This is how I Paladin

...

This is how I wizard.

I'm trying to find a place online where there's some kind of Fate/Holy Grail War-themed roleplay. Where's good for that? Any system will do.

Are you talking about PnP or PbP?

>I think alarm clocks are degenerate

Either. PbP is more friendly to someone with little time though.

Fate/Zero is the only bit of the franchise that's any good from an objective standpoint.

literally me

I've met people who swear off alarm clocks, but they generally aren't the kind of people that have anything to really get up for in the morning

I couldn't finish the VN because the protag is exactly like the image posted.
His endless rants and stupidity just made me nope the fuck out.

He gets somewhat less retarded after the Fate route but is still pretty dense through the whole VN.

The Fate route in general just isn't very good or memorable. All that I really remember about it is the three way in the shed. That said if someone doesn't like Shirou they probably shouldn't bother, but I think a lot of people underestimate the depth of the character just because every secondary fate product makes him look more like a harem protagonist where that isn't really the case in the individual routes

It is kind of weird that the only depiction of Shirou I actually like comes from fucking Kaleid Liner of all things.

This is how I Paladin

Shinji getting Bersercar'd was pretty OK but other than that Fate route sucks.
>most idiotic shirou
>worst saber
>worst kotomine
>rin is pretty ok but then again every f/sn heroine is great outside of their route
>rider vs saber on the skyscrapper is basically the only good fight

This

Decent but his writing is chuuni as fuck, as well as his philosophy.

Shirou is actually a fucking amazing model for a non-conventional paladin. How come I didn't realize this before?

>Is Fate any good
Yes.

>or is it targeted on waifufags and angsty teens?
Also yes.

>fate stay is mediocre
>fate hollow is great
>instead of another VN, they've been shitting out spinoff after spinoff of anime, manga, and fighting games

Because you're a faggot.

I've always thought of Fate as just set up for UBW, and both of them together as setup for Heavens Feel.

I trust you guys more than /a/, what is the correct way to watch the series? I mostly appreciate cool fights, but I was told to watch the prequel first and I felt very much out of the loop in the few episodes I watched.

This is how I monk/rogue.

The main story of Hollow Ataraxia is great (= Bazett, Caren and Avenger), but overall it's the worst mainline Fate story because 99% of it is just slice-of-life and comedy skits that have nothing to do with anything.

That's basically just heaven's feel Shirou with a little sister though

And this is why the japs deserved the bombs.

You felt out of the loop because newfags that started with Zero appreciate it for the fights and can't totally appreciate the tragic aspect of it. You start with Fate/stay night, the 2006 anime series by DEEN. People say it's bad but I thought it was already, just really talky. Considering it's based on a VN, it's about what you can expect. From there you can go to Zero or Unlimited Blade Works, since the foundation of F/SN is there and you can appreciate the others properly. Fate/Zero is a tragedy because you know everyone will lose and it all goes to hell despite their planning and efforts. UBW is good because you're taking what you're familiar with and altering it just so that it's familiar but new, and builds on the foundations and loose ends of F/SN.

>I trust you guys more than /a/, what is the correct way to watch the series?

Depends on how deep you want to buy in. If you want the whole shebang, the best way to do it is simply read everything in chronological order, starting with the original VN, followed by Hollow Ataraxia, then Zero, then all the side bullshit whenever you feel up to it. This is how the series was meant to be experienced.

However, if you don't want to buy in so deep and just want a taste of things, the most casual friendly version of Fate is probably the Fate/Zero anime, and then you can follow it up with the UBW anime (the new one, there's another one but ignore it). That way you get like 90% of the story in a very casual-friendly package.

Kiritsugu is a paladin who loses everything in pursuit of his faith in justice using the strictest definitions of the laws and rules to the point that he sacrifices chunks of his body as a weapon, and ends up losing it all when confronting someone who has no defined goals and has broken the rules for no better reason than he was able to - whom he still defeats only to find out his goal was impossible to reach.

Shirou is a pretender to that throne who is not particularly skilled in any area but blunders his way into a victory through sheer ignorance and a strong will.

Then again, my favorite fictional Paladins are the Brahmins from The Moonstone who give up ever being pure enough to step foot in their holy land again to retrieve a stolen artifact.

>watch

Read the fucking VN, if only for Heaven's Feel

Honestly that's why I liked it more. Fate has three routes that diverge quickly: 1st is meh, 2nd is good, 3rd is horrible. But other than a few scenes at the beginning, each route is just concerned with the war.

Fate hollow brings in a ton of side characters, has a single story in a limited timeframe of 4 days, we get to learn a lot about each character and their daily lives, and it has Bazett and Caren. Even though it has a bunch of skits that feel like they don't matter to Bazett/Avenger's story, it feels like it's more focused with the limited timespan.

I might agree if I liked each of the FSN routes, but Heaven's Feel did not work for me.

It's interesting how Kiritsugu is the optimal version of Shirou. The problem is that Shirou hadn't suffered nor trained to the extent that Kiritsugu has so he doesn't understand the depths he'll have to go to to accomplish being a hero of justice.

It has some neat concepts and characters, but on the whole it's garbage.

>Kiritsugu is a paladin
maybe avenger under the most loose of associations, hes really not a good person

Assassin actually.

I actually wake up every morning at roughly 6:50 because I've had my alarm clock set to 7:00 for pretty much all my life and my body seems to automatically anticipate the alarm, so I no longer need to use an actual alarm.

I still keep the alarm though, just in case.

>hes really not a good person

He is though. He absolutely is a good person. He's just a good person who realizes that in order to accomplish good, he needs to get his hands dirty.

His whole motivation is literally just to save people. That's as good as it gets.

>He doesn't like HF

>the pun
be ashamed

And yet that ignorance is what allows him to thrive. Kiri at the end of the day fucked up anf accomplished nothing other than creating his own tragedy.

Shiro on the other hand found peace. Depending on the route that peace comes in different ways.

It's a gigantic disappointment after UBW, which was amazing.

A good person wouldn't end up killing countless people and becoming the worlds greatest villain trying to make the world a better place

his saving grace was realizing that he wasn't a good person

While Zero is a prequel you lack a bit of explanations if you start there, so either keep the wiki close (and risk spoilers) or start from FSN.
You could start with either the Deen anime, even if they mix up some stuff, or with a Fate route playthrough. You can find one on youtube.
The follow-up would be the UBW Ufotable series, as the film feels pretty rushed. Also it's prettier.
Heaven's feel is coming out soon, in 3 movies.

You can also just play the novel, if reading is more your thing.

You can see Zero right after the Fate part, you should get it by then.

He THINKS hes a good person. Good people do not act like fucking monsters with justification “oh I’ll just find a miracle to fix everything”

Shirou at least bit the bullet and looked to himself for change and hope. Kiri just looked for things that couldn’t exist

Don't worry, your sempai will notice you over the swords eventually.

How did it disappoint? It really built up Kirei into a fantastic nemesis and foil. It explored heroism in a vastly more concrete way than either Fate or UBW did. Plus it had plenty hype moments

>Rider vs Assassin
>Sparks Liner High
>Nine Lives Blade Works
>Light and Dark
>Crazy Train

It was nihilistic bullcrap that amounted to “dont try anything, dont fucking bother trying to make the world a better place, just sit in your corner and just give up and keep whats yours close”

Not to mention Sakura was a absolutely fucking TERRIBLE heroine. “Waaah look at my life and how sad it is!!! Dont you feel bad for me sebpai desu ne”

Never trust the opinions of someone who recommends the Deen one.
Why do people on the internet insist that fucking everyone is a paladin anyway?

>thinking that sakura is hf's heroine instead of illya

C'moooon
At least now being in the counter force runs in the Emiya family.
Yeah, it's really great.

Annon I fucking wish, Illya really was the best. Only bad mark against UBW is she dies. Thankfully her death was a dam awesome scene

Weirdly I was the same up until High School, which was when it came to be that not even an alarm clock glued to both sides of my head could wake me up. Either I that was when I fell into a depression or puberty fucked with my circadian rhythms.

>It was nihilistic bullcrap that amounted to “dont try anything, dont fucking bother trying to make the world a better place, just sit in your corner and just give up and keep whats yours close”

Did we not read the same thing? It's about the conflict of between saving an anonymous many or a dear few. It's actually exploring the self-admitted cracks in Shirou's belief system as explained in UBW. And in the metaplot of FSN, it brings things full circle in the 3 routes examination of what it means to be a hero.

I can get not liking Sakura, but to me, it's the perfect thematic culmination to Fate and UBW.

Animation was fine, I didn't have any problems with the story as it was presented, there were a few things that were open or unexplained that would allow for other routes to follow up on. He asked for the watch order.

Don't advise someone to be a FSN secondary. Frankly, I was hooked from that first Lancer vs Archer duel in the prologue.

No we read the same thing. And you know how it ended? Give up, instead of trying to make the world a better place or trying to be better just throw away your ideals when its convenient and just shag off with your agency-less doll

This is how I rogue priest.

That's an excellent way to paladin.

People judged him for all the people he killed, not seeing all of the people he saved.

Like, the airplane. The rest of the world thinks he blew up a 747 full of innocent people to get one guy. In reality, he killed his only friend/mentor/surrogate mother to prevent what would have been, if we are being honest, probably most of New York City getting turned into zombies and the rest getting burned to the ground to contain it.

I gotta admit, I did love this.

Is Dr Strange beating up Harry Potter?

>People judged him for all the people he killed, not seeing all of the people he saved.
because taken to the extreme he wanted it wouldn't matter- everyone would be dead

the issue with kerry's "the ends justify the means, i am the lesser evil" shtick is that his "end" was unreachable- he would have killed everyone in the world for "the greater good"- which is why it didnt matter that manjew was in the grail, even an uncorrupted one would have had the same outcome

Technically he's beating up a sort of amalgamation of Tim Hunter, Doctor Fate and Harry Potter.

He also kills analogues of Superman and The Flash right after this.

Because Heaven's Feel is about saving something concrete and personal. UBW ends, having refuted Shirou's ideology - which is what he acknowledges, even though he still wants to follow through with it because of its transcendent beauty. Heaven's Feel starts from that premise and constructs a story to illustrate the idea that a hero is someone who saves saves something near and concrete.

>just throw away your ideals when its convenient
Wrong. It's about encountering a situation that can't be resolved by one's current worldview or whose resolution is unacceptable, and adjusting based on this outside-context problem. This oversight in worldview is what made Archer miserable, and HF is explicitly about Shirou not going the route of Archer.

Was this Leauge of Extraordinary Gentleman?

And that realization horrified him and he blew up the grail rather than use it.

He wanted the grail so bad precisely because he wanted a way to save everyone without having to kill. Finding out that even a miracle wouldnt do it the way he wanted destroyed him, and the grails revenge burning down that neighborhood made it even worse.

Based on what we saw, Kerry absolutely saved millions of people doing what he did. But his ultimate goal was always out of reach, because human nature is what it is.

Childhood is idolizing Shirou

Adulthood is realizing that Shiki makes more sense

Oh yeah, that fucking issue.
>Wizard pisses you off
>IMMEDIATELY INVOKE AVATAR OF NYARLATHOTEP TO TAKE HIM TO THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE WHERE AZATHOTH RESIDES IN HIS DAEMON COURT BY USING A THE PSYCHIC ESSENCE OF STAR SPAWN TO PROXY AS TO NOT GO INSANE IN THE PROCESS OF DOING THIS, TEMPORARILY ALTERING YOUR BRAINS CHEMISTRY IN THE PROCESS TO BLOODBORNE INSIGHT LEVELS AS YOU USE THIS SPELL, LOSING SIGHT OF YOUR COMPANIONS WHO ARE ALSO SET TO WITNESS THIS AWESOME HORROR THAT SHOULD NOT BE AS THE ONLY THING THAT STOPS YOU FROM ERADICATING REALITY ON A LESSER SCALE IN A PIECE IS THEM BREAKING YOUR CONCENTRATION.

There was a time he only dealt with an underhwhelming lesser great old one from Conan's age, now this shit.

Heres the thing Hw just calls for you to be a selfish prick and save whats your own and nothing else. It basically relies on the philosophy “if people care just for themselves well be fine”

Its fine he saves whats near and dear. Whats not fine is it calls to say “and fuck everyone else and the world too” it basically calls that no, dont be a better man. Just dont even bother whith trying

>And that realization horrified him and he blew up the grail rather than use it.
yes, one of the two good things he did. because thankfully he realized how inherently flawed he and his ideals were

>his goal
of "magic will fix it"

saying the ends are justified because you magical macguffin will fix everything is never right

No.

It was back when Marvel were doing their "the multiverse is ending because universes are periodically crashing into one another with Earths as the points of contact" thing. Basically so far the good guys have managed to prevent disaster by using one-off means or destroying the alternate Earth because it's uninhabited, but this time the Earth that's about to crash into 616's is inhabited and basically has a Justice League defending it.

The two sides try to talk things out, but it becomes known that the 616 boys have an antimatter bomb for killing Earths in the wings just in case, and not!Batman starts a fight with Namor because of it. In the resulting chaos Strange, who has been desperately making loads of eldritch pacts over the last few weeks, gets super mad and goes full forbidden arts, soloing the League. The good guys then go home, preparing to use the antimatter bomb, and realize none of them can bring themselves to do it, so they all just sort of make their peace. Then Namor wakes up and is like "wait, you faggots were gonna let two universes die because you didn't want to bloody your hands? IMPERIOUS REX" and detonates the bomb, destroying the alternate Earth.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen thing you're thinking of was written by Moore and it was straight up just Harry Potter as the antichrist.

Fate/zero is good, stay night is okay, and the rest is Neptunia-tier garbage.

I'm not saying that you should like HF, but you seem to find it artistically invalid.

How does disagreeing with its themes (and in a way that makes me wonder if you're a teenager) make it a letdown? What aspect of FSN's themes would you have liked explored in a third route?

I dont find it artistically invalid. I just find it morally repugnant especially on how it hails itself as the “true ending”.

If it didnt parade itself with that it woild be fine, but it goes out of its way to say its the “real” route and everything else was set up.

Basically its a morally bankrupt route that does everything it can to drag the others through the mud.

As for a third route. Honestly I dont know, but certainly not HF

Im not sure if you are trolling or just vastly missing the point.

His goal wasnt 'use magic to fix what I did'.

His goal was to save people. He was already saving people the only way he knew how, and he was good at it, but he was unhappy with the cost. He didnt want the grail to wash away his sins, he wanted the grail to rewrite the rules so his sins would never be neccessary in the first place. But the grail refused.

Its the difference between wanting to end a war and wanting world peace.

I always found the whole 'the greater good is bad cause if you keep doing it everyone would be dead' to be very flawed reasoning, but than again most of nasu is very flawed type philosophy.
also what says, 'using magic to fix it' is a stupid criticism, people in real life would use magic to fix shit if it was around, get off your high horse

>harry potter as the antichrist
Is that actually what the plot of Century was about?

Pretty much. More really just hated dam near anything associated with modern culture

And how's that happen? The last I read in was during the 60s, I think I remember Voldemort fucking Mina Murray at the Rutles show at Hyde Park?

>I just find it morally repugnant especially on how it hails itself as the “true ending”... its the “real” route and everything else was set up.

You should have seen it coming with how self-destructive Shirou as a protagonist is.

>Basically its a morally bankrupt route
How? Because it involves saving and redeeming an actual person in contrast with hypothetically doing so, with all the warts of real people rather an idealized abstract?

>that does everything it can to drag the others through the mud.
The three routes naturally build on each other's ideas. It's a fairly clear dialectic process.

Honestly I dont remember it all that well. Honestly looking bach I kind of preferred the movie over where the comics went. Least the movie was able to have fun

Daily reminder that anime is trash

And yes before someone says "hurr but fate is a VN," that includes VNs. Especially VNs in fact.

I can understand his criticism, especially since it goes from 'I wanna save everyone' straight to fuck sakura, it isn't a slow build that shows him eventually trying to save sakura alone.
also how is it a 'what if' he saves taiga in UBW, he saves a good amount of fuyuki each route.

I remember someone saying to me that nasu strikes him as a strange conservative.

>Should have seen how self destructive he was.

And you know what. Maybe he was a better man for it. Instead of being like every other selfish bastard in this world and letting the world rot for all they care.

>For saving something real

No for saving just one person and telling the world “fuck all of you im done i got mine”

>Naturally Build

Not really. All thats really done is each route just goes “no IM right” to the one before it with HF being the most obvious about it

What's up, Holden?

Who?

Have you never heard of The Catcher in the Rye?

That seems...incredibly mean spirited.

Ah, my issue isnt that people are phony’s its that we could be so much better. But we never are. We just stay selfish and shitty. And its frustrating.

In a way HF is a culmination of that. Its perfectly rational and reasonable. Its also just another mark of how selfish we can be and how we never seem to ever to truly be great or even good. We just stop at when we are fufilled

>comic feuds
>anything but petty
lmao