Things that annoy you in TM

[Twelveseal]

What can I say... I tend to forget they exist.

And this as someone who's played the 1st one in an arcade.

[the god of world-0]

The multiple protagonist thing could be done like in Odin's sphere, where everyone gets only a part of the story. It would be a good incentive to play every route instead of just picking your waifu and them never touching the other characters like a lot of people do in Extra.

[weeblord]

Extra is both an extremely boring story and extremely boring to play so i cant blame anyone for only completing it once.

[Lily Emilio]

I spent hundreds of hours in Extra on all routes to look for lores that Aksys mistranslated.

[the god of world-0]

I spent hundreds of hours in Extra on all routes to look for lores that Aksys mistranslated.

Truly, you do the work of heroes.

[Laserman]

best bet are the mangas

Which ones?

If they go in narrating every fight, then the gameplay will truly become pointless.

Well, not every fight, just some of them.

[OverMaster]

A Fate Beat Em Up could be pretty good actually.

"The (Lion King) president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough Servant to rescue the president?"

[eddyak]

It isn't gonna be the waifus that need rescuing.

[Twelveseal]

Honestly, I'd probably make it an FGO-based thing with direct crossover; you can link your account to it, with loot drops and units exchangeable across the games.

It'd offer an alternative timeline in which Chaldea wasn't betrayed in the beginning, allowing for co-op play or automated helper units, as well as a different story.

[LeadDemon]

Warning: rant, and there's a lot of strawmanning here. This is all incredibly colored by my own personal experience and my own views, and this is not meant to be anything resembling an objective evaluation. If you disagree with my assessment, that's fine and I won't fight you on that. This isn't something I really have any desire to debate on given its inherent unverifiable and subjective nature, so I won't be engaging in replies that try to start that, but I wanted to at least put words to paper on this.

This is dealing with my concerns and issues with the fanbase of Nasuland (or rather, a specific class of issue), rather than my issues with the company itself. The issues are interrelated in some regard but I don't want to muddle the message here.

At times, this refers to the "Nasuland fanbase" as if such a thing is monolithic. It's not, and I know that. I'm not attacking you, or anyone, personally. I honestly don't think Beast's Lair is indicative of a lot of the things mentioned here, for the most part.

TL;DR: I think people are very bad at explaining Nasuland and overcomplicate such explanations. I think a significant part of this is a sort of pseudo-intellectualism within the fanbase, wherein one prizes knowing something the more complicated it is. I believe this has always been a factor in some regard but has amped up in recent years.

So, I think this is probably common knowledge in some respect (it may not be, I dunno), but I believe the reason Nasuland's seen as a convoluted mess to people on the outside's predominantly twofold- it's the result of over twenty years of varying authors developing their own works in a shared setting, and the fanbase (generally) sucks at explaining it.

I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but I'd just like to speak to some trends I've seen over the past twelve-ish years, cause this is something that I think's been present for a long time and that's only gotten worse.

This comparison will absolutely make some people groan, but for the purposes of this topic, JoJo has a lot of similarities with Nasuland. They're both long-running Japanese media franchises with a lot of cultural reach given how niche they are, especially internationally, which center around varying works that tackle different themes but are fundamentally meant to be in the same setting, where the author's frequently accused of forgetting or contradicting himself, and which both have very notorious fanbases. Obviously it's not 1:1 in most (or even any) of these ways, and Araki and Nasu have very different design philosophies, but let's use it as an example since I think it's useful here.

Ask a JoJo fan to explain what JoJo is about to you, and they'll probably say something like "every part is its own self-contained story that follows a different member of this family, the Joestar family, and their goals. There's a lot of difference between the parts, so like part one is basically one big Kenshiro reference, while part four's more like a murder mystery. There are a few different special abilities, but the big one is called Stands, which are manifestations of a person's spirit that each have their own specific ability, like stopping time or generating fire, so a lot of the combat revolves around a rock-paper-scissors kind of fighting because everyone's powers are so different." Is that a perfect explanation? No, not at all, but it explains the setting, some differences between parts, and the basics of its main mechanical system. If you disagree and think your average JoJo fan would provide a very different explanation, that's fine, but I'm just using it as an abstract example here.

In my experience (again, this is all colored by what I personally have seen, this is not an objective empirical study, nor am I saying that your experiences have been the same), getting someone to do the same for Nasuland is a nightmare, and it really shouldn't be. Nasuland is a shared setting where each part is usually its own self-contained story and follows a different cast of characters and conflict. The setting's thing is that magic and monsters are real, just hidden from the public, and all our myths and legends actually happened. There's a lot of difference between the works, so like Kara no Kyoukai is like a murder mystery, while Fate/Stay Night is about this magical battle royale happening in a city. The big thing nowadays is the Fate series, which is about mages summoning the superpowered spirits of mythical or historical figures, who all have their own abilities based on their legend, so like Nikola Tesla can control lightning or Medusa has eyes that turn you to stone.

If anything, I'd say that explanation gives too much info rather than not enough because it tries to be comprehensive of the setting. You could trim out a lot of it and still be left with a totally serviceable explanation that gets the basics of the setting across, especially if you only wanna focus on Fate. It misses out on the themes, which I do think are incredibly important mind you, but in my experience I don't think people talk about that in casual "oh what's X about" conversation. If your response to this is something like "saying all our 'myths and legends actually happened' is an oversimplification" or "you should really say magecraft instead of magic" then congrats, I consider you to be part of the problem. Minutiae like that don't matter for these purposes.

Then your friend asks "so what's Fate/Stay Night about?" Most of the time when I see this, whoever's answering wants to try and explain everything in their answer. "So, seven magi- oh uh that's people who use magecraft, that's different than Magic cause magecraft is XXX, anyway so seven magi- oh wait actually in order to be a magus you also need to be pursuing the Root, which is XXX, it's all explained in this other work Kara no Kyoukai- you know, you really should read this stuff in release order-, but yeah so these seven mages summon seven Servants, who are the manifestations of Heroic Spirits- those are past heroes from myths or history, oh but some of them can actually be bad guys cause villains and monsters and stuff can count too, but so they summon them in these classes which are like containers for the spirit based on different concepts, and they enter a fight for the Holy Grail, which is the thing that helped the magi summon the Servants and is a wishgranting device- it was actually developed to XXX but you need to read the booklet that came out with this one anime adaptation to get the full gist of that, but yeah so the winner gets the wish except actually XXX", and all of that's before they even start getting into specifics about Stay Night and Shirou in particular. And don't get me started on how I've seen alternate timelines tried to be explained. It's a horrid mess.

Dial that back a bit. What's Fate/Stay Night about? There's this magic ritual in Japan where mages summon legendary figures to do battle, each figure having their own special powers based off their legend. We follow a mage who doesn't know a lot about magic as he gets swept up in this conflict, and how his experiences in it help him to reconcile his dreams of being a hero with reality. There are three stories that are bundled together, each one being a different "what-if" for the story based on which heroine he falls in love with, and each one showing a different way he decides to live his life going forwards.

That's all you need to say. Fate is not complicated- it is big, there is a difference. People make it complicated because they try to explain twenty years worth of writing in one paragraph like lunatics. If I tried to explain anything like Nasuland fans try to explain Nasuland, it'd sound overly complicated.

This honestly ties in with one of my biggest problems with the Nasuland fanbase in the present day, which is this weird pseudo-intellectual vibe I get from it. I think it's always been present but I think the past several years have really accelerated it. Again, this is all my own personal experience, but I think a lot of people want Nasuland to be complicated. They want to use copious amounts of Proper Noun Phrases and terms methods that sound intentionally obtuse, or they want to nitpick translations that don't really have any fault in communicating meaning, and things like that.

I'm not sure what the mindset behind this is, but I think there might be a sort of prestige there. If Nasuland is complicated, you are "intelligent" for understanding it. It's standard internet protocol. If you can correct someone in the comments of some anime Youtuber, you win. By using obtuse terms and nitpicks and overly convoluting your explanations, you prove that you're on the "inside" and you know what you're talking about (the "loremaster" effect), and the more complicated the setting sounds, the "better" you are for having that accolade. By prizing "lore" as some end-all be-all of the works made in the setting, you tie up an understanding of the setting in all of these concepts and terms.

You turn Fate/Stay Night from a love story to a status sheet, basically, and in doing so, you make it impenetrable to anyone from the outside. This, in turn, is self-perpetuating, because if you have this thing that looks impenetrable and convoluted and focused on "deep and intricate lore" above anything else, then you're going to attract people who are interested in that, which feeds into the cycle.

I think this mindset's been especially pervasive in the past several years. Maybe that's because of GO ballooning the fanbase, maybe that's because nowadays you have things like "FATE LORE EXPLAINED- DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE", maybe it's just because that sort of stuff's just in my face more or because I've been getting more annoyed by it as I've fallen out of those sorts of habits myself, I don't really have enough information to form an opinion on why that's been caused, but yeah I do think that's been a trend and that's been something I really haven't enjoyed.

Rant over, thanks for reading.

[Mattias]

Comparing Nasu to Jojo is a bit of apples and oranges. Jojo has always been one single storyline, that of the Jostar family, progressing forward with large similarities among each separate part, while also still being written by a single eprson. Nasu is many disparate parts sharing the same world, and as you said early on written by many different people at this point. It's much closer to the Marvel movies, that occasionally intersect but are often radically different from one another in their mechanics.

[LeadDemon]

I mean, like I said, I agree that the JoJo comparison isn't 1:1 in any regard- the example's used to illustrate a point of contrast between how I see Nasuland's fanbase's descriptions of the setting with a "control group", so to speak, and to illustrate the issue I have with it. We're in agreement that the two are different, but you could just as easily substitute JoJo with any long-running media franchise you're a fan of that doesn't suffer the aforementioned issues while retaining what I'm saying, so the comparison between the franchises is unrelated to the point itself.

[Kamera]

relatable

[Byegod]

I agree with all of that.

I would also add some stuff myself that sometimes the setting over complicates itself or nasu doesnt clear stuff up which causes a game of telephone between "lore masters" as each has there own interpretation

[GarlandGreene]

*wall of text

I believe the key word in all of this is "context". From my perspective, context is essential in the success of an internal universe. It's more than just explaining them to the reader/viewer, there needs to be links between the universe and the story. Without it, it's nothing more than abstract art, I mean what is the point of memorizing the laws of a universe that doesn't exist? Anyone can ramble on about a made-up world and with enough effort, they can fill the holes and make that world consistent with itself, but would most people be interested? I know I wouldn't be. Nothing is more tedious than going through infodump after infodump with no visible connection to the story other than to act as a red herring and divert attention from the plot’s lack of depth. That's why I can never get into the To Aru franchise.


To me, the Big Three (KnK, Tsukihime and F/SN) are typically somewhere in-between where there's always going to be extra fluff but a decent chunk of the jargon and magic feels purposeful, sometimes even symbolic, which serves to enhance the intent and themes of its stories. Shirou's progression in his magus abilities throughout the 3 routes mirroring his development as a character comes to mind.

[Irrelevant Passerby]

I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but I think the idea that people unintentionally end up overexplaining the various Fate stories to newcomers is a very good point. Thinking back on some of the conversations I've seen or been a part in, it does seem like oftentimes people jump straight to attempting to explain the setting as a whole when it might be more appropriate to talk about the individual narratives that make it up.

[Mattias]

Fate and Tsuki I can boil down pretty easily when I explain it to others. KnK is the one I tend to ramble one, because there isn't really a solid through line. Fate is "seven wizards use ancient heroes to fight over an allpowerful wish", Tsuki is "A guy who can kill anything fights a bunch of vampires", but the best I can do for KnK is "Girl who can kill anything does normal Urban Fantasy stuff". Which is super vague so I try to expand it it and it ends up "Girl with split personalities had one die so she can see everythings death, wanders around stabbing suicidal girls, rape victims, monks, terrorists and crossdressers."

[Altima of the Gates]

I mean, Fate isn't just ancient heroes because you also have just mythological figures, villains, monsters and their relationship with their contractors. The wish is a farce, the whole idea of the war is a scam and only a setpiece for dialogue on human nature and humanity itself.

[the god of world-0]

I am pretty sure at least one of those things can be considered a spoiler

[Menwearpink]

Actually almost everything said there is a spoiler.

that said to speak on it very quickly and shortly in passing I definitely do agree with most of it. I used to be part of that problem and I do see a lot of attempts to get clout, showboat or attain “authority” within a lot of fan circles. People who try to present themselves as more right by dumping extraneous detail or amounts of information or obfuscating in a pseudo-intellectual manner via wonky “impressive”-sounding languages when it comes to translations or explanations...

And people copy it because they think the cool kids are like that and that Nasu is like that so it propagates itself.