Fate/Zero - Episode 13 Discussion / Poll

[FlareKnight]

It was a fine episode overall. Good to deepen the bond between Rider and Waver. Gives that pair more depth and can understand Waver's feelings better. Though probably a rare time when someone would complain about having some super powerful servant .

Then you have the early scenes with Caster and reactions that a normal person would have had to first seeing that scene. Instead these two are so warped that we get that reaction to destroying that disguisting scene. Quite the philosophical idea being tossed out there by Caster's master. Certainly one point of view, though it's clear they both seriously need to be killed...now.

Of course I think there's nothing wrong with wanting some more action. The dialogue is good, but at the same time it is a war that's lacked much...war. Sadly with the size of this cast and the desire to flesh things out that takes time and episodes. Hopefully the second half will be able to use what we've gotten here and give some more fights. Dialogue is good and important, but when you've got summoned heroes, might as well take advantage of it.

Originally Posted by iBeast

Seriously... if you don't care for quality dialogue and just want non-sensible action then watch Bleach.

For a anime made to the appeal of a more mature audience, there are a lot of whiners in every thread even though every episode usually gets the majority of 10/10.

It may be shocking but people can whine no matter how old they get. Plus some things just don't fit everyone's tates.

[Thess]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Then you have the early scenes with Caster and reactions that a normal person would have had to first seeing that scene. Instead these two are so warped that we get that reaction to destroying that disguisting scene. Quite the philosophical idea being tossed out there by Caster's master. Certainly one point of view, though it's clear they both seriously need to be killed...now..

It was four-wall at its finest, because technically Gen and Nasu are "God". And they nailed it down with the description.

[Vicious108]

About time Ryunosuke got some depth as a character. He had easily been the least interesting Master thus far and, with Caster's demise likely approaching, I was worried he'd meet his end as a fairly one dimensional serial killer. But that speech of his that managed to move even the great Bluebeard was not only compelling but also hilarious. It's clear they're a rather special pair to Urobuchi, what with how they basically described the way he likely goes about writing his stories, not to mention Caster pulling out freaking Chtulu, a known favourite of Mr. Butch.

I also love how the pursuit of entertainment seems to be a recurring theme in this series and how so many of the characters have voiced their ideologies on it. Last week we had Gilgamesh's morally ambivalent views on the matter and Kotomine being faced with some unpleasant truths regarding his own, and now this week we've got Caster and Ryunosuke speaking of God as if he were a mere entertainer himself, and even Waver scoffing at videogames for being low-class entertainment, before being taught yet another valuable life lesson from the larger than life and ever endearing King of Conquerors.

As for the end of the episode... certainly a cruel cliffhanger, but it was fairly obvious already that we were in for something like that. It's always been clear to me that this would be more akin to a prolonged hiatus rather than a true pair of actual self-contained seasons. And when the alternative would have been to rush the likely grandiose action sequence that's coming up or drag out the prior material immensely just so the break would take place at a "good stopping point", then no thanks, I'm fine with the cliffhanger. I won't give a crap about it a year from now till the rest of my life anyway, when I'm leisurely re-watching the complete product with no necessary breaks in between.

The fact that ufotable didn't go about rushing and butchering anything just to come to a climatic stopping point that would satisfy the impatient ones just shows how much they respect the original work and are simply more concerned with the overall quality of their product as a whole (which is the reason they're taking the 3 month break to begin with - to keep up said quality). If there's one animation studio out there these days that seems to be focused not only on making money, but also on creating standout works to be recognised and remembered fondly for years to come, it's them, which is why I'm glad Fate/Zero's in their hands.

With that being said, man will these be a painful three months. I guess we have the Blu-ray versions of episodes 1-13 to look forward to in the meantime. Even this episode's, which some refer to as dragged out, since I believe a line (from Sola-Ui) from last week's preview was omitted once again.

[U<3Anime]

Originally Posted by DemiSoda

It has little to do with strong dialogue. The dialogue in Fate/Zero is indeed very good. The problem is pacing. Seriously the last 4 episodes or so of Fate/Zero has nearly been nothing but dialgoue, and a final episode of Fate/Zero 1st cour being devoted to Waver being emo and mostly nothing but talking between Waver x Rider and Ryousuke x Caster is imo unacceptable. Not a single master has been eliminated in the Holy Grail War by the end of the 1st cour and I was expecting Caster/Ryousuke to be knocked out of the competition at the very least. Beginning of the series, I was expecting both Lancer and Caster, but look at what happened...

There's plenty of shows that mix heavy dialogue and action well... Fate/Zero unfortunately is not one of them. Ufotable's predecessor series Kara no Kyoukai is a good example as is say something like Seirei No Moribito.

Yo this guy knows what's up.

I believe Kara no Kyoukai has it's own fair share of talking heads. However, whenever there's action, it's freaking awesome right?

Man, I have been more entertained by Senjou no Hoizon than Fate/Zero seriously(Yea that's right, I'm bringing Horizon up, since I watched those back to back and they are both LN adaptations with 2 seasons). I feel both of them have some pacing problems and have a substantial amount of mumble jumble (Horizon novels are freaking huge, they ain't the size of a light novel). At the very least, I feel Horizon managed to managed to maintain a better balance of dialogue(Episode 12 Toori and Horizon confession scene) and action (Episode 13 Musashi's great escape) at the end. It managed to end things with a bang, while leaving viewers excited for more of what to expect next season.

Very bitter, but I haven't given up on the anime yet. I really hope things kicks into high gear for the 2nd half of the show. I'm expecting Ufotable to step it up and show us their best. I want them to make sure that the 3 months wait for the giant demon tentacle monster battle is actually worth it.

[abc0716]

And so the 1st half of Fate/Zero is over, we have to wait for 4 months later for the 2nd half to start. (Which is quite painful, since it ends with a cliffhanger.)

Episode 13 is quite decent, with interaction between Rider + Weaver, and Caster + Ryunosuke (both are quite funny actually, but the former one is more heartwarming, while the latter one is 'crazier').

Rating of the episode: 8/10

[fertygo]

Some of you that complaining about no action n stuff, need to be reminded they just faithful to the source, they fully commit this cour for adapting the 2 first volue of novel, n season two for the rest two.

What you want?
They make fiction fight that never exist in novel? With TYPE-MOON fans that very fickle, just look to the complaint of addition in eps 10, or dialogue cut in eps 11, they bash it to the death.

Its just unfortunately the 2nd vol that half of the material and supposed to finish this cour is have little "battle" to none thus its seems "boring".

Originally Posted by Endless Twilight

With that being said, man will these be a painful three months. I guess we have the Blu-ray versions of episodes 1-13 to look forward to in the meantime. Even this episode's, which some refer to as dragged out, since I believe a line (from Sola-Ui) from last week's preview was omitted once again.

LOL the BD is out just about a month the 2nd run aired

But its seems some extended episode will airing in Marathon run at 2nd Januari, we'll see if any fansub doing anything bout that.

Originally Posted by DemiSoda

There's plenty of shows that mix heavy dialogue and action well... Fate/Zero unfortunately is not one of them. Ufotable's predecessor series Kara no Kyoukai is a good example as is say something like Seirei No Moribito.

LOL You know nothing about things that you said, UFOtable doing the exact same thing that they doing at KnK and this, they focusing the dialogue at exist in novel and if there's action part, they doing it.. In this case there's no action (yet) in the novel, what they can do?

And you can't be serious about Moribito, once again its very similar to this show, the 1st cour have just one/two little fight, n they not show that again till 14/15th eps.

[Archer]

Why do we need action anyway?

Fate/Zero has not once portrayed itself as action anime. It does have some good action scenes, but the anime never gives the pretense that it is supposed to be action-packed. None of the promotional material has concentrated on the action. The first episode, which is supposed to set the atmosphere for the rest of series, has concentrated highly upon "scheming", with focus on the characters trying to get the upper hand in the war. It should be plainly obvious to anyone that by episode 4, when the first actual action scene arrives, this was going to be a dialogue driven anime that revolves around people plotting against each other. We're now halfway through the series and ufotable has done very well to keep this kind of atmosphere intact.

Sure, there does need to be some kind of payoff for all this scheming eventually, but it doesn't necessarily mean action scenes.

[ninja_pintu]

So with this we finish the first cour of Fate/Zero. And boy was it awesome. I didn't mind the long build up at all as it is not rare for a 2 cour anime to dedicate it's first cour to buildup. Even more so when you have 7 main characters and they all need to be fleshed out. Even this episode was fleshing its character out. But all that said, with caster finally doing something, I do hope that building up is done and the plot will start moving. I will be slightly disappoint if second cour also spends its time in too much building up.

And I loved caster here. Initially I was disappointed in him as he didn't feel as threatening as I first thought he was. But I guess it was never his role to be threatening. He is just there to throw everything into disorder and he doesn't give a damn about any rules or anything like that And it was fun to see what he did here, its like when everyone is moving with caution, he just goes and throws a large monster into the array

And Rider gets even more fleshed out this episode. I think its a bit unfair to other characters. He is getting the most characterization out of all the main cast. I guess even the author loves Rider as much as we do

So right now, I think its better to wait till the whole thing is out before judging the show. Judging just the first cour of a series which is 2 cour just doesn't feel right. Unless we take into consideration that this cour was supposed to be just a build up for the second cour. I still feel its more proper the see the second cour and then give both cour the same score

[jeroz]

Originally Posted by U<3Anime

Man, I have been more entertained by Senjou no Hoizon than Fate/Zero seriously(Yea that's right, I'm bringing Horizon up, since I watched those back to back and they are both LN adaptations with 2 seasons). I feel both of them have some pacing problems and have a substantial amount of mumble jumble (Horizon novels are freaking huge, they ain't the size of a light novel). At the very least, I feel Horizon managed to managed to maintain a better balance of dialogue(Episode 12 Toori and Horizon confession scene) and action (Episode 13 Musashi's great escape) at the end. It managed to end things with a bang, while leaving viewers excited for more of what to expect next season.

Kind of unfair imo. Horizon finishes the first volume in one season, whereas Fate Zero is spending 2 season's worth of time to adapt the 4 books. This is NOT the final episode to season 1, but another episode within a two season show. If you want cliffhanger, they could've just stop at ep11 after that NP from Rider, but no, they want to use the whole 13 ep season tv time.

Horizon is truly season 1 & 2 so the finale feels like a finale, whereas F/Z i not suppose to have season 1 & 2 which explains why this episode does not feel like a season finale.

[Horse]

(Forgive my poor english.)

In my opinion.......... pacing.

Your "favorable" comparisions to Kara no Kyoukai are not valid. Kara no Kyoukai is a series of movies with varying length and it does have some feeling of pacing and dramatic structure within the single movies - exposition, rising action, climax and resolution (or cliffhanger). Not so much in the whole series but I'll blame that on the novels. They actually made it a point in many interviews that this was the reason they did not go for a TV series format.

Fate/zero TV seems to have no idea what pacing is - neither in single episodes, nor in the whole first cour. Some examples: the first Lancer vs Saber fight probably took longer than it would "real time", the characters randomly stop caring about stuff going on around like hunting Caster down or Saber's injured hand, it took Caster and Ryuunosuke some 3 episodes to notice what happened to their lair, etc... To be honest I don't even know (or care?) how many nights have passed since the summonings.

I really don't have a feeling anything actually happened in this cour other than "walls of text" (WHAAAT? Walls of text in a visual medium??).

Your "favorable" comparisions to Seirei no Moribito are not valid. The characters in Moribito and their personal struggles are far more down to earth and non-derp than in Fate/zero - as such any dialogue heavy scenes/episodes were far more relatable and interesting (INB4 "GTFO and watch *insert other show here*"). The characters also showed growth while Fate/zero characters had pretty much no character development so far.

So after this cour's ending I'd like to lament a direct adaptation (word4word, panel4panel) does not always mean a good adaptation. Perhaps a thought-out series of four ~100minute long movies for the whole story would fix many problems I have with Fate/zero TV.

PS.

Originally Posted by iBeast

For a anime made to the appeal of a more mature audience, (...)

I really don't think this is the case.

[fertygo]

What Pacing have to do with this?
They just commit with the source material, the Novel is exactly move like this. So you're complaining to source material if anything.
All of accusation that "not happening" is just not there on the source.

The characters also showed growth while Fate/zero characters had pretty much no character development so far.

LOLwut?

even if you compare it to Moribito (why we do it in 1st place?) All the result of their chara development is on 2nd half afterall, which most of you not know it yet in F/Z case.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by fertygo

What Pacing have to do with this?

A lot when it comes to my enjoyment of a show/story.

Originally Posted by fertygo

They just commit with the source material, the Novel is exactly move like this. So you're complaining to source material if anything.

Which is why I also said:

Originally Posted by Horse

So after this cour's ending I'd like to lament a direct adaptation (word4word, panel4panel) does not always mean a good adaptation..

As for

Originally Posted by fertygo

LOLwut?

even if you compare it to Moribito (why we do it in 1st place?) All the result of their chara development is on 2nd half afterall, which most of you not know it yet in F/Z case.

I said they had no development "so far" and didn't compare it to Moribito first so I guess that's not a question directed at me.

[Thess]

Originally Posted by Horse

Your "favorable" comparisions to Seirei no Moribito are not valid. The characters in Moribito and their personal struggles are far more down to earth and non-derp than in Fate/zero - as such any dialogue heavy scenes/episodes were far more relatable and interesting (INB4 "GTFO and watch *insert other show here*"). The characters also showed growth while Fate/zero characters had pretty much no character development so far.

Eh?

While the other complains are valid, character development? It has a lot of it: Waver's experiencing a coming of age. Kirei's growth is one of the pivotal focus of the series (and it's being portrayed rather well). Kayneth's breakdown from the proud person he once was. Saber's dilemna. Rider's subtle growing attachment to corporeal things until it was made more obvious. Caster is one of the characters who (ironically) also get development, it's started in this episode (although his bitterness was portrayed earlier when he blamed God for Jeanne's fate). And yes, it'll continue.

Now, not everyone is getting a stellar job: Kariya's slow downfall into madness and horror due to the crippling crest of worms in him could have touched better (in episode 5, for instance, the vomiting blood/worms was a WAY more tame of what could have been), but hey maybe it'll be expended in BR. Sola's another who suffers from not getting her side of the story portrayed fine.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by Thess

Eh?

While the other complains are valid, character development? It has a lot of it:

AT THE MOMENT I disagree so I'll stick to what I said and get back to it after the 2nd cour.

Your idea of character development seems to be different to mine - seeing Kariya vomit "more" worms would not really change a thing in my eyes! We already know he IS f*cked so what exactly would that scene contribute/change to his character portrayal or development? His character development ended when he decided to give in to Zouken and everything that follows is just consequence of that.

Kayneth lost his "magic jutsu" (a result to his own bold actions) and his woman (about which he was paranoid from the start from what I could see, not of his own fault). Sure, he cried and (possibly) regretted his actions/behaviour but I don't consider it sincere. Now if he gets out of this depressed state! That will be character development.

PS. That character growth/development complaint of mine was directed at the source rather than the adaptation, I guess, since it was simply a response to Moribito appearing in this thread.

[jeroz]

Can someone check the countdown at the end of the episodes again as to how long has it passed between the episode where Rider burn down the art and this episode?

[Thess]

Originally Posted by Horse

Your idea of character development seems to be different to mine - seeing Kariya vomit "more" worms would not really change a thing in my eyes! We already know he IS f*cked so what exactly would that scene contribute/change to his character portrayal or development? His character development ended when he decided to give in to Zouken and everything that follows is just consequence of that.

It seems so. You seem to assume that character development involves IMPROVING a character's life? Well, no, it's about progress and regression: fall for grace are also character arcs. The characters I listed didn't remain static.

Kariya was a decent, sound minded person and has become twisted under duress even if he still keeps decency. The pain IS an integral part of his character growth (and degradation) to witness his torment and his reaction.

Originally Posted by Horse

Kayneth lost his "magic jutsu" (a result to his proud and bold actions, rather than any kind of change) and his woman (about which he was paranoid from the start from what I could see). Yes, he cried and (perhaps) regretted stuff so it's probably the closest to what I'd call character growth.

Kayneth was a proud, pompous and traditional magus who is now got nothing in his possession. We see him growing afraid, vulnerable and "humbled" (if slightly) likewise more paranoid after his losses. Yes, that's character development too. Not all characters are graced with Waver's luck who can only go higher.

That to say, Kirei's arc is obviously the best, IMO.

[Yuutsu]

To those wondering about how there has not been any deaths of servants, I'd like to kindly remind you that it is Gen Urobochi writing this story.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

Assassin is 100% dead

Calm down. If you want your deaths so much, you don't have to worry. You're going to get them... -.-

-------------------

With regards to the cliffhanger itself... Dear god, that's evil on the part of the studio. D:

Episode 14 is gonna open with what is probably the most batshit insane sequence of mind-blowingly awesome scenes every conceived by a human being.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by Thess

It seems so. You seem to assume that character development involves IMPROVING a character's life? Well, no, it's about progress and regression: fall for grace are also character arcs. The characters I listed didn't remain static.

I probably made it sound like that but no, I don't think it needs to be about improving (in a positive way) - it can be anything, even growing stronger in your own beliefs.

I'm not seeing what you are. Everything so far seems to be a RESULT of some "GAME OVER" action (Kariya getting fucked up by Zouken, Kayneth not being as strong as Emiya) rather than a character's realization. I don't know if I can ever express what I mean. XD

[blue_sora]

Originally Posted by Horse

AT THE MOMENT I disagree so I'll stick to what I said and get back to it after the 2nd cour.

Your idea of character development seems to be different to mine - seeing Kariya vomit "more" worms would not really change a thing in my eyes! We already know he IS f*cked so what exactly would that scene contribute/change to his character portrayal or development? His character development ended when he decided to give in to Zouken and everything that follows is just consequence of that.

Kayneth lost his "magic jutsu" (a result to his proud and bold actions, rather than any kind of change) and his woman (about which he was paranoid from the start from what I could see). Yes, he cried and (perhaps) regretted stuff so it's probably the closest to what I'd call character growth.

Well if there is no character development then it's because Gen presented a well-developed characters in the first place. This isn't Fate/Stay Night were all the characters are teenagers which still learning the meaning of life; this is all mature adults with already a fixed goal and beliefs. My analogy will be all of them are all onions who already matured; all of left is to peel each layers to see what they really are made of which Gen explored slowly in the novel.

And it's not there isn't any fundamental changes in the characters; Kiritsugu suddenly wants to run away when before it he was into the war and Kirei who before this 'I could care less about the Grail' turns into 'Now I want the Grail for myself!' is a great change for Kirei. Saber even starts to doubt about her kingship due to Rider. It's just the changes aren't flashy or dramatic like other action series.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by blue_sora

My analogy will be all of them are all onions who already matured; all of left is to peel each layers to see what they really are made of which Gen explored slowly in the novel.

That's fair enough, that's why I said Moribito was not a valid comparision.