Forum - View topicANNCast - Chewing the Fate
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phoenix72
Posts: 31 |
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so i am assuming none of us have gotten the chance to play hollow atarexia (i still need to finish heavens feel so hollow atarexia is not yet a feasable read).
i bring this up because since we all know who Karen is it would make sense that a bit more of kirei's backstory is in it. i say this because no one has cited this work yet. |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1011 |
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Just to clarify things, while Kirei has accepted the fact that he's evil, he enjoys being evil, and nothing he does can ever change that, it's important to know that doesn't mean he likes that about himself. On the contrary, it pisses him off to no end, even by the time F/SN rolls around. He's able to feel things such as remorse and he can perfectly distinguish right from wrong, having a strong moral compass. He's faaaaaaaaaar from being a good person, but he's not a complete sociopath either. This places him between the two spectrums, and he feels he has no place in the world because of it. The reason why he wants the Grail is to learn the reason for his screwed up mentality, both in F/Z and F/SN. Actually, Kirei and Shirou are surprisingly similar. Both have essentially no sense of self and can only find purpose through their fellow humans: The only difference is that for Shirou it is helping people, and for Kotomine it is causing them pain and suffering. I'm sure there probably is a reason for his personality, but it's likely that we'll never get that reason. Which I'm fine with, it fun to imagine how he got to be that way. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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Saying that you "know" what happens just increases the suspicion that you are jumping to conclusions. You could just say what you know, some people would still probably shout "no that's wrong", but at least you'd have given something to chew on. Fans vaunt a lot of things. If what you say here is right, you're criticizing the story partly for what some guy on the internet said. Well, here's another guy. At least it might give you better understanding for why some people enjoy Nasu's writing. It is true that Nasu's character are often not relatable. The reason for that is at least partly his interest in abnormal worldviews and approaches to problems. That shows through most of his written works, like the narrative use for both of Tohnos' eyes or Fate/Extra protagonist's blank slate status. He's not that concerned about portraying psychological realism (although, for example, Fujino's condition in Garden of Sinners is real and everybody has same ol' daddy issues) as he is about presenting some weird "affliction" or freakish way of reasoning and then imagining how a person would view things differently. Arguably Fate has the least of that, but even then both Kirei and Shirou can hardly be considered realistic or relatable. They're thought experiments. That's what make them more interesting to me than Fate/Zero's masters, who have immediately apparent (human) flaws leading to their inevitable conclusions in this tight clockwork narrative that allows for few surprises. As for Sakura, the way she's written is one of the most debated topics in the fandom, so you wouldn't be saying anything unheard of. Last edited by jl07045 on Sat May 16, 2015 4:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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I3uster
Posts: 45 |
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I don't want to play Nasu canon nazi again but honestly if your analysis goes against the text maybe it's time to revise?
I'm all for creative interpretations but you get directly contradicted (dislike for organized religion is not implied ever for example while the opposite is stated explicitly. He is loyal to the Church.) The character is not robbed of complexity by his status of being "born evil" due to the way Nasu plays with these predetermined fates. You saw Kara no Kyoukai, right? A lot of his thoughts regarding this in there. |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night are not 100% compatible texts, as I've said a few times. Maybe like...70% or 80% or so. There aren't very many out-and-out plotholes, but they read like worlds and characters envisioned by two completely different people, even down to their style of prose and dialogue. If my interpretation of "Kirei probably became who he was due to several factors" clashes with "he was literally born evil," that's fine by me, because the latter is really dumb. There are dumb things in Fate/stay Night (and Fate/Zero,) and that's okay too. The religion thing is just a mix-up. I said Urobuchi had a dislike of organized religion, not Kirei. I've seen Garden of Sinners, yeah. I think what it was doing with the concept and characterization was a lot stronger than Fate/stay Night. Either way, Nasu characterization is just a completely different animal from Booch characterization. They view human nature differently. That's okay. But it does cause incongruity, and that stuff is interesting to analyze.
I understand that, it's not that I think I have a "new" observation, far from it. It's just that from where I'm coming from, it's not a "debated thing," it's "this is jaw-droppingly repulsive and there's no defense for it," so yeah, not much point in bringing it up. The Sakura stuff is gross. Fate/stay Night is really gross about women in the prologue and all three of its routes. However, I'm not going to convince anyone who doesn't already feel that way, so all I can do is leave it at that. |
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I3uster
Posts: 45 |
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Actually I think a big strength of Zero is how, thematically at least, congruent it is with F/SN, and uses a lot of its minor conflicts that occupy the background behind the big self-worth idea as more central conflicts.
They do have their massive differences as writers (it starts with the fundamental difference of Uro as a pessimist (though he's growing out of that recently) and Nasu as the boundless optimist) but considering how tight cooperation was on the production of the novel here like Nasu's involvement in the creation of characters I don't even think the incongruity is that big unless you want to see it. If you then base your thesis of a greater incongruity of a pre-established main character of the work on assumptions and false information (wow this sounds kind of harsh, but yeah) then I don't think you have much of a point. |
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lyracharles77
Posts: 1 |
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I really liked your analysis jesuotaku, but I do have to agree that you look for and enjoy different things than Type-Lunatics. A person on a Type-Moon fan forum put it like this in regards to your analysis.
"My issue isn't so much the angle it takes on Risei, though I agree that's wrong, so much as I think it just flat out misses the point. Fate is not a story about 'realistic' characters with neurological explanations for their various psychoses. It's about heroes and monsters, sorcery and miracles and the resurrection of the dead, Lawful Good and Chaotic Insane, the perfect judge who becomes inhuman in her perfection, literally manifest Evil, &c. &c. &c. It exaggerates in the recognisable manner of the myths and epics from which it borrows, not only for that stylistic allusion, but for an intended purpose of bringing out the conflicts thereby represented in the sharpest possible relief. Kirei is not meant to be a priest with a psychopathy disorder, he's a distorted mirror of the main character in his hollow inhumanity and his struggle for meaning and his unbending will. Shirō isn't a kid with PTSD and bad parenting issues, he's a hyperbolic representation of the struggles of ideal and reality, childhood and adulthood and so on. You can contend that Nasu's way of going about things is systematically bad by arguing that there's no need for this kind of break from realism and it's very unsubtle (and I'd argue back about how it's necessary to the entire concept), but I very much disagree that "Kirei was evil from birth" must be justified in-story so speculatively. It's not what the character's there for." While you are much more about allegory and realism and more subtle stuff. |
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desolat
Posts: 6 |
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you're only giving them more reason to tuck every disagreeing opinion under the blanket of le obnoxious type moonies, you know
the very power you seek to help the people with will turn them against you, reminds me of an anime i recently watched |
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I3uster
Posts: 45 |
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The obnoxious fanbase battle is long over. We're furry-tier now.
and yet the idea of people not saying blatantly wrong things remains something beautiful |
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desolat
Posts: 6 |
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I have to agree with the profiling insofar as that the desire to win internet argument points while delicately tiptoeing around the fact that the other guy is spouting nonsense in some weird forum thread/comment section that nobody cares about is indicative of some high-grade jhs.
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I3uster
Posts: 45 |
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Honestly I think the main problem is that a critic jumping in fresh is a real challenge when people have been chewing the source to the bone in all its thematic content. Any little obnoxious fan is pretty much armed with tons of material to contradict a critic at every turn, and that piles on, and gets frustrating quickly.
To say anything new you have to make assumptions and read implications into the material that weren't there before (because let's face it, both Zero and SN have the thematic subtlety of a sledgehammer. yay otaku media). It just gets bad at the point where such things are contradicted outright. and this is where we are right now, with all our obnoxious type-moonie power combined or whatever |
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desolat
Posts: 6 |
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Nobody is really asking person X or Y that just read the VN or watched the anime to break new ground where years of text-humping has taken place. By the same token it's totally fine to construct one's criticism of a work or a character based on what they have gleaned from the media they have consumed, as long as that criticism falls within the same boundaries.
That is to say, not making sweeping generalizations with fallacious premises, insufficient exposure to the subject, and argumentation somewhat bare beyond the highly persuasive point 'because that's how it is', while self-righteously insulting the people that might help in forming a more complete opinion on the given subject. also i'm just here to save you from yourself, based on the reports if i listen to the podcast i might actually explode from second hand embarrassment |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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"No, because the lore/fan consensus" isn't really a valid response to someone attempting to analyze this TV show from a film theory perspective. Hope is basically looking at it through the lens of auteur theory with respect to Urobuchi; "the video game says he's just evil" isn't a counterargument to "this writer has a common theme of psychopathy across many of his works, let's look at this character specifically through that prism". If you were writing a paper on Urobuchi and ignored this character, part of one of his most well-known and popular works, because "well the game, written by someone else, says he's just evil" you'd get a failing grade. Misses the point of identifying and articulating common themes across an artists's oeuvre.
I'm aware that F/SN is largely written by and for database-loving otaku and has all these roadblocks in place to prevent any kind of semiotic critical analysis with respect to emotional interpretations that are not explicitly backed up by what Nasu said directly in the games. But this is chiefly an Urobuchi work, not a Nasu work. Anyone watching Urobuchi's stuff can see it from a hundred miles away. The show is unmistakably his. Overall, I knew this would be the response to any kind of analysis that didn't come from within the hardcore fan community would be met with this kind of opposition. But that's fine. Media analysis isn't law, there are no hard rules in place. So long as you back up what you're saying with some evidence from the text and the point you're making stands, thematically, then it has merit. What Hope's saying has merit to me - I may or may not agree with it, but it isn't "wrong" because "the games said so". That isn't the kind of analysis she's doing. This isn't the answer to a puzzle or a math problem, it's a personal interpretation of one part of a very well-known artist's work. I'm really glad to have seen this show, I really enjoyed discussing it and I'm glad people are being civil and just hashing it out. |
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I3uster
Posts: 45 |
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It's not even about going against fandom consensus or whatever, it's arguing against the text of the novel, that is Fate/Zero itself.
A criticism that goes against the text is of course valid but is to me, personally, less interesting than one that foots itself in the text of the work. I'm not calling her criticism wrong though, just her theory. |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Okay sure, I haven't read the whole Fate/Zero novel. By all means, cite the novel. Nobody was quoting anything from Fate/Zero up to this point, it was all statements from the Heaven's Feel route of Fate/stay Night, which is a different work by a different person with a different perspective. But yeah, if the Fate/Zero novel expressly states "Kirei was born the seed of evil" or whatever, that's different. I hadn't read anything like that though, everything I'd read and everything in the show seems very interested in questioning how he got to the place he finds himself in, mostly in relationship to his father. |
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