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Lord Justice posted:Yeah, it's sort of getting to the point where it feels like Urobuchi is a straight up better writer than Nasu is. I haven't read the VN nor do I have any intention to, but I felt nothing at Shirou's big moment. Part of it may be due to my dislike for Shirou in general however, I've found his awful incompetent and idiotic schtick to be incredibly irritating from the first episode. Kiritsugu may be an awful person, but I consider him to be better than Shirou simply on the merit that he completely wins the 4th War via his own tactics and planning, and it never felt like he needed the plot to hold him up. I suppose part of the problem as well, and this has come up before, is that UBW is not meant for F/Z watchers. It tries to accommodate them, but UBW is a completely different show, even if it has similar theming. I'll have to disagree with that actually. I read the VN after watching /Zero and I still really liked it. It make the story all the more interesting to know the (admittedly retconned) backstory. The VN's dialog is not nearly as bad as the show. Nasu got his points across much better than than he did now. Even though there was no action porn to prop it up, I feel that the VN's version of this fight especially was far more entertaining because the narrative and emotional beats were pretty spot on. As for not liking Shirou... well, you're sorta not supposed to. I think his ideology is supposed to sound a bit insane to the viewer, and I think we're expected to have a similar reaction to Rin.
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May 24, 2015 03:36
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Lord Justice posted:Yeah, it's sort of getting to the point where it feels like Urobuchi is a straight up better writer than Nasu is. I haven't read the VN nor do I have any intention to, but I felt nothing at Shirou's big moment. Part of it may be due to my dislike for Shirou in general however, I've found his awful incompetent and idiotic schtick to be incredibly irritating from the first episode. Kiritsugu may be an awful person, but I consider him to be better than Shirou simply on the merit that he completely wins the 4th War via his own tactics and planning, and it never felt like he needed the plot to hold him up. I suppose part of the problem as well, and this has come up before, is that UBW is not meant for F/Z watchers. It tries to accommodate them, but UBW is a completely different show, even if it has similar theming. UBW is a great follow up to F/Z, unless you drew completely the wrong conclusions and thought that Kiritsugu was a cool badass who totally smoked those other idiots with lives and emotions and why can't Shirou be like that?
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May 24, 2015 03:49
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ViggyNash posted:I read the VN after watching /Zero and I still really liked it. I went into the episode expecting whatever bad things people are complaining about, and it's a very good episode to me. 
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May 24, 2015 03:51
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ViggyNash posted:I'll have to disagree with that actually. I read the VN after watching /Zero and I still really liked it. It make the story all the more interesting to know the (admittedly retconned) backstory. The VN's dialog is not nearly as bad as the show. Nasu got his points across much better than than he did now. Even though there was no action porn to prop it up, I feel that the VN's version of this fight especially was far more entertaining because the narrative and emotional beats were pretty spot on. It's entirely possible you're right, but you're speaking about the VN mostly here, and not the anime itself. Going from F/Z straight into anime UBW doesn't seem to work very well, at least personally, and my main point there is that UBW is a different kind of show and presents itself differently. F/Z was a grand game between a bunch of adults, one teenager, and a bystander for all intents and purposes, and felt like an actual war. UBW is mostly just teens screwing around with Gilgamesh and Kirei doing something in the background, along with Caster being cool and competent until she's unceremoniously dumped from the narrative. I get that Shirou probably isn't supposed to be likeable, but it doesn't help his narrative arc at all that he isn't, to me. When I found out Archer was Shirou, I pretty much stopped caring about him immediately, and these last few episodes have been just boring because of it, stuff with Lancer aside. At this point I'm probably just watching for Gilgamesh to do what he does. Myriad Truths posted:UBW is a great follow up to F/Z, unless you drew completely the wrong conclusions and thought that Kiritsugu was a cool badass who totally smoked those other idiots with lives and emotions and why can't Shirou be like that? This isn't really what I meant with Kiritsugu. I don't necessarily want Shirou to be like Kiritsugu (in that he's a merciless assassin), but rather it's Shirou's rank incompetence in comparison to Kiritsugu's competence that bothers me. Kiritsugu went into the 4th War with the necessary skillset and planning to get it done, Shirou just bumbled into the 5th War and has done little of consequence so far. Lord Justice fucked around with this message at 04:12 on May 24, 2015 |
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May 24, 2015 04:08
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Another problem is that it's hard to get emotionally invested in the conflict. It's so hollow and abstract, and we've been told rather than shown its consequences. Shred the monologues, pare down the overlong fight scene, ditch some of the Shinji creepery (actually, just have Archer say 'no, seriously, Saber, run, your Master's alone with a serial rapist and his demigod Servant and my bluff won't keep them away for much longer' - the mismatch between the sympathy he's getting from the narrative and the fact that he handed Rin to Shinji are clashing with each other jarringly), and give us a flashback (uh, flashforward?) episode or two of Archer's life. Let us see and feel how it changed him rather than getting two goddamn episodes of 'you are a fake and your ideals will betray you'.
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May 24, 2015 04:20
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Lord Justice posted:This isn't really what I meant with Kiritsugu. I don't necessarily want Shirou to be like Kiritsugu (in that he's a merciless assassin), but rather it's Shirou's rank incompetence in comparison to Kiritsugu's competence that bothers me. Kiritsugu went into the 4th War with the necessary skillset and planning to get it done, Shirou just bumbled into the 5th War and has done little of consequence so far. Well, it seems like you're measuring Shirou's competence by whether he's winning magic fights, which I think is a mistake. I suppose F/Z is more faithful to the original premise of the HGW as a competition between magi where the goal is to obtain the Holy Grail. That goes unchallenged in F/Z, so pretty much everyone is trying to achieve it in various ways. In F/SN I count four Masters who recognize that as a sham from the get-go, so trying to use the War as a measure of their competence when it's more a pretext here is a little misleading. I don't think Shirou is particularly incompetent or unsuccessful in UBW; he's still alive despite being an ex-Master with a death wish. That's pretty good.
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May 24, 2015 04:23
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Myriad Truths posted:Well, it seems like you're measuring Shirou's competence by whether he's winning magic fights, which I think is a mistake. I suppose F/Z is more faithful to the original premise of the HGW as a competition between magi where the goal is to obtain the Holy Grail. That goes unchallenged in F/Z, so pretty much everyone is trying to achieve it in various ways. In F/SN I count four Masters who recognize that as a sham from the get-go, so trying to use the War as a measure of their competence when it's more a pretext here is a little misleading. I don't think Shirou is particularly incompetent or unsuccessful in UBW; he's still alive despite being an ex-Master with a death wish. That's pretty good. I'm measuring his competence based on fighting because A, we haven't seen him doing much else besides cooking I guess, and B, it's still a War with fights, sham or not. Every time Shirou has tried to fight someone, he's either failed spectacularly, or barely gotten things to a temporary stalemate (Kuzuki). Shirou seems utterly incapable of understanding that you can't fight Servants, and honestly should have been dead a long time ago if the narrative wasn't keeping him alive. Which I think is part of the problem with Shirou vs. Archer here, as it is not a fight. It is Shirou getting his rear end kicked and Archer very clearly holding back. That's not terribly exciting in fighting terms, and only serves to make Shirou look even worse. Darth Walrus posted:Another problem is that it's hard to get emotionally invested in the conflict. It's so hollow and abstract, and we've been told rather than shown its consequences. You're exactly on point, I feel, especially with Archer's life. It would have helped immensely to see some of that, and it looked a lot more interesting than what is happening currently.
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May 24, 2015 04:46
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If Archer was really trying to kill Shirou, he could have done it much more easily than having a sword fight. Winning isn't his problem; it's breaking Shirou and getting him to admit his ideals are wrong.
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May 24, 2015 04:59
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Shirou actually is better at fighting than Kiritsugu. You can tell because he fights Servants and doesn't die (even if he doesn't win either). Kiritsugu never even fought one of the Assassins. The Fifth War Masters in general are stronger than the Fourth War ones, while the Fourth War ones generally make up for it by being better planners and information-gatherers. (Although Uryu is bad at all of those things; he loses to a little girl, gets everyone else to ally against him by recklessly killing people, and has no knowledge of magecraft.) I do agree that showing rather than telling Archer's backstory was a problem. What we get in the anime is actually more specific than the VN's version, but it's still not really enough. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 05:10 on May 24, 2015 |
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May 24, 2015 05:04
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Silver2195 posted:Shirou actually is better at fighting than Kiritsugu. You can tell because he fights Servants and doesn't die (even if he doesn't win either). Kiritsugu never even fought one of the Assassins. He's really not. Shirou only has crappy projection and strengthening magic, and only survives because the narrative dictates he should. We never actually see Kiritsugu fighting a Servant, but I wouldn't bet against him if he was fighting say, a Caster. I imagine an Origin Bullet would be catastrophic to a mage of that level. Which is kind of my whole point here, Kiritsugu is better at fighting because he's not a complete idiot and doesn't fight in fights he can't reasonably win. Kiritsugu is the Mage Killer, his entire armament is designed around that, and all Shirou carries around is a stick, and eventually some swords I guess. Perhaps Shirou should find out what Kiritsugu did with his Contender and leftover Origin Bullets, that would most likely be more helpful than a stick.
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May 24, 2015 05:16
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As someone who has never read the visual novel and this is new to, I thought this episode was perfectly fine. Wish Lancer was in the more to be honest.
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May 24, 2015 05:17
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Fiend Computer posted:Wish Lancer was in the more to be honest. You and me Fiend, you and me.
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May 24, 2015 05:18
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Lord Justice posted:Plot Armour It's kinda hard to really look too seriously at this in the greater context of the story being s VN with 30 some odd bad ends and dead ends where Shirou only survives to the not-dead-ends by the skin of his teeth (Or less!). Shirou can project Noble Phantasms, while the Origin bullets are deadly in specific circumstances we see that it requires some set up for them to be effective. Sometimes a sufficiently powerful Magus, especially if one is aware of the weapon, can probably handle it with ease. Actualized NP's with their passive abilities are greater than pretty much anything a modern magus can throw up in front of them as we saw in the Fate route.
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May 24, 2015 05:39
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Raenir Salazar posted:It's kinda hard to really look too seriously at this in the greater context of the story being s VN with 30 some odd bad ends and dead ends where Shirou only survives to the not-dead-ends by the skin of his teeth (Or less!). You're probably correct about Shirou's power level overall in the context of the VN, but the issue is, I don't have that context, and I have no desire to read the VN either. I'm arguing from the context of the UBW anime itself, and so far Kiritsugu is clearly superior to Shirou.
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May 24, 2015 05:45
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kiritsugu is a better fighter but shirou is a better girl magnet, so it's a draw
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May 24, 2015 05:46
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how is shirou surviving 'plot armor?' what rule is he breaking by being able to at least keep himself alive?
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May 24, 2015 05:53
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drat, the protagonist of the story is doing something besides making GBS threads himself and dying... look at all this plot armor
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May 24, 2015 05:53
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ViggyNash posted:I'll have to disagree with that actually. I read the VN after watching /Zero and I still really liked it. It make the story all the more interesting to know the (admittedly retconned) backstory. What was retconned?
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May 24, 2015 06:04
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Endorph posted:how is shirou surviving 'plot armor?' what rule is he breaking by being able to at least keep himself alive? Shirou fights Servants constantly and doesn't die. He's just a normal human with some crappy magic, it really doesn't make a lot of sense that he would survive very long against that sort of power. F/Z gets around this problem by not having Kiritsugu actually fight any Servants, and it works a lot better as a result.
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May 24, 2015 06:08
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Lord Justice posted:Shirou fights Servants constantly and doesn't die. He's just a normal human with some crappy magic, it really doesn't make a lot of sense that he would survive very long against that sort of power. F/Z gets around this problem by not having Kiritsugu actually fight any Servants, and it works a lot better as a result. who cares really? it's not like he survives by skateboarding around them, doing a kickflip, then rolling away wearing sunglasses. the fact that he manages to survive by the skin of his teeth doesn't undermine how much stronger the servants are than he is, and when he survives it's normally a consequence of his own efforts/actions.
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May 24, 2015 06:11
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Did you miss the part about Avalon allowing him to recover at an extremely fast rate
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May 24, 2015 06:12
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Did you miss the part about Avalon allowing him to recover at an extremely fast rate When was that implanted in him? It's unclear to me - If it was the whole series, then fine, but that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. His rate of recovery seems to be a lot slower than say with Kiritsugu, who recovered from having his heart explode after only a few seconds. Shirou seems to need hours in same cases to recover from lesser wounds.
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May 24, 2015 06:16
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Kiritsugu put it in shirou when he found him in the aftermath of the grail iirc It's also why he was able to summon Saber in the first place.
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May 24, 2015 06:20
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Holy poo poo Ufo you are ruining pretty much the best part. Why.
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May 24, 2015 06:22
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Lord Justice posted:Shirou fights Servants constantly and doesn't die. He's just a normal human with some crappy magic, it really doesn't make a lot of sense that he would survive very long against that sort of power. F/Z gets around this problem by not having Kiritsugu actually fight any Servants, and it works a lot better as a result. This is an excellent example of backwards viewing since FSN has a bunch of people who fight Servants and win. There's also someone in HA who does.
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May 24, 2015 06:22
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Lord Justice posted:When was that implanted in him? It's unclear to me - If it was the whole series, then fine, but that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. His rate of recovery seems to be a lot slower than say with Kiritsugu, who recovered from having his heart explode after only a few seconds. Shirou seems to need hours in same cases to recover from lesser wounds. They literally spelled it out this episode. Shirou clutching his glowing chest and everything, Giant explosions of light. Avalon appearing. Right there when he was found. Even straight up said, that it's powered by Saber, so even if he does not have the master-servant link anymore, it still works from simple proximity to her. Left over magic in the sheath is what let him save Shirou in the first place.
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May 24, 2015 06:27
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Lord Justice posted:Shirou fights Servants constantly and doesn't die. He's just a normal human with some crappy magic, it really doesn't make a lot of sense that he would survive very long against that sort of power. F/Z gets around this problem by not having Kiritsugu actually fight any Servants, and it works a lot better as a result.
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May 24, 2015 06:32
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and it's not like shirou is the only one doing that. bazett goes toe-to-toe with servants in f/ha (not ubw but it bears mentioning.). kuzuki beats on saber (admittedly with caster's help.) rin beats on caster. sufficiently skilled and/or lucky masters can hold their own against servants if the circumstances are in their favor.
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May 24, 2015 06:34
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also you keep calling shirou's magic crappy but rin made a huge deal out of how good shirou was at swords, how naturally inclined towards sword-related magic he was, etc etc. now what is shirou using against the servants. shirou isn't a 'crappy' magus, he's a very specific one. he's good at swords. he's garbo at everything else but if it's got a handle and a pointy bit, he's a natural.
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May 24, 2015 06:37
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Repster posted:They literally spelled it out this episode. Shirou clutching his glowing chest and everything, Giant explosions of light. Avalon appearing. Right there when he was found. Even straight up said, that it's powered by Saber, so even if he does not have the master-servant link anymore, it still works from simple proximity to her. Left over magic in the sheath is what let him save Shirou in the first place. Ah, I see then. To be honest, I found that sequence confusing, and I wasn't sure what was real and what Shirou was just imagining. In hindsight, I suppose that light around Kiritsugu was Avalon. Endorph posted:how doesn't it make sense? it's not like f/sn's rules were laid down by the gods. nasu wrote f/sn. nasu wrote shirou surviving encounters with servants. shirou surviving encounters with servants is therefore possible in the setting. If an author decrees their character survives for no other reason than the author said so, that's plot armour, which is the point I'm making. I'm aware of Avalon now of course, but it still feels that way, and I still feel UBW would have been better off without Shirou getting into direct fights with Servants. Endorph posted:and it's not like shirou is the only one doing that. bazett goes toe-to-toe with servants in f/ha (not ubw but it bears mentioning.). kuzuki beats on saber (admittedly with caster's help.) rin beats on caster. sufficiently skilled and/or lucky masters can hold their own against servants if the circumstances are in their favor. In the cases I'm aware of, Kuzuki took out Saber for about 2 minutes and had no lasting effect on her, and Rin's plan failed completely and would have ended with her dying without Archer's betrayal. Just because normal humans can fight Servants in very specific scenarios doesn't mean Servants wouldn't completely destroy a normal human 99% of the time.
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May 24, 2015 06:41
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if you don't like shirou getting into direct fights with servants, that's fine and a valid opinion - maybe you think it makes servants seem less special, whatever - but don't call it plot armor when it fits with the established rules of the setting and reality doesn't bend to accommodate it.
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May 24, 2015 06:43
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Endorph posted:if you don't like shirou getting into direct fights with servants, that's fine and a valid opinion - maybe you think it makes servants seem less special, whatever - but don't call it plot armor when it fits with the established rules of the setting and reality doesn't bend to accommodate it. I think the problem comes down to application. Shirou has Avalon, fine, he can survive wounds that would cripple or kill him. The issue comes in when A, Avalon is only introduced in the latter part of the second cour, so it's reaching deus ex machina territory, and B, it's used to retroactively justify Shirou's stupidity and honestly serves to be even more frustrating in that regard. Within F/Z, Avalon's power is clearly spelled out from the first episode, and we know it's implanted in Irisviel. It's then only used a few times. When Kiritsugu uses it, all it does is merely even the fight, it doesn't work as a crutch or an out. It's just a way for Kiritsugu to survive Kirei's unarmed strikes and Kiritsugu's Time Alter abilities and that's it.
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May 24, 2015 07:03
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Lord Justice posted:Shirou fights Servants constantly and doesn't die. He's just a normal human with some crappy magic, it really doesn't make a lot of sense that he would survive very long against that sort of power. F/Z gets around this problem by not having Kiritsugu actually fight any Servants, and it works a lot better as a result. Lets put aside for a second the technical reasons why Shirou manages to keep surviving (Avalon, Kanshou & Bakuya granting him +10 CON and +5 DEX, getting saved by another Servant's intervention, or meta reasons like "Avalon was explained in the previous route and UBW is predicated on you knowing this"); don't you see that maybe there may be narrative reasons that provide a sort of commentary regarding Kiritsugu's methods? I think it can probably be simplified down to this: Shirou cannot preserve the happiness of those in front of him by running away when the odds are not in his favor.
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May 24, 2015 07:05
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Lord Justice posted:Avalon is only introduced in the latter part of the second cour, so it's reaching deus ex machina territory That's an unfortunate side effect of only getting the UBW adaption because for as unliked Fate is, it's main purpose is setting up just about every important plot point in UBW. This includes, Avalon, how OP Gilgamesh is, who Saber is to begin with, Shirou's dream, Illya's role in the Holy Grail war, Kotomine's status as evil badass, among other things. Not to excuse this adaptation, but there's not really much they could do about it other than rewriting the plot. The truth is, each route is not a self-contained story.
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May 24, 2015 07:08
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UBW presumes you are either a VN reader or FZ viewer, why should it need to explain what Avalon is? If you watched Fate Zero you should already know where it is and what it does.
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May 24, 2015 07:13
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Rodyle posted:UBW presumes you are either a VN reader or FZ viewer, why should it need to explain what Avalon is? If you watched Fate Zero you should already know where it is and what it does. I just re-watched the last episode of F/Z, Avalon is never brought up or mentioned in regards to Shirou. Raenir Salazar posted:Lets put aside for a second the technical reasons why Shirou manages to keep surviving (Avalon, Kanshou & Bakuya granting him +10 CON and +5 DEX, getting saved by another Servant's intervention, or meta reasons like "Avalon was explained in the previous route and UBW is predicated on you knowing this"); don't you see that maybe there may be narrative reasons that provide a sort of commentary regarding Kiritsugu's methods? I'm aware of the narrative behind Shirou. The problem I have is that I feel it is presented in such a way it really hurts Shirou's character's and makes it really difficult to feel invested in anything he's doing narratively.
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May 24, 2015 07:35
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Episode had Rin and Lancer. A+++
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May 24, 2015 07:37
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Rewatching the final episode of F/Z also made me realize how badly UBW is following it up. The narrative with Saber is left completely hanging, along with Kirei's whole thing which has been shifted to the background, and he just died without doing anything in particular. Plus all the problems with Shirou, and it's really becoming more and more apparent that UBW was not designed for this. I get that it's part of a larger VN, but I feel that's pretty much the entire problem. They adapted themselves into a corner - F/Z was a big hit with new people, and they wanted to keep going, but DEEN covered Fate and I guess they can't do that again so they adapt UBW, which doesn't follow from F/Z much. It's not like Fate does either, Heaven's Feel is apparently the actual follow-up. To me, FSN almost feels unadaptable, not with the setup the VN has. I'm not entirely sure if DEEN was entirely wrong in their idea of putting together the three routes, even if their execution was apparently terrible. To be honest though, my preference wouldn't have been a mashup so much as a complete rewrite to fit into a complete anime properly, and to work as an actual followup to F/Z.
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May 24, 2015 07:47
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The VN basically sets it up as: Fate: Asks if Shirou is willing to pursue the ideal. UBW: Asks if the ideal itself is worth the effort. HF: Asks if Shirou is willing to make the necessary sacrifices. So I feel like UBW is just a straight up awful choice as a sequel because it's sort of silly to ask that question after Kiritsugu spent his entire life on it and got a resounding "no". But there really is no right answer here because Zero leaves behind three main sequel hooks, one for each route: Saber, Gilgamesh, and Sakura. It was written with three separate (and almost completely incompatible) stories in mind, and while that works out for it as a standalone anime it really doesn't mesh with making a decent sequel. And of course F/SN relies a toooooon on inner monologue and that never works for animated adaptions so you know. Screwed either way. Just treat it like any other adaption of this sort of thing and assume the complete story is in the source material, then watch the cool fights. EDIT: On the other hand, UBW was designed to effectively be a sequel to Fate, so if you watch the DEEN anime then come here you'll get a much better effect. Right down to being amazed how much better everything is. 
BlitzBlast fucked around with this message at 08:14 on May 24, 2015 |
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May 24, 2015 08:08
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I'm beginning to hate Fate/Zero simply on the merit that people overrate it so damned much. Urobochi came in and did his grimdark thing, people ate it up, and now everyone's making GBS threads on the source material. The anime is faltering a little bit because the pacing is weirdly splitting things into three episodes, but I still don't see how anyone can like Kiritsugu over Shirou. Shirou is a dumb force of nature, like a broken NPC that's pathfinding into a wall at high speeds for eternity. He's a train wreck, but one that's entertaining as hell. Kiritsugu was just a blatant shitlord in a contest between gentlemen who'd prefer being subtle shitlords, and only achieved any sort of success because he worked with Goku the servant. Shirou is capable of operating without Saber's help, regardless of the Avalan shoehorn in today's episode, and he's much more fun to watch because of it. Fate/Zero was cool, but it was built on the foundations set by Shirou and his crazy rear end. The sad thing is, the constant comparisons are only going to get worse by the time Heaven's Feel comes out. 
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May 24, 2015 08:09
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