Tag Archives: Fate/stay night

Community

The “Build a Harem” Tag

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It’s been a while since a Community tag post, so let’s let our hair down a bit, since the ever-charming Raistlin was kind enough to nominate me with some very nice words!

This particular tag originated from Cactus Matt over at the excellent Anime Q and A blog — he’s a frequent collaborator with a number of other excellent anime bloggers (some of whom I highlighted last weekΒ — more of those to come since I didn’t have time to mention everyone!) and his “20 Questions” format for his reviews is an excellent twist on the usual formula. Go check him out!

As is probably self-evident, this particular tag revolves around, well, building a harem. So hit the jump to find out more and check out my picks!

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Community

The One-Liner Challenge

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Time for a Community tag post! This one looked like a particularly fun one, and after the lovely Irina from I Drink and Watch Anime specifically requested me to do one about games, who was I to refuse?

The original tag came from The Awkward Book Blogger and was based around, as you might expect, books — but it has since expanded to encompass anime and now, thanks to my contribution, games as well.

So let’s jump right in. After the jump. Jumpy jumpy jump.

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Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Jeanne Alter

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I thought I’d taunt the Fate/Grand Order players a bit with today’s Waifu Wednesday.

The joke’s on me, of course; having not played the game for a while and come back to it just in time for a drop rate up on the extremely popular Jeanne Alter, I burned 90+ Saint Quartz on summons only to receive more Boudicas than I know what to do with and not even a whiff of Jeanne. Serves me right for pulling Gilgamesh on my first draw back when his event ran shortly after the game launched in the West.

Anyway, let’s take a look at Jeanne Alter today, and why she might be so popular among the fanbase, particularly those under the thrall of the gacha!

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Features, MoeGamer Awards 2017

The MoeGamer Awards: Character I’d Most Like to Talk To

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of made-up prizes that give me an excuse to celebrate games, concepts and communities I’ve particularly appreciated over the course of 2017. Find out more and suggest some categoriesΒ here!

Today’s suggestion is another one from longstanding friend of the site Annie Gallagher. Check out her pageΒ Guardian AcornΒ for some insightful writing on games, anime, politics, music and all manner of other goodness from the perspective of a trans feminist philosopher, critic, gamer and otaku. She didn’t likeΒ Criminal GirlsΒ as much as I did, but at least she doesn’t call people who did enjoy it paedophiles and ban all discussion of it. Which is, you know, nice.

Annie had a number of great character-centric suggestions — one of which I’m still debating whether or not to actually jump in and do… we’ll have to see on that one! — and this was one of them. It was a tricky decision, for sure.

And the winner is…

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Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Rin Tohsaka

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As we bid a fond farewell to September’s Cover Game Fate/stay night, it’s only fitting that we celebrate one of this incredible visual novel’s most enduringly popular waifus.

Rin Tohsaka is a constant presence in all three of the main narrative routes inΒ Fate/stay night, despite onlyΒ Unlimited Blade WorksΒ technically being “hers”. As such, aside from protagonist Shirou, she’s arguably the character we get to know the best over the course of the complete narrative.

She’s noteworthy not only for being a great character in her own right, but also for arguably being one of the most significant defining influences on what has become an incredibly popular — some might argue clichΓ©d — character trope today: theΒ tsundere.

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Cover Games, Fate/stay night

Fate/stay night: The Friction of Real and Ideal

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This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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Fate/stay night’s final route Heaven’s Feel is a culmination of everything that has come before.

Longer, more complex, more challenging and concluding with a definite sense of “finality”, it’s a fitting end to an enormously ambitious visual novel — as well as just the beginning of something that would go on to become a worldwide phenomenon.

So let’s dive into the Holy Grail War for one last time and see where this epic (in every sense of the word) ends up…

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One-Shots

The Three Ages of Visual Novels

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With this month’s Cover Game being one of the most influential, well-regarded visual novels of all time, it seems only right and proper to take a look at the history of the medium as a whole.

To date, there have been three main “eras” of visual novels that can be clearly distinguished through a combination of their visual style, thematic content, gameplay elements (if any) and breadth of appeal. Of course, things aren’tΒ quiteΒ as neat and simple as that might suggest, with some modern works deliberately channeling older styles, or some older works being ahead of their time, but it’s a working hypothesis to start from.

And, since visual novels form an extremely important part of both Japanese gaming and Japanese popular media in general, it’s worth tracing the route things have taken to get to where we are today.

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Cover Games, Fate/stay night

Fate/stay night: Struggling with Oneself

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This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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Unlimited Blade Works, the second of Fate/stay night’s three distinct narrative routes, concentrates on the concept of the struggle between oneself and an ideal.

It’s a story with an altogether different feeling to theΒ FateΒ route, featuring a great deal more internal conflict. Β And not just for the protagonist Shirou Emiya, either, but also for many of the people around him — most notably heroine Rin Tohsaka.

In fact, this time around, it’s only really Saber, who had plenty of her own struggles inΒ Fate, who gets off relatively lightly (in terms of mental and philosophical challenges, anyway — though she does spend much of the story being physically and sexually tortured). Everyone else has a lot of very serious and meaningful questions to try and answer before the two weeks in which the story unfolds come to a close.

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Cover Games, Fate/stay night

Fate/stay night: Oneself as an Ideal

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This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
<< First | < Previous | Next > | Latest >>

Fate/stay night’s complete three-part narrative opens with the simply named Fate.

In the original 2004 release of the game, this 30+ hour path was a prerequisite to unlocking the other routes of the gameΒ Unlimited Blade WorksΒ andΒ Heaven’s Feel, though the 2012Β RΓ©alta NuaΒ release on PC split the three routes into separate executable files, allowing them to be played independently, albeit with some shared save data.

It’s still best to play them in the order they were originally intended, however, sinceΒ Fate, as we’ll explore today, carries the important role of allowing us to understand the context in which the other narratives unfold.

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Cover Games, Fate/stay night

Fate/stay night: Introduction and History

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This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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To say that Type-Moon’s Fate/stay night is an influential work in Japanese popular media is something of an understatement.

Since its first appearance as an adults-only visual novel in 2004, the series has gone on to spawn a visual novel sequel and all-ages remake, numerous spin-off games for a variety of different console and handheld platforms, several anime series, manga volumes, light novels, movies and, most recently, a successful free-to-play mobile game.

The original game is regarded as one of the best visual novels of all time, and indeed was a bestseller in its year of release in Japan. And yet, for some reason, we’ve never seen an official localisation in the West, even from long-standing powerhouses of visual novel publishing such as JAST USA, MangaGamer or Sekai Project.

Thankfully, all is not lost, thanks to the continuing efforts of various fan translation groups, who have not only translated the original 2004 visual novel, but also the 2012 release of theΒ RΓ©alta NuaΒ remake, including the ability to re-integrate the adult content from the original.

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