#before you watch fate zero - because fate zero kinda spoils some things about heaven's feel

[whirlibird]

Your posting of fate makes me wanna try watching it again but I have NO IDEA where it's supposed to start smwnwnj

<3 <3 <3 To Think I Am Being Rewarded For My Behaviour Of Spamming Anime Posts....

but yea GOTTA LOVE FATE it gets wild!!! it is pretty hard to get started and i cant say im the best to give recommendations since i havent even seen everything dfhjgsdgf but i will give it my best shot!

fate stay night is where fate started, and the easiest place to start *that* would be the fate/stay night unlimited blade works anime by ufotable

it should be on crunchyroll, thats where i watched it. it lacks a few things but gets most of the themes right, which is what’s important. the animation is also baller and its a fun watch! very good intro to the series.

https://www.crunchyroll.com/fatestay-night ‘tis here if you wanna hop in

alternatively, you can also start with fate/zero, which is a prequel to fate stay night.

theres quite a good anime adaptation - i wouldn’t personally recommend it to start with, bc its a bit too dark and lacks optimism for my tastes, which isnt really reflective of fate as a whole? at least imo. it is good, though - or at least, enjoyable?

listen, it has lancelot du lac jump on top of a fighter jet and chase king gilgamesh around on it while screaming and firing a minigun! while rock music plays!

tangent, but fate has the best lancelot take of any adaptation ive seen so far because it actually remembers that a major part of his character is his Emotional Delicacy and his tendency to regularly go batshit when faced with difficult problems. fate really said “what if we manifested the second most mary sue knight in all of arthuriana, but like, only from the times when he went insane and ran off naked into the woods”

and also gave him a gun!

i love lancelot

anyway. it also provides some background for fate/stay night and adds some depth and reinforcement to the Juicy Themes(TM) behind fate, which is the main appeal of the franchise. that and the extremely off-the-walls bullshit they come up with sometimes.

i started with the unlimited blade works anime, lost my mind over archer, and then sort of passively consumed fate by just...seeing posts that turned up on my dash about it, or from friends talking to me abt some of the wilder shit that happens.

fate meta is incredibly enjoyable to read bc theyre just hog wild and occasionally give me emotional whiplash from how fucking weird fate is, but also how emotionally compelling some of the Themes(TM) are

then i got into fate grand order bc i read a post analyzing the character motivations of salieri, you know, the musician, who in fate is actually the manifestation of the rumors that he killed mozart, and has a Lot of issues about this

he first shows up in an alternate timeline of russia where everyone had to become furries in order to survive permawinter

because aliens

fate grand order is a gacha mobile game and i cannot even begin to describe what its deal is. it starts slow but gets very, very good later on.

but yeah fgo sucked me back into fate, permanently this time, and im STILL working my way thru fate content

there is so much fate content, oh my god

on the plus side you wont run out and most of it is self-contained so you can just stop at your favourite

the one downside of the anime adaptations is that they dont go in as deep on the characters and their dynamics with each other as the visual novel does, so some of the finer details that really make the themes Pop dont get across, which is a shame. but also it doesnt really matter when youre first getting into fate? you can just start at UBW, and if you like it, mosey along into the other stuff when you so feel like it

(sidenote - there isnt a decent anime adaptation of the fate route - it’s the first of three routes that make up fate/stay night, before unlimited blade works and heaven’s feel. each of the three routes do build up on each other, and the fate route is chronologically first, but. well. an anime adaptation of fate route does exist, but its kind of a mess, and also combines stuff from other routes, which isnt great)

this went on a lot longer than i expected but i hope it helps!

tl;dr start with the fate stay night unlimited blade works anime, and then go from there :D

[tainbocuailnge]

The fandom you're in looks really awesome, and the reason I followed you is it the cooler that comes with it, but I have no idea what it's about or what the actual game is? Is there a place I can go to kind of find out and maybe play myself? (You're so passionate about it that I'm starting to get really curious but google is my enemy)

I’m GUESSING you mean fate series cause that’s my number one thing I do not shut up about. it’s uhh kind of a spiraling mess of a series but most installments are standalone enough for it to not be a complete hell to get into, but also I’m glad you asked because getting in without help is definitely hell

fate started with the visual novel fate/stay night, written by kinoko nasu and released in 2004. as such that’s the best starting point in my opinion, because it features all the detailed worldbuilding groundwork that later installments kind of gloss over so it can be hard to go back to if you already know all that from other installments. the plot is that seven magi summon legendary heroes to fight for them in a ritual war, with the prize being the holy grail which can grant any wish. leading themes are what it means to be a hero and save someone, the way history repeats itself, and forming your own identity in the wake of trauma. it has three routes, the last of which especially has really heavy themes of physical emotional and sexual abuse so if you need detailed content warnings pm me and I’ll do my best

fsn has several releases, the original vn features infamously bad erotica but there’s a rerelease called fate/stay night [realta nua] which replaced those scenes with pg-15 content and also tightened the visuals up a bit. I’ve got downloads for both versions here. it’s like 80 hours of vn so that’s quite the investment but there’s also the anime fate/stay night [unlimited blade works] featuring the second route, and the third route is getting a series of movies the first of which is out too, called heaven’s feel - presage flower. fate route (the first route) sort of got an anime in 2006 and unlimited blade works a movie in 2010 but those are really really bad so look for the 2014 anime and 2017 movie. imo the ubw anime did a decent job and heaven’s feel is doing pretty good too so far so they’re good for seeing if you like what the series has to offer before you dive into a long ass vn.

the prequel to fate/stay night is fate/zero, a light novel series written by gen urobuchi in collaboration with nasu. as such it’s notably darker than the rest of the series but by nature of being a prequel it makes for an equally decent starting point as stay night, since both will spoil things for the other. fate/zero has an anime too. 

imo stay night and zero are the ‘standard’ fate installments, if someone says they like fate you can safely assume they’ve consumed at least one of those - is what I used to say but apparently it’s been so long that even this isn’t a reasonable assumption anymore. oh how times have changed. anyway please do start with zero or stay night cause like I said those are earlier installments so they’re at high risk of falling flat if you already know the deep lore from later stuff.

the biggest most booming fate installment is fate/grand order, a mobile game featuring characters from all other fates as well as a lot of newcomers. it’s pretty newbie friendly in terms of lore I think but you’ll get more out of it if you do know the background for all these characters since character development tends to carry over between installments. it’s infamously story heavy for a mobile game, especially in the later chapters when nasu got the hang of writing for mobage. the tone is also notably different from fsn and fz in that it’s more…. grandiose and theatrical, and obviously it waifs everyone up a bit so they can get you to spend money. still good tho. still love it. it’s got two anime specials, first order and moonlight lostroom, but first order makes no damn sense if you don’t know anything of stay night and lostroom takes place after the events of the first fgo arc. there’s anime projects of two of the chapters in progress too.

you thought that was all? you’re a fool this isn’t even half of it but I’ll briefly go over the rest under a cut cause those 3 are the big players.

carnival phantasm is a comedy OVA series featuring skits about several works from the same author. about half of it is about fate and the other about tsukihime, an earlier visual novel. watching order is after stay night. today’s menu for the emiya family is the canon domestic fsn au manga and anime where everyone’s just chilling eating dinner together instead of killing each other. 

fate/hollow ataraxia is another visual novel. it’s a direct sequel to fate/stay night and a personal favourite. it takes place half a year after stay night and features much of the same themes, but from a pair of characters who lost the war in fsn before it even started.

fate/apocrypha is another series of light novels. in terms of reading order i’d put it after stay night and zero. it features a cast twice as big as those two and basically approaches the same themes from a different angle. it’s got a finished anime and an ongoing manga but the anime kinda butchered pretty much everything about it. unfortunately one of the light novels is still not translated so the anime is still the most accessible way to get approximately the whole story. the manga IS very good though so once that’s finished I’d probably tell people to read that one if they want to apocrypha

fate/EXTRA is a psp game it’s like 10 bucks in the ps store iirc. for reading order I’d put it after stay night but not necessarily after zero. in this one the ritual for the holy grail is held in a simulation on the moon, which is a supercomputer, and it’s an organised tournament with 128 participants instead of a 7 man free for all. it’s about forging meaningful bonds in a system designed to drive people apart and finding the drive to keep going even if nothing is certain. the gameplay isn’t great but the story is $$$ it’s my other personal favourite. it’s sequel is called fate/EXTRA CCC, it’s on psp too but never got a western release, but there’s a translation of one route out there and some madmen are working on a translation patch that’ll be done in time for my grandchildren I hope. CCC is the wildest ride of my life i love it a lot but it’s very horny so not really for everyone. fate/extra CCC fox tail is a manga which follows an alternate CCC route and i hear it’s cool. the sequel to CCC is fate/EXTELLA which did come to the west and is on several platforms, and somewhere next year fate/EXTELLA link should get localised. extella is very rushed and mostly expands the extraverse world but if you can grab it on sale after you decided you like extra it’s not a bad buy just don’t pay full price. fate/EXTRA last encore is an anime which. sort of comes after extra? it’s very trippy arthouse bullshit and I ate that shit up but it’s definitely not for everyone. the last 3 episodes are missing on netflix so make sure you don’t miss those if you decide to watch.

fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ☆ ILLYA is a magical girl spinoff manga & anime which sounds great in theory until you see it’s mostly pedobait, but extremely unfortunately for us sometimes it does something legitimately cool so we all suffer. don’t get into prillya it’s bad for your health. 

fate/strange fake WAS an aprils fools story but this series has no limits so now it’s a full on light novel spinoff and also manga I think? I don’t keep up with it but it throws some wild ass lore our way sometimes. you’ll probably want to be up to date with apocrypha and everything before it before you try this one.

fate/prototype was just the original concept for fsn extrapolated a bit upon but again this series has no limits. prototype has an animated feature and some material books, and then the light novels fate/prototype fragments of blue and silver are the prequel to prototype, but it’s weird cause we never got a proper prototype so I don’t know what’s up with that. fate/labyrinth is a side story to fragments which I know even less about. I actually never see anyone talk about prototype so there’s probably no translations lol

lord el melloi II case files is even more light novels. I’m pretty sure you need to have gone over stay night, zero, hollow ataraxia, apocrypha, and strange fake before this one starts to make sense. there might be translations? i don’t know a fucking thing my guy