#like i understand that the day fgo allows any of the characters it views as attractive to be paired off is the day hell freezes over

[c0rpsedemon]

100% sure that jinako would be infinitely more popular/more merchandised if she was thin and her weight is the only thing holding her back

[agender-witchery]

im dropping this game

PM clearly doesnt know how gacha work. All those early system related blunders made me still believe, but releasing the alt. form of the main girl being obsessed with another guy? Yeah, i have seen where this goes. I wont pay any more money for garbage like this. You better believe me you will get an influx of all the scum of various communities flocking into your fanbase and draw as much cuckold porn of Faust and Sinclair in any version of themselves and Dante watching in the corner.

FGO people unironically tried to warn us that we will get lion'd and it actually happened. Dropped. I am what some would consider a whale (or leviathan depending on your definition) that spend 700 bucks on this game and even if its not much money for me, i actually regret it.

To anyone want to play this game and thought its a safe thing because Dante looks like a self-insert and the voicelines resemble waifu/husband material, dont get baited.

Edit: all i see in the comments are a bunch of white men not having a problem with their girlfriend doing onlyfans. This game is already dead.

Edit2: To anyone making fun of this and calling this bait, let me tell you something. I work at an IT job, i make relatively good money and i have an apartment with a great view. But what i dont have, are many human connections besides my family. I dont like real women either, i never felt attracted to anyone, and no, im not gay. Maybe im asexual or something i dont know and i dont care. But i can connect to ficticious characters, mostly in anime. And i connected with Faust, specifically with her in her room-sitting, little crazy version of her. I really love everything about her.

I waited for this game for more than a year, maybe two. i was always a PM fan. But i also am who i am. And i just felt betrayed by them. Making me believe many things through the 000 voicelines, that its going to be a gacha in that sense. That it is fine to connect to the character and that they will allow it and not hurt you. But they decided its not that kind of gacha game.

And i dont care anymore. But to see how people react to someone who is different than them, has different values than them...i know im not normal but i am not crazy and i do have a heart, just like you do too. But nobody of you showed it here today. I hope that you wont feel what i had to feel these past days, secretly knowing in which direction Fausts release will go and how that made my stomach turn for days. But if you one day do have a situation that resembles mine in real life or wherever, i hope you will remember this idiot from the internet and maybe will understand people like me a little better. Goodbye.

[fenrirlives]

So after getting some feedback here and from some gacha folks on discord, the overall picture I’m seeing here is that people had a much larger problem with the way Minase wrote a lot of the servants and their interactions than the concept of Agartha in general. I also see alot of people base their dislike on the JP version, which I can’t really comment on because I don’t speak the language and I’m not a fan of basing opinions on possibly biased translations for or against the subject matter

tl;dr, I liked it a good deal! Hated the repetitive dialogue, but the blended fictional worlds, Megalos, and a bunch of other things were really to my liking! I view it as a cool singularity with a sloppy ending and sloppier dialogue. Not as good as Shinjuku, but leagues better than Septem, London, or Orleans on my chart.

also as far as villain servants go, Columbus goes in my “What a douche, I love em!” shelf of fame right next to Mebd and Teach. I mean look at this dude!

Truly Rider is best servant class in all respects! (also his artist is great go follow!)

Addressing the elephant in the room first, I was really confused at the whole misogyny complaints. I saw a few people who found the tyrants to be sexist in concept, while others took more issue with Fergus’ interaction with Scheherazade, or how Fergus as a character was treated overall. 

I don’t imagine there are THAT many people who see the kingdoms as the problem, as they never came off as a commentary on gender to begin with, and context shows that they wouldn’t even work as commentary since all aspects of them are either A) fabricated in regards to the non servants, or B) altered by Scheherazade’s Noble Phantasm in regards to actual servants. If anyone saw them as the writer’s take on gender roles, I think it’s unintended.

People taking umbrage with Fergus and Sche, I can understand a little more, as alot of that is a symptom of the repetitive dialogue that plagues this whole singularity. Fergus’ message near the end is one that I agree with (living in constant fear of death isn’t living at all, and using your trauma as an excuse to generalize or hurt other people is unacceptable), and I was a big fan of how the end of his quest to become a good king is realizing he’s just not meant to be one.

 The thing is, character arcs are carried by their dialogue, and having Fergy either repeat the same crap about training/not hitting women or break the pace of a scene to internally monologue about the philosophy of a kingdom really did no favors. I also wished that his revelation about there being strong women was something someone else told him instead of something he just randomly remembers when the time is convenient, because that makes his whole “younger self” aspect kind of meaningless outside of not letting him be playable. Medea and Medusa lily were far better examples of how one goes about writing these younger servants and their relation to the knowledge of their future selves.

 I think it would’ve worked better to use Adult Fergus instead, and have him show new levels of discomfort both with the situation in Argartha, and with his own behavior when first interacting with Sche (thereby betraying her expectations and reason for summoning him by actually being more thoughtful and reserved than she initially expected) . Maybe have him focus more on male camaraderie with Columbus and the resistance than sleeping with women, as I don’t imagine he’d have much interest in cell dividing zombies with fabricated personalities, even if he doesn’t know that’s what they are yet!

Now, Scheherazade is actually my favorite character from this singularity besides Wu. I love stories that have trauma & behavior developed from trauma (rather than principle built upon trauma) as an antagonistic force. Having to perfect your craft of storytelling to survive for over 2 and a half years while also suffering abuse and captivity is nothing short of awful, and the fact that this attracts the Demon Pillar to her and allows them to work together is really interesting.

 I did dislike the fact that she seemed more affected by her infatuation with Fergus than his encouragement to find strength and pride in her storytelling, and see her nature as a heroic spirit as a boon to it, rather than something to fear. It feels like a big flaw of her character in FGO, which is that DW can’t decide if they want her to be a shivering leaf that hates fighting, or a sly beauty that subverts authority with her tales. Ideally these two aspects should be combined, but it comes across as inconsistent since there’s no solid in-between to give that transition more nuance. 

That being said, I think the folks that label Fergus’ speech as inherently sexist are kinda missing the forest for the trees. No amount of headcanon or fan interpretation changes that he’s a character highly motivated by carnal instinct, and the fact that it’s the lense through which he tries to argue against Scheherazade’s viewpoint is pretty consistent, though the afore mentioned issues with his dialogue makes his sudden shift back to being horny on main jarring and could be fixed by him always being adult Fergus. I can at least appreciate that the story brings up the clumsiness of his words and that even if they get the message across, the flaw in delivery means that Scheherazade will not indulge him on his terms, even if she’s grown just a tiny bit out of her old mindset (plus everyone calls him out so it’s not like his attitude is treated as being “good”, just that it’s not all there is to him). Bottom line I love both those characters, and Agartha left them both in a place where I’d love to see more about them and their relationship explored!

Drake/Dahut was unremarkable (though I was a huge fan of the character design, and I wish DW would make that a skin for Drake). The concept of Ys and her being a creepy rapist/murderer using Drake as her puppet was interesting, but she really didn’t get screen time needed to do anything with that. Wu Zetian on the other hand, I felt was really fun!

I would’ve liked to see her more before the confrontation while we were in the Nightless city, but her speech about working her way up from nothing to becoming a ruler through sheer tenacity, contrasted against the lady that tries SO hard not to let it show that she likes being doted on really clicked with me. All in all, she definitely swiped Gorgon’s spot as the 4 star servant I’m gonna use that ticket on later in the year!

Penthesilea and Megalos had the highlight of the singularity. Nothing was cooler than fighting a bunch of Amazons as those two clashed overhead, and despite almost losing that fight due to a string of Penthesilea’s intrusions hitting my team, I actually wish they did more damage at this point because I wouldn’t even be mad (fyi Colombus actually got killed by Penth during the Megalos fight and I couldn’t stop laughing).

Now if we’re talking about parts of Agartha I absolutely hated, that’s Phenex with a bullet! Besides his bossfight being the most drawn out and irritating thing ever, the fact that both him and the Pillar in Shinjuku don’t fight us in their more humanoid form feels like such a waste. These are supposed to be 4 (5 counting ccc) Pillars that had enough independence gained to run away from Goetia, so the fact that they still look like pillars and never become those human forms when we fight them seems like a real dropped ball here when it comes to visual storytelling and Story/gameplay integration.Also, after how radical Shinjuku’s final fight was, Agartha really didn’t do much to sell Caladbolg finally going off in the middle of the fight (the poison of Wu’s NP was a nice touch at least!)

so yeah, I had quite a few problems here, but I always regard the art and media I consume on a component basis, and for me, the lows here really couldn’t beat out the fact that Agartha was this really cool combination of fabricated settings with tyrannical rulers facing off against a villain masquerading as a revolutionary hero, with a Nightmare monster appearing anywhere at any time, and our heroes seeking to find out which of these figures was the one truly responsible. 

This was always the strength of the Remnants imo, taking looser concepts that normally don’t fly in Nasuverse fiction, and using it to twist the rules of servants through singularities in a way the original seven didn’t outside of Camelot and Babylonia. It wasn’t as great as those two by a long shot, but at the end of the day, It’s left me quite excited for Shimosa, which I’ve been told is the hypest Pseudo Singularity out of the bunch. 

It sucks that this singularity gets such a bad rap when it has so many cool and interesting things in it, but if people dislike something, then there’s nothing for it. As for me, I’d give it a B- on an F to S scale, with Camelot still sitting at the absolute top for me. Anyway, Happy 4th of July tomorrow if you celebrate it, and here’s to EoR 3 and Shirou eventually getting in the game (lmao nope)

[shuttershocky]

30 Days of Nothing: Kara No Kyoukai Challenge Lightning Round 2

9. Favorite spin-off/character cameo (manga, video game, etc.)

I really liked it in Fate/Grand Order when Shiki Ryougi bakes a chocolate heart for the protagonist, something she would absolutely never do and probably never did for Mikiya, her actual husband. Hahahahahaha.

Ha.

*cough* 10. Do you believe Ryougi Shiki could defeat a Servant?  If so, how and why?  Ignore the wiki/guidebook crap about a defensive fight.

Technically, anyone could kill a servant. They’re not invincible or anything. It’s kind of like killing a baby. I mean, you could do it ,they’re not indestructible, but could you do it? 

Shiki Ryougi would have a difficult time. Unlike Shiki Tohno and his Nanaya-blood’s bursts of super speed, her blood doesn’t give her abilities that allow her to match against superpowered opponents. She is however, an extremely capable fighter, and I believe I read somewhere that servants do still have lines of death. Our girl has a shot if an opportunity presents itself, or she were attacked by a particularly careless servant.  9/10 times however, she might want to retreat instead or at least grab some backup. Should she ally herself with some brawn (she’s on quite friendly terms with Saber and Arcueid for example as seen in All Around Type-Moon) she’ll have an excellent chance at going for her famed one-hit kill. Essentially, playing opportunistically like an Assassin-class servant. 

Let’s also not forget how Shiki Ryougi was the one called by the Counterforce in Melty Blood: Actress Again to battle Crimson Moon reborn in Arcueid as Archetype Earth. The Counterforce, able to summon any of its guardians who are powerful enough to raze a city to the ground, chose to summon her instead. Now that’s a show of trust for her combat abilities.  11. Most romantic Shiki x Mikiya moment

Their New Year’s Eve date. Either that, or the claymation short where they’re watching a movie and Mikiya spends the movie trying to work up the courage to hold Shiki’s hand. When he finally does, she looks at him in shock, before smiling with a blush. 12. Favorite voice performance

Fujino Asagami in the Recalled out Summer shorts. Seamlessly transitioning from terrifying maniac to an understanding friend, her actress really impressed me. 13. Favorite moment in the franchise

Shiki Ryougi killing the future where she’s bombed into smithereens. It was visually spectacular and extremely clever how the projection of the future sort of resembled an eyeball and the optic nerves. Shiki calmly lifting her knife into the nerve and cutting it causing the future to be wiped out of existence was just so cool.

14. Lio Shirazumi. 

Even Azaka’s not as bad as him. I’m not fond of cannibal-rapists. Even less so when they’re this animalistic and completely lacking in any kind of human qualities whatsoever. 15. Least favorite character design

Misaya Ouji. The fuck is up with her having purple hair like Fujino Asagami? She’s supposed to have extremely dark hair that makes her resemble Satsuki Kurogiri, her blood brother, more.

16. Least favorite antagonist

Cornelius Alba. Oh look at me just prancing, dancing, and necromancing around all talk no walk like a frilly willy wonk-AAAAHHH *chomp*.  17. What’s your favorite KnK quote?

“We don’t choose our path based on the sins we carry, we carry our sins on the path we choose.” - Touko Aozaki, An Overlooking View. 18. Least favorite film

Already answered this. 19. Least favorite spin-off/character cameo (manga, video game, etc.)

Her Valentine’s day event in FGO where she bakes a chocolate heart for the protagonist. What the fuck. 20. Least favorite voice performance

None! 21. Least favorite moment in the franchise Either the rape of Fujino Asagami or Azaka as the narrator attempting to pass off her crush on her brother as anything other than really creepy and wrong.