I marathoned Fate/Zero overnight; it was awesome and makes up for Fate/Stay Night—I’m a big fan of shows that grind down and destroy characters, and now I understand why a lot of people like Eliezer are fans of Kiritsugu.
That said, there were some obvious writing errors (eg. Kiritsugu arranging for his lackey to kill a character within seconds of signing a magically binding contract to not intend his death! -_-), the first episodes were bad data dumps, and I still don’t get the ending with the rejection of the Grail. It seems to have been some sort of straw utilitarianism. Eh.
Synchronicity! I’ll second all of the above, and indeed I intended (and neglected) to make a comment about Fate/Zero, as I recently saw it. Fate/Zero finally made me realize why Kiritsugu was a somewhat appropriate name for that particular SuperHappy faction...
And I recommend people to see it first, I think. There’s no need to drudge through the nonsense of the Fate/Stay night anime—I think that pretty much all that’s good in Fate/stay night is even better in Fate/Zero, and Fate/Zero rids itself of the bad...
And I loved seeing a character who was almost pure consequentialist, a man who could indeed shut-up-and-multiply, to not be treated as a villain, even when his attitude comes in conflict with more rule-bound “honorable” heroes...
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the consequentialism thing. It came across more of a curse than anything else, and the bit at the end seemed to imply that it was supposed to be actually a bad thing.
and the bit at the end seemed to imply that it was supposed to be actually a bad thing.
One problem with Fate/Zero is that it expects the audience to have seen FSN and played through most of the visual novel paths.
The Grail is tainted with the evil of Angra Mainyu), which makes it into an antagonistic wish-granting device. I’d imagine that no matter what wish one brought to it, it would interpret in such a way as to harm humanity to the fullest extent.
One problem with Fate/Zero is that it expects the audience to have seen FSN
I disagree with this—in fact I think some criticized it for spending time enough to introduce new watchers who had never seen F/SN(and in fact I recommend people to watch Fate/Zero first. Though personally I had indeed watched F/SN first, several years back)
Without having known anything about Angra Mainyu, and never played the visual novels, I still got that with all its tentacliness and black-ooziness and the human-sacrifice needingness of the thing, it was really more of an Unholy Grail than a Holy one; malicious, not just ruthless like Kiritsugu...
I don’t think Kiritsugu ever abandons his consequentialism; he just abandons one particular path which he realizes will have bad consequences… but the anime is really ambiguous on this.
I think the contract thing can work out. All the arranging was done in advance, so if his goal of having the character die is magically removed after the completion of the contract, he’s fine unless a a goal of actively saving his life is also magically added.
Perhaps there was a nuance in the original Japanese, but as I read the deal in the fansub and thought about exactly the question “are there any loopholes in this?”, I was sure that the answer was no and the language completely excluded any clever tricks Kiritsugu pulled or could pull… until I saw that the shooter was Maiya (rather than any other faction), at which point I was furious.
(And if the contracts are that easy to subvert, Lord Kenneth should have easily spotted the loophole as a pretty devious and experienced mage himself.)
I’m also a bit skeptical about the contract implementation, but from a plot perspective it doesn’t matter very much. Even with Excalibur sealed and her left hand disabled, Saber outclasses Lancer. Even without the self-Geis scroll, Kayneth has no other option for evading Kiritsugu. It was probably still a bad writing decision to add a plot hole simply to make Kiritsugu look badass.
(A better subversion, IMO, would have been to have Kiritsugu not inherit the Emiya family crest—which is what it looks like from the perspective of Fate/Zero anyway. Then the self-Geis fails for a reason Kayneth may have genuinely not known.)
The bigger WTF, in my mind, is why Saber’s left hand was injured at all. That whole sequence required her to hold the Idiot Ball twice. Where did she ever get the idea that Servants only have one Noble Phantasm? And since when does her magical armor slow her down? Argh....
Further, Kiritsugu explains his goal as eliminating master & servant simultaneously, but this seems entirely unnecessary. You should prefer to eliminate a servant first, so it can’t contract with another master or act as a free agent, and also eliminate a master so they can’t hang around and fight you or contract with a spare servant—but there’s no need to do them simultaneously in the same battle, and with Kayneth there was even less need: he was completely crippled physically & magically, so he could neither fight nor, I think, contract again!
I think I’m going to leave this as a plot hole like in Death Note. Yes, it may be ‘cool’ that Near just magically deduces who Mikami is. But it’s still stupid and unnecessary.
Even if he couldn’t fight or contract again, couldn’t he still have given away his Command Seals to someone else, if he hadn’t been forced to use them all up?
“Legend of the Galactic Heroes” is the kind of show I would like people to imagine I was watching when I say I’ve been watching anime.
To start with the things I don’t like about it, or that are in any way suboptimal: The animation is an example of a lot of what’s wrong with old school anime productions; choppy movements and stock footage abound. There are plenty of strawmen who seem to exist purely to be taken down a notch by the better, more reasonable characters, the idiot ball bounces its merry way through the ranks of secondary characters like a children’s sing along movie. There is a whole lot of improbable and just plain stupid pseudoscience, and little attempt is made at making it make logical sense. This is space opera, not science fiction. Occasionally the Japanese writers fanboy on German-style culture too hard, which combined with themes of military rule and strong blond and blue eyed characters receiving salutes from crowds of uniformed soldiers may make casual viewers wonder if the show promotes fascism (It doesn’t. Sort of. It’s complicated).
With all of that said, I highly recommend this show. It doesn’t take the easy way out of having a clear good vs. evil conflict. On one side there is the Free Planet’s Alliance, a corrupt and bloated democracy, and on the other is the Galactic Empire, a military aristocracy which has given in to decadence and forsaken noblesse oblige. The actions of the characters within each faction highlight the issues of authoritarian and democratic government, but neither side is explicitly right or wrong. Individual characters have different conceptions of morality, many of which conflict, and many of which are sympathetic. Oberstein, a grey-eyed spy-master and bureaucrat of the Empire, is hated by his own compatriots for his ruthlessness, but does everything out of a sense of utilitarian calculation. If a thousand civilian lives lost to an attack could save hundreds of thousands in the long term, he will push the fat man into the path of the trolley. Yang Wenli, persecuted by his own country over whims of public opinion, refuses to betray the principles of democracy even as its worst elements are brought forth by political maneuvering and populism. This is a satisfying story told on a grand scope, it’s about passion and consequence, war and intrigue. I wholeheartedly recommend it on the strength of its characters and the majesty of its narrative style.
Be aware: The early episodes drag a bit, but get better drastically as things continue. This is a BIG series, with one hundred and ten episodes (OVAs), two movies, and two prequel mini-series released from 1988 to 2000. It has never been released in America and probably never will be.
I have mixed feelings about Casshern Sins, which I watched over the weekend. It has an excellent soundtrack, kind of neat figure-it-out plot, and a surreal dreamlike quality that reminds me (a lot!) of Squall’s Dead. That said, the resolution to the puzzles don’t really make any sense (it seems halfway plausible at the end that, in-universe, eating Casshern really would grant immortality—it’s certainly no stranger than the ruin being caused by nyy gur qrngu rfpncvat sebz Yhan jura fur jnf xvyyrq), and characters and perhaps the series over all are engure rkcyvpvgyl qrnguvfg, bs gur fvyyvrfg “qrngu tvirf zrnavat gb yvsr” glcr.
Frankenweenie. I’m not going to say it’s Bayesian or materialist, but it’s very definite that accepting death is bad. It’s charmingly visually grotesque and beautifully filmed (Tim Burton), and a good bit of fun.
Based on the pilot episode with a very special game of chicken, the new Last Resort TV show seems promising. The initial premise is basically The Hunt for Red October meets Lost minus the supernatural elements.
It’s also the sort of show that can turn into a complete mess if the writers don’t have a good handle on running the larger story arc.
Movies and Television Thread
I marathoned Fate/Zero overnight; it was awesome and makes up for Fate/Stay Night—I’m a big fan of shows that grind down and destroy characters, and now I understand why a lot of people like Eliezer are fans of Kiritsugu.
That said, there were some obvious writing errors (eg. Kiritsugu arranging for his lackey to kill a character within seconds of signing a magically binding contract to not intend his death! -_-), the first episodes were bad data dumps, and I still don’t get the ending with the rejection of the Grail. It seems to have been some sort of straw utilitarianism. Eh.
Synchronicity! I’ll second all of the above, and indeed I intended (and neglected) to make a comment about Fate/Zero, as I recently saw it. Fate/Zero finally made me realize why Kiritsugu was a somewhat appropriate name for that particular SuperHappy faction...
And I recommend people to see it first, I think. There’s no need to drudge through the nonsense of the Fate/Stay night anime—I think that pretty much all that’s good in Fate/stay night is even better in Fate/Zero, and Fate/Zero rids itself of the bad...
And I loved seeing a character who was almost pure consequentialist, a man who could indeed shut-up-and-multiply, to not be treated as a villain, even when his attitude comes in conflict with more rule-bound “honorable” heroes...
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the consequentialism thing. It came across more of a curse than anything else, and the bit at the end seemed to imply that it was supposed to be actually a bad thing.
One problem with Fate/Zero is that it expects the audience to have seen FSN and played through most of the visual novel paths.
The Grail is tainted with the evil of Angra Mainyu), which makes it into an antagonistic wish-granting device. I’d imagine that no matter what wish one brought to it, it would interpret in such a way as to harm humanity to the fullest extent.
That doesn’t constitute a dismissal of Kiritsugu’s philosophy. It’s a warning against wish-granting devices. Like telling Belgarath not to use his power when he doesn’t know how the universe will implement it.
I disagree with this—in fact I think some criticized it for spending time enough to introduce new watchers who had never seen F/SN(and in fact I recommend people to watch Fate/Zero first. Though personally I had indeed watched F/SN first, several years back)
Without having known anything about Angra Mainyu, and never played the visual novels, I still got that with all its tentacliness and black-ooziness and the human-sacrifice needingness of the thing, it was really more of an Unholy Grail than a Holy one; malicious, not just ruthless like Kiritsugu...
I don’t think Kiritsugu ever abandons his consequentialism; he just abandons one particular path which he realizes will have bad consequences… but the anime is really ambiguous on this.
I think the contract thing can work out. All the arranging was done in advance, so if his goal of having the character die is magically removed after the completion of the contract, he’s fine unless a a goal of actively saving his life is also magically added.
Perhaps there was a nuance in the original Japanese, but as I read the deal in the fansub and thought about exactly the question “are there any loopholes in this?”, I was sure that the answer was no and the language completely excluded any clever tricks Kiritsugu pulled or could pull… until I saw that the shooter was Maiya (rather than any other faction), at which point I was furious.
(And if the contracts are that easy to subvert, Lord Kenneth should have easily spotted the loophole as a pretty devious and experienced mage himself.)
I’m also a bit skeptical about the contract implementation, but from a plot perspective it doesn’t matter very much. Even with Excalibur sealed and her left hand disabled, Saber outclasses Lancer. Even without the self-Geis scroll, Kayneth has no other option for evading Kiritsugu. It was probably still a bad writing decision to add a plot hole simply to make Kiritsugu look badass.
(A better subversion, IMO, would have been to have Kiritsugu not inherit the Emiya family crest—which is what it looks like from the perspective of Fate/Zero anyway. Then the self-Geis fails for a reason Kayneth may have genuinely not known.)
The bigger WTF, in my mind, is why Saber’s left hand was injured at all. That whole sequence required her to hold the Idiot Ball twice. Where did she ever get the idea that Servants only have one Noble Phantasm? And since when does her magical armor slow her down? Argh....
I largely agree with your points.
Further, Kiritsugu explains his goal as eliminating master & servant simultaneously, but this seems entirely unnecessary. You should prefer to eliminate a servant first, so it can’t contract with another master or act as a free agent, and also eliminate a master so they can’t hang around and fight you or contract with a spare servant—but there’s no need to do them simultaneously in the same battle, and with Kayneth there was even less need: he was completely crippled physically & magically, so he could neither fight nor, I think, contract again!
I think I’m going to leave this as a plot hole like in Death Note. Yes, it may be ‘cool’ that Near just magically deduces who Mikami is. But it’s still stupid and unnecessary.
Even if he couldn’t fight or contract again, couldn’t he still have given away his Command Seals to someone else, if he hadn’t been forced to use them all up?
My impression was that unused Command Seals automatically went back to the Church, so he wouldn’t have them to give away.
Looper was pretty great.
“Legend of the Galactic Heroes” is the kind of show I would like people to imagine I was watching when I say I’ve been watching anime.
To start with the things I don’t like about it, or that are in any way suboptimal: The animation is an example of a lot of what’s wrong with old school anime productions; choppy movements and stock footage abound. There are plenty of strawmen who seem to exist purely to be taken down a notch by the better, more reasonable characters, the idiot ball bounces its merry way through the ranks of secondary characters like a children’s sing along movie. There is a whole lot of improbable and just plain stupid pseudoscience, and little attempt is made at making it make logical sense. This is space opera, not science fiction. Occasionally the Japanese writers fanboy on German-style culture too hard, which combined with themes of military rule and strong blond and blue eyed characters receiving salutes from crowds of uniformed soldiers may make casual viewers wonder if the show promotes fascism (It doesn’t. Sort of. It’s complicated).
With all of that said, I highly recommend this show. It doesn’t take the easy way out of having a clear good vs. evil conflict. On one side there is the Free Planet’s Alliance, a corrupt and bloated democracy, and on the other is the Galactic Empire, a military aristocracy which has given in to decadence and forsaken noblesse oblige. The actions of the characters within each faction highlight the issues of authoritarian and democratic government, but neither side is explicitly right or wrong. Individual characters have different conceptions of morality, many of which conflict, and many of which are sympathetic. Oberstein, a grey-eyed spy-master and bureaucrat of the Empire, is hated by his own compatriots for his ruthlessness, but does everything out of a sense of utilitarian calculation. If a thousand civilian lives lost to an attack could save hundreds of thousands in the long term, he will push the fat man into the path of the trolley. Yang Wenli, persecuted by his own country over whims of public opinion, refuses to betray the principles of democracy even as its worst elements are brought forth by political maneuvering and populism. This is a satisfying story told on a grand scope, it’s about passion and consequence, war and intrigue. I wholeheartedly recommend it on the strength of its characters and the majesty of its narrative style.
Be aware: The early episodes drag a bit, but get better drastically as things continue. This is a BIG series, with one hundred and ten episodes (OVAs), two movies, and two prequel mini-series released from 1988 to 2000. It has never been released in America and probably never will be.
The Master is the best serious drama I’ve seen in years.
I have mixed feelings about Casshern Sins, which I watched over the weekend. It has an excellent soundtrack, kind of neat figure-it-out plot, and a surreal dreamlike quality that reminds me (a lot!) of Squall’s Dead. That said, the resolution to the puzzles don’t really make any sense (it seems halfway plausible at the end that, in-universe, eating Casshern really would grant immortality—it’s certainly no stranger than the ruin being caused by nyy gur qrngu rfpncvat sebz Yhan jura fur jnf xvyyrq), and characters and perhaps the series over all are engure rkcyvpvgyl qrnguvfg, bs gur fvyyvrfg “qrngu tvirf zrnavat gb yvsr” glcr.
Frankenweenie. I’m not going to say it’s Bayesian or materialist, but it’s very definite that accepting death is bad. It’s charmingly visually grotesque and beautifully filmed (Tim Burton), and a good bit of fun.
I find The Thick of It delightful (half hour episodes of British politicking and cursing extravagantly). It’s on Hulu.
Based on the pilot episode with a very special game of chicken, the new Last Resort TV show seems promising. The initial premise is basically The Hunt for Red October meets Lost minus the supernatural elements.
It’s also the sort of show that can turn into a complete mess if the writers don’t have a good handle on running the larger story arc.