Questions, questions and more questions (READ THE OP FOR ANSWERS)

[Zork Knight]

Jeanne and Georgios are heroes, Amakusa and Molay are villains, and Martha is comic relief

[Sssgth]

Kirei is hardly a hero, Ciel is an explicit unbeliever and also not exactly heroic herself. And Saver had already appeared as a being distinct from "earthly" deities.

Sure, but the Church itself is presented as a positive force that protects humanity, and in a relatively realistic manner compared to typical “anime Catholic Church” portrayals. F/ha even specifies that Caren’s training being abusive was an anomaly and not representative of the organization as a whole. Early Nasu was edgier.

Jeanne and Georgios are heroes, Amakusa and Molay are villains, and Martha is comic relief

Jeanne, Georgios, and Amakusa predated the rest, and were taken seriously in their contexts (or was meant to be in the case of St. George in Apocrypha, which was actually why he got cut). FGO turned Jeanne and Amakusa into joke characters too, and dropped George off the map until Christmas 6. It’s definitely something to do with the progression of time.

Type-Moon has simply become more mainstream with time. Making the second-highest grossing mobile game in the world is a far different level than making a niche (but popular in that niche) visual novel about vampires. With that kind of mainstream attention comes a need to be more careful, which means portraying your own nation’s religions and culture in a more positive light, and potentially cutting back on positive portrayals of other nations’ religions and cultures. Simple as.

For what it’s worth, any “positive depictions of Christianity by Type-Moon” fall somewhere between accident and edginess, though the billion Saber avatar tradcath accounts on Twitter might try to convince you otherwise.

[Herod]

Come on, Ciel whole backstory is that she was continuously killed by the church for a month just to test her immortality.

[Mattias]

He was Makiri Zolgen, the last true heir of the Zolgen Family from Kiev, but after he went to Japan, he reversed which was his first vs last name, and went native as Matou Zouken/Zouken Matou.

Wait, Kiev? I had thought the Makiri were Russian, but given that Zolgen is about 300 year old, he's actually Ukrainian? Huh. The more you know...

[Herod]

Wait, Kiev? I had thought the Makiri were Russian, but given that Zolgen is about 300 year old, he's actually Ukrainian? Huh. The more you know...

Kiev was part of the Russian empire since 1667.

[Dullahan]

zouken is about 500 years old. therefore if he was born in KIJEVAS he was born as a subject of the GRAND DVCHY OF LITHVANIA which he remains to this day

[Blastedspider]

Sure, but the Church itself is presented as a positive force that protects humanity, and in a relatively realistic manner compared to typical “anime Catholic Church” portrayals.

And that's changed... how? The story doesn't focus much on threats they typically deal with but they still do appear in the same capacity as before, Hansa and Father Karabo being the most recent examples. They don't appear in F/GO often but it doesn't really deal with demons and vampires either.

Jeanne, Georgios, and Amakusa predated the rest, and were taken seriously in their contexts (or was meant to be in the case of St. George in Apocrypha, which was actually why he got cut)

Most pre-existing or not characters are flanderized. Compare Douman from 5.5 and Douman trembling before Tamamo Cat, for example. Everything that happens in non-main chapters tends to be more light-hearted and sillier. As far as I can tell, it is true for gacha games in general, not just F/GO.

[Prix with a Silent X]

zouken is about 500 years old. therefore if he was born in KIJEVAS he was born as a subject of the GRAND DVCHY OF LITHVANIA which he remains to this day

I thought he was still kind of normal human looking and fairly young back when the first HGW was... well, was.

Is that just because he hadn't started sucking at reconstituting his body yet? I thought he didn't start being a cloud of bugs and eating people until after the Grail cockblocked him.

[Dullahan]

skilled magi can hang around for about 200 years and look fairly normal. there are various methods of doing this. araya is an example. alba a lesser case; he is about 60 but (in the novel, not the movie) uses a glamour to look like a 20 year old bishounen. go too far past 200 ish and your soul starts to rot. this is zouken's problem. it's nothing to do with the grail, he's just hung around for too long

you can still drink milk a day or two after the use-by, but after two weeks it'll be pretty dire

[Prix with a Silent X]

skilled magi can hang around for about 200 years and look fairly normal. araya is a case of that. go too far past that and the soul starts to rot. you can still drink milk a day or two after the use-by, but after two weeks it'll be pretty dire

May I introduce you to lactose-free milk. Lasts like three weeks longer than regular milk.

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More seriously, thank you for the explanation. Though I thought Araya was like from InuYasha times... Or is he just from like pre-Western contact?

[Dullahan]

this was rendered ambiguous in the movie because the director chose to set araya's flashback on a sengoku-era battlefield. there is no specific indication of when/where he is from in the book, or if he's even japanese. he is "over 200 years old" which puts his birthdate in the 1700s somewhere.

[Prix with a Silent X]

this was rendered ambiguous in the movie because the director chose to set araya's flashback on a sengoku-era battlefield. there is no specific indication of when/where he is from in the book, or if he's even japanese. he is "over 200 years old" which puts his birthdate in the 1700s somewhere.

Doesn't his name kind of indicate he's Japanese, or no? Isn't there some kind of extra material somewhere suggesting that Touko and Araya bonded over being "fellow countrymen" at the Clock Tower, or was that specifically for the movie material?

[Dullahan]

kokutou identifies him as "looking japanese" when he looks at the photograph from london. that in company with a japanese name (which is a legal requirement for naturalised japanese citizens of any background) suggests that he was certainly presenting as japanese in the 1980s, but that doesn't necessarily indicate anything about where he was before that. (certainly if you wanted to engage, say, in large property development projects in central tokyo, you would find being a japanese citizen helpful.)

he is referred to as a former taimitsu [esoteric tendai sect] priest. taimitsu is usually used in connection with the esoteric practices taken up (largely from shingon) after Tendai was established in japan, but the tendai sect as a whole has its roots on mount t'ien-tai in china and branches all over east asia. being born during the period of sakoku makes it more probable that he was japanese originally, but there is no inherent obstacle to putting his birthplace in china, korea, mongolia etc if you want to

[Hawkeye]

He was Makiri Zolgen, the last true heir of the Zolgen Family from Kiev, but after he went to Japan, he reversed which was his first vs last name, and went native as Matou Zouken/Zouken Matou.

Ah, thanks very much.

I was doing some digging on my own, if GO is anything to go by, he was still going by Makiri Zolgen in 1888, so wouldn't that be after the second grail war in Japan? Course, this is in a reality where the first and only grail war in Fuyuki happened in 2004... Bleh, why can't anything be consistent, I'm just trying to research for a fanfiction. XD

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Ah, thanks very much.

I was doing some digging on my own, if GO is anything to go by, he was still going by Makiri Zolgen in 1888, so wouldn't that be after the second grail war in Japan? Course, this is in a reality where the first and only grail war in Fuyuki happened in 2004... Bleh, why can't anything be consistent, I'm just trying to research for a fanfiction. XD

Wait, wasn't that during the London Singularity? I thought during that event, a younger Makiri was brought over and possessed by a Demon Pillar?

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skilled magi can hang around for about 200 years and look fairly normal. there are various methods of doing this. araya is an example. alba a lesser case; he is about 60 but (in the novel, not the movie) uses a glamour to look like a 20 year old bishounen. go too far past 200 ish and your soul starts to rot. this is zouken's problem. it's nothing to do with the grail, he's just hung around for too long

you can still drink milk a day or two after the use-by, but after two weeks it'll be pretty dire

I thought Araya also had transferred his consciousness to puppets like Touko, but to a lesser extent?

[Mattias]

skilled magi can hang around for about 200 years and look fairly normal.

Isn't the Clock Tower director 2000 years old, but not a vampire?

[Dullahan]

implying the clock tower director is just a skilled magus and not Literally Jesus

[Comun]

Isn't the Clock Tower director 2000 years old, but not a vampire?

His teacher died in 960BC, so a lot closer to 3000 than 2000.

Assuming not Jesus, of course.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

His teacher died in 960BC, so a lot closer to 3000 than 2000.

Assuming not Jesus, of course.

I thought Yumina was more like Jesus?

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Also, wasn't the Director's teacher Solomon, or is that just fanon?

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zouken is about 500 years old. therefore if he was born in KIJEVAS he was born as a subject of the GRAND DVCHY OF LITHVANIA which he remains to this day

With that in mind, he or his forebears might have been voting members of the sejm in the Commonwealth.

[Reign]

Director's teacher was Solomon, so assuming that's literal and not like a "follows Solomon's philosophy but never met him" kind of thing, he's closer to 3000 years old than 2000.

Yumina is the name of a Magician who mages learn about once they reach Cause rank, and that's all we know for certain. Probably

Jesus's

First's

successor/heir who is said to be barely living. The other option is she's the Fourth but that would require Nasu retconning his old statement that the Fourth Magician's identity is unknown.