I did like watching Emiya getting mauled a couple times. My favorite was definitely when he pushed Saber out of the way to get smattered by Berserker.

Even Emiya’s character single was pathetic D: siiigh

ARCHER = FUTURE!EMIYA?!

That’s it, I’m going to go kill myself.

Oh, and from what you’ve said, I’m REALLY glad I didn’t force myself to continue the seres.

I got sick of the flat main characters, the fact that the good characters were pushed to the side or delegated into stereotypical roles, the fairly formulaic episodes, and Rin’s flip-flopping. But then it had the nerve to go and turn into a harem show.

For the game players, they’ve been deprived of the events that they really wanted to see. On the top of this list is Shirou vs Archer. Archer was a broken, weary Shirou who had enough of his own ideals after it cost him the lives of the people that he cared about, but only gave him nothing but more suffering for himself and for the people around him. This epic clash of ideals makes Unlimited Blade Works the choice for many game players, but the anime refused to take this route, since it required the knowledge of the characters that the anime failed to give anyway.

Some might have wanted to see the Heaven’s Feel route, but that would’ve meant that Shirou had to kill Saber, and that was a big no-no commercially. Coincidentally, Heaven’s Feel was not very well liked because of the huge slaughterfest involved. (You’ve got Sakura going berserk and devouring Servants left and right, while the Servantless Masters try to team up and try to take her down before they all die)

Newbies to Fate/Stay Night were displeased because at the first glance, all the characters seemed to be one-dimensional and it felt like a monster-of-the-week type of deal. Studio DEEN really dropped the ball on this one. Shirou becomes a dolt that can’t think, Sakura is useless, Saber has no personality, etc. etc. The insight into Shirou’s mind that the game player gets but the anime watcher lacks makes pretty much all the difference to his character. Furthermore, the lack of background information on the other characters, like Ilya’s tragic past, makes them look rather illogical at times. This can be attributed to the fact that the path Studio DEEN took was only the introduction route where everybody gets to know a little about everybody else, but that shouldn’t really be the case. There were 24 episodes, they could’ve at least fit SOME of the backstory into that time.

In any case, I’ll do some people a favor and tell you more about the characters. You can do whatever you want with ‘em, or something.

Emiya Shirou – Ten years ago, back during the fourth Holy Grail War, he was trapped in Kotomine’s basement as mana supply for Gilgamesh. When part of the city exploded into flames, he found himself to be the only survivor of the chaos, because of Kiritsugu’s help (Avalon). He wondered why he didn’t die like the rest of them, and why he had to live while everybody around him passed away painfully. (Survivor’s guilt) He couldn’t let that out of his mind, so when he heard about how Kiritsugu wanted to become a Hero of Justice and help people, he decided that since other people died for his sake, it was only fair that he would dedicate his own life for the sake of others. That way, he could truly be at peace with himself. (In Unlimited Blade Works, he realizes that he was just deluding himself to be happy since he was following the ideals. In Heaven’s Feel, he grows up and scraps the ideals altogether.) In order to accomplish this, Shirou picks up sorcery (but never goes past the basics) and archery. Five years later, his father passes away because of the Holy Grail (more on this later) and Fujimura, a close friend of his father, decides to move in to comfort Shirou at his time of loss.

Three months before the war, Shirou and Shinji have a fight because Shirou found out that Shinji was harassing Sakura. He notes that Shinji has changed for the worse. He allows Sakura to come over to his house soon afterwards, lifting the spirits of a depressed girl. Shortly before the war begins, Shirou quits the Archery club. Shirou was the best archer in the club, and the club was reluctant to see him go.

When he threw himself in front of Berserker to save Saber, he did it out of instinct. It was because that his ideals were so ingraved into his mind, that he did something without even thinking about it.

His Unlimited Blade Works Reality Marble was formed out from his reinforcement sorcery and from his ideals. The countless blades represent just how he will spend his life fighting for his ideals. This is the result of specialization sorcery, when he spent the last ten years during nothing but reinforcement. Reinforcement by nature allows the user to see the properties of a material, and then change it. It wasn’t much of a leap to be able to create his own materials inside of him. This is why he is able to create weapons out of nothing. Furthermore, by seeing the properties of a material he can by extension use this power to ’see’ a user’s skill of a weapon, and then copy such skill and ability. However, this process uses a lot of mana, so creating something really mana-heavy (like Excalibur) will probably wipe him out. And since he’s just copying the skill, he won’t be a good as the person he’s copying.

Saber – King Arthur, aka Arturia. She was a noble warrior that found herself to be king after she pulled the sword from the stone. Nobody really cared that she was a female, since she was a pretty damn good leader. No, the thing that bothered them was her lack of humanity. She sacrificed many people to achieve her own goals, and her people hated her for that. Since she couldn’t get rid of the guilt that followed her, she decided to redo her life all over again, in hopes that somebody else would do her job better. (Er, nothing more can be said here)

Rin Tohsaka – She looked after her father, a Master in the fourth war that was betrayed by his friend, Kotomine, and wanted to become a Magi just like him. Her father put priority on his duty over his family, and like him, Rin put being a Magi over anything else in her life. She even gave away her sister, Sakura, to the Matous, since it was her duty to do so. (She regrets doing so, but she had no other choice.) Occasionally, she would go over to Archery field and watch Shirou practice, but that was because she admired his dedication. Also, she was thankful that Shirou was taking care of her sister when she herself could not.

On the day of her summoning, she found out that her clocks were an hour off but she forgot to do something about it. Thus, her wavelengths were completely off, and instead of summoning Saber, she summoned Archer instead. (That’s what she originally thought, but it was actually the pendant that made her summon Archer) At their first meeting, Archer immediately mocked her for her failure to summon properly, and Rin had to resort to using a command seal in order for him ‘to obey her commands’. Basically, if he disobeyed anything she said, his body wouldn’t be able to move. Archer finally admitted that she was actually a worthy master after that. (And then Rin left him to clean up the mess he made in the living room. In the morning, she found that her living room was in perfect condition, AND Archer made black tea. Rin later said angrily that she didn’t want a ‘domestic’ servant. The relationship was off to a rocky start.)

When she found out that Shirou was stabbed by Lancer, the first thing on her mind was Sakura. She couldn’t stand to see her sad again, so she used all the mana in her father’s pendant to revive Shirou, then left it behind. Shirou later picked it up.

Archer – Shirou from an alternate future. In his timeline, he killed Sakura, watched Ilya die, and failed to keep Saber from trying again. Rin also died for his sake later in his lifetime. When Shirou grew up, he pursued his ideals as a hero of justice, defending the weak from the strong. Unfortunately, as he later found out, such ideals were pretty much impossible to attain. He found himself killing more people than he could possibly save. And when he saved people, he found himself killing them to save others. He shed innocent blood to save innocent blood, hoping that each kill would be his last. He even sacrificed his own afterlife to save a handful of people from a destined death, only to kill them all off later. He died a broken man, betrayed by one of the people he saved. But that wasn’t all.

Since he sacrificed his own afterlife in a vain attempt to fulfill his ideals, he now had to pay the full price for his choice. He was condemned to kill people over and over again, in different parts of history and different universes, in the name of protecting the rest of humanity. By this time, he was sick of it all, and he spent every moment in the afterlife waiting for an opportunity to be summoned in a Holy Grail War that Shirou participated in. It was very slim chance, and he knew that it might never have happened. However, if he did manage to get summoned, he would basically be able to kill himself and cause a time paradox, wiping himself out from existance. More importantly, he would be able to take out his frustrations on the idiot that caused him so much pain in the first place.

Archer still has the pendant he picked up when he was revived. He gave that to Rin, while Shirou had the one that Rin actually used.

Sakura – Within her calm, cheerful exterior, hides a tormented soul that secretly resents her sister. As soon as she entered the family of Matou, she was designated the future of the family due to her latent sorcery abilities, much to Shinji’s displeasure. She then went through a very painful process to obtain the family magical seal as proof of her ‘Matou-ness’, which changed her hair color amongst other things. She was also infested with her new grandfather’s parasites, which leeched away her mana in order to keep him alive. (One particular parasite held a piece of the Holy Grail from the fourth war, which will come into play in Heaven’s Feel.) She was constantly abused by her brother out of resentment, and was even raped. She knew though, that Shinji was not the one at fault, since he was getting the shaft too. Needless to say, she was not a very happy camper.

She found Shirou who took her in and actually made her feel as if somebody actually cared about her. She started to brighten up a bit as she continued to stay by Shirou’s side. Even though she was forced to summon Rider, and was later forced to give her away to Shinji, she could still find something to smile about, as little as it were.

Shinji – He was originally a pretty good person to be around. He was nice, helpful, and actually didn’t act like a complete and total jackass to everybody around him.

Yeah, well, that’s before he found out that his own family pretty much disowned him for not being able to use sorcery. The new future of the family? Some girl that wasn’t part of it to begin with. No matter what he did, nobody would listen to him, so he grew an inferiority complex. That’s when he changed. He took out his frustrations on Sakura, and became an ass so that he would be able to feel better about himself. This later prompted him to steal Rider by copying down Sakura’s command seals onto one of the family tomes, essentially ripping out her seals and placing it onto the book.

Rider – A servant loyal to Sakura. She disapproved of Shinji being her master, but Sakura told her to follow him, and so she did. She actually is a really quiet and emotional person, and likes reading.

Ilya – As you may have suspected, Ilya is actually Shirou’s sister-in-law, as her biological father is Kiritsugu. She was born artificially using Kiritsugu’s sperm and a magically crafted egg. Because of this, she doesn’t grow normally, and despite her appearance, she is actually nineteen years old. A few years before the war began, she was forced into the wilderness by her own family as a method to force her into summoning a servant. It was basically do or die, and she had no choice in the matter. She managed to summon Heracles and save herself, but in doing so experienced horrible pain. She hated Heracles for making her suffer like this, and so she made him into a Berserker so that he would be able to experience the same pain of not being able to express oneself.

Furthermore, she was also supposed to be the vessel for the Holy Grail. This was the very reason for her existance: to be able to win the war, and then become the grail so that her family would be able to claim it for themselves. A win-win situation for them, but not for Ilya. The only family that she ever grew close to was with her father, but she never saw him again after the fourth war. She grew a liking to Shirou because of his connection to her father. (She dies an year after the fifth holy grail war is done. No exceptions.)

Berserker – A softie at heart, he bore the pain of being a Berserker for Ilya’s sake. He would sacrifice his own life to save his master.

Kuzuki – He was raised to be an assassin from his very day of birth. His entire life’s purpose was to kill off a single target, and he spent twenty years preparing for that moment. And then after it was over… that is it. He fulfilled his purpose for living. Feeling very unsatisfied, he went around searching for a new purpose in life, trying to find a reason to live. And he ended up teaching in Fuyuki City.

When he found Caster and heard about the war, he decided to help out. He wasn’t interested in the prize, but he just wanted do actually do something for a person, the complete opposite of what he had lived for previously. Even if he had to kill, he would now kill for a person that needed him.

Caster – Medea had a very harsh life. She had several boyfriends betray her during her lifetime, and when she was summoned, her own Master was a really big jerk too. She didn’t want to be betrayed anymore, so she killed her Master and then stumbled around knowing that she would die pretty soon. That’s when she met Kuzuki, who helped her without even knowing who she even was. She fell in love with him after staying with him for some time, and so she decided to win the war so that she could be with Kuzuki.

Assassin – Since he was summoned by another Servant, he can’t even be considered a real Servant. He had no real reason to win the war, but he decided to stick around for the battles. (And uh, that’s basically it.)

Lancer – Originally summoned by a different master, he found himself working under Kotomine after his master (after falling in love with the evil church dude) had her arm chopped off by the same guy. But he couldn’t attack Kotomine. He wasn’t the type of person that would betray his master, even if he wasn’t his original one. He shook it off after a few days, though he did think of Kotomine as a cowardly loser. After all, he also had no reason to win the war anyhow. He was also here for the battles.

Unfortunately for him, Kotomine sent him off to be recon instead. Because of that, he took every opportunity to pick a fight with someone (like Archer). What he didn’t know was that he was only useful for info because Kotomine already had Gilgamesh. If he had known, he would have immediately left his service. (In Unlimited Blade Works, he fights alongside Shirou and Rin and fights Archer, then is killed when Kotomine forces him to stab himself. Before he dies, however, Lancer stabs Kotomine with the same lance as well, killing him too.)

Kirei – He was raised by his father to become a nice, good figure. But, he couldn’t find any enjoyment in that. In fact, he couldn’t feel any emotions at all. He tried having a lover, being a friend, etc. etc. but all he could only find fun in ripping that all apart to shreds. And so, he betrayed his friend, Rin’s father, and was about to win the fourth Holy Grail War when he was shot by Kiritsugu. Because he was on the verge of death, the Holy Grail appeared before the two Masters and Servants. Kotomine, detesting everything in this world, wished for it to be destroyed, causing the fire that destroyed part of the city. When Saber destroyed the Holy Grail, the contents of the grail fell upon Kotomine, giving him an artificial heart. He wished to know more about the Holy Grail because of this incident, and specifically, what would happen if someone with a pure and good heart would wish upon such a tainted and evil artifact.

Gilgamesh – Despite appearances, Gilgamesh actually had a reason to get the Holy Grail. While it was true that he was the most egotistical person on the side of the planet, he was still a ruler, and a ruler had to take care of his people. When the Holy Grail spilled upon him during the fourth war (which gave him an almost physical body and allowed him to stay longer in the world), it gave him an experience that he would never forget. He encountered all the sins of the world, which quite frankly shocked him. He couldn’t have such evils haunt his kingdom. So, he aimed to use the grail to destroy such evil, basically using the sins of humanity’s own medicine against them. Oh, and he also wanted Saber to drink fom the grail and stay longer too, since he didn’t realize the consequences of such actions. (If she did drink from the grail, then her heart would’ve been severely corrupted [See Heaven's Feel]. Gilgamesh was too full of himself for that.)

And besides these characters, there’s a whole lot of backstory involved in the Holy Grail War itself. But my hands are too tired to type. If you want to go see some of this for yourself, then check out Insani’s translation of the Fate prologue.

http://www.insani.org/fate.html

Completely translated and h-scene free.

Or they could have just made a decent adaptation of this purportedly great game in the first place. I dunno, that’s just me.

And for those of you who keep ranting about how shitty the show is, do yourself a favor and play through the game.

For Saber vs. Gilgy, I think the excuse was that Caster sealed Saber’s original Noble Phantasm, but in the final battle she suddenly gained her ultimate levelled-up convenient plot device Noble Phantasm which wasn’t subject to the same effect. We’re probably not supposed to think too deeply about that, though.

One thing I can’t believe I forgot to mention in the main rant was the knife that Kirei conveniently gave to Rin all those years ago- “Here, this is the one item that could defeat me- hold onto it until the final boss battle, will you?”