In Defense of Deen/Stay Night (A Newcomer's Guide to Fate)

HO BOY!
Here I go talking about Fate Again.
We are now over halfway through 2017 (time flies amirite?)
The “Year of Fate”.
A year with new adaptations and spinoffs hoping to solidify Fate as one of the most convoluted
franchises in recent memory.
So today I am harking back to one of my older opinions on the Fate franchise.
An opinion that I’d like newcomers to heed when they decide to dive into this rather
daunting series.
That is: Watch Studio Deen's Fate/Stay Night from 2006
lovingly referred to as Deen/Stay Night.
[SURPRISE BLOOPER THAT IS NO LONGER A BLOOPER]
I know I am quite alone with this opinion.
Fans of the original visual novel will balk at this saying that you’d be wasting your
time on an unsuccessful adaptation.
Watchers of anime in general will agree, as the later adaptation by ufotable far exceeds D/SN in
both storytelling and production value.
But even with those very valid points, I still believe there is a place in everyone’s watching
order for D/SN.
More importantly it’s what you should watch first.
Figuring out where to start with Fate is almost as daunting as the actual consumption of it.
Not only that, but the fact that in North America, there aren't any official localizations
of the original visual novel, makes it even harder to find a good starting point.
The VN came out in Japan in 2004, but the fan translation patch didn’t hit the net
until around early 2008.
Fate’s Sequel Hollow/Ataraxia came out in Japan a year after the original in 2005, yet
it took until 2014 for an English patch to finally get done up.
At this point we have 9 years of lore from the fate franchise that started to build up.
Then we reached a tipping point and had all that material has come crashing down on us.
As such, it’s almost impossible to be a casual fan of Fate anymore.
To be a fan, you need to dive into the myriad of Holy Grail Wars, the alternate universes
and timelines.
We’ve reached a scale that’s more complicated than trying to play through every Kingdom
Hearts in prep for KH3 that’s coming out.
...whenever it’s coming out.
Now, if you can survive the tidal wave of content by going through the VN's in chronological
order, that would be the best way of going about learning Fate.
But, since none of those original game patches are official, it can be a bit of work getting
them up and running.
Starting with finding a Japanese copy of the game, like I did, which are quite expensive
nowadays. [Necessary Acrobatics check]
All in all, the niche nature of patching foreign games doesn’t mesh so well with the mainstream
status the Fate franchise is getting closer and closer to.
So then for us Western fans the most reasonable option remaining is...
bingo: watching Deen/Stay Night
The original visual novel is an epic tome of a story.
Like most visual novels, it plays like a choose your own adventure where you control the choices
of Shirou Emiya, as he attempts to learn about and survive the 5th Holy Grail War.
I say attempts because if you choose wrong he will fail.
A lot.
Now as far as adapting this for anime, there is quite a bit of story that would need to
get cut for the sake of the narrative.
Bad endings for example would have no place anymore.
It would be confusing for people to have the characters die every couple of episodes, only
for them to be fine the following week.
Some stories have narrative tropes that can explain this away, but Higurashi this ain’t.
So that has to go.
Fate also has what we call "Routes", separate stories which cover major “what if” scenarios
that differ from one another, despite involving the same characters and the same timeline.
Routes are usually put in place not only to tell these different stories, but also to
add a layer of re-playability.
Some games have you re-play through the same scenario from another character’s perspective,
like in Nier: Automata for example.
But fate’s routes are a bit unique.
The three routes, Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel, all tell the same general
story of the same grail war.
But with each new route the story becomes increasingly darker.
They each build upon what occurred in the previous route without actively referencing them.
Because you can’t play through them out of order, the game just won’t allow you
to do that on your first time.
When translating this order to the adaptations is where things get messy.
There are the two clean cut versions of the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel routes
that are easy enough.
But the initial Fate route of the Novel never really had a proper adaptation.
To be fair the Fate route acts more like a prologue to the story as a whole and less
of something that could stand alone.
Studio Deen’s adaptation had to be based on the Fate route, they couldn’t dive head
first into the latter two routes because the groundwork wasn't there, but making a pure
adaptation of the Fate route would not have worked either as it just wouldn't've been
a substantial television show if they did that.
So they took matters into their own hands, which is where people have problems with it.
For the most part it is an adaption of Fate.
It follows the timeline, most of the same events, but in the latter part of the series
things diverge and Deen gave the story its own original ending.
One that became a semi amalgamation of plot points from the other two routes.
You can argue about if their anime original ending was any good, in fact I have.
But considering what Deen had to work with at the time they did an admirable job.
There was no right answer for what they could have done.
Though, even if other routes and other adaptations have done the material better, Deen / Stay
Night is the best introduction that you can have to Fate.
Barring playing the original novel of course.
It contains enough of the original route so that you have that groundwork for what lies
ahead.
It also gives you little sneak peaks into the major plot revolutions of the other routes.
Speaking of plot revelations, this is the exact reason why I would recommend you to
watch Deen Stay night first, over Fate / Zero.
Many people will recommend Zero as the best starting point because in chronological order
it is the first.
Sure there is story and lore that happen before this but that hasn't been adapted yet and may never
be, so Zero is the earliest you can go.
But there are some inherent problems with starting at Zero.
If you take nothing else from this video, I want you to take one thing away.
If you have to ignore all else, do not ignore this one thing:
DO NOT WATCH FATE ZERO FIRST.
Zero is a prequel, written with the intent that the audience would, or at least should,
have full knowledge of some of the basic plot points from Fate / Stay.
Personal revelations about several characters are in Zero from the get go.
Those same revelations take far longer to surface in the Fate Storyline, so it spoils you.
It changes the entire dynamic of the story if you start here.
On top of which, one of the greatest tragedies in Fate Zero is that it is assumed the audience
knows how futile all the events of the story are.
If you wanna know more about how Fate Zero works as a tragedy you should check out my
friend Eric’s video which does the subject much more justice as he goes a bit more in depth.
But basically because we know the ending, we know the fates of all these characters
even though they try so desperately to carve their own paths.
There’s even a countdown timer throughout Zero counting down to the predetermined event
that sparks the beginning of Fate / Stay Night.
Starting at Zero is like watching Star Wars but beginning with Episode One.
You know nothing of the struggles of Luke, Leia, and Han, but the story is framed with
those events in mind.
So what are the other options then?
Well you could start with Ufotable’s UBW adaptation.
But then we have a different problem.
Ufotable sped through a crap ton of early plot points because, like the material it
was adapting, it assumed you already knew the events of the Fate route.
UBW is a perfect adaptation of the UBW route, but it is not a good adaptation of Fate Stay
Night as a whole and it’ll felt very incomplete.
Lastly, I’m going to assume that even though that Heaven’s Feel is not out
yet, it’s going to do the same kind of plot skipping that UBW did.
Because they will assume you’ve seen the older material and why spend the money
re-animating that? What do you think this is?
Endless Eight?
If you want my personal watch order, so that you can get the most out of the adapted material,
here’s what you should do: Start with Deen / Stay Night.
This gives you good groundwork and an introduction to most of the major characters that you need
to know about.
Move onto Zero after that.
This keeps the revelations from Fate in mind as the story progresses.
Then watch Ufotable’s UBW release, and finally the upcoming Heaven’s Feel adaptation.
This I think this is the most optimal.
Of course there are some optional things to watch as well, like Fate / Prism Ilya if you
like that sort of thing and the magnificent Carnival Phantasm.
My god watch carnival phantasm.
But with both of those I would still recommended watching Deen / Stay Night first for that groundwork.
Then feel free to...well do whatever you want.
Fate is one of my favourite anime franchises but even I haven’t been able to keep up
with all of the extra material.
If you can power to you, but for now I’m sticking to what I know, and that’s...
anime.
Even then Fate is still really, really big.
And it’s only getting bigger, so I hope this video is helpful for anyone looking for
a good way to approach it.
Thank you for sticking it out till the end of the video!
A thank you to all my patrons including Joshua Garcia, Head-drul Leon, Bing Theo, Calhoonboy,
Siri Yamako, and Viktor Ekmark, you guys are all especially awesome.
Until next time, Ladies, Gentlemen, and others, Stay Frosty.

In Defense of Deen/Stay Night (A Newcomer's Guide to Fate)

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