“Can Justice save the world?”

Fate/Zero, a prequel to the widely-acclaimed Fate/Stay Night, which first originally came about in the form of light novels, is a collaboration project between Type-Moon and Nitroplus, two of my most favorite visual novel studios; The novel was written by Gen Urobuchi of Nitroplus and illustrations were being drawn by Takashi Takeuchi of Type-Moon. Fate/Zero is made from the best of the best and it is no doubt a novel of greatness with disproportional scale.

The anime for Fate/Zero was adapted and released around October of last year, and later on, the continuation of the series, begun this year and after twelve episodes of epicness, Fate/Zero finally ended. Being produced by ufotable who also were involved in one other high-budget Type-Moon release, Kara no Kyoukai, the attention and recognition Fate/Zero receives were certainly deserved.

Fate/Zero is a prequel, and depicts Emiya Kiritsugu, Shirou’s foster father in Fate/Stay Night, and his ventures in the 4th Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City. The system being the Holy Grail War is similar to Fate/Stay Night. Seven magi are chosen to participate, and they will have to summon a Heroic Spirit as “servant” in order for them to join in the war. Emiya Kiritsugu was selected as one of the participant, and in the war, he will face countless trails and revelations along the way.

It is recommended to watch Fate/Stay Night first before watching Fate/Zero. Fate/Stay Night handles the premise introductions slightly better then Fate/Zero does. However, what Fate/Zero outdid the 2006 TV show is the way it delivers these premises and concepts to ultimate extreme levels. Emiya Kiritsugu completely butchered the “system” of Holy Grail War by even using gunfires in his fights, he always find loopholes in the system, and uses it to his best advantage. The other masters aren’t dumb like a bunch of school kids either, and employs smart, tactical moves while in combat.

Fate/Zero also intelligently strikes at the core of philosophy by entailing the different parts of human natures and conduct: ideals and beliefs, pride and valor, the values of kingship, redemption and so on. Fate/Zero philosophically creates dozens of concepts and together, different characters who share different viewpoints regarding said concept, and it makes the whole anime even the more so interesting. Each of these was dealt in an in-depth manner, and it makes the viewers question themselves too; Was what Emiya Kiritsugu did excusable? Was Saber truthfully the rightful king? All these, coupled with the excellent dialogues of the characters, make the anime isn’t just “some action anime” but a “deep anime” too.

In order for such an in-depth story and plot points to continue, the characters had to be rich and colorful in context to delivery the story as well, and Fate/Zero manages in that aspect quite well. Recurring characters like Saber and Gilgamesh make a return, so do characters like the new Rider, who has his own viewpoints of kingships to share in contrast to Saber’s and Gilgamesh’s own. Then there are the new Lancer, Beserker and Caster who possess intriguing pasts and identities of their own. Also, Assassin in Fate/Zero actually acted like a true assassin, carefully plotting and besting their opponents from the shadows, unlike Fate/Stay Night’s Assassin who waited at the front door for an enemy to arrive. The more straightforward approach of the characters in Fate/Stay Night, and the more witful approach of the characters in Fate/Zero; The contrasting differences make the characters in both anime delightful in their own rights.

The servants aside, the masters had a lot to share as well. Velvet and rider’s interactions are always nice to watch, then there’s the proud and prideful Tohsaka Tokiomi, Rin’s father, the pitiful Matou Kariya who purely wanted to save Sakura, the psychotic Ryuunosuke and of cause, the main focus of the show, Kiritsugu and Kirei. The former wanted to save the world and aspires to be a hero, and the latter lacks a will and only joined the Holy Grail War to seek answers for his emptiness. All of them are explored deeply, careful attentions and time allocations are span out for all the characters in order to build and develop them.

Another one of Fate/Zero satisfying element is their visuals. The vibrant world of Fuyuki City is illustrated with great details, and almost all the characters are interestingly nice to look at. The animations are also of extraordinary quality; they are smooth, fluid and fast-paced. Because of that, Fate/Zero may in fact, shows us one of the best action sequences in the following years to come.

Some slight 3D graphics are present, and sometimes, may appear a bit overwhelming. One of the earlier major 3D usage is probably seen when Berserker first appears. Berserker is somewhat a human and non-human at the same time, so any 3D resources spent on him is a good waste in my opinion. It makes the existence of Berserker slightly virtual-like, yet, still manifesting. Another major 3D usage comes in the motorcycle race scene between Saber and Rider, which is literally an extreme visual pleasure to the eyes.

In some episodes, slight degradation of visuals quality may be spotted but overall, Fate/Zero still excels graphically as a whole.

The two OPs, “oath sign” by LiSA, and “to the beginning” by Kalafina are both good songs. The tunes of the songs provide a somewhat hopeful ambiance. They are also combined with a rhythmic beat give off that pop feel. Instruments like violin and guitars are also commonly used, similarly in most of the EDs as well.

Yuki Kajiura is the composer for Fate/Zero’s soundtracks, who made exceptional soundtracks for Kara no Kyoukai and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Compared to the two though, Fate/Zero’s soundtracks fall slightly but it’s still a good soundtrack altogether. The melodies are dramatic, sometimes ominous, and sometimes, completely dark melodies, captures the dark atmospheres of the anime.

The voice acting is truly godsend. Since most of the cast are of adults this time around, some may sound a bit generic but Kiritsugu, Kirei and Kariya’s seiyuu did a truly wonderful job. Koyama Rikiya (Kiritsugu) and Shingaki Tarusuke (Kariya) in particular, knows exceedingly well when to sound cool, and when to sound desperate. Veterans from the old cast like Kawasumi Ayako’s (Saber) and Seki Tomokazu (Gilgamesh) doesn’t disappoint too, which makes Saber’s prideful manner of speech, and Gilgamesh’s provocative tones much more amazing.

The ending tied up a lot of details. In particular, one could understand more about the perspectives of heroes in the eyes of both Kiritsugu’s and Shirou’s respectively. It also gives more background information about characters in Fate/Stay Night, like Rin and Sakura in particular.

At the end, Fate/Zero is one hell of a masterpiece. Truth to be told, when I watched Fate/Stay Night several years ago, despite raging complaints, I thought it was good, not exactly the greatest but good nonetheless. Fate/Zero completely outdid itself though, and it makes a Type-Moon fan like me even the more so obsessive. For those who had watched Fate/Stay Night (or had played the game), be sure to check out this anime too! Fate/Zero is a series which would certainly be one of the best anime in years to come, and I’m sure once the BD are released, it will enhance the qualities of the anime even more so, with added dialogues and whatnot.

Rating

Final Score

Fate/Zero is a massive trove of philosophical ideas. Today, we will have an in-depth look at Emiya Kiritsugu’s ideals, and compare it with the ideals Emiya Shirou, Fate/Stay Night’s main protagonist. Please be warned that there will be major spoilers ahead, and also do take note that I will be comparing Kiritsugu with the Shirou of Fate/Stay Night’s anime, NOT the visual novel, as you can basically control how Shirou should go about his ideals in there anyway.

There’s no hope on the battlefield.
It has nothing but unspeakable despair.
Just a crime we call victory, paid for by the pain of the defeated.
Yet humanity has never recognized this truth.
And the reason for that is, in every era,
a dazzling hero has blinded people with their legends and prevented them from seeing the evil of bloodshed.
The true nature of humanity has not advanced a step beyond the Stone Age!

We will first have a look at Kiritsugu. The foster father and role model of Shirou, was actually a man with a very twisted ideal. He aspired to be a hero of justice, but he also understood it is impossible to save everyone. Viewing things objectively instead of subjectively, his way of salvation focuses on “maintaining” the scale of good and evil. If he was forced to kill five person to save five hundred people, he would gladly pull the trigger, and if being forced to kill five hundred thousand people in order to save six billion people, he would again, gladly do so. Kiritsugu kills people and criminals to increase the higher statistics of people who will be saved by his actions.

Through his countless killings, Kiritsugu has shielded off his emotions, which enabled him to think logically. He selfishly understood that his brutality and atrocity is needed by the world and by shutting off his human emotions, he kills and kills non-stop, with the delusion that his act of murders are for the greater good. However, deep down, Kiritsugu is a human, he has doubts, and is surprisingly quite emotional. Despite his countless killings, the man knew his way of saving the world is completely wrong. That was why he sought the Grail once he was aware about the existence of the Holy Grail War, in hope that the Grail would do what he couldn’t.

Once Kiritsugu discerned of the Grail’s true identity, and it’s method of granting the user’s wish, it is no doubt Kiritsugu wanted to destroy it. His ideals and beliefs were in a haywire after that, and his merciless facade was completely shattered. After being shown such a hell, even saving one, just one life is enough for him, as even just saving one life, would be a ‘salvation’ to his struggles.

Kiritsugu: When I was little, I wanted to be a hero
Shirou: What? You wanted to be one.. Did you give up?
Kiritsugu: Yeah.. It’s unfortunate but being a hero is a limited-time thing. When you grow up, it gets hard to call yourself one. I should have realized that earlier.
Shirou: I see. That’s just too bad, then.
Kiritsugu: Indeed. You’re absolutely right.
Kiritsugu: The moon’s really nice tonight..
Shirou: Yeah.. Since you couldn’t do it, I’ll do it for you.
Shirou: You’re an adult now, so you can’t do it. But I can. Leave it to me.
Shirou: Your dream..
Kiritsugu: Right… Yeah… I can be at peace now..

..which brings me to Emiya Shirou next. Shirou, who was saved by Kiritsugu, is a young boy, and probably because of that, his naivety knows no bounds. He wants to be a hero, an “Ally of Justice” like his father, to uphold his idealistic views and most of all, to obtain his childish dream of saving the world. Unlike Kiritsugu, Shirou isn’t as logical as his role model, and in hopes of achieving his dream, he relied on simple activities like helping everyone with their daily tasks, works hard, and to have a healthy lifestyle.

Later on when he begins fighting as the master of Saber, his perspective in battles also begun taking shape, and his outlook when compared with Kiritsugu, is like hell and heaven. In contrast to Kiritsugu’s cold and calculating personality at both his opponents and allies, Shirou opted a more self-sacrificing altitude. Instead of looking at things logically, and making a small sacrifice, Shirou always makes his best attempts at saving everyone without a care of his own well-being. Countless times shown, Shirou, who barely knows how to use magic, was injured to the extreme core by the more experienced magi. He couldn’t stand people getting hurt for his sake, and even sacrificed himself keeping Saber from getting hurt, even though as a Heroic Spirit, Saber’s strength is inherently stronger then that of Shirou’s. Rin repeatedly argued with him and his philosophical stance in Unlimited Blade Works too, to show Shirou just how wrong his idealistic approach is.

In a way, Kiritsugu’s approach in saving the world resembles that of Fate/Stay Night’s Archer. They are cold and calculating, and saving everyone and making small sacrifices are nothing but daily routines to them. Blankly, they kept on repeatedly “saving” the world almost to the brink of insanity. Kiritsugu himself becomes exhausted after years of killing, and immediately turns to the Grail as his one and only means without even questioning the seemingly vague omnipotent wish granting device.

Archer, who is the manifestation of Shirou’s future form, had been ridding the world off evil by mechanically “saving” it, to the point that he became dead, incarnated into a Counter Guardian, and was even ultimately betrayed by his own ideals. Two men, who both grew weary by their own foolery, desired to end it in one way or the other. It is ironic that Kiritsugu’s adpoted son would ended up in almost the same path that he did in the future.

Shirou’s approach would definitely resembles a genuine hero. However, he has no love for himself and had no qualms about sacrificing himself. In a way, Shirou even sounds more like a monster, compared to Kiritsugu, who dons an emotionless and merciless mask, was just an ordinary human deep down who is prone to extreme fears and despairs. Between Shirou and Kiritsugu, who do you think is the true “hero of justice”?

When an anime released so many sequels, prequels, remakes, spin-offs and so on, it can get confusing, not knowing which to watch first. Should we follow the order they are released? Or should we watch in chronological order? What about experimenting in a specified order yourself?

The advantages of watching shows in a chronological order is obvious, so that the story flows better. If the sequel’s plots are heavily connected to the prequel, then that makes it more so the reason to watch it in proper chronological order. Even if the stories are not connected much, there also might be slight references to previous prequels, and not having the knowledge to those references loses some level of fun.

Obviously, some franchise specially release prequels to their works years after their success, and one main reason is for viewers to further understand their works. This is certainly the case for Fate/Zero. Story-wise, Fate/Zero is set just before Fate/Stay Night, however, it is better to watch Fate/Stay Night first before watching Fate/Zero as it exposes so much plot revelations and twists which Fate/Stay Night couldn’t cover, so first-timers who are newly exposed to the Fate universe would no doubt be subtly perplexed.

Ultimately though, whether or not the anime is being shown in chronological or non-chronological order does not really matter. What matters the most is your own personal preferences, and to me, what I prefer best is watching anime according to the time they are released, be it chronological or not. One main reason is the difference of quality, enjoyment and production values. I will use Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night again as examples. Comparing the two, Fate/Zero is no doubt innately better, be it visuals, story, characters.. anything. If one watches Fate/Zero first, he will be easily be let down, which completely downgrades one’s enjoyment and appreciation of the Fate universe. So at that end, one should just watch Fate/Stay Night, Unlimited Blade Works and finally Fate/Zero, following the order they were released.

Ghost in the Shell is another franchise I had had experiences with. I watched almost every GitS releases consecutively by this year, which was pretty late as there were already so many different series released by then when I checked in MAL. One is a sequel, another is a prequel, and some are retellings, etc.. I ended up watching the whole thing in my own chronological order and I feel that the series is overshadowed by the more better movies in my opinion. The order that I watched in is GitS (1995), GitS Innocence, GitS: SAC, GitS: SAC 2nd gig and GitS: Solid State Society. In this order, the main problem is between GitS Innocence and GitS: SAC (first season).

For those uninformed, GitS: SAC is released on Oct 1 2002 while the Innocence movie is released on Mar 6 2004. Looking at the order, I should be watching Innocence AFTER GitS: SAC but I reverted it. By doing this, I actually gained less knowledge prior to the movie. For example, I had no idea Batou was so infatuated with dogs, since the first movie didn’t show any scenes of Batou with them. It’s only a fun little knowledge, yet it degrades one’s enjoyment by so much. There’s also the production values to consider aforementioned. For a 2004 movie, the Innocence movie’s quality are tantamount to newer anime films, which is saying a lot. By watching that first, and watching the TV series after that, the disappointment easily downgrades viewer’s expectations and enjoyment.

On a slightly unrelated note, ones who play Devil May Cry will immediately take notice of the series’s awkward order. The stories goes in a chronological order of 3-1-4-2, and players like me, who played DMC3 first will be instantly disappointed at DMC1′s less fluid battle gameplays. So this theory of “playing things accordingly to release dates” could actually be applied to video games as well.

Unexpectedly, the order of watching anime is much more crucial then one thinks. Have you watched an anime which you feel you watched in the wrong order? Are you the type who watched the first season of Haruhi in chronological order? Are you the type who watched Fate/Zero without watching Fate/Stay Night first? Your opinions are always most welcomed.

I saw Aaeru doing a questionnaire too, similar to what Ace and Yumeka had done. However, this is more visual novel-focused and despite that I don’t play as much visual novels as most major players, I jumped into the fray just as soon as I saw it. Questionnaires like these are always fun after all.

1. Who is your favourite female visual novel character?
Tohsaka Rin! Favorite character in anime, and favorite character in visual novels. I like just how important she contribute to the plot, regardless of the routes. Other favourite female characters include Natsume Rin (Little Busters), Kud (Little Busters), Ikumi (Moon.) and Haru (G-senjou no Maou).

2. Who is your favourite male visual novel character?
The charismatic leader of Little Busters, Natsume Kyousuke, is definitely one of my top favourites, while Masato from the same visual novel, is second to none too. I also like Kong Taoluo (Kikokugai) for his badassery, and Kenichi (Sharin no Kuni) and Azai Kyousuke (G-senjou no Maou) for their decisiveness and quick-wittiness. While this doesn’t really count much as a visual novel, Phoenix Wright from Ace Attorney is also a pretty good character.

3. What is your favourite visual novel?
My top 3 favorite visual novels are Ef-A Fairy Tale of the Two, G-Senjou no Maou and Fate-Stay Night. These three certainly put up a good fight but still, I think I will ultimately still choose Ef, it’s beautiful, relaxing atmospheres, yet top-quality productions make it a force to be reckon with. Of cause, other then these three, there are other visual novels noteworthy too.

4. What is your favourite visual novel soundtrack (or song)?
Once again, I would say my favorite soundtracks are from Ef-A Fairy Tale of the Two. While the styles and tunes are different, Ef’s soundtracks are akin to anime’s Aria, calm, soothing and relaxing. Aside from songs like those, I like hearing a bit of rock too, and Sengoku Rance had a collection of phenomenal rock songs. Similarly, Kira Kira and Deardrops is noteworthy.

5. Which is your favourite visual novel opening animation?
Once again, Ef, it’s opening is incredible. Bloody Rondo’s opening is pretty memorable too.

6. What is your favourite scene in a visual novel?
Any H-scenes. A bit of spoilers, but my favourite scene is in G-Senjou no Maou, where Kyousuke finally meet “Maou” in person and interacted with him. At that time, he had already discovered “Maou’s” real identity. The lengthy mysterious build-up between the two makes this scene so epic.

7. What qualities in a VN character do you gravitate most towards?
I like characters who are decisive and is able to make quick and calm judgements at the spur of the moment. They should also be strong, both physically and mentally and is one of the reason why I like the characters from G-Senjou no Maou and Sharin no Kuni so.

8. Which character in a VN is most similar to you in terms of personality?
Shouichi from Deardrops. Both of us are sometimes calm, yet passionate at the same time, and also, we both love music in our own ways.

Shouichi originally plays the violin and was a calm individual, however, after started learning the wonders of rock and being together with his boisterous bandmates for quite a long time, he’s became just as audacious, but still retained some of his calmness from before.

9. Who is your favourite VN Artist?
Na-Ga (Little Busters), Huke (Steins;Gate), Peko (Sono Hanabira), Nanao Naru (Ef – A Fairy tale of the Two) and Coffee-Kizoku (Cure Girl).

10. Who is your favourite VN writer?
Jun Maeda, Gen Urobuchi and Kinoko Nasu. Three writers from three epic studios.

11. What is your favourite thing about visual novel/eroge?
The fact how anime (slight motions and sound), manga (the different CGs and pictures of visual novels are almost akin to the different pics of manga panels) and light novels (I think this should be obvious) elements are merged into one. To me, visual novel is a combination of all of these, and while it still has it’s pros and cons, it’s almost the ultimate form of otaku entertainment.

12. What is one thing you would eliminate from all VNs to make them more perfect?
My take on this is pretty much the same as Yirba’s. Better distribution towards non-Japanese market.

13. Do you think you’ll ever stop playing VNs?
No, but I will be slow for sure.

14. Are you open about the fact that you play VNs with people you know?
Likewise with anime, people in Brunei here are very ignorant of visual novels. In fact, visual novels are even lesser known then anime here, and their disinterest is really on a whole new level.

Surprisingly, my sister was interested the first time she saw me playing Ef. I immediately introduced her some mainstream titles I played like Fate/Stay Night, Ever17, G-Senjou no Maou and Saya no Uta.

15. Which visual novel was the biggest let down for you?
Princess Waltz. The art and music is good and all but plot and character developments are very poorly done.

16. Name one VN nobody-has-played that you would recommend for others.
Brass Restoration. It’s a free visual novel but it’s actually pretty good. It speaks of how the Ryo, the main character loses hope for his dream and his hardships of regaining the passion he once had.

Other answers from other participants
Rablazone
Yirba
Therussoturisto
Uuchujin
Nekotea

Height: 154 cm
Weight: 42 kg
Three Sizes: B73/W53/H76
Blood Type: O
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Green

She is Shirou’s Servant, an agile but powerful warrior. Loyal, independent, and reserved, Saber acts coldly but is actually suppressing her emotions to focus on her goals. Her class is considered the “Most Outstanding,” with excellent ratings in all categories. Since her Master cannot effectively provide her with Mana, she minimizes her activity to preserve what she has. Saber is frustrated by Shirou’s “protective” tendencies, believing his erratic and reckless behavior will jeopardize her chances of winning the Holy Grail War.

This is one of the figures that was long extinct since I even started my hobby of collecting figures. As luck would had it however, this same figure had a re-release sometime ago. I immediately snatched my chance and bought her, only to find out later that there are pre-owned sales of her for cheaper prices at amiami. Ah well, at least I get to enjoy her while she is “fresh and virgin.”

I love flowery patterns on the side and on the top of the box, but the patterns may be a bit too much and overcrowded in my opinion – makes the box more flashier than is necessary. The scale figure comes with a big stand and two versions of Saber’s Excalibur, the concealed and exposed versions.

Donning on her blue battle dress, with a dynamic fighting pose, as always, she looks exceptionally gallant. At a scale of 1/7, she stands at more than 20cm tall and is also extremely wide. She can really eat up a lot of space, almost equivalent to most standard horizontal scale figures.

The details on her face is amazing, and her flocks of hair is well done too. Although I find her ahoge to be a bit more thicker then usual. I could had sworn the ahoge on the anime is more naturally thin and hair-like.

Details on her outfit are crafted with precise accuracy – I especially like the magic symbols on her chest armor. Though the type of silver paint they used made the metal looks very grainy for some reason.

I’m also quite loving the details of the sword, the exposed version of the sword in this case. That detailed magic inscribing on the sword is quite good, though likewise with the armor, the extremely grainy paint kinda puts me off a bit.

Aside from the grainy metal, the dress overall looks good. Although, she wasn’t able to come in one piece. One side of her dress had an awkward paint job – looks like a bad coating or perhaps the top layer of the paint had been chipped off.

The stand, aforementioned, is incredibly wide. It had also been made to make it “interact” with the figure, having a part of it diagonally sliced, probably by Saber’s sword. I usually dislike text on figure stands, and likewise, had to really question it’s presence here.

To support such a huge and heavy figure, the stand luckily offers a huge peg to withstand it – something which looks like a small bended metal bar which can be fitted into the slot on the stand and on one of Saber’s leg. It creates a better, stable balance but can look awkward – from what I can see, Saber is supposed to be running and sidestepping while swinging her sword, but the increased height makes it look like jumping instead. This is however, hard to notice from afar though.

Likewise with that one particular side of the dress, her other sword, the concealed version doesn’t come with one piece either. The round thingy on the side is supposed to be fit nicely on the handle, in fact, the exposed version was pretty much fine in that regard. This concealed version however, is very loose no matter how hard I push it in, and I can only guess that it was a factory manufacturing error. When I opened the package, the first thing that fell out of it is actually that round orange thing which was supposed to fit into the sword tightly. It was a very small piece too so luckily, I was still able to find it (it actually fell down twice). It kinda reminds me of the wings of the Kuroyukihime figma I bought sometime ago, one side was fine, and the other side of the wings just keep falling off.

I always had a gripe about special effects on figures, and while this one is definitely well done than some others I saw, I still prefer the exposed version of the sword – looking like a true genuine sword with all details exposed. In this version, the sword is likewise in the anime, concealed by the wind, at least that’s how it’s trying to look like. The blue swirls around the sword can easily be mistaken for blue tentacles however. The transparent outlook of the sword and the unclear inscribing does creates a sort of concealment that the figure is going for however.

In the end however, I love this figure, and I’m really proud to have her in my collection. Although I had some tiny nitpicks of flaws I noticed here and there as you can see, those are quite easily overlooked in the grand scale of things.

We all had our roots in our fixation with the Japanese subculture. We were introduced to anime watching through classic old shows like Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. We were introduced to manga through classic titles like Ranma 1/2, Doraemon, Yu Yu Hakusho and the likes. My history with visual novels go as far back to when our household just had a PS1 a long time ago. That day, after getting the console, marked the day I started gaming for real (before that, I only played a few obscure PC games). Even so, it was not even until later that I come across these visual novels in PS1. Even then, I never knew they were called visual novels at the time, and just called them “Japanese cartoon games”. The design structure – the sprites, the dialogues on the bottom, the CG, it seemed somehow familiar, but I just couldn’t quite describe them properly other than calling them “Japanese cartoon games”. There was also the fact that these games were completely in Japanese, and I could barely even recognize a few kanji (“recognize” in a way that I knew them as Chinese words, thus, it’s meaning, but still did not know how to properly read them as Japanese) so I obviously couldn’t even attempt to decipher these complicated moonrunes before, thinking they were some kind of secret codes.

I didn’t stumble upon them in a long while since than, not even after we bought a PS2, not even the day we got a proper internet connection at our home. However, the latter did help immensely in my discovery of visual novels. After a lot of my friends had quit playing a MMO we were active in, I decided to stop as well, and started watching anime. Later, I discovered anime charts, and since than, had been following new anime each season, while trying to keep up with some older titles. It was also around this time when I also started joining anime forums.

Ironically, the anime community on one of the forums I joined, consist of a lot of visual novel players, even when I initially joined for anime discussions. In fact, I would even say more than half of the active members at the time were visual novel players, which was actually unique, since other anime forums barely even know about visual novels. One of my good friend and forummate on the site, introduced me to them, and recommended me a few good titles. If I’m not mistaken, I think this was around 2009, it was the time when I finally know the proper term to called these “Japanese cartoon games”. It was then that I noticed there were quite a lot of visual novels already fully translated at the time, providing more accessibility for people who couldn’t read Japanese. Perhaps during the period of time from my PS1 days to 2009, a lot of translations were being done unbeknownst to me. I was really excited to try out a medium which I couldn’t even had a chance to play before. I never left hope as I struggled and kept brainstorming how do I install my first very visual novel – patches, updates, cracks, mounts, language locale; there are a lot of things to sort out.

After successfully installing it, I played my very first visual novel, Fate/Stay Night, and was left almost speechless by the time I finished it. I was amazed by the fight scenes, which I originally thought is going to be inferior to anime with motion capabilities; I’m astonished with it’s level of character psychological study, showing me a level of perspective, immersion and characterization which any other media just to pale in comparison; I’m fascinated by the grand-scale storytelling, intrigued by the premise, the system behind it, the attention to detail and the list just goes on. Visual novels showed me a new dimension to the Japanese subculture that I had never noticed before.

I was instantly hooked by then. After Fate/Stay Night, I played other mainstream titles which were also fully translated. I was in awe of the beauty of ef, especially with it’s beautiful visuals and music. I feel the uniqueness of Ever 17’s sci-fi story, and if I’m not wrong, it was indeed one of the first visual novel that uses such storytelling design, a design which would work best only in visual novel format. I was disgusted at Saya no Uta with it’s extremely detailed grittiness, both visually and mentally. Each visual novel I played seems to evoke different kinds of views and emotions. Of cause, throughout all these major mainstream titles, I also play visual novels with lighter tones in between, as a “break” of sort, for example, Osananajimi wa Daitouryou, Hinatabokko, and the likes.

On 2010, and even on Christmas too, comes one of the greatest gift ever, a finished translation patch of G-Senjou no Maou – it was one of those visual novels I really wanted to play after seeing it in vndb and hearing people who played the untranslated version praising it. G-Senjou no Maou was indeed as great as I had expected, I was always a fan of psychological series where characters try to outwit their opponents – G-Senjou no Maou is exactly such kind of visual novel, yet, something more. There are constant exciting, mentally gripping scenes, but there’s also the feels, the emotions the characters felt from their struggles, and there’s the very endearing, conclusive ending. Just like the protagonist with his dual personality, the visual novel is just so good at showing us different shades of emotions at any given time.

I never forget to “wind down” however, and pick lighter visual novels to play whenever possible, and I especially needed one after such a quality, extravagant experience from playing G-Senjou no Maou. I think it was around this time that I discover the Sono Hanabira series. Before this, I had been looking for ages for a yuri anime/visual novel like Sono Hanabira, one which doesn’t just have yuri undertones, one that is only purely about two girls loving each other. No drama, no magic, no actions and certainly no weird fetishes like tentacles or d*** girls. Just as soon as I had given up, the discovery of Sono Hanabira was like finding a tiny oasis in a massive sea of sandy dessert. Sono Hanabira has all my needs, all my specified “ideals” and uniquely acquired tastes of yuri; it has them all, which just makes me appreciative of the visual novel medium that much more. Since then, I had been periodically prowling through the translated Sono Hanabira titles one by one in a gradual manner, getting my yuri fix, and getting fixated on my favorite yuri couples of Sono Hanabira, and occasionally, some nosebleed here and there, and checking my sugar levels.

At some point, I started learning the Japanese language due to my fondness for visual novels. I memorized hiragana and katakana, and decided to tackle kanji by playing visual novels. I played a few titles like Cure Girl, Yosuga no Sora, Furifure 2 in this manner. Ironically, instead of checking and studying the kanji I saw on screen, I just breeze through them using machine translators. I opened up my electronic dictionary in hope to learn some kanji, but I found myself clicking through the screen at lightning speed regardless, guess I just can’t help myself when there’s an already convenient translator right in front of me, embarrassingly. I didn’t know what came over me at some point, but I even played visual novels like Bloody Rondo and Dies Irae, the latter completely not suitable to a greenhorn like me, as I wasn’t even able to understand 90% of what I read on screen. In short, a failed endeavor, and as a major amount of my time was also spent on other media like anime, manga, games and novels, I decided to put playing untranslated visual novels on hold for now, as I could barely even keep up with the translated titles as it is, let alone untranslated titles.

The later parts of my visual novel history involves frequently visiting sites like fuwanovel and erogedownload to check out for new translated releases that interests me, and also playing old visual novels recommended before which I still haven’t had the chance to play. I finished Little Busters, Deardrops, Kara no Shoujo, Rewrite, Grisaia no Kajitsu and a dozens of translated visual novels at this point, all great titles in their own rights. At this point, I had changed a new desktop computer to replace my extinct one so I was able to play some visual novels in full + widescreen format, providing they support such resolutions.

The last major visual novel I had played for now is the Muv-luv trilogy – Extra, Unlimited and Alternative, which was as lengthy as playing three different visual novels at once. Still, playing Muv-luv is such an emotional experience, a level of empathy I had never once felt to such a degree, perhaps exceeding even G-Senjou no Maou. There are the relaxing slice of life moments, yet, there are also exciting moments, especially during the fighting scenes. There are also those extremely shocking moments, and the constant fear knowing that your comrades could die at any moment, and the despair that you share with the protagonist. Earlier, I mentioned that each visual novels seem to evoke different kinds of views and emotions, but Muv-luv here is just such an emotional series that you would just about experience any kinds of human emotions throughout the series-joy, wrath, disgust, despair and the list goes on.

What makes me keep coming back to visual novels? What makes them so alluring? For some titles, they consist of a plethora of inducing-emotions. For some titles, they are life-inspiring. For some titles, they just tell an extremely fascinating tale, or perhaps, a very heartwarming romance story. To me, visual novel is the ultimate form of entertainment. Visual novel is a story, just like novels, but visual novel tell it’s story not only through words, but also through visuals, sounds and sometimes, even motions.

Although quite a time-consuming medium, I can still see myself coming back for more, more.. and more, prowling through my massive backlog of visual novels gradually, which include visual novels like the newly translated titles – I/O, Cho Dengeki Stryker, Ayakashibito, to older titles I had yet to play like Planetarian, Narcissu, Umineko and the likes.

What’s your history with visual novels?

List of participants:
Kai
Joyjason
Garejei
Lazarinth
Therussoturisto

“Looks like it’s that time of year again, when various colorfully-named awards sprout up around the blogosphere. Nobody has any idea where they’ve come from, but we humor them anyway!”
~by Silvachief of The Geek Clinic

Apparently, I was nominated once more by some award/questions thing-this time, for the Real Neat Blog awards, by Leaveit2me of Pop Culture Mecha (thanks, man). So without further ado, here are my answers to his questions…
 
______________________
 
1. Answer 1 of the following: Why should someone read your blog instead of mine? OR, Why should someone read my blog instead of yours?

> Why should someone read your blog instead of mine
> read your blog instead of mine
> read your blog

2. Write a simple love poem (in any form) to the anime/manga character of your choice.
I’m the harem master of the masters
School uniform is my body, and bloomers is my blood
I have charmed over a thousand tsunderes
Unknown to jealousy
Nor known to love
Have withstood the pain and consequences of being a pimp
Yet these hands will never touch a yandere
So, as I pray

UNLIMITED WAIFU WORKS

3. If you could have any anime character’s costume in your wardrobe, whose would it be?
Some random magical girl or maid costumes because they are amusing. But in a realistic scenario, if I were to cosplay, I would pick costumes from characters who would more or less fit my real life skinny body-most probably Accelerator or Lelouch.

4. In 140 characters or less, talk about a strong feeling you have regarding something to do with anime.
Waifu.

5. Describe what you think would be the perfect anime. If you think it already exists, please share.
I believe no anime is absolutely perfect. Even anime which are given the 10/10 score for me are anime with forgiven flaws, since the other aspects of said anime are just so good they made me forgive any existing flaws they may have.

6. Pitch an idea for an anime that is a cross between Bleach, One Piece and Naruto.
Just have a Fate/Stay Night-esque battle royale theme. The servants can be past heroes-like a former pirate, ninja or even pull out some magical twists for the shinigami. This will work.

7. And last but not least, who are you? Please be brief.
They call me Kai. Master of the harems.

But to answer your question seriously, I’m just an ordinary person living in Brunei who also so happens to love watching anime and playing games (even if I don’t keep up with games that fast). I can be appreciative of a wide variety of genres, although Gintama still remained my favorite anime after all these years. Also, I love Miku. Hnnnnnng, dat Miku.

You can go to my about page to know more about me.

Here’s another Miku pic to end this post.

So yeah, that’s it. Feel free to share your own answers in the comments.

Just the other day, I finally reached the 3rd page in my VNDB’s completed list, so that means I just finished 100 visual novels! (To be exact, 101, but for the sake of this post, I’ll just round it off to 100). It’s a special occasion, so to celebrate for it, I decided to write about visual novels and why I’m still playing them now.

I was first introduced to visual novels by a friend and forum-mate of mine (this was when I was still active in forums) and playing my first visual novel-Fate/Stay Night, my trip to a then half decade long journey of visual novels started from there. I’m not going to bore you with the details, but you can check this post if you want to know more about my history with visual novels.

Admittedly, it took me awhile to get used to a storytelling medium I never tried before, but once I settled in, I was able to appreciate it. I said this before, but visual novels to me are the ultimate storytelling medium, “ultimate”-not in the sense that they are the very best, in that it is a combination of every possible media of the Japanese anime culture-anime art, the transitioning effect from manga (although it uses sprites and CGs instead of panels) and literary of books and light novels.

Visual novels are like books, but at the same time, so much more with the abilities of visuals, sound and depending on the title, even motions, and one shouldn’t underestimate these little technical advantages. Good music can exceedingly bolster’s one emotions when reading a story, which isn’t something you can simply achieve from reading a book. Of course, you can try finding fitting music of your own to listen to but that is obviously incomparable to original music specifically tailored to the current scenes of the story. The “visual” part of visual novels-background art, CGs and sprites make your experience like that of reading a picture book. These technical elements improve one’s experience in investing in the stories, in particular, the immersion in visual novels is incredible, since you’re able to experience the story through the eyes of the main character as if they are your own, and these technical advantages bolster that immersion.

Visual novels are also interactive games to a degree-they are essentially choose-your-own adventure games. One thing visual novel has that no other media has, is the ability of branching outcomes and endings. This is where a lot of visual novel discussions on “X’s route” or “Y’s route” or “True End”, and so on originate from. Some anime like Amagami and Yosuga no Sora (both unsurprisingly anime adaptions of visual novels) have begun to attempt the “multiple routes” storytelling on anime by resetting a story back to it’s branching point after a few episodes-the attempt of course, is incomparable to visual novel-arguably the originator of the concept. The ability to influence a story’s outcomes depending on player’s choices is not an entirely new concept, but visual novels make it work with it’s immersive capability and unique mechanics. Being able to choose the outcome you desire and effect the story bolsters interactivity, and allows readers to feel involved in the stories-again, something which other media wouldn’t be able to replicate to the same degree-resulting in very unique titles which works best in visual novel format like Ever 17 and Steins;Gate.

It can be hilarious sometimes when you can dive into the MC’s thoughts.

Last but not least, visual novels have the advantage that books have-time. Unlike TV series or films, visual novels have the time to develop their stories and characters-and being able to dive into the character’s thoughts, monologues and soliloquies certainly help too. With a carefully planned pacing, it’s easy to be invested in the story and characters. Just by reading the story gradually, players would very naturally feel attached to the characters, which makes them even more empathizing once the drama befalls them.

When visual novels started, they were just a gimmick, but through borrowing concepts from other media, adapting and evolving itself over a period of time-the combination of different elements are blended together and had become it’s own thing. Visual novels are a fantastic, immersive, storytelling medium-an unique mix of literature, visuals, sound and interactive choices which can influence the story’s outcome. All these aspects of visual novels kept me coming back for more, even if I’m mostly an extremely slow reader for the most part.

And around half a decade later, I finally completed over a hundred visual novels… I think I will end this post here, let me bask in my meager success for now.

P.S: Might as well plug this while I’m at it. Last two years ago, I discussed a topic where I tried “distinguishing visual novels from games”, a topic which spawned 5 posts (+interviews from other visual novel players). Check them out if you’re interested.

Distinguishing Visual Novels
Distinguishing Visual Novels: Part I – Introduction to Visual Novels
Distinguishing Visual Novels: Part II – Origin of Visual Novels
Distinguishing Visual Novels: Part III – Deconstruction of Visual Novels
Distinguishing Visual Novels: Part IV – Differentiating Visual Novels from Games
Distinguishing Visual Novels: Bonus Part – Interviews

Rin is one of those characters where I just can’t seem to have an opportunity to spend any money on, which is baffling even to this day. I have a lot of Saber figures and posters, probably because they are just more accessible, but not a single one for Rin. I assume Saber is just more easier merchandised, considering how many versions of Saber there are and how aesthetically good all of them are. Despite this, and I would like to point this out clearly-my true absolute waifu in the Fate/Stay Night universe is Rin.

Rin’s Noble Phantasm: Teasing 101

One thing which strikes me fancy in Rin is that she is her own person, and moves forward in her own way. Sure enough, her lifestyle definitely has it’s fair share of problems, but she is comfortable with it-and is studying magic not out of obligation, but of pure love for it. She is comfortable about herself being a hedonist, and her presence just brings comfort, optimism and empowerment all in one go, despite Fate/Stay Night’s generally bleak settings.

This is a stark contrast to Shirou’s altruism-his whole lifestyle basically just screams OBLIGATION. I appreciate Shirou’s characterization (not to say I like him as a character), but put both of them together, the contrast between their characterizations highlight why Rin is just such a great character. Out of all the three heroines: Saber, Rin and Sakura-Rin is the only one who is the perfect foil to Shirou. And while foil characters are usually used to utilize the main protagonist’s characterization, in this case, ironically, it worked the other way around.

There was one scene in the first cour of the UBW TV series which highlights these particular aspects of their characterizations extremely well. As expected, Shirou’s troublesome lifestyle made Rin went mad.

“Hmph!”

Other than that, she’s a very dependable person and is a character who follows through her promises-one of the reason why she never stab Shirou in the back despite such acts possible and even recommended at times for easy victories in the Holy Grail Wars. To that end, Rin is just a very good human being with her own sets of morals and ideals to uphold, which of course, aren’t close to Shirou’s ambitions, and shouldn’t be. Throughout Fate/Stay Night, I had always seen Rin as a character who’s trying to be a cold, calculating mage just like how veteran mages should be (just like pretty much almost all of Fate/Zero’s masters-the adult ones, at least), but couldn’t due to her own naivety.

Indeed, she may be harsh on the outside, but she’s a very nice, sympathetic girl on the inside-a clear element of tsundere, but in Rin’s case, the archetype fits in almost naturally. We had seen cases of this, like how Rin grew so hysterical after Shirou got stabbed by Lancer and was close to death, and also with the way Rin treated Sakura in Heaven’s Feel. Within the context, Rin was always being misunderstood as that cold, calculating girl but almost nobody had realized her soft side.

This is the face of a Best Girl.

I also like how expressive she is. I’m just not talking about her contrasting tsundere traits here, but rather just with the ability to be expressive, which in Fate/Stay Night’s settings, seems like a rare trait, as you can see from characters with dead-fish expressions like Sakura, Kiritsugu and even Kirei who certainly had their fair share of troubles expressing their emotions. I guess to make it simple, I just like how honest and straightforward she is, and doesn’t hide her feelings at all. She’s happy when she’s happy, shocked when she’s shocked, angry when she’s angry-what we see of Rin is what it is, there are no hidden agenda… at least if you managed to get around her “honor student” facade at school.

Of course, while she may possess a thousand faces, unknown to death, nor known to life; she can still rock out the classic tsundere look, and still does a better job at it than most typical tsunderes.

Illya knows what’s up.

To that end, it’s a little bit difficult to describe my fascination with Rin, since she is a combination of different kinds of positive traits. She is witty, snarky, intelligent, and also happens to be a tsundere, which is one of my favorite archetypes. She’s honest and straightforward, she’s comfortable with being herself and she’s also prideful and competitive.

Rin is also shown to have proficiency in the art of yuri, Fate/Extra proves this, and this scores even more points for Rin as far as I’m concerned.

Last but not least, I would like to mention that although the anime adaption of UBW had been pretty polarizing-I’m perhaps one of the very few guys who still like it anyway, and my love for Rin remained strong nonetheless. After all, Tsundere + Twintails + Zettai Ryouiki is an instant win.

Coming up with a favorite list is harder than I thought, especially when I want to limit it to just 5…

It’s the start of 2016, so with it, come another post of my favorite anime of last year. Again, I want to make it clear that despite this list being numbered, it’s not listed in any consecutive order at all, even my honorable mentions should have been included in the main list. The thing is-I want to keep these lists short; ideally 5, so entries past the 5th entry would have to be honorable mentions.

Anyway, here are my favorite anime of 2015.

1. OreGairu Zoku

I’ll start by saying this, while some people were praising OreGairu (season 1) as one of the best anime when it aired, I didn’t think as much, but I do appreciate what it is trying to portray. Another part of my problem is that I marathoned the whole show in one go, which is not advisable for an anime like this-considering the amount of subtleties it presents. Overall, OreGairu to me is at it’s core just a romance comedy with a deconstruction, at the same time, it is also an introduction, to an otherwise extremely spectacular season 2 in OreGairu Zoku. I may only be a casual observer but I admit, I’m a fan. It’s this season where it quite literally tossed any elements of romance comedy that may remained from season 1, and replaced them with feels-inducing drama and layers upon layers of character-analytic psychology. In a way, the Sagami arc in season 1 is not the end, but the true beginning for the series-where story arcs on par, or even better quality than it are all presented throughout Zoku. OreGairu Zoku is a wonderful anime-it is a deconstruction, but, it is also quite an in-depth study of human nature, a study of teens suffering from loneliness and insecurities, and a study of teens who outside of the cynical context just desire simple, genuine friendship.
 

2. Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works

Unlimited Blade Works gets a lot of flak from people that until now, I just don’t understand. To me, it’s a much better adaption than the movie, and definitely better than the original Fate/Stay Night. From what I notice, it’s an extremely faithful adaption of the visual novel. Admittedly, I’m a fan of the Fate franchise, so there may be some level of bias here, but really, I feel like some of the criticisms against Unlimited Blade Works are from people who aren’t that familiar with the franchise. But whatever it is, I’ll stand by my choice here-Unlimited Blade Works deserves a spot in this list, as far as quality of a Fate/Stay Night title is concerned, this one beats the original Fate/Stay Night and the movie by a landslide; though it definitely plays second fiddle to Fate/Zero, in a close fight nonetheless. The adaption also did a great job of adding original anime content whenever necessary-most predominantly that extended epilogue which showed the lives of adult Shirou and Rin. Finally, I think we can all agree at the very least that visuals and music are top-notch. I know I’m correct, but that doesn’t mean I’m right.
 

3. Hibike! Euphonium

Looking at my last year’s favorite anime list, it may look like I sound very critical of KyoAni, and while their shows may be a hit-or-miss (arguably more hit than miss), they are still a great anime studio which produces great anime titles in general. One of them this year, Hibike! Euphonium, had really struck it’s chord among anime fans. The anime follows Kumiko and the concert band at her new high school-a journey of ambitions, struggles and agonizing practices to reach their goal of making it to the nationals-a journey where at the end of the day, everyone grew, not just as musicians but as people-through the dozens of internal strife and sacrificing choices they suffered throughout the show; it is one of the best school drama I had watched in awhile. Last but not least, I just want to get this out-Kumiko x Reina, enough said.
 

4. Gakkou Gurashi!

Gakkou Gurashi is quite simply my favorite anime of the Summer season. While moe and darkness is a combination the anime industry had been dabbling in for awhile, you can never get more blatant as Gakkou Gurashi where moe anime girls are inserted into a zombie premise. The more interesting thing about Gakkou Gurashi is that it doesn’t outright scare it’s viewers by showing how gory, ugly and grotesque zombies look visually, but through apprehension. In fact, the zombies are usually concealed, whether or not it’s dark shadows covering the eyes, or at some point even black auras would surround them-which is an interesting visual design, but brilliant, and reinforces my point on how the anime scares people not through visuals but the mind. It’s as if the anime is constantly trying to confuse you that there isn’t anything wrong-just like the delusional main character of the show. At it’s heart, Gakkou Gurashi is also an anime about high school and slice of life, characters suffered but they grow, they spent their daily lives at school and they graduate. To encapsulate this whole paragraph, Gakkou Gurashi is pretty much high school slice of life/drama with zombies, in which when taken out of context, the zombies could even symbolize some problems of reality too, in which I’ll stop here and leave it to your interpretative hands (or minds).
 

5. Shirobako

Funny story-Shirobako is actually in my main favorite anime list now too, an entry I considered for awhile, but still feel like it’s well-deserved. Shirobako is a (realistic) anime about making anime-it is at times sort of a documentary and is very informative-showing us the behind-the-scenes of anime production, at the same time, it is also a slice of life anime about the working lives of young adults. One thing I like about Shirobako is that it doesn’t depict the anime production industry with rose-tinted glasses, it’s realistic, and paints the hardships, struggles and the generally chaotic environment of the workplace-which could arguably be worse than some other jobs. Anime production is serious business.
 

Honorable Mention(s): Moe Anime

Moe anime this year had been top tier, so I’m going to group a few in one entry. First up, Non Non Biyori Repeat. The series had always been great with their extremely relaxing atmosphere and season 2 is no different, and is able to reproduce that magic flawlessly. The anime depicts a relaxing rural lifestyle-it’s a “healing” anime which uses it’s lush visuals, calm tunes and brilliantly-inserted sound effects to produce an overall soothing atmosphere unlike any other. Next up, is GochiUsa Season 2. As far as typical moe shows go, GochiUsa isn’t that much different from it’s peers-relaxing, slice of life, yuri subtext with (very) subtle character and relationships development, but it’s just so damn good at what it does (even better than Season 1 imo). GochiUsa is an extremely endearing show filled with good, cute characters. Last but not least, Yuru Yuri Season 3, which is actually excellent in the sense that it went in a different direction-focusing more on the slice of life aspects rather than the zaniness from the previous two seasons. Another thing I feel warrant a mention is that some characters had really begun to interact in one-on-one conversations, as compared to previous seasons where it’s more focused on group dynamics. In other words, even Namori, the creator of the series, has got herself into the yuri shipfest as well, and we finally get to see interactions between some characters not in doujins, but -officially- as well.
 

Honorable Mention(s): Plastic Memories

A lot of people disliked Plastic Memories for it’s comedy, criticizing that it ruined it’s potential. For me, I like it -because- of it’s comedy. Don’t get me wrong though, Plastic Memories isn’t a comedy anime in the first place, but drama, and the tear-jerking type at that. The reason why I’m praising it’s comedy isn’t because it’s good; in fact, it’s pretty much akin to LN shitty comedy (I would give it Angel Beats-level comedy at best), but that it’s comedy is necessary in the bigger picture. It just can’t be a weekly “Crying of the Week” episode where the characters routinely take care of different Giftia until the end, aside from the other Giftia, the main characters themselves are also developing characters and I definitely like the direction the anime actually took. Comedy and drama in frequent transitions-you would see LN comedy hijinks and a slow build-up drama, and this contrast between joy and sadness just made the entire experience more heartfelt and feels-inducing. No matter what people say, I love this anime, and for those who says otherwise, you guys suck.
 

Honorable Mention(s): Noragami Aragoto

Noragami to me, is just a shounen, but admittedly, a well-written shounen with great thematic focus. Noragami Aragato is another case where the sequel gets even better than the already excellent prequel. It’s interesting because the season started off with an extremely strong arc in Bishamon’s, in which it actually used a plot point introduced in season 1, but magnified to a much larger scale. It’s interesting in the sense that we see the two gods, Bishamon and Yato operated in completely different manners-in short, the arc deals with the theme of relationships between the gods and their Shinki. As good as the Bishamon arc was though, the second major arc in the season felt even more powerful. Particularly, Ebisu brought a lot of interesting elements to the table, for one, he is sort of an anti-hero of the series. But more importantly, Ebisu is pretty much the catalyst for Yato’s character development, in what was arguably the most feels-inducing scene of the anime. Ebisu and Yato barely interacted for just a few episodes this season, but to be able to feel this much emotional impact from that really tells you how good the writing is. Honestly, I would have been fine if the anime ended right then and there without revealing that shitty love triangle (spoilers in the link), but I guess we can see how this would play out in a possible season 3.

VNDB’s Top 10 visual novels

One day I was kinda bored, and sorted through VNDB’s visual novels through rating — technically VNDB’s top visual novels (picture above), so to speak. The result was interesting and I was about to tweet my findings, and then realized I might as well just do it here since it’s actually kinda long.

Daru has good taste.

In my own list, you can see visual novels like G-Senjou no Maou, Fate/Stay Night and Muv-Luv on the top part of the list, though the list isn’t in a consecutive order; in fact none of my lists are. That, and ranking visual novels consecutively is hard. Despite that, G-Senjou no Maou is one of my absolute favorites ever, and it’s pretty damn close to the discussion if we are talking that #1 visual novel.

Well, surprise — it doesn’t even crack VNDB’s top 10. “Is VNDB’s standard that damn high?” I asked myself.

Unfortunately, the visual novels I played in VNDB’s top 10 list can’t even be counted with one hand. I have been playing visual novels for years, but seems like I’m only just barely scratching the surface. In any case, VNDB had Muv-Luv Alternative at the #1 spot, followed by Steins;Gate at #2 — both these titles I can definitely attest to myself, as both are incredibly excellent titles.

Baldr Sky is a name I constantly see brought up in visual novel discussions. Unfortunately, it’s one series I know next to nothing about (please, put your pitchforks away) but seeing as how Baldr Sky 2 is at the #3 spot, I’m sure it is a phenomenal title. I want to bring everyone’s attention to White Album 2 though. I didn’t play the visual novel, but the adaption is one of my favorite romance anime ever. Disappointingly however, the ending feels like something is amiss. That’s because the visual novel is actually divided into two parts — the ~Introductory Chapter~ and the ~Closing Chapter~, and the anime only managed to cover the ~Introductory Chapter~ so far. White Album 2 ~Closing Chapter~ is ranked at #4 in VNDB, so the conclusive arc has to be absolutely amazing. The most infuriating thing about this is that I will probably never be able to experience the story in any shape or form — an anime adaption of ~Closing Chapter~ seems highly unlikely, much less a translation.

I have seen some Umineko screenshots before, and I have no idea what’s happening.

“Umineko no Naku Koro ni has a lot of potential to begin with. I really loved a lot of what it had to offer, so much that I would almost recommend reading the first 4 episodes and then looking up fan theories online. Heck, i’m genuinely angry at Umineko because i’m so glad I started reading it and yet can’t actually recommend it to anyone. The final 4 episodes? Well, let’s just say I want 50 hours of my life back.”
~by Silvachief of TheGeekClinic

Umineko is also something I have been wanting to check out for awhile, but not sure if it’s something I can commit to as it seems even more time-consuming than the entire Muv-luv trilogy, if that’s even possible. Similarly to White Album 2, Umineko is also divided into 2 parts, each part containing 4 episodes. From opinions I have randomly stumbled upon, the last 4 episodes seems to be very bad, though I don’t know — it’s at the #10 spot in VNDB’s list. Though the consensus seems to be that the first 4 episodes is by far superior in every aspect, and it does seems to reflect in VNDB’s ranking, as Umineko is ranked at #5 as opposed to Umineko Chiru’s #10

An important thing to note is that like Tsukihime, Umineko’s anime also “doesn’t exist”. Hmm, that means I probably can’t do the “aw shit it’s too long, might as well watch the anime”-thing like what I did in Higurashi.

Subarashiki Hibi is ranked at #6, and is the one visual novel I’m dying to play the most. If you never really follow the untranslated visual novels scene, let’s say that alongside Dies Irae, both these visual novels were perhaps the most popular titles that have never been translated. Fortunately that changes now as an official translation of SubaHibi is in the works (together with Dies Irae too I might add! Despite the rocky start). Finally it took until the #7 spot to reach some titles mainstream visual novel players would recognize — Clannad at #7 and Fate/Stay Night at #8. At #9 we have Muramasa, another oft-hyped title in the untranslated visual novel scene.

This list really puts into perspective just how much hidden gems are out there. A lot of visual novels in my own favorite list doesn’t even make it in VNDB’s top 10. Ever 17 is at #12, Little Busters is at #15 while G-Senjou no Maou, my personal masterpiece is as far back as #17, with Grisaia no Kajitsu just two spots behind it at #19 (man, what). Despite that, the English translation scene in visual novels have really come a long way, evidenced with the official English releases of both SubaHibi and Dies Irae on the horizon — something I’m eternally grateful for.

Will we actually get to play White Album 2 or Muramasa soon!? …Hmmmmmmmm

You know the best thing about having an universe so exceptionally large you can make a dozens of anime based on it? It is another way to improve fandom engagement and one of the many reasons why Type-Moon has been so popular even to this day. Yes, I am talking about the infamous “Nasuverse”.

Sometimes I noticed while I was at type-moon wikia reading random crap for shits and giggles, I ended spending hours on it when it should have been just a few brief minutes of killing time. All Type-Moon anime have really extensive settings — they are like bottomless ravines where you can always find some fun new trivia no matter how deep you dig into them. Reading type-moon wikia pages is like an adventure, a treasure-seeking quest.

It helps that the franchise is always very concept-driven, and a lot of the things that drive the series forward is it’s own lore. And instead of creating a completely new universe, new Type-Moon works reuse the universe for their stories — resulting in countless fun references, trivia sometimes even cameo appearances. Whether or not it’s official information, or fan-made logic that piece together theories as to how the elements are tied together across multiple titles, fandom engagement is particularly strong in Type-Moon, mostly due to the fact that the entire franchise is like one big family.

The moon. Or I guess you can say… The Type-Moon.

In general, the writing of Type-Moon itself resembles an ambitious fanfic writer, or an ambitious forum-based roleplaying. A set of rules and laws were created to govern the settings and foundation of the story (Holy Grail War, etc…) and characters are later on designed, their details spiced up to then fill in the roles (the seven servants/heroic spirits, the seven masters, etc…). But exactly because of this, it is ridiculously easy to expand on the universe, and produce newer titles based on them. I suppose you can say, the universe of Type-Moon is accessible, exploitable even.

This act of tying one another titles in one universe is also the reason why Type-Moon has so many sequels, prequels, spin-offs and whatnot of recurring series, but almost rarely a new series. Just from Tsukihime alone, we had Tsukihime itself, Kagetsu Tohya, Melty Blood and so on. Fate/Stay Night as a series is also so huge it puts most old franchises to shame — on the top of my mind we had the original Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Strange Fake and the Fate/Extra series and I still feel like I am missing a few. Even series away from the “Big Two” of Type-Moon like Kara no Kyoukai and Mahoutsukai no Yoru still somehow find it’s way back to the universe.

Carnival Phantasm. It’s totally non-canonical, still a pretty fun show though.

Indeed, it is as if Type-Moon themselves are joining the fandom along with the fun of stringing ideas to tie their works together in the Nasuverse. Because of that, we get gems like Carnival Phantasm, a fun crossover between Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime. And Fate/Grand Order needs no introduction. Although I never play the game myself, I suppose this is why Fate/Grand Order is so popular, because it must have been satisfying to experience something where characters of past titles of the franchise that already spanned a decade come together in one game. Since the entire franchise is already tied in one huge universe, making these crossovers is a breeze for Type-Moon — Nasuverse makes producing new titles, even crossovers look effortlessly easy.

Furthermore, for me, it has been a particularly joyful ride to follow the franchise from it’s infancy. I still remember the day when I watched “Deen/Stay Night” and was only mildly entertained at best. I decided to jump to the visual novel sometime later and had been with Type-Moon since (well except for Fate/Grand Order, y’all know how much I hate mobage). Having been with the series since the first Fate/Stay Night anime, it feels satisfying that a series I was initially only mildly entertained with at best, has grown by leaps and bounds — in due part to it’s inclination to tie everything in one universe, in due part to the beauty of Nasuverse.

P.S: I swear I’m not writing this post just to put up all those cool af Type-Moon crossover pics.

Birthday: December 15
Height: 150 cm
Weight: 42 kg
BWH: 83-56-82
Three sizes: B83/W56/H82

One of three Servants available to the protagonist of Fate/Extra. Similar to Arturia Pendragon, Nero is female. While she was notorious as a tyrannical emperor and for her arrogance as an artist with supremacy comparable to the gods, Nero is a kindhearted individual who wanted what was best for her subjects.

I no longer buy as many figures as I used to, but despite that, if there’s one thing I have a crapload of — it’s Saber figures. Unsurprisingly, I still have a few Saber figures I have yet to unbox, which I bought from god-knows-when. This post will be about one of these Saber figure from Fate/Extra.

Noting special about the box — it spots a bluish design, with the “Fate/EXTRA” logo on the top left and with instructions on the back of the box. The figure comes with a sword and an additional face.

I remember I bought this on the spot at a local retail shop rather than online, so I didn’t realize this is actually a prize figure, which speaks volume about it. That’s not to say the figure is a 10/10 masterpiece or anything, but for a prize figure she looks good. Donning on a red battle dress trimmed with gold and a pair of golden boots beneath her skirt, Saber gives off a majestic look that matches her proud, haughty demeanor.

Equipped with her is a beautiful red sword with black lines and patterns, though trying put it into her grasp was no easy task. You need to insert the sword into the two pegs located behind her arm and another one just below her shoulder — a very tight space to work with. The ability to take out the head from the socket doesn’t make the task any easier either.

Scrutinizing further, you can see nice, little intricate details like the wrinkles on her sleeves and skirt. While it’s obvious if you look at her original design, the figure is also sculpted in a convincing way that makes it look like the semi-transparent skirt really differs from the rest of the outfit — especially in the way it flutters about, gives it the impression that it is lighter and uses a thinner fabric.

Unfortunately, the hair strands don’t look pretty good, and there are some problems with the paint too. It could be that there were some troubles during manufacturing or shipping, but there are areas where you can see the paint is chipped off, the undercoat sticking out like a sore thumb.

The figure uses a plain red base which looks really simple, but gets the job done. Here are some more pictures before I finish up this post.

So the verdict? This figure is a cut above the rest among other prize figures. However, there are definitely better Red Saber figures out there and if you can fork out a little more cash, you might as well buy a scale figure of Red Saber or something. But this one is definitely a decent addition to your collection as well.

I was tagged by MedievalOtaku for the Five Flaming Hotties. While making this list, I notice the thing that ties most, if not all of these characters is “passion” (and lots of red too). Because come on, nothing speaks “flaming” more than the word “passion”. I suppose you can alternatively treat this list as “Top 5 Passionate Characters” or something.

Anyway, enjoy the list, in no particular order:

1. Shana (Shakugan no Shana)

This is called Flaming Hotties, and you really can’t not mention “flaming” without Shana, otherwise known as Flame-Haired Burning-Eyed Hunter — she just seems like the epitome of flaming hotties. I mean, I’m not sure what else to say here, even the character design (her Flame Haze mode, especially) speaks for itself — red hair, red eyes and she’s sure as hell fiery, sometimes literally, even! Also, she’s the character responsible for getting me into an already now decade long affection with the tsundere archetype, so I will always have a soft spot for Shana.
 

2. Erza Scarlet (Fairy Tail)

Erza is one of the strongest mages in Fairy Tail but sheltering an emotional baggage within. Erza Scarlet is a character of duality, cool and reserved on the outside but emotional on the inside — the kind of characterizations I’m particularly fond of. A paragon of beauty and strength, Erza Scarlet inspires a feeling of awe, might and kindness befitting a cheesy shounen like Fairy Tail perfectly.
 

3. Nero Claudius (Fate/Extra)

It won’t even be an exaggeration to say that Nero is not only my favorite Saber, not only my favorite Servant in Fate/Extra, but my favorite Servant in the entire Fate/Stay Night universe. Nasu’s idea of uniting the character traits of Gilgamesh’s pride and Artoria’s compassion has proven to be highly successful, resulting in a character who possesses the best of both worlds. Nero Claudius enriches the Fate universe with her childish innocence, haughtiness and passion. Also, smug Nero is good.

4. Kurebayashi Juri (Aikatsu)

When Juri graced the screen on the third season of Aikatsu, she easily becomes one of my favorite idols of the show. After all, it’s hard not to like her, especially with her charismatic presence and sincere zest. With her love for theatrics, Juri is a character that captures my heart through her dramatic poses, unflinching confidence and undying passion. The fact that she happens to have one of the best songs in the show certainly helps too.
 

5. Tohsaka Rin (Fate/Stay Night)

Ah, there she is. To me, the waifu among waifus. If Shana is the one that got me into the tsundere bandwagon, then Rin is the one that truly pulled me into the deepest depth of this rabbit hole. I’m not complaining though. Nothing more to add here as I’m just going to link this here. Rin is brilliance, Rin is perfection; Rin is love, Rin is life.