Fate/stay night

O Nasu! Verily I am smitten!

Fate/stay night is the product of an unholy one-night stand involving Watchmen and ancient mythology. I’ve talked about it a good bit already. It’s dark and ironic; it’s metafictional and meta-mythic, if such a thing is possible (and not too redundant); and for an H-game, it can be rather romantic, if in a twisted sort of way. Above all that, it’s a damn good story. It taught me what visual novels can do — in fact, I think it broke me; a while after finishing Fate, I tried my hand at Kanon, and I just couldn’t do it. Maybe some other time, when Fate’s wicked afterglow has worn off a little more. Or maybe if someone patches the Nasuverse magic system into Kanon.

This may have made my twelve moments list. I thought about it. And, in retrospect, I’m not sure why it didn’t — maybe because the whole thing is so crazy that it’s difficult to isolate one moment from the rest.

Solanin

So much anime and manga seems geared toward a teenage audience. It’s nice to see something that speaks to the venerable occupants of the twenties.

Well, it’s nice except — ah. The more I say, the more you’re spoiled. Suffice to say that if you see Solanin’s one-volume bulk sticking out of the manga shelf at your bookstore of choice, you really should pick it up if you’re in the mood for something rather realistic. And I mean it — the emotion here is about as authentic as it gets in manga, prose fiction, or anywhere. You may get the most out of it if you are among we twenty-plus-year-old drifters, but I’m sure its potential appeal is much wider than that. If you’ve ever wondered what you’ll do with your life, Solanin probably has something to offer you.

Also, there’s a Solanin movie due out in April 2010. Check out the somewhat spoiler-ridden trailer here, if you haven’t already.

If I had to choose one moment from the whole thing, it’d probably be — that final concert? That’d be a good bet, anyway. But I also enjoy (if that’s the right word) how Solanin handles its big turning point. It’s…overwhelming, almost. Some of you may know exactly what I mean.

Bakuman

What can I say about Bakuman that Ghostlightning hasn’t said already? His description covers it, in a nutshell. To put it in a smaller nutshell, it’s a manga about making manga, and it’s a remarkably human story. And, as it’s done by the Death Note team, it’s pretty much the only thing that has ever given me any desire to read Death Note — and that’s impressive, believe me.

Here’s another story that doesn’t make the selection of individual moments easy. With its over-the-top presentation of everyday things and its sometimes frantic pacing, it seems to outdo itself with each new chapter. But this is great insofar as each new moment is the best. I’m not sure how Bakuman pulls that off, but it pulls it off well.

I’m still out of town at this point, but I’ve commanded my robot slaves to post the second part of this list on Super Fanicom in my absence, so watch for it.

With regards to its title, “Fate”, I found it to be apt in the way in which it worked to illustrate, by means of the larger picture, how going against it can sometimes be overrated. For want of better citations, I’ve noticed that this is where the East has traditionally broken off from the West when it comes to fiction–to the former, fate is not something to be resisted, merely something to be endured. Yes, you can row, row, and fight the power, but at the end of the day you’re going to be a hobo cracking open coconuts for a kid on the sidewalk, no exceptions. [Owen, "Fate/stay night, Fate Route"]

Even if my point of view is decidedly western, I’ve seen that trend as well. Allow me to whip out The Wind-up Bird Chronicle:

“… The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you’re supposed to go up and down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there’s no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.” [Vintage/Jay Rubin translation p. 51]

As much as I like it, it can be a difficult novel to deal with, as it lacks the immediacy of conflict that I’m used to. For hundreds of pages, we simply watch the narrator come to terms with the idea of doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done in accordance with the “flow” of things. He undertakes a kind of quest, but his real victory is learning to take things as they come without, say, losing it and beating a dude with a baseball bat. It’s not about overcoming odds, or forging one’s own destiny; it’s about living with such things, which play out as they do just because.

Perhaps the core of this difference between east and west lies in my side of the dividing line’s conception of fate as a simple thing, or as a single thing.

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

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

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

See here. Of course, none of these means exactly “fate” as we understand it in English; these words mean what they mean, and I wouldn’t claim to have a good feel for any of them unless I’d lived in Japan for a while. With that in mind, to which “kind” of fate should we say the title refers? The English kind? One of the synonymous (or partly so) Japanese concepts? I’m sure we could discuss the “Fate” route using several of these terms; perhaps we should view the title as a synthesis of all varieties of fate that might come to mind.

Even in English, where synonyms for and variations upon the idea of fate are somewhat more limited, it’s a rather abstract concept, the sort of thing a good postmodernist might deny has any real meaning at all. Of course, having no “real” meaning allows it to encompass any honest interpretation. That’s the essence of deconstruction, after all, that everything-and-nothing simultaneity. We might conclude that フエイト/feito, an English word written in a Japanese way, a kind of canal between one linguistic pool and another, represents just such a recognition of the nature of fate: it’s whatever we say it is, whether it be God or nature or bullshit.

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

This is what I’m saying, basically. “Deconstruction” as a term is used pretty loosely now, but F/sn does what I’d call “complete” deconstruction with the idea of fate; it doesn’t rob it of its meaning, it calls its meaning into question by presenting numerous possible meanings, any of which could be true given the right circumstances and perspective. I’m not referring to dictionary-definition meaning, of course, which is easy enough to figure out (once we settle on which “fate” in which language to look up, anyway); I’m talking about the peripheral concerns, the qualifiers and caveats. Who or what imposes fate? Can it be overcome? Is it, as Murakami’s character suggests, a necessity, a river to be navigated but not dammed?

Like the game itself, I’ll leave it for you to decide. I need to talk about structure before this post gets out of hand.

I’ve noticed this before with other visual novels, but here – possibly because the text is ‘in front’ of the images rather than segregated from them – it’s more prominent: the sentence is king. At any given moment there’s never enough text on the screen to build up a really meaty paragraph, which means there’s little opportunity for the constructive, building-block hypotaxis I expect from modern prose. I wonder if it’s fair to call this prose at all – but whatever we’re going to name it, this form of writing relies on the well-tempered sentence. [Emphasis mine] [IKnight, "Fate/stay notes"]

Now there’s an interesting question. I certainly think a visual novel is more written fiction than video game, assuming the rudimentary choices it offers its players/readers aren’t enough to render the experience very game-like in terms of interactivity and setting. It may be more akin to a light novel than to film, as its images are largely static. It’s a hybrid of all those things, really. I’d be inclined to say that we can’t deal with it as we deal with traditional, printed prose fiction, as we’d be overlooking too many of its qualities, but that prose fiction is certainly a part of the experience — granting that the presentation of said prose is somewhat unique. The one-line-at-a-time presentation must impact the way we read somehow.

With only sounds, a limited array of visual effects and dramatic-yet-positionless sweeps of coloured light to rely on, I find myself gripped. The frustrated desire to know what’s going on, and what particularly gruesome kind of wound Shirou will sustain this time, drives me through the text. [IKnight, "Fate/stay notes"]

I’d say the game’s handing us narrative a few sentences at a time adds to that sense of lack of information. When in the middle of a novel, we know there’s more to come; we can see it, skip ahead, guess at outcomes based on the length of description remaining and the presentation of words on the page. Fate/stay night doesn’t offer that minor luxury. We’re essentially plowing ahead blind, and, if my experience is any indication, our sense of suspense is heightened considerably for it.

This arc’s themes are many and varied. Family and the necessary selfishness of love remain prominent throughout; early human development and the right to life show up at crucial moments; significant themes from previous arcs, such as idealism, are revisited with a vengeance. “Heaven’s Feel” is certainly robust — perhaps a little too robust at times, as I found it heavy on exposition — and might deserve a more in-depth analysis than I’m prepared to give it here (Owen’s done it, though I haven’t yet devoted as much time to his post as I’d like).

I’ll correct myself. It’s not that Shirou lacks imagination, as I suggested before. He simply has little concept of things beyond the physical. This actually works well with the idea that he lacks a sense of self; he conceives of himself as a body and nothing more.

This after “Unlimited Blade Works,” in which Shirou asks why a copy must be inferior to the original, then promptly demonstrates that one can do a great deal with a copy. For me, UBW was all about creation and the formation of ideas, and thoughts (and works of art) aren’t born from nothing; they have origins in prior knowledge. Everything new is a copy, to some degree, and a new thing might well improve upon its basis. But then, Shirou isn’t thinking of human-made objects here. This works as one of HF’s frequent reminders that everyone dies eventually.

Kotomine and Shirou’s commonalities are made especially evident in this arc. In fact, Kotomine appears more human in general this time; he’s given a history, a reason for why his motivations and goals are what they are. He’s a kind of reverse-Shirou, in a way; he is (or was) devoted to a goal that can never be achieved, and his pursuit of that goal is not unlike a ritual of penance, but his is a far more personal goal. And when Shirou accepts that his ideal is unrealistic, Kotomine becomes a replacement, of sorts, in the same way that HF’s Kiritsugu occupies a thematic position similar to UBW’s Archer.

Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness…

“Heaven’s Feel” is like an 18-hour-long Giygas fight, with all the mental side effects that entails. Also dickworms.

Self-hatred? Well, I can understand that Sakura might have a few sexual hang-ups, she having been abused by a centuries-old magus with a body made of worms (yes, dickworms), not to mention her adoptive brother, and an altered body that craves magical energy, of which semen is evidently a concentrated cluster.

Still, I think more masturbators should be like Kurosawa.

“There are no meaningless things” — yeah, that’s what I say. But evidently Kotomine doesn’t think meaning and worth are related, at least insofar as meaning equals worth. It’s probably safe to say by now that Kotomine has a uniquely self-centered view of worth, as far as the F/sn cast goes.

Now here’s an interesting comparison: art is designated worthy of admiration, while nature is associated with a curse. This may be only loosely related, but I’ve been wondering lately, for various reasons, to what degree nature is the enemy of humankind. Once we’re able to improve upon nature — alter the weather, upgrade our bodies with more reliable parts — to what extent should we do so?

Then again, the essence of Shirou’s question seems to be whether Rider’s eyes (Medusa’s eyes, actually) are the beautiful, terrible work of the gods, or an abomination of nature. It’s almost as if art, a uniquely human act, cannot produce something “bad,” while nature, believed by many to be entirely impartial (or a manifestation of some god’s divine will), is more than capable of doing so. That seems a little, I don’t know, crooked — but so help me, I like the sound of it. After all, ours is a human point of view, and don’t natural disasters feel bad to us? We’re born of nature, but it is a kind of incomprehensible foe; will we, like the second and third pantheons of so many mythologies, overthrow our creator in the end? Not that I think doing away with nature is a great idea, but one has to wonder.

As in, “Kýrie, eléison?” So, Kotomine’s personal name, Kirei (綺礼), is pronounced the same as the word meaning pretty or beautiful (きれい), and it’s also likened to a Greek word meaning “O Lord” — an invocation of the Lord’s name, in other words. Ironically, Kotomine has a twisted concept of beauty, and he’s more likely to invoke Angra Mainyu than Jesus Christ. In the context of F/sn, though, his is also a name weighted with magic, as prayer and Biblical verse are literally used as incantations to dispel spirits.

Fun fact: the kanji that make up “Kotomine” are 言 (statement, word) and 峰 (peak). Truly he represents the very pinnacle of rhetoric. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

It’s almost as if Kotomine offers to God his inquisition of God. Would God appreciate such a thing? He damn well better; he’s the one who gave us the ability to question in the first place, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Here, Kotomine seems to espouse a view of good and evil based on the intentions of the being in question. Shirou, on the other hand, favors judgment based on the outcome of the being’s actions, which, in Angra Mainyu’s case, have not been favorable for those involved, on the whole. If I had to choose, I suppose I’d go with the latter, but I’d rather say that “good” and “evil” are oversimplifications, and deal with morality in more specific terms.

Well, that’s done. I have a few more posts planned on F/sn, but the game itself is finished, and I don’t know what I’ll do now. I think F/sn has broken my ability to enjoy visual novels; I started Kanon, but I just can’t seem to get into it. Maybe if Ayu used her noble phantasm on Makoto, and Piro turned out to be a spy from the Magic Association…

Yes, really.

This arc makes a great deal out of human capability. In many cases, we see humans challenge servants and, miraculously, not end up as molten piles of meat. Kuzuki beats Saber into submission; Rin survives a brief magic duel with Caster, then closes the distance and punches the hell out of her; Shirou defeats both a weakened Archer and a not-so-weakened Gilgamesh. It often comes down to situational advantages, but Shirou, at least, gets most of his tricks from within himself. As the theme develops, it reminds me of Gurren Lagann’s idea of creating a favorable future in the face of ridiculous odds, and its assurance that we can do such a thing not in spite of our humanity, but because of it. Do the impossible, see the invisible, and so on.

Isn’t that the only thing we can do? Perhaps the ability to invent meaning is a defense mechanism, a safeguard against insanity. I prefer to see it as our greatest strength, once we get it under control. Being able to decide for ourselves the meaning of life, the universe, and everything isn’t something we should take lightly.

This more or less answers my question from before. Namely:

If Excalibur is more well-known than Ea at the time of this particular Holy Grail War — and it no doubt is, as Ea doesn’t even have a “true” name — why does Ea overwhelm it so reliably? Perhaps the rule applies to servants but not noble phantasms individually, which function as extensions of the servants…

Popularity doesn’t seem to play as large a role as I thought, leaving more room for the effect of the myth’s age and influence. We also find out that noble phantasms are essentially extensions of their wielders. The game actually makes Shirou’s advantage over Gilgamesh make sense here; Gilgamesh’s strength lies in his ability to exploit any given servant’s weakness, but Shirou isn’t a servant, and his one ability is similar enough to Gilgamesh’s standard attack to counter it well enough.

Well, that sucks. Basically, these guardians promote happiness and peace by doing away with people who are unhappy. Efficient, I guess, but it doesn’t actually change anything — you’re not doing much good unless you have a way of making unhappy people happier, as there will always be unhappy people — and that seems to be Archer’s qualm with the whole thing.

There is some merit in pursuing an unattainable goal. You’ll get somewhere if you keep moving forward, and why not set your sights as high as possible? It’s certainly better than doing nothing at all, and you may accomplish more through idealism than you would if you settled for less. But this is turning into Fate/motivational speech, so let’s move on.

So it’s not that Assassin has no connection to history; he just has less than the servants summoned properly. We could probably say that all stories begin with reality, though. How could a writer write without human experience?

Again, giving form to the formless is just what we do. My major qualm with postmodernism is that branch thereof which pushes the meaninglessness of the universe and advocates embracing chaos. To do so is to deny our most uniquely human quality; the universe has meaning as long as we live in it, I say. And it’s true that our individual, everyday meaning-production doesn’t call into being pocket dimensions full of swords, but that doesn’t mean our constructs are impotent. Look at religion, or capitalism, or fandom.

“Everything is here, and nothing is here” — that describes well how the mind works, and Shirou learns to use it to his advantage. Once Gilgamesh fell within the jurisdiction of Shirou’s conception, he had already lost.

Some may take this sort of thing as wishful thinking, but this is ultimately the kind of story I most enjoy, one in which people succeed or fail or otherwise move in one direction or another out of their own power. “Unlimited Blade Works” gets that across in a more direct way than “Fate,” and so it presents an interesting thematic parallel thereof.

Here, have some more Fate/stay night. I still haven’t scoured the blogs for helpful thoughts on the “Fate” route, but I can at least make some notes on my progress through “Unlimited Blade Works” — can and should, before I forget everything. Windows Update and my own carelessness conspired to do away with a few of my screencaps, but I think I can wing it well enough through those points.

Also: spoilers well beyond the scope of the anime.

I’ll omit glaringly obvious details here. I know this arc’s massive twist already (I haven’t gotten that far; I looked it up after I watched the show however long ago, figuring I’d never play the game anyway), so parallels between Shirou and Archer, while interesting, would be too obvious to warrant mentioning.

We learned in “Fate” that Assassin has his roots in fiction more than other servants; “Unlimited Blade Works” suggests that this is because he’s the servant of a servant. Thus, a human master summons a fictionalized but historical (as far as the game’s setting is concerned) servant, and that servant, given enough magical energy and a disregard for the rules of the Holy Grail War, might summon a servant who is fictional outright. It brings to mind Kotomine’s comment in “Fate” about humans being the ultimate source of “entertainment,” with art offering that entertainment in a distilled way.

Compare Shirou’s ideal here to Mitsuzuri’s aesthetic (see here): “Beautiful people have to do some kind of martial arts.” Of course, Mitsuzuri has the luxury to say that, not having watched people die (as far as we know), and one can practice martial arts without harmful intent. Shirou’s also a tad unrealistic if he thinks he can get through life without hurting anyone, but I suppose that’s the point.

I think the implication here is that expending all one’s energy on others and accepting nothing in return leads to destruction. Money keeps appearing as a metaphor for this: once you’ve spent money, it’s gone, and you’ll eventually run out without a source of income. Interesting; I don’t really think of philanthropy in terms of economics, even if it does so often take the form of monetary donation these days. It’s another one of those cycles that keep showing up.

Speaking of which, I could talk about the cycle as one of the basic “movements” of narrative art…well, maybe another time.

Hero definition #5408: a hero is one who surpasses fate itself. But how does one save those who are fated to die? In F/sn, it seems to involve an almost Faustian bargain that results in the hero serving as a heroic spirit, doomed to fight and destroy in exchange for one act of heroism. No wonder Archer’s so bitter.

I’ve heard it suggested that Shirou has no concept of self, and that’s why he’s so willing to throw his body in front of swords and things. To him, there are only other people. But he’s outright unable to have fun? That’s just as troubling. I can only conclude that…

…Shirou outright lacks imagination. It was around this point that I realized his descriptions of his feelings lean heavily toward the physical. Here, he’s not flustered, or aroused, or embarrassed — or, rather, he’s probably all those things, but he understands it not in vague emotional terms, but literally: his face is hot. Not that he doesn’t experience emotion, but it’s notable that he doesn’t think of it as most people do. Though he seems to “learn” emotion throughout the game, to some extent, I think I have a good idea now of why his friends worry about him.

Speaking of burning faces, it’s about time for me to go put the moves on Rin. Until next time!

(It may be worth mentioning that grad school and eventually work will probably prompt me to write more here and less over yonder. These posts are so much easier.)

Reading the structure is a wasted…hey, what the hell, Shirou?

To be fair, if we’re going the magic = art route, I don’t think he’s wrong, per se. Structural criticism may deal with absolute terms on the surface level, but all we can say for certain of those terms (provided we study them sociologically) is that they effect x% of y population one way, z% of y population another, and so on — where the artistic energy is most easily transmitted, as it were. But then, I like that about structural criticism; if you go far enough with it, it ultimately has to move beyond textual minutiae into the realm of readers. Also, Shirou ends up getting quite a lot of use out of his talent for structure. But at any rate I’m not opposed to taking this as a warning against dwelling on the surface of things exclusively.

I had forgotten that a Hindu/Buddhist reincarnation mechanic was in play here. Humans and animals I understand — but machines? That’s an interesting twist. This cycle of death and rebirth seems to rely on public opinion, or devotion, or “worship,” so what happens when a kind and generous human being known to very few dies? Should we simply measure kindness and generosity in terms of the number of people who benefit from it?

Who else wants to see a Mother Teresa servant? She’d make a hell of a Berserker.

Ooh! See, this is why I like Kotomine (besides the mullet). He’s a real bastard, but he says what needs to be said. Really, this is true; the desire to protect something does imply a desire to protect something from something else, which must obviously be an active threat, or else what’s the point? Some people get on to Shirou for being misogynistic in this route, but I think that particular quirk of his is sufficiently dismantled by the end.

It’s a matter of point of view, isn’t it? I’m sure the Cyclopes didn’t think Odysseus was a hero. This explains handily why many of the servants designated “good” seem so ruthless — we’re on the receiving end.

This becomes a theme late in “Fate,” and it strikes a personal chord with me. Bad experiences with the kind of people who spend half their time wishing things had happened differently for them have led me to believe that they’re cowards, in a way (not that I, you know, do that myself or anything). Granted, Saber’s in a position to make an eternal sacrifice here, so she’s a bit of a special case.

This following a date. I love how F/sn has handled romance so far. It’s so awkward, so…mundane that it’s easy to forget those involved are superhuman. Even the first sex scene in this route is a little awkward. The second…well. Awkward to watch, maybe.

Turning the dissemination and evolution of stories into a literal source of power…this is some serious Pontifus-pandering right here. I especially like the Caliburn vs. Gram/Balmung bit. Still, the way it works seems a little contradictory, given what we’ve learned already about the relative power of servants, namely that it’s derived from how well-known they are when they’re summoned. If Excalibur is more well-known than Ea at the time of this particular Holy Grail War — and it no doubt is, as Ea doesn’t even have a “true” name — why does Ea overwhelm it so reliably? Perhaps the rule applies to servants but not noble phantasms individually, which function as extensions of the servants, and if Gilgamesh draws power from those who revere heroes derived from his epic…well, that explains a lot.

More Pontiservice. I like the theme of balance, and of all things belonging to systems which in turn belong to larger systems and so on. It makes sense (to me) if we’re talking about magic, or magic symbolizing art and the consumption thereof.

And it is the case that many heroes die in pursuit of their final objective. Gilgamesh even jokes about it one point, referencing his own failed quest for immortality. This is one of the many little answers F/sn throws at the question of what a hero is, exactly. Joseph Campbell would’ve been all over this shit.

Dear Cuchlann: PLAY THIS GAME.

Kotomineeeeee~ m(_ _)m

So many questions to deal with here! Is art’s having been created what renders it entertaining? Probably, given how it’s used. Kotomine circumvents the issue of art necessarily being a distilled depiction of reality by toying with people directly, but Kotomine’s just a tad crazy, and art’s distilled nature isn’t an unequivocally bad thing; it may let us see ourselves more clearly within it than we can in reality. Perhaps Kotomine’s rejection of art played a role in rendering him as emotionless as he is here; if nothing else, it contributes to my sense of his inhumanity.

Here’s another answer to that ubiquitous question: heroes are exemplars of humanity, encompassing all the good and bad traits thereof. Heroes of myth often do things that aren’t especially admirable — Gilgamesh here would know, he having been a womanizing lout of a leader before he and Enkidu became an ambiguously gay duo. Interesting, as we (and by we I mean me, and by me I mean His Majesty Northrop Frye) often think of mythic heroes as exceeding humans in means and surroundings, and romantic heroes as humans of supernatural or at least exceptional means and surroundings, and yet these very heroes manage to be everypeople, in a way. Perhaps being an everyman itself constitutes exceptional means; after all, which one regular human can speak for all regular humans?

More posts to come on “Fate,” as soon as I hit the aniblogocalypse for thoughts thereupon.

Incidentally, these are about the prologue (past this point), which happens to be sort of long.

Remember that we’re still in the mind of Rin Tousaka at this point — an altogether enjoyable place to be, though Shirou isn’t half bad, either. There’s room in my heart of hearts for cynics and idealists alike, as long as they’re multidimensional.

Again with people building gods (or, specifically, mythic heroes), though this time it’s a fantastical take on the idea. What’s interesting here is the acknowledgment that the ever-powerful servants are, without the aid of the Holy Grail (which is itself poorly understood), beyond human control. Indeed, this is basically what happens when we invent fictions (says I); they get away from us, become not just ours but everyone’s, influence future writings which in turn influence them back (says Eliot). Since Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I’ve had a tendency to read magic as a surrogate for art, especially writing, and Fate seems willing to meet me halfway on that matter.

Also note that “authenticity does not matter,” that “faith” brings the servants (an ironic name when “they cannot be controlled by humans,” eh?) into existence. Really, the fantasy here is only one remove from reality. I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t much matter whether any or all religions are true when religion results in tangible consequences, up to and including things like persecution and murder (alright, and charity, to be fair). God is real insofar as He inspires action; He’s as real as anything beyond the physical, empirical realm can be. In the Fate setting, “authenticity does not matter” is just a bit more immediate and dangerous a truth than it is on our Earth — just a bit.

Hello irony, my old friend! What these heroes do isn’t very heroic. At risk of getting ahead of myself, Lancer even makes a comment about that later on. I wonder if they’re meant to reflect the state of contemporary humanity (as it exists in the setting, anyway — it’s human will that grants the servants life, after all), or if the implication is that they were never all that heroic, that heroes as such don’t exist. Or maybe, insofar as the servants are essentially born of idealism, it’s a warning against uninformed idealism, or idealism taken too far. But is there a balance, I wonder? Is there a right way to be idealistic, or must we concede to postmodern cynicism? I suspect Shirou and Rin will ride that question out.

Here’s a more explicit comparison of the servants and their origin with religion. Maybe it’d be more apt to say that they’re like devils and angels.

All in all, I’m stricken by how much more similar the visual novel experience is to reading prose than it is to playing a video game, especially since visual novels originate in the tradition of games and anime (I think, don’t quote me on that). Fate’s occasional reader/player choices feel like formalities, though not so much so that the gamer in me doesn’t want to try to stumble through it sans guidance for now. I also have some thoughts on using Frye’s modes in a relative, text-specific way, but I’ll save that for when I write about whichever of Shirou’s arcs I end up in first.

I’m not going to exhaustively document the entire game like this, but I do have some quick observations on the first few minutes, some of which are based on what I know from the anime adaptation.

Does immeasurable equal meaningless, then? Or, rather, does someone who focuses on the immeasurable lead a meaningless existence? Surely Rin doesn’t believe this, and she’s just cynically echoing the opinion of society. Insofar as art is an immeasurable abstract, you could say that art criticism is meaningless, not that that’ll stop me any more than magic being “kind of meaningless” will stop Rin from doing it. Where’s the meaning in doing a meaningless thing? I don’t exactly expect F/sn to delve into that, but I’ll be watching for it anyway.

Insofar as Shirou uses magic to work with technology, maybe he’s the zero point. Of course, I’m not supposed to know that yet.

Says the game: “Hey, uh, before you start masturbating, you really ought to know that I’m trying to deal with love here.” I hope you succeed, game, I really do.

Ayako would be pleased with the aesthetics of what’s to come, then. Interestingly, the idea here is that combat begets beauty, whereas in the opening bit with Shirou and Saber, Shirou mentions that Saber’s combat attire would look unappealing if not for Saber’s personal beauty mitigating the harshness of it — combat begets beauty vs. beauty beautifies combat. I don’t suppose they’re mutually exclusive.

From the anime, I know that Shinji Matou turns out to be kind of a douchebag, so I wasn’t especially surprised when this scene set Rin against him. What’s interesting, though, is that he’s a popular kid, and Rin apparently isn’t (due to lack of interest, I’m guessing). Wish fulfillment? I don’t care either way; I never felt the need to blast the popular kids in my high school with magic. Well, not often.