Kids these days with their Fate/Grand Orders and Fate/Apocryphas, making up servants all over the place… BACK IN MY DAY, there were only seven servants with seven masters. Well, technically eight I guess… and wait, there’s the Caster and Assassin thing so uh not sure how many masters… ANYWAY, join Jel, Iro, and Gee for an anime-focused discussion of their love/hate relationship with Fate/Stay Night and the various sequels and spinoffs it has spawned over the years.
Opening Song: “Emotional literacy” by BRADIO
Show Notes
4:15 Monster Hunter World multiplayer is bad
8:05 Where it all started
The DEEEEEEEEN Years
18:28 Fate/State Night (2006)
23:55 Unlimited Blade Works (2010)
Acclaimed actor and activist Sir Ian McKellen reading the Unlimited Blade Works incantation:
Ufotable
28:23 Fate/Zero (2012)
39:54 Unlimited Blade Works (2014-2015)
48:44 Heaven’s Feel (2017-current)
Iro and Gee’s Heaven’s Feel experience
Extras and Spinoffs
56:02 Carnival Phantasm (2011)
(Lerche is doing Hakumei and Mikochi this season)
1:01:23 We don’t talk about Prisma Ilya
1:04:56 Fate/Grand Order: First Order (2016)
1:12:09 Fate/Aprocrypha (2017)
(The Last Jedi is better than Rogue One. Fight me.)
1:19:27 Fate/Extra: Encore (current)
1:27:50 Today’s Menu For the Emiya Family (current)
1:35:55 Final thoughts
The Glorio Blog 
Very interesting discussion of Fate/Zero and the inherently classist aspect of magic, as Gee called it. It reminds me of how to me, Fate/Zero has always been about how the death of the idea of war as a gentleman’s sport, with noblemen in fancy uniforms moving pieces around on a large map — see also: Europe in the early days of World War I.
Throughout the Fourth Holy Grail War, the “nobles” like Tokiomi, Kayneth and even Waver, the guys who take pride in honour and in adhering to the rituals and rules of the War — they are the losers, the guys who come to realize that the olden days of magic and chivalry are over in the worst possible way. Nobility doesn’t win wars anymore — opportunism, cunning, betrayal and blatant disregard for the rules do.
A lot of the character development for the Servants is about this realization — they may be able to ride motorcycles and play video games now, the harsh truth of the matter is that they’re still a relic of the past, used as nothing more than tools and lapdogs — especially Saber, who’s basically just there as Kiritsugu’s entry ticket into the War. Gilgamesh is the only Servant who learns to more or less get with the times, while the others — Saber, Rider and especially Lancer — are forced to watch their ideals being spat upon and trampled.
I think it’s ultimately this — sigh — deconstructionist take that makes Fate/Zero a more meaningful and poetic urban fantasy story than its sequel.
I think it’s wrong to say Tokiomi and Kayneth are meant to depict noble virtue. They are nobles in the purely material sense of the term, but they had no virtue. Tokiomi sold his daughter off to a man he knew was dangerous, and used a pawn to game the War. Kayneth broke his promise with Diurmand for self-preservation and used every trick in the book before that in an attempt to win. I more see them opposed to Waver. He is no one in a material sense, but he is unarguably the most virtuous master in the war, and learns what courage he lacked through his experience with Rider. In the end, it’s this same courage that ends up saving his life.
I see that Urobuchi may have been taking this angle in regards to the servants, but to me it was an affirmation that the hollow ideals of Kiritsugu are just as Saber derides them, a perpetuation of the cycle of violence. To see no virtue in human act, even when forced to fight, is to deny man his goodness. Violence always stems from evil, but it does not need to end in evil. Even though he dies, Rider does not fail, because Rider’s claim of the nature of the King, as someone who can inspire his people, is fulfilled in what he does for Waver.