Well, after some fighting and a lot of people having trouble (well, two), some experimentation shows that the only person who can make spoiler tags with angle brackets work in comments is me. Guests can make them work only with square brackets. Why? I have no idea. Last night I replaced an xml registration file that had a security flaw, but it shouldn’t have had anything to do with comments. Maybe it retroactively altered the permissions everyone else has. Please feel free to try other formatting tags with angle brackets, and see what you can and cannot do. It may be that the more than just the plug-in that governs the [spoiler] tag was modified.
And now since this is a random post, I shall get on with being random.
I don’t have anything profound to say about the death of an industry, but it’s nice that it works for me, a bit. The local Hollywood Video is closing it’s doors, and I found out way too late to snag anything more than the dregs of animé. I passed on Reign and Initial D , but picked up Slayer’s Next (Movie), Cowboy Bebop (The Movie), Spriggan, Steamboy, and Ghost in the Shell: Innocence for just over $40 total, counting tax. Of those, Steamboy is an obligation buy, and Spriggan is a “why the hell did I get that?” buy. Slayers is a “enh, why not?” buy. More stuff to toss on the unwatched pile with Pumpkin Scissors, Haibaine Renmei, and the rest of Ikkitousen. Poor Haibaine, what bad company. Speaking of Pumpkin Scissors for a second, I dusted off an old half-finished article from when it was out on fansub and finished it up. Not particularly detailed; I wasn’t that crazy about it. It will appear in a couple of days.
Poking around on the internet last night, I discovered that Fate/Stay Night had an eroge as it’s origin. I almost would not have guessed that; I had a bit of a suspicion because of the harem elements. I figured dating sim though, not full blown hentai. it does explain that weird fanservice scene in the abandoned house. (Yes, the world really does need more Saber x Rin fanservice.) Apparently, there were only three major paths, and it seemed to be more a matter of who you chose to play as than the choices made (although one was the evil Shirou route.) They chose to follow the Saber route, with a nod to Rin’s, which is why she and Archer got featured so significantly.
And now that I’ve mentioned The Show That Deserves No Mention, I might as well talk about it, I guess. After 14 episodes of pure dreck (or twelve, depending on your criteria) Shana finally got its ass in gear and started throwing down some serious action. Unfortunately, it not only happened too late, it happened too fast. The action in episode 15 managed to drag worse than a one-wheeled chariot, interspersed with segments where so many things happened so fast, I was left hanging worse than a one-wheeled chariot going airborne after hitting a pothole. Don’t ask me what chariots are doing running around on one wheel and hitting potholes, that’s how confused I was. Even after watching the episode three times, I needed the following episode just to explain what the hell I’d just watched. Upside: Yuiji’s finally gotten serious about training, and plans to leave town with Shana; finally not stringing Kazumi along any further. Downside: Shana’s mad at him for it. Argh. Just shoot me. There’s no way there’s any common sense left in this show. No way. None. (h/t to Jason for the meme.)
Then there’s KimiAru, a.k.a. They Are My Noble Masters. Last episode (6) we got what TV had to substitute for the sex-with-the-lolis scene from the game: Ren gets a kiss on the cheek from both Yume and Natose. Yay. This week (ep.7), what looks to be a lightweight episode involving Rie Tanaka’s character (Ageha) temporarily moving in with the Kuonji family suddenly turns emo in the end. Mihato has shown increasing jealousy as the various women vie for Ren’s attention, but when Ageha
I’m a Shinra-sama partisan myself.
Sorry about the lack of screenshots in this post, but I have to run; at least one other post needs to be written tonight, this one political..
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Since you finished Fate Stay Night… you really need to check out the wikipedia page on Archer. The True Identity section fills in some of the information from the games that really makes Archer the interesting character of the series. I wish they would have fit more of his storyline into the show instead of so many episodes of Shiro’s “I’m not good enough” nonsense.
Oh, and repeat after me
[evil eye]
I will watch Haibaine Renmei, I will watch Haibaine Renmei, I will watch Haibaine Renmei…
[/evil eye]
Hmm, I dropped KimiAru after the MANLY TEA episode (which, let’s face it, was wikkid-relevant to my interests). For the sake of those watching it, I hope it either avoids trying to ‘get plot in my fanservice’, or somehow manages to successfully pull it off.
Fate/stay night never really satisfied me in its handling of action scenes, which is probably personal taste. But Archer’s exit was indeed rather sad (though terrifically GAR). Apparently the reason the plot’s a little incoherent is that you need to know various facts from the original game to understand everything that happens.
Sakura is a much more sympathetic character in the anime. Mostly, that’s because in the game, she’s either out of the way pretty fast, or on her storyline, which is such an unremitting series of bad things that there’s no way to involve her in the other two plot arcs. I mean, you can have a little bit of “oh, she’s been hurt, poor thing,” but Sakura got hurt to the point where there can’t really be anything there but pity.
Play the game if you get a chance. There’s a fan translation of the Saber path, and actually they ought to have the Rin path (with lots more Archer!) finished in a few days, as they’re just working on the patch installer now. Nothing in the Saber path will come as a huuuuuge shock, after seeing the anime, but it’s quite well-done… except for Type Moon’s normal standard of odd ero-writing. Still, there’s not MUCH ero in there, and there is that abandoned house, this time with much less bad CGI dragon and more Saber/Rin than you can shake a stick at.
I have to say that Yashiro’s AMV handled the action scenes much better by virtue of editing and placement — albeit in a rather choppy manner; I’m not a member of the MTV generation, with an attention span measured in femtoseconds. Still, it is the main reason I ended up watching the series.
My main problem wasn’t the plot, it was the background. The War was fought every ten years, yet it seemed to have been fought only once before — otherwise all the Servants would have known each other from the get-go, even if the same ones didn’t appear every time. And the twists on western legends were just bizarre. I’m still having trouble digesting Saber’s real identity — I could only think of one medieval armored chick with a sword. Well, two, but the second one was strictly legendary, and didn’t do anything but form the basis of a government.
(If you don’t know who I mean, clue in the spoiler):“Wat’ry tart.”
Bear: good lord. I wouldn’t have guessed that was his identity in a zillion years. It does explain why he kept sneering at Shriou’s ideals, though.
One bad thing about the series: now I have the sound of Shirou shouting “Saber!” engraved on my brain. He must have done that about ten times every episode. Me: “Yeah, ok, it’s her NAME, we get it, you idiot!”
The implication is that -any- hero is eligible to be a Servant – or rather, the entire fact of being a hero is enough to qualify you. (Saber’s the only one returning from the last war, and supposedly she and Kiritsugu exchanged words precisely one time the entire war long.) Plenty of opportunity for people not to have met each other. Hell, Assassin never existed in the first place!
At least one doujin ran with the idea that fictional Servants could exist. “What do you mean, Goku is stronger… oh.”
The thing with Saber… apparently the initial exposure of the Japanese to Arturian legend had some translation problems. ;p
Now that you’re done, go here: http://www.freewebs.com/aortic/fatekaranokyokai.htm It’s a large collection of translated Fate doujinshi, most of them funny as heck. I particularly recommend “Childcare is War” for insane cute factor. (Of course, these will spoil the hell out of the rest of the game, the sequel game Hollow Ataraxia, yadda yadda… and possibly confuse you here and there…)
Well, the anime had me thinking it was fought every 10 years for the last several centuries. The Wiki article, with information from the game, makes it clear it’s normally fought every 60, and has been going on for only 200 years — this time (fifth war) it’s starting fifty years early. I could see them knowing less of each other, since it’s apparent that different servants may be summoned each time, it’s not as likely to have them know each other. If it had been fought forty or fifty times, that would be different.
Interesting that Haibane is in the unwatched pile. Have you seen any of it? Honestly, once I started I couldn’t stop until it was done. I even took the last disk with me on vacation so I could finish it.
Based on Haibane’s rep, I haven’t dared break the wrapper.
At the point it got in, I couldn’t spare much time for anime. And what little I could spare had to be escapist fantasy; my life was heavy enough. (You don’t want to know, and I’m not discusing it here anyway.) Hence Fate/Stay Night. Life’s lightened up somewhat, in that there’s no longer an immediate crisis combined with health challenges, but the outlook is such that I’m still in “lightweight, escapist” mode. Therefore, the only anime I’m making time for now is R+V for the fanservice, KimiAru (ditto) and Shana, just so I can bag on it for being such a botch. Only the sorry state of my city government has been able to drag me into the real world.
As much as I love the series, I think now would be a terrible time for you to watch Haibane Renmei and I think you are wise to leave it unopened.
But I hate to leave you with the impression that Haibane is some kind of Citizen Kane like edifice that must be absorbed and appreciated and delved to an almost French-level of interpretation. I’ve seen movies, too, that had that “afraid to break the shrink-wrap” rep. The trick is to leave all those expectations and reputations behind and just enjoy the show for what it is.
First and foremost, it’s a great story about characters you care about. Greatness really comes after you’ve seen it; while you’re watching, it’s just completely involving storytelling.
Perhaps so, but right now, I don’t want to be involved, I want to be diverted and entertained.