I want to become an ally of justice…

In any other local­iza­tion, Emiya Shirou’s wishes would prob­a­bly have been trans­lated to ‘hero of jus­tice’. But Nasu­verse has made it remark­ably appro­pri­ate not to do so. Fate/stay night has already approached the ques­tion of ‘what makes a hero’ from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, from the ide­al­ized (Unlim­ited Blade Works) to the per­sonal (Heaven’s Feel). Yet as Fate/stay night mixes the Black & White of mod­ern hero­ism, the tragic and cyn­i­cal nature of Fate/zero takes it up even another notch:

True jus­tice may be heroic, but it was far too inhu­mane for heroes. Read the rest of this entry »

Read­ing Eternal’s review on the themes of Fate/stay night has got­ten my brains crank­ing again regard­ing this epic sto­ry­line that Nasu (and Urobuchi in Fate/zero) have envi­sioned and brought to life before us. Eter­nal high­lights how the three paths of Fate/stay night — Fate, Unlim­ited Blade Works, Heaven’s Feel — are brought together to con­cep­tu­al­ize the ques­tion of “what is the def­i­n­i­tion of a hero”. Although, this same com­par­i­son may be made to sev­eral other themes within the Fat­e­v­erse. To broaden out the scope, one can say that Nasu’s writ­ings are a crit­i­cal analy­sis by sto­ry­telling on “the def­i­n­i­tion of ideal within dif­fer­ent scopes of black and white”.

Typ­ing this reminds me of the days when I played Fate/stay night before it was trans­lated, rely­ing on a dic­tio­nary and lots of guess­work… result­ing in migraines and a desire to never do so again.

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Over the past two weeks my life’s free time had been almost entirely con­sumed by pho­to­shop, as the Tarot Project is finally com­ing together. I only have three things to say on the mat­ter — I’ve never taken pho­to­shop to be such seri­ous busi­ness before; I can finally say I’m more than just a noob to pho­to­shop thanks to the picto-editing skills I’ve acquired; and I haven’t felt so proud of my goods for a long time.

Before any­one asks “why all girls?”, it’s to cut down on the com­pe­ti­tion between char­ac­ter and more con­sis­tency in art style. Not to men­tion — the deck is cuter this way.

I might think about mak­ing a bishie/GAR deck later, maybe, if I feel like throw­ing away another week+ of free time.

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