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I don’t usually reflect on my own history as an anime fan, but something occurred to me the other day. What is the significance of a gateway anime? What kind of impact does a person’s first experience with a medium have on their enjoyment and preferences of that medium? Most fans who choose to pursue anime seriously become more well-rounded over time, but I think that the early experiences are given less credit than they deserve.
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[arsenixc]
Fiction would be in a sad state if jargon did not exist. In this case, I’m not referring to the fan-made terminology used in reference to various bodies of fiction: I’m talking about the jargon used within fiction, the internal laws that most fantasy and sci-fi stories rely on.
lelangir‘s recent post on the matter makes for an enlightening read, exploring the role of mechanics in a story’s narrative structure. There’s no doubt that the internal mechanics of fictional worlds can be more than just feigned depth – speculative fiction would have a hard time speculating if it couldn’t act independently of the laws of common sense. As lelangir notes, consistency is more important than plausibility: it’s foolish to expect realism from Lord of the Rings, but a story that is consistent with itself lends the structure and framework needed to build whatever needs to be built around it.
Having said that, there are more than a few pitfalls to the elaborate universes created by writers of fiction, and they extend far beyond the issue of plot holes. The creation of a universe is not only a challenge in terms of maintaining consistency, but it also requires enough context within the plot for the viewer to see the relationship between the mechanics and the story’s intention.
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From the moment Digitalboy announced his Diary of an Anime Lived project, I was interested. True, it’s usually not a good idea for an anime blogger to talk more about themselves than about anime, but there are times when personal posts add an extra level of realism to an invisible writer and their opinions. It’s also intriguing to see how fiction can impact lives, intentionally or not.
However, when the project was announced and posts started surfacing, I quickly realized that anime hasn’t impacted me as much as I thought it had. Sure, my life is different today because of anime – but it’s the fandom that changed me, not any particular work of fiction. I could have rambled on about Honey and Clover and shoujo manga and unrequited love, but that’s not quite what the project is about. H&C might be my favourite anime, but it didn’t make me rethink anything. It’s my Bible, and it made me want to cry for every Takemoto and Morita and Hagu, every Ayumi and Rika and Mayama, but it didn’t make me rethink anything.
My prospects were looking bleak for a while: I’m from an ordinary, functional family, I attended reasonably safe and healthy schools, and I don’t suffer from any psychological problems. There isn’t much in my life that I can ramble on about, no tear-jerking awakenings spawned by a heroic struggle in anime.
Towards the end of the year, though, I realized something. I found a connection in a character who couldn’t be more different from me: Emiya Shirou.
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There’s a lot that one can say about Fate/stay night; I spent about 5000 words on it in total, and I estimate Owen, Pontifus, and Martin have spent about the same.
Of course, when it comes to a game this iconic, there’s no accurate way of counting the impressions and retrospectives of fans. F/SN has always been one of the most popular visual novels in the history of everything, earning not only an anime adaptation and a plethora of merchandise, but also a solid concrete reader score (approximately 9/10 on VNDB and ErogameScape [NSFW]). Long story short, it’s a good game. Period.
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If there’s one thing I can comfortably say about Fate/stay night, it’s that it’s been quite a ride. At almost 100 hours, my save file is 100% complete, leaving behind an aftertaste that is surprisingly bittersweet. For a story that initially appeared to be about gender-swapped heroes and awkward mana-charging metaphors, I can only say that I’m utterly impressed at how F/SN grows out of its shell and reaches both the mind and the heart.
Interestingly, there are also some elements of the game that are only obvious – or at least more visible – in hindsight. While it will always be a fantasy story at its core, the supernatural plot devices serve far more purpose than to simply feign depth with Nasuverse jargon. Looking closely (but not too closely), it’s easy to see the multiple levels of symbols and motifs that are scattered across the story, even if the plot doesn’t depend on them. Luckily for us, Nasu’s writing is fairly self-explanatory, and the various soliloquies and interludes, in addition to the surprisingly helpful afterword, help shed light on the “true” meaning of the game.
Sadly, it’s in the nature of posts like these to be purely conjecture, but while I don’t think that there is any black-and-white lens to view Fate/stay night through, I’ll do what I can to piece together the clues of this 800,000 word epic.
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The grand finale of Type-Moon’s 50+ hour epic is not quite what one would expect. Coming after the dramatic battle of ideals in Unlimited Blade Works and the story of the fallen warrior and the king of heroes in Fate, it’s hard to imagine what kind of climax could do justice to the buildup.
Thankfully, Heavens Feel fills those shoes with ease.
In retrospect, though, there was something more to my enjoyment of the story than the simple fact that it ‘s a well-written conclusion. It touched me emotionally in a way that no Type-Moon work has. It’s hard to define it with a word, but there was something in particular that resonated with me in HF, something that has little to do with filling in the back story and tying in the themes. It’s the one thing that makes visual novels hit or miss, the often deciding factor that draws the line between melodramatic and heart-wrenching. It’s the difference between observing Shirou’s struggle as a fly on the wall and observing it as a participant.
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