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Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Either way when you summon super murderghosts it's quite useful to to have a way to prevent your Servant from killing you. The War is predicated on betrayal, after all.

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Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

korrandark posted:

I had some questions about the Holy Grail War. How are the heroic spirits chosen? I remember in Fate/Zero that you could choose what hero you wanted by having something that belonged to them, but what if you didn't have anyone in mind? How are the heroic spirits put into categories(like Saber or Lancer)? Is it random or is there someway to manipulate the system?

Catalyst decides hero (so far everybody we know has been summoned with one), with personality as a secondary criterion (mostly if more than one hero is tied to the catalyst, I s'pose). Each class has certain requirements, the most relevant of which is, obviously, the choice of weapon, but many heroes fit for more than one class. There's been examples of people manipulating the summoning ritual to get a specific class, although we have no good idea what happens if you ask for a class that doesn't match the hero.
Assassin is a special case because the class itself is its catalyst, as it will call one of the Hassan-i-sabbah, aka the originators of the term 'assassin'.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Nyaa posted:

I think it is similar and/or complimentary to the master. I don't think fate apocalyphy is a good reference since it is not design and written by Nasu. Fate/extra, however, is a great reference since everyone summon servant with themself as the catalyst.

On the other hand Extra uses a completely different system.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Kubla Khan posted:

I'm not a huge fan of stuff like "A+ class magic", "I can recover 6 mana points a day!", "Gilgamesh is using his class ability" etc, it just feels awkward outside of a video game. I can overlook it but I'd still prefer if magic were more mystical and strange. I liked the idea of 'sorcery' vs. regular magic.

Well supposedly FSN started as some tabletop campaign Nasu homebrewed.

And he really loves his RPG terms.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Yosuke posted:

It chooses Masters, but Servants are entirely based on the ritual.

Not entirely. Shirou was dreaming of Saber before he even knew there was something going on.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Meanwhile, in spinoff land....


How come the loli manga is also the coolest TM-related action manga?

E: Goddamnit why can't I put a timg inside a spoiler.

Kyte fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Oct 29, 2014

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

ACES CURE PLANES posted:

I don't want to read that lovely manga, but goddamn that image is awesome and I kinda want to know the context behind it.

Not enough to read it though.

If you skip to the end of Zwei you get to the alternate world arc where most of the cool stuff happens.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

SALT CURES HAM posted:

Tsukihime manga owns in case anyone was wondering






Those scenes are not even half as dynamic, though.

Which is, y'know, kind of important in an action manga.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
TM April Fool's.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
That kinda sounds like the wiki making stuff up.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
It's actually not that bad. Sure, it rewrote the very center of his being but it's not like it switched it to something particularly unusual either.

His survivor's guilt, on the other hand, does a fine job all by itself.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

point of return posted:

Isn't there a weird trademark issue with the word "superhero" in the United States?

"Seigi no Mikata" means "Ally of Justice". At some point some translator made it into "Hero of Justice" and it stuck.
I couldn't pinpoint how, but it seems to be subtly different from the standard "Hero" (which is "Yuusha") or japan's perception of western heroes, aka superheroes (which are often called simply "Hero").

Yuusha is what they call the protagonist in JRPGs like Dragon Quest and such, btw. Hero is often used in westernized works (Tiger and Bunny, for example). Kamen Riders typically call themselves Seigi no Mikata.

E: I remember somebody explaining it that the core difference is that in japan the focus is in punishing those who have committed evil, whereas a superhero typically works to prevent evil from being committed in first place. The former takes losses and collateral damage as a given, while the latter takes it as a failure.

E2: In general FSN is pretty steeped in japanese subtleties we have no idea about, and they color the things Shirou says or thinks. Somebody bothered to explain it, in case anybody's curious.

Kyte fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Dec 7, 2014

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Twiddy posted:

Yeah that's fantastic that that's how the meanings work in Japanese. In English though, we help get that idea across by saying superhero.

I mean you tell me superhero, and sure I think of the guy who beats the supervillain, but I also think of Superman flying around and fixing dams and poo poo.

I don't really care either way, I just started infodumping.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Raenir Salazar posted:

I guess another thing to ask is why were they so effective? Did they have particularly good stats for fighting monks or was it Shirou downloading all of Archer's fighting skills or both?

Projections retain "the memory of being used". They can actually swing themselves in a way.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Serious Frolicking posted:

So let me see if I've got this right. Shirou has a natural affinity for projection, which is normally pretty useless. But because he had excalibur's sheath inside him for most of his life, he became attuned to swords and by extension weapons in general. So, he can create swords and such far beyond what projection is normally capable of at the cost of being incompetent at all other forms of magic. Two possible end states for his ability are Archer's reality marble and HF's weirdness where his body turned into swords.

More or less this.

BlitzBlast posted:

It's simpler than that, actually. Avalon gave him his sword origin/affinity, but his real talent comes from an extension of the one spell he used most of his life: reinforcement. Shirou's really good at analyzing an object's inner workings (it's how he fixes things), to the point he can understand any given item's essence. This lets him use projection, which normally just copies an object's appearance and most basic qualities, to create perfect replicas.

All Avalon did was make him better at tracing swords. UBW too is just a database of all the information he's ever gotten. As for what happened in HF, that was a side effect of grafting on Archer's arm. It's constantly sending magic into his body, and since Shirou/Archer's magic affinity is sword...

But not this.
His projection pulls out swords from UBW. It's why they're almost perfect replicas. UBW's doing the heavy lifting of forging them. UBW also instantly analyzes any sword he sees and stores it within. The thing with Archer's arm was because it was literally invading Shirou from inside.

Fangz posted:

I think it's much more interesting an explanation (and more consistent thematically in the case of HF) to say that Shirou's abilities reflects his worldview, than claim that it's a result of some magical artifact that happened to be there by chance, even if you can dig out some Nasu quote from some interview somewhere that states it is the case.

It's neither.

He survived the fire with massive psychological trauma and a guilt complex. Then he got a scabbard shoved inside him, which altered his Origin. This change in turn altered his element. Since all magecraft is done through the element, and traditional magecraft presupposes a normal elemental alignment, Shirou is crap at normal spells (same with Sakura, actually). On the other hand, he is very very good at sword magic. UBW is a sword magic.

Going back to Shirou's mind, he's a ball of issues stemming from the fire, then witnessed Kerry rescuing him and thought "ah, I want to be happy like him" and latched onto that. Thus he copies Kerry's ideal to save people. ("If I save people I will be happy"). His lack of a sense of self-worth is probably from the fire as well (since it 'burned away' at him), with influence of his Origin. His Origin influences the way he manifests this ideal, in that he's most successful when fighting, but it's not the cause for it.

UBW is the result of his extreme aptitude for sword magic, not his mindset. His mindset, however, affects how UBW looks. UBW is not the product of his psychological issues. They just derive from the same source (the fire).

Kyte fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Dec 16, 2014

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Caster was all "wizard needs mana badly" at Kuzuki's doorstep after murdering her old Master so he picked her up and proceeded to hot dickings CG animals.

Nate RFB posted:

This, at the very least, I don't think is accurate.
I can't read that in any other context other than it trying to showcase that UBW is intrinsic to Shirou's very being and soul, rather than something that naturally "grew" out of his ability to project swords. And since he lost Avalon after Fate, is his Origin/Affinity still the same? Would he somehow lose the ability to project in the first place as a result?

Ok I s'pose I need to clarify. An RM refers to two things: A spell that takes out your soul and puts it on the world, and the end result of casting said spell. UBW is indeed Shirou's soul. But that's not the special part. Everybody has a soul, after all.
In Shirou's case his abilities with it aren't a byproduct of his mental issues or anything, except perhaps as evidence of his Origin. He's a bit of a special case in that his Origin manifests unusually strongly. Most people can walk their entire lives having no idea what's their Origin and it won't do one lick of a difference, but in Shirou's case it actually punched through the normal filters and set his magical element as 'Sword'. (normally you get boring stuff like 'Fire' or 'Water')
And that's why he's exceptional: Normally achieving RM-the-spell is something that takes decades of work and tons of power (which is why most RM users are vampires. Plenty of time to amass research and power) but Shirou's natural +10 to Sword Magic made him capable of casting the ultimate sword spell, UBW. And then he cheated some more with Emiya Cloud Sync.
Otherwise it'd've just remained internalized. He'd prolly keep his projection abilities, but no manifesting it as a bounded field.

From UBW flows the rest of his projection-related abilities.

He already grew up full of swordstuff, it's not gonna go away even if the magnet's gone.

(The Origin, as the name implies, is the starting point from which your existence is made. You can imagine it as a magnet, which attracts metaphorical 'stuff' that eventually becomes a 'thing', such as a person (or a rock. or an animal. or anything else). The thing with Avalon is that it's a super strong artifact on its own, so it sort of acted as a second magnet that attracted sword-aligned 'stuff' and stuck it on Shirou, thus altering his existential development)

Raenir Salazar posted:

Makes me wonder if every Magus can have a in theory their own reality marble that reflects their specialty? Its just otherwise normally possible to achieve that level of magic though?

In theory yes. In practice... sometimes.
Nrvnqsr Chaos succeeded, for example.
But I s'pose it's not a particularly useful avenue of research for most magi. Can't be passed down, after all.

Rand Brittain posted:

I think you have to be single-minded to a point that's not really healthy. Ordinary people can't be distilled down to a single concept like that.

Nah. It's just a spell that turns you inside out. The problem's that it's crazy expensive to research and cast.

Fangz posted:

We've got a narrative where characters are defined by their determination, where random peasants attain True Magic by pure effort, where Archmaguses became worms with no will except to survive, where we are told that Shirou's real virtue is that he would stubbornly fail to give up (see Rin having watched him attempt a jump over and over again). Explaining Shirou as the product of someone else doing something to him, and not instead as something he did to himself... that just feels weaksauce.

One of the things with Nasu is that if you don't get some sort of special feat in your character sheet you aren't gonna amount for jackshit, especially if you also have a 'Modern World Human' penalty.
Anyways, he becomes Archer by his own volition, but he only has the capability to become Archer because he received the plot coupon.

He can only become a protagonist because he's got protagonist power, but he's still got to do the protagonist's journey.

E: I need to lay off the urge to answer everything.

Kyte fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 17, 2014

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Shirou started getting a crest before he summoned a servant though, I always assumed from Ilya's threat that she had some hand in it.

The grail played favorites and had already set aside the Saber slot for him. :v:

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
The hero'd need a catalyst for you. And the chances of that are vanishingly small.

Which is of course why Archer had one. :v:

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

They're no more similar than any other two blonde characters drawn by the same artist.

Takeuchi's sameface goes beyond Saber, anyways.

(And this is why anime draws characters with wildly improbable hairstyles and colors)

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
My impression was Rin was disappointed Archer wasn't willing to disclose more info and she'd figured it out when Shirou traced or a bit afterwards (which is why she'd organized the date and such).

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Isn't Ilya completely covered in CSs?

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Endorph posted:

also it's far and away the best of those designs, cleavage or no.

Kyte fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Dec 30, 2014

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Shyrka posted:

That looks like Luvia to me. She's even doing the gandr pose!

That's because it is Luvia. The Seibaclone is Waver's student.

(For the record Luvia does not like Waver)

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Raenir Salazar posted:

Because that's adult Waver and adult Waver is something of a hard rear end right? :D

I think it had something to do with Waver being a scrub magus. Despite everything Luvia still is part of the magical aristocracy, just like Kayneth.

(And somebody once mentioned that Waver and Rin don't get along either and Luvia's Rin with boobs and drills so dunno)

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
There's also entirely different localization teams.

I'm told Nasu's writing is actually fairly poetic in the original language.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
But if GB and... Gungnir I think it was? I don't quite remember. Anyways if they were to duel, Gungnir would come out on top. That's what it's supposed to mean: When a weapon is "remade", it loses some of its mystery and therefore will lose to its "father".

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Rodyle posted:

Gil likes Extra world because it's decaying and turning into the World of Steel or something iirc, Gil's whole problem with the present era is the relative lack of conflict allows for a large population and thus weaker individual humans.

Nah his attitude just shifts to reflect the era and the Clinton administration sucked. :v:

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
The actual explanation to the prototype thing is that legendary weapons all represent some sort of idea. Caliburn, for example, is the "sword that selects the rightful king", an idea passed down from Gram, which in turn got it from Merodach. The thing here is that when the myth sorts of 'splits off', it loses some of its mystery and therefore potency. Thus Merodach will beat Gram which will beat Caliburn.

The actual weapon may be better, or may have new tricks, or maybe be used better, but the intrinsic quality they embody gets diluted. Since Gil has the first item to embody any given idea, his stuff is 'purest' and therefore strongest in a pure clash of mystery. He might even have the same physical weapon, just in its pre-legendary state (since it's all copies and poo poo). "Prototype" is always used figuratively.

(This, incidentally, is why he has all sorts of bullshit stuff in the Gate. The Gate and its legend declares that he can and will have something for literally every idea expressed by humanity. The upshot of this is he doesn't have things created by beings outside humanity (see Excalibur and Karna's divine gear). It seems Prisma is playing a bit with this idea lately, with stuff Gil has never seen and implications that the bad dudes are creating a new humanity (aka the Liners from Notes).)

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
The Capsule Servant thing came from the minigame that replaced Hanafuda in HA Vita.
https://wakameparadise.wordpress.com/capsule-servant/

That's also where Jeanne's new personality came from. :v:

IIRC Mordred was stalking following Saber.
Apparently Saber used to be a legendary idol.


E: oh right. While Shirou's lawyering it up, Archer defeats crime more directly.

Kyte fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Apr 1, 2015

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
If Kariya had been less concerned about trying to get his self-insert fantasy to work and more concerned with actually helping Sakura he would've tried to work with Tokiomi instead of getting himself killed like a chump.

And then he might've succeeded.

Ergo Kariya couldn't do it, because to be Kariya is to be a loser. :v:

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
It is not inaccurate to say all three lack emotional maturity.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
tbf Tokiomi wasn't aware of just how deep the worm hole went and was otherwise doing everything correctly for the sake and well-being of his daughter as dictated by his cultural context. In addition both Tokiomi and Kariya knew they'd forfeited their rights to live when they signed up for the deathmatch so even the whole violence bit is sorta justified.

wrt Fastwheels let's be honest: Brilliant assholes that don't suffer upstart little shits that can't actually walk the walk (because Waver sucks as a mage) aren't particularly unusual. Same thing wrt violence w/ Waver as above. Honestly his great sin was being too arrogant. That's it. It's kinda sad, really. He even tried to be a good husband [within his cultural context] but the wife was too much of a bitch to care.

(It's really important to note the whole "cultural context" bit because these are people who live lives quite removed from what's "normal" to us.)

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Redmark posted:

Eh it's a huge stretch imo to say that the main chars simply "lack emotional maturity". Gilgamesh and Kotomine are straight up inhuman, which is why they're fascinating. I don't buy that you can characterize them as simply amoral. With Kiritsugu, even if he ends up as a catastrophic failure, his world view was hardened over a long life as a soldier. Just because he's stubborn and wrong about a lot of things, I don't think it makes him more childish for it than, say, Saber (and the comparison between those two is often made).

In general I think it's unfair to single out extreme ethical positions when there are anime stakes involved. These aren't salarymen. It makes sense that when the big fuckoff grail is in sight, duty and family honor are not the primary concerns. Perhaps it makes the characters less relatable, but that's what happens when everything is magic.

While it's true that all three have circumstances that shaped their lives and mindsets which more or less justify their current state, they are emotionally immature. It's a simple statement of fact.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

AlternateNu posted:

I've been meaning to ask, where did the term "prana" come from vice the more oft used "mana"? Was it some weird Nasu-ism in one of the earlier releases?

In jp it's all magical energy but Mirror moon decided to be fancy and designated od as magical energy from the body, mana as magical energy from the world and prana as magical energy after being processed through circuits.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Nasu mentioned somewhere that Archer got his shroud from, iirc, a member of the Church with a penchant for curry.

Clearly it means Curry DeMarche. :v:

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
The Sabers will continue multiplying so long as Takeuchi continues working in Type-Moon.

In other words, forever.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Supposedly he has a NP that does that job for him.

It's Gilgamesh after all, why wouldn't he have the legendary prototypical Roomba.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
The guy has some cool ideas and generally makes for fun action stuff.

The problem is what often happens in between the action. :v:

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Prisma has Baz showing off overpowered punch magic though.

(Apparently there's record somewhere that Nasu & Takeuchi saw prisma bazett and were like "ahahaha what")

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Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Goddamn the ahoges are multiplying.

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