she needs to be the one to use Saber instead of giving it to someone else.
She returns to the basement, and pushes some shelves full of occult books out of the way to clear the summoning circle inscribed on the floor. She grumbles that this would be easier if the catalyst in that box from her dad wasn't broken, but that she thinks she can manage even without it. She waits for 2 AM exactly, when her mana is at its daily peak, measures some other more esoteric environmental factors, and steps into the circle to begin her incantation.
Her magical knowledge already extends to more than just theory, it seems! I just hope she made sure that the clock telling her it's 2 AM hasn't been fucked with, considering what happened the last couple of times she played with the amulet. You don't want to summon your familiar without your mana maxed out, after all. Everybody knows that.
She casts the spell, calling the Saber down the forked road from the crown of the seventh kingdom, vowing to use it to fight evil in the Grail war, etc. There's a momentary art shift where everything goes all CGI looking, the music is appropriately mysterious and enchanting, and then there's a gust of wind and a cloud of smoke, followed by a very ominous crash from upstairs. The basement door is stuck, and she needs to kick it in to get through. Upstairs, the living room is totaled, and there's a white haired man in an outfit that shares the amulet's color scheme and crucifix motif reclining across the ruined furniture.
Saber is kind of like a very strong and poorly socialized cat, I guess.
Oh. Apparently she actually did forget that the clocks were scrambled, and tried to summon her familiar without being at max mana. That's a pretty unlikely thing for her to just forget, considering that its been on her mind the whole damned day. :/
After having a momentary freakout in front of Saber, and demonstrating that she doesn't know what she's doing nearly as well as it seemed, he seems reluctant to accept her as his new mistress. He isn't impressed by the mark on her hand when she shows it to him. Instead, he rather smarmily tells her, without any apologies for trashing the living room, that he will fight for her in the Grail War as per the conditions of his summoning, but that he's not going to take any actual orders from her. He'll fight in her name and give her any spoils of battle, but he doesn't want to so much as talk to her again until the conflict is over, and advises her to go hide in the basement or something until the danger is past.
Ouch. Not sure what combination this is of botched summoning, Tohsaka's undignified little freakout, or her just being too young and inexperienced, but Saber's slicing her a new one. Granted, this could also be some sort of a character test. Act unruly, see how she responds, judge her actual worthiness as a Mistress based on that response, etc.
Well, if this is a test, I'd say she passes it. Rebuking him angrily, she raises her marked hand and shouts another spell, along with a command to obey all of her orders without question as a Servant is meant to. As she does this, one of the three markings making up the symbol on her hand fades to a duller color, and Saber - after recoiling from the incantation - expresses disbelief that she would use one of her Command Seals on such a broad order.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, the rune on her hand lets her place irresistible geasa on her Servant, with each of the three parts of the symbol being used up permanently to give her one such command. If so, using one of those commands up front to compel your Servant to obey any future orders you give it seems like a neccessity in this business, unless the Servant is cooperative from the beginning.
I'm not sure who to side with in this conflict of wills. On one hand, Saber arrived in a cloud of wanton property damage, and is refusing to do what's implied to be his divinely appointed job. On the other...Tohsaka just magically enslaved a sapient being into a state of abject servitude, and we don't know if the stakes of this Grail War are sufficient to justify that (if anything, they're implied to not be. There aren't a bunch of other wizards banging on her door and urging her to join them right now or else the world risks destruction, etc). So, yeah. This is pretty uncomfortable stuff for our protagonist to be doing.
They go upstairs to a room that isn't destroyed, and talk things over. Saber tells her that the more general and open-ended a Command Seal command is worded, the weaker the compulsion will be. There's never been a human in all of history who had enough mana to essentially wish for infinite wishes like she just tried to. However, her mana is still unusually abundant, so while he isn't bound to obey her orders to the letter like she commanded, he also isn't completely unaffected as he'd be if an average novice sorcerer tried that. He is now forced to take her orders into strong consideration, and will be generally inclined to follow them unless he's really sure that it's a bad idea. He also apologizes for his previous behavior, and says that while he mostly acted the way he did in order to protect what he thought was a helpless child in over her head from danger, he still shouldn't have been so rude about it. Now that he's seen how powerful she actually is, he has no reason to doubt her capability.
Of course, what makes this interesting to me is the question of whether he actually was impressed by her display of mana and changed his view of her accordingly, or if her Seal of Command actually changed who and what he is to turn him into a being that is inclined to follow her instructions. If the latter, then the ethical implications are...well...complicated. Really complicated.
...
If rather than forcing the Servant to do something against its will, the Seal changes the Servant's personal imperatives to make them earnestly want to do it, I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. I suppose it depends on what "Servants" actually are, and what they do (if anything) when not being summoned by wizards. If they're self-interested beings with lives of their own, then this is a lot worse than just forcing them to obey. It's outright mind rape. On the other hand, if their whole identity is built on the fundamental imperative of "fight for your summoner in the Grail War(s)," then customizing your Servant's personality and desires to better serve that imperative while in your employ might not be nearly as horrific for them as it would be for a human.
It makes me think of some articles I've read on AI theory. Fitting, since these "servants" are almost certainly a kind of artificial intelligence, even if their creator was a god or a demon or something rather than humans. Would it be wrong to reprogram a sentient software entity? Notably, Saber didn't seem to be horrified or frightened when she started using her Command Seal. He was alarmed, but seemingly more for her sake than his own (he said something to the effect of "are you seriously reckless enough to use a Command Seal for something that uselessly open ended?" Granted, that may have just been an attempt at reverse psychology). So, yeah? Maybe this is just normal and healthy for his kind?
Or maybe not. These aren't simple questions to answer in the absence of more information about what these creatures actually are and how they work under the hood.
...
He says that he'll still ignore commands that he's sure are bad ones, but he'll always explain why he thinks so and try to counsel her toward better solutions. Also, it turns out that he's not actually Saber. He's Archer. This disappoints her, and he gets offended that this disappoints her, which leads them to sort of grudgingly accept each other's rudeness on the condition that they don't let each other down in the future. She also jokes about making him let her apologize for throwing shade a moment ago, and he seems to find this genuinely funny and playfully endearing. Which I suppose is further evidence for the interpretation that the Command Seals do change the Servant's personality, and that the Servants in general are cool with this, though still not at all conclusive.
This could be sweet, or awful, depending again on what Servants actually are and how they actually think.
As they head back downstairs, she asks him which "heroic spirit" he is. Huh. Apparently there's more to him than just "Archer." Are there multiple Archers, then? Or, is "Archer" a role that any number of spirits can be summoned to play? He responds by saying that he doesn't know. Due to her imperfect summoning, he's not able to access all of his memories. Which is a problem, since without knowing who he is and what he can do she won't be able to strategize very effectively, but he assures her that given her abundant mana, he must be in the upper tier. Presumably, her botched summoning was also why he appeared in the wrong room.
Speaking of which, her first order is for him to clean up the damned mess he made.
He's grudging, but the fact that he doesn't refuse means that he doesn't consider it a terrible idea.
Looks like this post is over SV's image limit. Just a moment.
The awkwardly titled "Fate/Stay Night" is yet another show I'll be going into blind. All I knew about it until today was that it's an anime that's very popular on SV, which if precedent is anything to go by means that it's going to be terrible. Today, before starting the watch, I learned that it was originally based on some hentai-lite visual novel, which...well, let's just say that it doesn't do much to raise my expectations.
Still, I'll go into this with as open a mind as I can, and will be quite happy to have my initial misgivings proven wrong.
The first episode seems to be a special of sorts, with a length of around forty-five minutes. Might end up splitting this review if there's much to talk about along the way. Well, let's start!
Slow, wistful piano music over an artistically blurred childhood scene. A preteen girl in a gated mansion garden in the company of what I assume are her parents. The man who I assume to be her father pats her on the head, hands her a hardcover book (or maybe it's a briefcase? Something hard and rectangular), and then walks away into a blinding white light that may or may not be metaphorical.
Ah, okay. We get a voiceover from the girl, and yeah, its her father. "Come home soon, Father." I'm guessing, from the music and framing, that this was the last time she saw him. Cut to a late teenaged version of that girl being woken up by her alarm clock, which presumably pulled her out of her dream about the last meeting with her father.
...
Is it just me who finds this tendency in fiction kind of weird? I'm pointing it out now because FMA:B just did this as well a couple episodes ago, so it's been on my mind. Anime is especially fond of this, but I've seen it in books and movies from other countries as well often enough.
Basically, I can't remember a single time that I've reenacted a memory in my dreams. I've had dreams that used or combined elements of real life memories, but I can't recall ever experiencing a 1:1 reliving. Protagonists dwelling on their difficult pasts tend to repeat those pasts at night with some frequency, but is this actually a thing that other people do? Have any of you had dreams like this?
Like I said, it may be that I'm the odd one out here and most (or at least some) people do have dreams like this. So yeah, interested in hearing from you guys about this.
...
Anyway, girl comes downstairs from her bedroom and starts her day. The house looks pretty lavish, so this is probably the same manorial place we saw her in the garden of in her dream/flashback. The art style of this show actually retains just a bit of the ethereal blurriness of that sequence, giving it an oil painting sort of aesthetic. It's a pretty nice look, to be honest. I kind of wish more anime went for this sort of pseudo-impressionistic style. Anyway, she puts on a striking red dress and what looks to be a school bookbag, but then stops at the door before going down into the creepy basement to recover a creepy jeweled amulet.
Interesting. I guess she knows that she's going to have supernatural stuff happening to her at some point, and is keeping this magic jewelry around for when it does. Nice change from the usual for female protagonists in urban fantasy anime, who tend to get blindsided by the weirdness and flap around uselessly for a while until they figure their shit out. Even if this girl DOES end up flapping around uselessly when "it" starts, at least she won't spend the first half an episode in stunned disbelief. We've all seen that enough times already.
The first sign that it is, in fact, starting, is the lack of other people on the street as she walks to school. No cars, no pedestrians, nothing. When she arrives at school and finds the courtyard empty despite it being a weekday morning, she starts having serious misgivings, though she tries to convince herself that everything's fine.
The solitude really is building a tense, oppressive atmosphere, and the beauty of the girl's scenic hometown in its oil panting-ish art style throws it all into much harsher relief.
This solitude finally ends when she sees a somewhat older woman (a teacher or other staff member, I assume) at the vending machines by the school entrance. Said woman (who is named as Mitsuzuri) tells our protagonist (who is named Tohsaka, it seems) that she's nearly an hour early, and asks her if she's okay when she seems confused by this. Tohsaka looks skeptical.
In context, that look says "the thing pretending to be Mitsuzuri is totally about to rip off its human skin and start spitting acid at me, isn't it?"
The clock on the school wall says it's the time Mitsuzuri says it is, but that would mean that every clock in Tohsaka's house - mechanical and computer based alike - would have to have been one hour late. She wonders if her taking the amulet today somehow caused that. Which suggests that she didn't take it on any previous days. Wonder what made her decide to start now in particular?
Anyway, Mitsu isn't actually an adult it turns out, her outfit just makes her look older. She's a classmate, and here early herself in order to get everything ready for her archery team's morning practice session. Mitsu is the captain of this small, but serious, club. Another team member arrives, and greets Tohsaka in a weirdly reverent way. Tohsaka looks uncomfortable and excuses herself, only to be accosted on her way out by That Guy who helps run the club.
More people start showing up and going about a normal schoolday, so it seems that it really is Tohsaka and not the rest of the world that's off. As one might expect from a rich, attractive girl with good fashion sense, Tohsaka seems to be quite a popular student. Even the teachers like her. However, things seem to be slightly off kilter this morning. She notes that everyone's behavior seems slightly off. People who she doesn't particularly know are paying a weird amount of attention to her, moreso than usual. Other student beg for permission to sit with her during lunch, and get nasty behind her back when she brushes them off.
She spends lunchtime alone, in contemplation, in an empty sportsball field. She recounts that the booklike object her father gave her that day was actually a sealed box with a Hellraiser-esque puzzle lock that she only managed to solve very recently. Inside, there was some broken "catalyst" (???) and the amulet. When she picked the amulet up, all the clocks in her house went crazy for a moment.
Um. If touching the amulet messed with the household clocks last time, why would she have not checked after doing it again?
Although...no, wait. She only went back and got the amulet after she was already about to walk out the door. So it must have messed with the clocks/rewound time around her/whatever again on its own. Weird. Wonder why it did that?
She then thinks to herself that she still has no idea how to use the amulet to summon Saber, the most powerful of the servants. And that, according to the Dubious Priest, there are only two Masters left to go. End scene.
I get the impression that I'm only supposed to be watching this after having seen some other Fate/Stay Night series, which would give me some idea of what the hell she's talking about. As it is, while it is still refreshing to have a protagonist who knows her way around the occult underworld from the outset for once, the information is coming out way too fast and with way too little context for me to follow. Which, again, is totally forgivable if I'm meant to already know the setting, but if that ISN'T the case then this is a pretty bad introduction for the audience. As it is, all I can gather is that she knows that her wizard dad left her an amulet that can summon some sort of familiar, and she's going to need to do it by a certain time before some other supernatural thing happens.
Tohsaka returns home late that afternoon to what seems to be an empty mansion. Does this teenager actually live all by herself in that big place? I guess in a family of wizards anything is possible. We did see a mother in the initial dream/flashback though. Is she just not home at the moment? She sees that there's a voice message on the home phone (a fairly old fashioned looking one too. I'm guessing this is set in the eighties or nineties, by the look of the appliances?), and listens to it. A deep male voice reminds her of what she already knows: tomorrow is the deadline by which all of the Servants must be summoned and bound to their masters before the Holy Grail War begins. If Tohsaka really does want to participate, she needs to figure her shit out by then.
I'm guessing that the voice message is from that "Dubious Priest" character she mentioned before (she's not excited or even surprised to hear the voice, so it's probably not her long missing father).
Okay. Still a lot of context-free magibabble, but I'm starting to put the gist of it together. This dubious priest guy is putting together an army of amulet-wearers to fight in this Holy Grail War that's about to start. Her father was presumably the wielder of the Saber amulet himself before passing it on clumsily to her. She mentions that the only other one that hasn't yet been activated is the Archer amulet, which I can only imagine her shooty friend Mitsu is going to claim at some point. As the "servants" bound to the amulets are meant to act as components of some sort of army, they're each associated with a weapon. Something along these lines, at least. No hints yet about who they're going to be fighting against, but I imagine we'll learn that soon enough.
As she listens to the message and grumbles to herself about still not having any idea how to summon Saber (it's not totally clear how much she WANTS to participate in this Grail War either), a glowing mark appears on the back of her hand without her noticing.
She returns to the basement, and pushes some shelves full of occult books out of the way to clear the summoning circle inscribed on the floor. She grumbles that this would be easier if the catalyst in that box from her dad wasn't broken, but that she thinks she can manage even without it. She waits for 2 AM exactly, when her mana is at its daily peak, measures some other more esoteric environmental factors, and steps into the circle to begin her incantation.
She casts the spell, calling the Saber down the forked road from the crown of the seventh kingdom, vowing to use it to fight evil in the Grail war, etc. There's a momentary art shift where everything goes all CGI looking, the music is appropriately mysterious and enchanting, and then there's a gust of wind and a cloud of smoke, followed by a very ominous crash from upstairs. The basement door is stuck, and she needs to kick it in to get through. Upstairs, the living room is totaled, and there's a white haired man in an outfit that shares the amulet's color scheme and crucifix motif reclining across the ruined furniture.
Saber is kind of like a very strong and poorly socialized cat, I guess.
Oh. Apparently she actually did forget that the clocks were scrambled, and tried to summon her familiar without being at max mana. That's a pretty unlikely thing for her to just forget, considering that its been on her mind the whole damned day. :/
After having a momentary freakout in front of Saber, and demonstrating that she doesn't know what she's doing nearly as well as it seemed, he seems reluctant to accept her as his new mistress. He isn't impressed by the mark on her hand when she shows it to him. Instead, he rather smarmily tells her, without any apologies for trashing the living room, that he will fight for her in the Grail War as per the conditions of his summoning, but that he's not going to take any actual orders from her. He'll fight in her name and give her any spoils of battle, but he doesn't want to so much as talk to her again until the conflict is over, and advises her to go hide in the basement or something until the danger is past.
Ouch. Not sure what combination this is of botched summoning, Tohsaka's undignified little freakout, or her just being too young and inexperienced, but Saber's slicing her a new one. Granted, this could also be some sort of a character test. Act unruly, see how she responds, judge her actual worthiness as a Mistress based on that response, etc.
Well, if this is a test, I'd say she passes it. Rebuking him angrily, she raises her marked hand and shouts another spell, along with a command to obey all of her orders without question as a Servant is meant to. As she does this, one of the three markings making up the symbol on her hand fades to a duller color, and Saber - after recoiling from the incantation - expresses disbelief that she would use one of her Command Seals on such a broad order.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, the rune on her hand lets her place irresistible geasa on her Servant, with each of the three parts of the symbol being used up permanently to give her one such command. If so, using one of those commands up front to compel your Servant to obey any future orders you give it seems like a neccessity in this business, unless the Servant is cooperative from the beginning.
I'm not sure who to side with in this conflict of wills. On one hand, Saber arrived in a cloud of wanton property damage, and is refusing to do what's implied to be his divinely appointed job. On the other...Tohsaka just magically enslaved a sapient being into a state of abject servitude, and we don't know if the stakes of this Grail War are sufficient to justify that (if anything, they're implied to not be. There aren't a bunch of other wizards banging on her door and urging her to join them right now or else the world risks destruction, etc). So, yeah. This is pretty uncomfortable stuff for our protagonist to be doing.
They go upstairs to a room that isn't destroyed, and talk things over. Saber tells her that the more general and open-ended a Command Seal command is worded, the weaker the compulsion will be. There's never been a human in all of history who had enough mana to essentially wish for infinite wishes like she just tried to. However, her mana is still unusually abundant, so while he isn't bound to obey her orders to the letter like she commanded, he also isn't completely unaffected as he'd be if an average novice sorcerer tried that. He is now forced to take her orders into strong consideration, and will be generally inclined to follow them unless he's really sure that it's a bad idea. He also apologizes for his previous behavior, and says that while he mostly acted the way he did in order to protect what he thought was a helpless child in over her head from danger, he still shouldn't have been so rude about it. Now that he's seen how powerful she actually is, he has no reason to doubt her capability.
...
If rather than forcing the Servant to do something against its will, the Seal changes the Servant's personal imperatives to make them earnestly want to do it, I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. I suppose it depends on what "Servants" actually are, and what they do (if anything) when not being summoned by wizards. If they're self-interested beings with lives of their own, then this is a lot worse than just forcing them to obey. It's outright mind rape. On the other hand, if their whole identity is built on the fundamental imperative of "fight for your summoner in the Grail War(s)," then customizing your Servant's personality and desires to better serve that imperative while in your employ might not be nearly as horrific for them as it would be for a human.
It makes me think of some articles I've read on AI theory. Fitting, since these "servants" are almost certainly a kind of artificial intelligence, even if their creator was a god or a demon or something rather than humans. Would it be wrong to reprogram a sentient software entity? Notably, Saber didn't seem to be horrified or frightened when she started using her Command Seal. He was alarmed, but seemingly more for her sake than his own (he said something to the effect of "are you seriously reckless enough to use a Command Seal for something that uselessly open ended?" Granted, that may have just been an attempt at reverse psychology). So, yeah? Maybe this is just normal and healthy for his kind?
Or maybe not. These aren't simple questions to answer in the absence of more information about what these creatures actually are and how they work under the hood.
...
He says that he'll still ignore commands that he's sure are bad ones, but he'll always explain why he thinks so and try to counsel her toward better solutions. Also, it turns out that he's not actually Saber. He's Archer. This disappoints her, and he gets offended that this disappoints her, which leads them to sort of grudgingly accept each other's rudeness on the condition that they don't let each other down in the future. She also jokes about making him let her apologize for throwing shade a moment ago, and he seems to find this genuinely funny and playfully endearing. Which I suppose is further evidence for the interpretation that the Command Seals do change the Servant's personality, and that the Servants in general are cool with this, though still not at all conclusive.
This could be sweet, or awful, depending again on what Servants actually are and how they actually think.
As they head back downstairs, she asks him which "heroic spirit" he is. Huh. Apparently there's more to him than just "Archer." Are there multiple Archers, then? Or, is "Archer" a role that any number of spirits can be summoned to play? He responds by saying that he doesn't know. Due to her imperfect summoning, he's not able to access all of his memories. Which is a problem, since without knowing who he is and what he can do she won't be able to strategize very effectively, but he assures her that given her abundant mana, he must be in the upper tier. Presumably, her botched summoning was also why he appeared in the wrong room.
Speaking of which, her first order is for him to clean up the damned mess he made.
Looks like this post is over SV's image limit. Just a moment.
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Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works S1E1: Prologue (part two)
- Location
- Patriarchova
The next morning, she wakes up and sees that she's so late that she might as well just skip school today. I'm going to be pretty pissed off if it turns out that she forgot about the messed up clocks AGAIN despite it having already burned her pretty severely the night before. She recounts last night's successes and failures, and heads downstairs to find that Archer proooobably didn't need that broom and dustpan to clean the living room.
If you can use magic to stick the pieces of broken furniture back together, you can also use it to clean up the leftover dust and splinters.
Archer himself comes in a moment later, bearing breakfast without having even been asked and calling her a lazy slob for waking up so late (d'awwwwww). If it actually is that late, then I suppose it isn't just the clocks making her think she overslept. Summoning demons at 1 AM will do that to you, I guess. She offers to show him around the city before the hostilities break out tomorrow. He tells her that she's forgotten one of the most important parts of establishing a summoner/ee relationship, and refers to her as "girl." She gets pissed off once again at him constantly referring to her like that, but then realizes that the thing she's forgotten to do is tell him her damned name. The full name is Rin Tohsaka. Archer says he'll call her Rin from now on, and I think I'll be doing the same. Easier to type, as well as to remember.
Cue montage of her walking around town talking to the air, while dogs bark at the unseen presence that mystifies and scares them. I guess only other stand users can see Archer. Either that, or Rin is insane and has been hallucinating him this whole time. Probably the former.
During a longer scene in which he's visible to the audience, we learn that the Archers are a class or type of Grail spirits, with Archie just being one of that group's more powerful members. Okay, that answers my earlier question. One trait that all Archers have (at least while manifested in the mortal world) is phenomenal eyesight. Archie demonstrates this by pointing out individual tiles on a bridge halfway across the city during the evening, putting his vision at least on par with that of most birds of prey and quite probably superior. Presumably, Archers also have superhuman hand-eye coordination that lets them use that eyesight to make accurate bow shots.
While discussing Archie's abilities, Rin spots That Guy stalking her from a sidewalk under the building whose roof they're on. Upon seeing her reaction to him, Archie asks if this is an enemy she needs him to deal with. She sighs and tells him that no, he's just That Guy.
Archie then asks her if she was trained to be a Mistress from a young age, and she answers that that is indeed the case. The Tohsakas are an old sorcerer family, and winning the Holy Grail has been an ambition of theirs for some generations. I wonder what this grail war (or grail wars, plural, as it increasingly seems like) are all about. We know there are factions in it rather than it being a free for all competition, going by the Dubious Priest's role in the story. And we know that there's more at stake than just which wizard family wins this century's prize for dickwaving purposes, considering all the vows to fight against evil that the Archie summoning ritual involved.
Ah, here we go! This show has a knack for answering my questions juuuuust as the lack of an explanation is starting to get on my nerves. Apparently, the Holy Grail can grant one wish to whoever wins it during each of these wars. Doesn't explain how these factions like the team the Dubious Priest is putting together are supposed to work, though. How do they decide who on the winning team should get the wish? Hopefully we'll get an explanation for that detail soon. Archie is somewhat dismayed to learn that Rin doesn't know what to wish for. She's mostly in this for the sake of achieving her family's longtime ambition of winning a Grail War. And I suppose to make sure that the wish doesn't go to anyone who'd use it for ill, given the whole spiel about conjuring her Servant to fight evil (though she might have been lying about that part just to make sure the spell worked).
I wonder. Maybe there are actually entire squads of wizards who don't want the wish for themselves, but just gang up and stop anyone notoriously awful from winning.
Archie says that he approves of her motive. I'm not sure if that's just because she reprogrammed him to be more approving of her in general, or if he was like that before (in the latter case, he's probably in the "let's just make sure someone evil doesn't get it" camp himself, given his earlier expressed sentiment of wanting to protect the helpless). I guess he could also be lying.
On the way home from Archie's all-day sightseeing tour, Rin notices a couple more of her classmates walking around, and hides from them since she's planning to pretend she was sick tomorrow. The camera focuses on them a little too long for that to be all though, so I'm guessing these two will tie into the story in a much larger capacity.
The next day, Rin gets a call from the Priest telling her to check in, and she blows him off. So much for factions then, I guess. On the way to school, Archie asks her if she's sure she should go to school today, as such a public place would be vulnerable to attack. She counters that being in public in front of witnesses would make an attack more difficult rather than easier. Furthermore, there's only one other wizard family in this city, and their power has waned in recent centuries to the point that she doubts any of them have enough mana for a summoning. Apparently, summoning one of these spirits is a prerequisite to winning the Grail. When she gets to her school though, she and Archie both detect a "bound field" encompassing the complex. Not sure what that means, but according to them it's something that only a wizard actively using magic can create. And, if the field is obvious enough for them to detect it without even trying to, its a sign that the wizard is either very aggressive and confident and not bothering to be stealthy, or just inept and not able to.
Oh look, and here comes Sakura the obsequious junior archery girl, who also happens to be one of the people she saw out and about last night. Come to think of it, she was in the company of a weird tall kid with an uncanny demeanor who I don't think we saw before. Maybe that was actually her own stand?
Sakura drops some papers, and Rin helps her pick them up.
As she does so, the door behind them closes on its own, as an invisible entity leaves the room.
Jump ahead to that evening. Rin has spent the day running around the school studying the "bounded field," which seems to be supported by a number of blood red glyphs painted on the walls and floors at key locations. She doesn't recognize this specific spell, but she's able to infer that when a certain catalytic glyph is activated, the field will liquify any human tissues within it, killing everyone at the school in a heartbeat. Yeah, looks like that other mage family is a bit stronger and more ruthless than she thought. Or else there's a newcomer who hasn't introduced themselves. Archie suspects that the spell is meant to feed the souls of all those sacrificed to a Servant, giving it a very strong - though temporary - boost in power to supplement its own and its Master's combined mana. When Rin is horrified by this, Archie assures her that he himself would never stoop to such tactics...but that whoever IS doing so seems to be setting it up very efficiently, and will be very difficult to combat if the sacrifice succeeds.
Rin starts to scratch out one of the glyphs, but is hailed by a newcomer wearing an outfit vaguely similar to Archie's and wielding a spear. He isn't the weird guy that we saw Sakura with the night before, so whoever Spear's master is I guess it isn't her.
This new Spear fellow (I'll call him Brittany) asks her if she can see him. And when she answers in the affirmative and asks if these glyphs are his doing, he assures her that, no, they aren't. They're his Master's work, he's just the beneficiary. Oh, okay, no problem then, we can totes be friends. Roll initiative, Brittany goes first.
Brittany shoots down and chases her, swinging and stabbing all the while. Fortunately, Rin seems to be quite adept at evading fiery demonic spear blades. Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?
As she evades him, Rin realizes that Archie will be at a disadvantage against an agile melee combatant in an enclosed space like this sportsball field, so she casts a Jump spell on herself and leaps over the fence and off of the school rooftop that it's apparently built on.
Also, because this is an anime, the magic words are German. What IS it with German being the language of magic, in anime?
Archie catches her at the bottom, and after a short chase they're confronted again by Brittany. He recognizes Archie as an Archer, and is puzzled by one of his kind working for an apparent lone operator like Rin. Archers are meant to be part of a combined arms force, and are less adept at single combat. So yeah, I guess Rin really should have joined that team after all. Brittany proves himself honorable, despite his ruthlessness (which may be imposed by his own Master, of course. Who knows) and lets Archie draw his bow and try to take a shot before he attacks.
Archie surprises Brittany, and Rin, by instead drawing a sword. Huh. Is he actually a Saber after all?
Cue stand battle. It's too fast to really follow, but that's a credit to the show in this case. Rather than merely seeming superhuman in the usual anime fighty way, they come across as uncanny, alien, unreal. Their speed and flexibility looks WRONG in a way that it doesn't usually in this sort of show, and it's almost certainly intentional. They seem to be evenly matched, parrying each other's blows with enough force to damage the pavement underfoot. Brittany disarm Archie many times, but he seems able to resummon his swords as fast as they're dropped or broken (an ability that Brittany seems to be unaware of, and surprised by. It's not a universal Servant thing then). Surprisingly, Brittany also repeatedly comments that Archie really DOES seem to be an Archer using his backup melee weapons, rather than a secret Saber or whatever. Why is he fighting like this, I don't know. Maybe it's just more effective in single combat, as Brittany hinted at earlier.
I'm curious about one thing, though. Why the hell did Archer wait until they'd fled the sportsball field to attack? Rin's stated reason for the escape was because close quarters combatants have the advantage in enclosed spaces. But...if Archie was just going to engage him hand to hand anyway, why didn't he tell her that? And, why did he let Brittany chase her around the court trying to stab her for a while without interfering, if he's perfectly capable of fighting with swords? Did she leave him at ground level while she went up onto the roof, for some reason, preventing him from reaching them in time until she jumped? Why would they have split up when there's a (likely hostile) rival wizard around?
Anyway.
During a break in the battle, Brittany asks who the heck Archie is, he's never heard of an Archer who dual wields short swords with such skill. He also asks him which "land" he's the heroic spirit of, which I suppose I'm either meant to already know about or will be expanded on later. Archie can't answer, of course, but he recognizes Brittany himself. There's only one Lancer out there who has that combination of speed and aggression. He doesn't name him, but apparently Brittany is somewhat famous around the spirit world.
Apparently, this is like old World of Darkness where letting too many people know about magic can cause reality to explode or something. At least, I can only assume as much, because Rin tells us that the the first rule of being a wizard is that if a muggle sees you using magic, you have to drop everything you're doing and murder them immediately. Rin never liked that rule, so she was always extra careful to never use magic where anyone could be watching.
Well then.
Rin and Archie race after the fleeing kid to stop Brittany from First Rule Of Murder Wizard Clubbing him, but they're too slow. By the time they catch up, Brittany has already done his work, and his Master has fled the crime scene presumably having expected Rin to escape in the meantime.
I don't thiiiiink it's That Guy? The hairstyle is the same, but the color is different, and his shoes and uniform are also not the same. Maybe? IDK.
Rin leans over him, apologizing frantically under her breath for getting him killed. Don't be so hard on yourself, Rin, he was going to get liquified and have his soul fed to a demon if you didn't intervene here. It turns out he's still breathing, though! Brittany's Master - I'll call them Jive Records for now - really must have been in a rush to move away after that and take their Servant with them, if they didn't even check to confirm the kill. Also, we still don't get to see the victim's face, but apparently he's the brother of someone Rin knows and whose face she'll be ashamed to look her in after this. Rin calls an ambulance, and leaves her amulet on the school floor behind her as she beats it.
Flash ahead to Rin back at her house. Still no sign of her mother, or anyone else living in that mansion with her. Is this a Mami Tamoe type deal, where she's using magic to mindfuck the tax agency and social services into ignoring her living situation? Starting to get that impression. She's moping on the couch about how she got a civilian put in critical condition. Archie reappears, amulet in hand, and tells her not to lose it again. She comments that its empty of mana. He tells her that she's the only one who can use it anyway. Not sure what the significance of either of those facts is, in this context.
However, they then realize that it won't take their enemy much time at all to realize that the witness survived, and will likely head to the hospital to finish him off. Desperate for this incident to have not been for nothing, Rin and Archie head to the hospital, top speed. As they approach, however, Archie says that there's something wrong: he detects TWO other Servants inbound, not just one. A moment later, this blonde swordswoman type attacks them.
Rin recognizes this new Servant as a Sabre, and quite possibly the very same one she meant to summon herself. End episode.
That was way better than I expected. On pretty much every front.
It's one of the weirdest shows I think I've seen lately, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It takes its bizarre premises seriously, and at least so far seems to be doing a good job at seeing them through to their logical conclusions. There are some genre conceits that grate on me (WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN ANIME HAVE TO BE ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL SERIOUSLY WHY?), and there were some sequences of events that felt highly questionable (Rin forgetting about the clocks repeatedly, the flow of the action in the sportsball field scene, etc). But, overall? I liked it. It did more things right than wrong, and some of the things it did right are very hard to find in anime.
Take our female lead, for instance. Rin isn't necessarily a likable protagonist. I'd go so far as to call her an antihero, although toward the end of the episode she started showing a heroic side as well. But god damn, it is so fucking rare to find a well written female protagonist in this genre. And it's not just that her writing is consistent and convincing, rare moments of uncharacteristic stupidity aside. She's unironically a strong female character. She has an agenda of her own that she's actively working toward, and those actions propel the story. Her father was a major influence on her choosing this path, but she isn't doing it just for him. Her relationship with Archie, morally dubious though it is (okay, EVERYTHING about magic in this setting is morally dubious if not outright evil), has push and pull between them, with strong personalities that conflict and cooperate at the appropriate times. And, as the aloof scion of an ancient sorcerer clan practicing her craft alone and in secret in modern society, she's an interesting character even if she isn't a likable one. Archie's paladin-ness seems like a necessarily foil to Rin in order to keep the investment up, and he hits the balance pretty well. He's alien enough that you can't be sure how well you actually know him, but for the time being he's a good balance to Rin's moral myopia.
Then there's the worldbuilding. I wouldn't call it great, or even necessarily good. But it does a good enough job of exploring and thinking to the stuff that the story calls attention to that...well, it sort of shows how low my expectations for fighty anime are when that's all it takes to impress me, but there we are. There were many points throughout the episode that I went "wait, what? how does that even...?" and then was pleasantly surprised when the show later actually explained how that even. That goes a long way with me. And, at the very least, it knows how inane its own premises are, and has the characters take them seriously without fully expecting us to take them seriously.
Also, even by anime standards the art is gorgeous.
So yeah, based on this pilot I'm giving Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works a "recommended" for any fans of shonen and/or urban fantasy. It's not amazing, but it's good enough to make me eat my opening words.
That said, one of my patrons showed me a clip from the original VN, which revealed why I might have heard unpromising things about this series. The studio that adapted this must have had some real miracle workers on staff, because um:
This is bad graphics Rin explaining to your forgettable male PC why he needs to fuck his stand. So, um. Yeah.
If you can use magic to stick the pieces of broken furniture back together, you can also use it to clean up the leftover dust and splinters.
Archer himself comes in a moment later, bearing breakfast without having even been asked and calling her a lazy slob for waking up so late (d'awwwwww). If it actually is that late, then I suppose it isn't just the clocks making her think she overslept. Summoning demons at 1 AM will do that to you, I guess. She offers to show him around the city before the hostilities break out tomorrow. He tells her that she's forgotten one of the most important parts of establishing a summoner/ee relationship, and refers to her as "girl." She gets pissed off once again at him constantly referring to her like that, but then realizes that the thing she's forgotten to do is tell him her damned name. The full name is Rin Tohsaka. Archer says he'll call her Rin from now on, and I think I'll be doing the same. Easier to type, as well as to remember.
Cue montage of her walking around town talking to the air, while dogs bark at the unseen presence that mystifies and scares them. I guess only other stand users can see Archer. Either that, or Rin is insane and has been hallucinating him this whole time. Probably the former.
While discussing Archie's abilities, Rin spots That Guy stalking her from a sidewalk under the building whose roof they're on. Upon seeing her reaction to him, Archie asks if this is an enemy she needs him to deal with. She sighs and tells him that no, he's just That Guy.
Archie then asks her if she was trained to be a Mistress from a young age, and she answers that that is indeed the case. The Tohsakas are an old sorcerer family, and winning the Holy Grail has been an ambition of theirs for some generations. I wonder what this grail war (or grail wars, plural, as it increasingly seems like) are all about. We know there are factions in it rather than it being a free for all competition, going by the Dubious Priest's role in the story. And we know that there's more at stake than just which wizard family wins this century's prize for dickwaving purposes, considering all the vows to fight against evil that the Archie summoning ritual involved.
Ah, here we go! This show has a knack for answering my questions juuuuust as the lack of an explanation is starting to get on my nerves. Apparently, the Holy Grail can grant one wish to whoever wins it during each of these wars. Doesn't explain how these factions like the team the Dubious Priest is putting together are supposed to work, though. How do they decide who on the winning team should get the wish? Hopefully we'll get an explanation for that detail soon. Archie is somewhat dismayed to learn that Rin doesn't know what to wish for. She's mostly in this for the sake of achieving her family's longtime ambition of winning a Grail War. And I suppose to make sure that the wish doesn't go to anyone who'd use it for ill, given the whole spiel about conjuring her Servant to fight evil (though she might have been lying about that part just to make sure the spell worked).
I wonder. Maybe there are actually entire squads of wizards who don't want the wish for themselves, but just gang up and stop anyone notoriously awful from winning.
Archie says that he approves of her motive. I'm not sure if that's just because she reprogrammed him to be more approving of her in general, or if he was like that before (in the latter case, he's probably in the "let's just make sure someone evil doesn't get it" camp himself, given his earlier expressed sentiment of wanting to protect the helpless). I guess he could also be lying.
On the way home from Archie's all-day sightseeing tour, Rin notices a couple more of her classmates walking around, and hides from them since she's planning to pretend she was sick tomorrow. The camera focuses on them a little too long for that to be all though, so I'm guessing these two will tie into the story in a much larger capacity.
The next day, Rin gets a call from the Priest telling her to check in, and she blows him off. So much for factions then, I guess. On the way to school, Archie asks her if she's sure she should go to school today, as such a public place would be vulnerable to attack. She counters that being in public in front of witnesses would make an attack more difficult rather than easier. Furthermore, there's only one other wizard family in this city, and their power has waned in recent centuries to the point that she doubts any of them have enough mana for a summoning. Apparently, summoning one of these spirits is a prerequisite to winning the Grail. When she gets to her school though, she and Archie both detect a "bound field" encompassing the complex. Not sure what that means, but according to them it's something that only a wizard actively using magic can create. And, if the field is obvious enough for them to detect it without even trying to, its a sign that the wizard is either very aggressive and confident and not bothering to be stealthy, or just inept and not able to.
Oh look, and here comes Sakura the obsequious junior archery girl, who also happens to be one of the people she saw out and about last night. Come to think of it, she was in the company of a weird tall kid with an uncanny demeanor who I don't think we saw before. Maybe that was actually her own stand?
Sakura drops some papers, and Rin helps her pick them up.
Jump ahead to that evening. Rin has spent the day running around the school studying the "bounded field," which seems to be supported by a number of blood red glyphs painted on the walls and floors at key locations. She doesn't recognize this specific spell, but she's able to infer that when a certain catalytic glyph is activated, the field will liquify any human tissues within it, killing everyone at the school in a heartbeat. Yeah, looks like that other mage family is a bit stronger and more ruthless than she thought. Or else there's a newcomer who hasn't introduced themselves. Archie suspects that the spell is meant to feed the souls of all those sacrificed to a Servant, giving it a very strong - though temporary - boost in power to supplement its own and its Master's combined mana. When Rin is horrified by this, Archie assures her that he himself would never stoop to such tactics...but that whoever IS doing so seems to be setting it up very efficiently, and will be very difficult to combat if the sacrifice succeeds.
Rin starts to scratch out one of the glyphs, but is hailed by a newcomer wearing an outfit vaguely similar to Archie's and wielding a spear. He isn't the weird guy that we saw Sakura with the night before, so whoever Spear's master is I guess it isn't her.
Brittany shoots down and chases her, swinging and stabbing all the while. Fortunately, Rin seems to be quite adept at evading fiery demonic spear blades. Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?
Also, because this is an anime, the magic words are German. What IS it with German being the language of magic, in anime?
Archie surprises Brittany, and Rin, by instead drawing a sword. Huh. Is he actually a Saber after all?
Cue stand battle. It's too fast to really follow, but that's a credit to the show in this case. Rather than merely seeming superhuman in the usual anime fighty way, they come across as uncanny, alien, unreal. Their speed and flexibility looks WRONG in a way that it doesn't usually in this sort of show, and it's almost certainly intentional. They seem to be evenly matched, parrying each other's blows with enough force to damage the pavement underfoot. Brittany disarm Archie many times, but he seems able to resummon his swords as fast as they're dropped or broken (an ability that Brittany seems to be unaware of, and surprised by. It's not a universal Servant thing then). Surprisingly, Brittany also repeatedly comments that Archie really DOES seem to be an Archer using his backup melee weapons, rather than a secret Saber or whatever. Why is he fighting like this, I don't know. Maybe it's just more effective in single combat, as Brittany hinted at earlier.
Anyway.
During a break in the battle, Brittany asks who the heck Archie is, he's never heard of an Archer who dual wields short swords with such skill. He also asks him which "land" he's the heroic spirit of, which I suppose I'm either meant to already know about or will be expanded on later. Archie can't answer, of course, but he recognizes Brittany himself. There's only one Lancer out there who has that combination of speed and aggression. He doesn't name him, but apparently Brittany is somewhat famous around the spirit world.
The battle resumes. Brittany starts charging some kind of super attack, but is then distracted by the sight of a fleeing civilian. Apparently, there's another student who stayed here super late, for some reason. I'll bet it's That Guy, still stalking Rin. Brittany instantly goes chasing after him.Apparently, this is like old World of Darkness where letting too many people know about magic can cause reality to explode or something. At least, I can only assume as much, because Rin tells us that the the first rule of being a wizard is that if a muggle sees you using magic, you have to drop everything you're doing and murder them immediately. Rin never liked that rule, so she was always extra careful to never use magic where anyone could be watching.
Well then.
Rin and Archie race after the fleeing kid to stop Brittany from First Rule Of Murder Wizard Clubbing him, but they're too slow. By the time they catch up, Brittany has already done his work, and his Master has fled the crime scene presumably having expected Rin to escape in the meantime.
Rin leans over him, apologizing frantically under her breath for getting him killed. Don't be so hard on yourself, Rin, he was going to get liquified and have his soul fed to a demon if you didn't intervene here. It turns out he's still breathing, though! Brittany's Master - I'll call them Jive Records for now - really must have been in a rush to move away after that and take their Servant with them, if they didn't even check to confirm the kill. Also, we still don't get to see the victim's face, but apparently he's the brother of someone Rin knows and whose face she'll be ashamed to look her in after this. Rin calls an ambulance, and leaves her amulet on the school floor behind her as she beats it.
Flash ahead to Rin back at her house. Still no sign of her mother, or anyone else living in that mansion with her. Is this a Mami Tamoe type deal, where she's using magic to mindfuck the tax agency and social services into ignoring her living situation? Starting to get that impression. She's moping on the couch about how she got a civilian put in critical condition. Archie reappears, amulet in hand, and tells her not to lose it again. She comments that its empty of mana. He tells her that she's the only one who can use it anyway. Not sure what the significance of either of those facts is, in this context.
However, they then realize that it won't take their enemy much time at all to realize that the witness survived, and will likely head to the hospital to finish him off. Desperate for this incident to have not been for nothing, Rin and Archie head to the hospital, top speed. As they approach, however, Archie says that there's something wrong: he detects TWO other Servants inbound, not just one. A moment later, this blonde swordswoman type attacks them.
That was way better than I expected. On pretty much every front.
It's one of the weirdest shows I think I've seen lately, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It takes its bizarre premises seriously, and at least so far seems to be doing a good job at seeing them through to their logical conclusions. There are some genre conceits that grate on me (WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN ANIME HAVE TO BE ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL SERIOUSLY WHY?), and there were some sequences of events that felt highly questionable (Rin forgetting about the clocks repeatedly, the flow of the action in the sportsball field scene, etc). But, overall? I liked it. It did more things right than wrong, and some of the things it did right are very hard to find in anime.
Take our female lead, for instance. Rin isn't necessarily a likable protagonist. I'd go so far as to call her an antihero, although toward the end of the episode she started showing a heroic side as well. But god damn, it is so fucking rare to find a well written female protagonist in this genre. And it's not just that her writing is consistent and convincing, rare moments of uncharacteristic stupidity aside. She's unironically a strong female character. She has an agenda of her own that she's actively working toward, and those actions propel the story. Her father was a major influence on her choosing this path, but she isn't doing it just for him. Her relationship with Archie, morally dubious though it is (okay, EVERYTHING about magic in this setting is morally dubious if not outright evil), has push and pull between them, with strong personalities that conflict and cooperate at the appropriate times. And, as the aloof scion of an ancient sorcerer clan practicing her craft alone and in secret in modern society, she's an interesting character even if she isn't a likable one. Archie's paladin-ness seems like a necessarily foil to Rin in order to keep the investment up, and he hits the balance pretty well. He's alien enough that you can't be sure how well you actually know him, but for the time being he's a good balance to Rin's moral myopia.
Then there's the worldbuilding. I wouldn't call it great, or even necessarily good. But it does a good enough job of exploring and thinking to the stuff that the story calls attention to that...well, it sort of shows how low my expectations for fighty anime are when that's all it takes to impress me, but there we are. There were many points throughout the episode that I went "wait, what? how does that even...?" and then was pleasantly surprised when the show later actually explained how that even. That goes a long way with me. And, at the very least, it knows how inane its own premises are, and has the characters take them seriously without fully expecting us to take them seriously.
Also, even by anime standards the art is gorgeous.
So yeah, based on this pilot I'm giving Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works a "recommended" for any fans of shonen and/or urban fantasy. It's not amazing, but it's good enough to make me eat my opening words.
That said, one of my patrons showed me a clip from the original VN, which revealed why I might have heard unpromising things about this series. The studio that adapted this must have had some real miracle workers on staff, because um:
This is bad graphics Rin explaining to your forgettable male PC why he needs to fuck his stand. So, um. Yeah.
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Khona Moshr
Pink Flamingo Cabal Healer(they/them)
- Location
- Alabama
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hey if you summoned something called a servant wouldn't you use them to do servant things like house cleaning?
SkyCrack
Hanging by a thread
- Location
- Little Red Dot
Ah yes despite me absolutely loving fate I do have to admit how weird it is, and how difficult it is to get to, especially with massive arguments on which series to start...
And yeah the VN is pretty not great with visuals, but the character designs are very popular and it gives more insight to characters that the anime just cannot do as a format. Do wish this would be continued though! And yes Tohsaka is great, one of the literal touchstones for anime in Japan
(By the way do let me know if I should edit anything I did my best to be as spoiler free as possible)
And yeah the VN is pretty not great with visuals, but the character designs are very popular and it gives more insight to characters that the anime just cannot do as a format. Do wish this would be continued though! And yes Tohsaka is great, one of the literal touchstones for anime in Japan
(By the way do let me know if I should edit anything I did my best to be as spoiler free as possible
)
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SalsaDeGranada
Thankful for our Cradle's Graces
- Location
- Philippines
Despite being eroge visual novels, the sex scenes from Type-Moon studios are infamously terrible.
They are really bad.
Shellfish metaphors were disturbingly prevalent.
thePUNisher
Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane
- Location
- Brazil
Type-Moon sex scenes gave me the best laugh I've ever had, fight me. But more seriously I heard that the weird sex stuff was shoehorned in to actually you know, sell the thing since back then most VNs were just porn and LN didn't take off as they did in the past decade.
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It is WEIRD that I know more about this than you @Leila Hann
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I've never read the VN, but I've heard that at the time it was written the entire genre was porny, and the creators didn't think that it would be successful if it wasn't too. Their solution was to awkwardly shoehorn lewd scenes and justifications for them into a story that really didn't need them.
Crimson Flight
华裔机甲迷
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Type-Moon pumping out Tsukihime and FSN back-to-back was a legitimate huge moment for both VNs and doujin culture.