keep in mind Erice's fashion sense came from Caren.
keep in mind Erice's fashion sense came from Caren.
If anything, F/GO's first dedicated Voyager-Class Servant should be Nemo. At least he's in the game as a character and has a cool all-terrain airship/spaceship.Originally Posted by ballinamon
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1. Erice has a cute F/GO outfit and it being Caren-ballpark is on-tangent with Erice's characterization.
2. It makes sense that if Erice, maybe not necessarily joins up with the pagan death gods, but reappropriates the power they'll presumably awaken in her, especially since it's been foreshadowed since volume 1 that she'll really change up the world in a big way.
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Back to the Voyager Nemo angle, it'd make even more sense w/in F/GO's context, given part 2's increased focus on globe-trotting status quo upheaval, and a prominent into-the-unknown vibe.
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
It just be like that. Like how you can tell at what period kingprotea was released in FGO from the first fanart that shows her bandages around her stomach
I am 100% certain that Voyager's class was changed to Foreigner in GO just so the devs didn't have to invent new class mechanics just for him
all the riders with boats should have been voyagers tbh
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Blindfold your eyes, so that the approaching night may strike no fear in you.
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Personally, I would have made Voyager-class the people include in Caren's lecture from chapter 1 (that included Drake and Columbus)
Make Voyager the class about explorers or people famous for their journeys/travels (I'm thinking characters like Gulliver and Simbad could fit there right as well)
I'd say Voyager for explorers or people who went on an odyssey, not just anyone with a boat. So like yeah Sinbad, Drake, Odysseus, but not Blackbeard or Anne and Mary.
Last edited by Reign; June 7th, 2020 at 04:35 PM.
I don't think either Oddy nor Gulliver nor Sinbad really qualify on account of being bumped around from place to place rather than going on a journey for the express purpose of exploring and basically kept their experiences to themselves rather than them "breaking new ground" for humanity
True Rider
They are the very symbol of an "adventurous journey" even so. That was even mentioned about Odysseus in FGO.
I know I'm late to the party, but I just finished the first volume.
I'm surprised how unenjoyable it was, despite how much I liked in it.
Let me first say that I really enjoy all the characters, including all the Servants, both from the main and supporting cast, with the exception of Galahad, whose presence varies from meaningless to bothersome, and his Master, who just left no impression whatsoever. I really enjoy the concepts and story developed here, as well as the themes it is hinting at. The art and design is probably my favorite in Fate currently, thank you NOCO.
The problem is that, in regards to most of this stuff, I only like it in concept, not in execution. This book reads amateurish, rushed and, frankly, souless.
Narration is dull and boring, failing to capture me at any point in the narrative. Most of the book is just descriptions, of the old world, of otakus, of Mosaic City, of Servants that are around, of Erice's house... etc. When it turns to characters, it changes suddenly to an overly dramatic tone that just sounds forced. There's no set-up, we go from academic descriptions to internal drama from one sentence to the next with no build-up or transition; and meanwhile, the writing is, again, dull. I have no way of knowing if that fault lies on Meteo or the translator though.
That said, the fault for the terrible dialogue definitely falls on Meteo. It's not even that the dialogue that is there is bad, but rather, there is too little of it. Conversations never actually happen. The characters talk for two or three sentences, followed by a barrage of descriptions of what happened and what they are talking about, followed by another two or three sentences; end or repeat based on the length of the conversation. What this means is that none of the dialogue leaves any impact. The only ones that worked were everything with Pran, because luckily he just talks very little, and the scene with Kochime, because the heart of it was in the moment, not in the conversation.
Erice, specially, suffers from the dull writing. Not a single time through this whole book I felt for her. Her plights as the Reaper are not presented well at all, the book, despite being to occupied with explaining everything, leaves the explanation for Dread Spirits to the end, leaving us with a very vague idea of what Erice actually suffers and how she feels about it aside from some scattered stuff that sounds edgy and nothing more because we don't actually see Erice really suffering. Even putting aside her emotional and physical struggles with her power, her social standing is also very vague and badly presented. We are told that, as the Reaper, she is hated and feared, and that she only has Karin as a friends, but she acts sociable enough in all her interactions and we never see any example of others actually acting like we are described people do until she murders their Servants in front of them.
Story structure is also really messy. We spend almost half of the book just learning about the world, with nothing really happening. Things are basically crawling to a halt, with the only guiding thread being the small mystery of who Pran is, when we are suddenly hit with the almost-mystery of the zombies. I say almost because while it is framed as a mystery, the story doesn't treat it as such. There's not enough time or information to speculate or be entrapped by it because 1) we are only told about these happening very quickly before the focus changes to Galahad Alter and Hannibal, 2) we never see any danger or consequence or evidence of these happenings before the end, 3) we see no meaningful victims, ever, even during the climax (we spent a single scene with Hannibal and he barely talks, he does not matter), so there's no real sense of danger, and 4) the conclusion to the mystery is hurriedly presented and the culprit quickly revealed with no ceremony: turns out it was someone new with no connection to anyone we know, using a method we never heard about (but that is nonetheless not impressive, because zombies have been so overused in recent years), working towards a goal that is barely hinted at, and that leaves unceremoniously despite being initially presented as a threat.
Any and all emotional scenes fall flat. Erice and Karin bonding happens after a sudden argument that springs up just as quickly as it is resolved, with nothing really mean being said by any of them (why would being called new-gen offend Karin? Who knows) and with the characters making up immediately, this guy has no idea how to build tension and resolve it. Hannibal's death happens basically amid Chitose's "badass scene", and we barely knew him and Koharu anyway. Erice's loneliness and emotional frailness were not presented well before, and so the book completely fails a drawing the connection between her and Pran.
Caren, who shows up twice, seemingly just so they could make a joke about her not wearing pants that one time, dies in Erice's arms as she tries to tell her she's like her Mother. I don't know this Caren and she is and acts completely different from the original one, you can't expect me to care about her death just because you named her Caren Fujimura and I don't know about Erice's relationship to her dead parents enough to gleam anything but the cheapest of death scenes from this.
Erice becomes a Master at the end, but what does that mean and why did she deserve it? All we know about how Erice feels about not having a Servant comes from two metaphores, with no scenes to back-up how bad it actually feels to live like this. Why is this such a conquest for her? Just to fit in I guess, not very emotional. Is it earned? Why? Because she protected Pran when he was in danger of dying, that's it? No greater connection between them? The flimsy bond over loneliness is all we get I guess.
In conclusion, I wish it was a lot better. I'll keep up with it though. Pran is really good and most scenes focusing on his stand-off and mysterious nature were great. Kochime and Karin's relationship is interesting enough that I'm really looking forward to see it develop (probably because it's attached to one of the best scenes in the book). Chitose and Longinus have the most interesting Master-Servant dynamic in the book and I can't wait to see more of them. I'm really curious about the mechanics and history of the world. And T. Rex mom having to take care of these kids is great.
An absolutely scathing review! Though not one I really disagree, Requiem really feels like a love it or hate it story even though it's just a volume in
I'm on chapter 6 but I honestly have to agree with pinetree. With the exception of me feeling like the servant interactions are very bland. I wasn't expecting much, since servants are just a casual thing, but I wanted to see some of that. Especially since the Master/Servant pairs we get are pretty lackluster.
Galahad Alter is just why. Why the fuck. Koharu also isn't interesting. So she's basically a demi-servant. Okay. But then nothing about her really makes me like her as a character. She's a loli when she's not transformed, and easily flustered as well as very polite. Boring. Her relationship with Galahad Alter is like, barely there. A series about Master/Servant relationships and when we see her and Galahad interact there's nothing there. No chemistry, no bond. Nothing that makes me care. I really tried to not look at him as EMIYA-lite but it's definitely there.
Going past that though, are the fight scenes. They exist? I guess? They flow so vaguely it's hard to even get invested in them. A high stakes fight between Nzambi and fusion Koharu and I'm just scrolling through. There's just no tension. Nothing that makes me go, "Man I seriously hope this character wins!" Even though they get bodied so easily. And speaking of, Nzambi's surprising fighting prowess is acknowledged by Erice, but I just don't feel it. It felt more like Koharu was just fighting really bad and taking hits she shouldn't have. Even Erice felt like she didn't know what the hell she was doing that fight. Whatever.
Maybe fight scenes aren't Meteo's specialty, since Erice killing the servants is glossed over too.
Onto the worldbuilding, which mostly shows up to tell us things that we already knew. Tell me about Mosaic City, tell me about the city structure, tell me about how casual Master/Servant relationships changed society, tell me about mages. I don't give a fuck about otakus, or whatever the hell else Erice waxed about. It feels like anytime we learn something new the writing than jerks away from it to talk about something else in the most unsubtle way possible. It wants there to be mystery, but it also doesn't work to give me clues.
Speaking of otakus though, Kuchime is actually okay. As long as he doesn't take the center stage, I'm fine with him being something like an NPC in the same location that the main character can happen upon.
Karin is awesome though, and it's a shame she has such drab, boring friend like Erice. She honestly makes every scene better and it's her inability to keep her mouth shut that makes her stand out all the more. I don't actually care for her servant. I do think it's interesting that she has a visually displeasing servant that her parents would especially hate, but other than that I don't really care about dino chick.
Hannibal exists, but once again I compare a canon servant to Five's version and can't help but be surprised at how well I liked him. He was a welcoming presence and though it irked me we couldn't see his Master, I liked him well enough. Shame his scene was dragged down by Koharu and Galahad Alter. He kept what could have been a very boring scene afloat.
And for the stars of the show. My goodness. First things first, Pran/Voyager/Foreigner is cute as hell. Getting him in FGO let to me giving Requiem a chance, and I was hoping he'd get more screentime but the scenes he showed up in he did great. I actually got that childlike wonder from him, and those tender explorations with his character were perfect. Wouldn't change them.
What I would change is Erice. She is boring as hell and adds nothing to any scene she's in. That's it.
Minor gripes: We could have done with more characters, the grain tournament is a cool and fun idea but I really didn't want to see Circe and Blackbeard as spectators. Also, the entire time servants were going berserk and causing havoc and I didn't feel any of that. Caren should have been an original character. Nzambi is a boring antagonist with no character. She showed up, wrecked a surprising amount of shit, and then..? That's it, I guess. I am still on chapter 6.
The art is lovely, the story is bland, and overall if someone asked me if it was good read I'd say no.
Last edited by Nobody; June 10th, 2020 at 05:09 AM.
You mentioning the fight scenes is actually a good point. I've never thought too deeply about that kind of thing, but it definitely lacks the punch compared to at least strange/fake and apocrypha .
And yeah that's all you're getting from Nzambi at least in this volume
I agree completely on the concepts side. On the execution side, I can tell our experiences were different at some points due we having read it in different languages, but that's I agree on that too.
To me the stronger points of the book's execution were:
1) How it makes it world feel very unfamiliar despite being built entirely on familiar Type-Moon concepts. Erice and Karin's argument about Servant rights and Kuchime's exposition on the current state of otaku culture do a fantastic of making everything feel off.
2) Erice as a first person narrator. She's a depressed teenager and she absolutely reads like one. Her narration is childish, edgy, opinionated and very unreliable at informing her own character. It gets really dull at her worst points, but that's indispensable part of the concept and the benefits outweigh the problems. To be completely honest, it feels like the story would be completely dry of tone if it had third person narration. The sudden shift from academic descriptions to exaggerated personal drama is not a point I personally took notice on my read, but in hindsight, it's definitely there and definitely something I'd blame on the narrator being a teenager instead of on the author or translator being incompetent.
The narrative itself takes a lot of care to present the faults in Erice's character and narration without throwing it in your face. For example, one of her most consistent and notorious traits is her extreme co-dependency towards the two "teachers" but her narration never consciously admits that she's craving validation. Another good example is when she confrots Chitose and the reader can feel Chitose is the one with fair points despite being locked at the opposing perspective.
Now for where I think the execution failed:
1) Screentime distribution. Karin did nothing and Koharu feels like she's still waiting for her proper introduction. Caren could've have done something before dying, as long it didn't provide reasons for the reader to believe she cared for Erice beyond the professional level, since I believe their relationship is a lot better as Erice just projecting her emotional dependency on someone who only sees her through professional lenses. The pages spent introducing the arena victims doesn't benefit the story in anything. I get the Meteo could never do without the scene of an entire stadium audience saying "Circe best girl" but he could have at least have her introduce just Galahad and Hannibal and then let the killing start mid-introduction.
2) The explanations for the Dread Spirits came far too late.
2) The action scenes. Whenever two or more characters were moving at the scene time, the narration devolved in a dysfunctional mess. And that's something that can't be justified by Erice being an edgy child. It's not a me problem either, since I've seen a lot other people, including Japanese natives and translators with 12+ years of experience, making the exact same complaints about how they either had to read an action scene 4 times to get what was what going on there or they simply quit and started skimming the fights. I'm honestly impressed at how I read this complaint from every JP reader I've seen but from not a single EN reader, implying that Bernkastel's translation did an amazing job of simplifying Meteo's fights to a readable level.
The issue here is that Meteo is far more experienced as a VN writer, so I guess he's too used to have the visual side (character sprites and CGs, etc.) to properly convey who is doing what in scenes with multiple people, so he takes that for granted in his LN writing, ending with a product where the reader can't tell who's who in a fight. The only real good fight in volume is the Chitose fight because Chitose is the only character taking the narration's attention, so we don't have about mistaking an action done by Chitose with an action done by someone else.
EDIT: While I was writting the problem with the fight scenes was mentioned for the first time (although not in the angle of it being difficult to tell who's doing what), so I guess it actually was a problem in English version as well.
Last edited by Comun; June 10th, 2020 at 05:55 AM.
On that front a manga adaptation should logically fix at least the problems with the fight scenes. It could also do a better job at conveying the world since we barely get to really breath in how different life is (also I'd like to see Erice make at least one expression that fits her personality)
like in FGO event shop?
None of her expressions in FGO match her personality to me
so Erice will not get any character development?
Mami is talking about how Erice is a sad and bitter girl but she's smiling in almost every illustration.
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A wise and beautiful woman who exudes an aura of grace. She is a sly, cunning, manipulative person who always gets what she wants, whether through trickery or ruthlessness. Her own fighting abilities are low, but she should not be trifled with. What does she ride? Men, of course!
