You might leave ‘Fate’ thinking you know all there is to know about Shirou and the Fate/Stay Night world but by mid-way through UBW, it’s clear that you knew nothing at all – delve on it enough and it’ll make you wonder if you ever really understood the characters in the first place. Each of the VN’s three routes (‘Fate’, ‘Unlimited Blade Works’ (UBW) & ‘Heaven’s Feel’ (HF)) are centred on and feature the same set of characters but just when you leave one route thinking you’ve got a solid grasp on the story and the characters, the next route comes along to make you question it all.
Looking back, one of the biggest challenges I faced in reading the Fate/Stay Night visual novel (VN) was coming to terms with the concept of ‘routes’, especially within the context of the story. Lastly, I also want to thank anyone who has been waiting for this for their patience and apologize again for the delay.
To keep this from turning into a massive wall of text, I will be interspersing it with pictures specifically, Fate-related pictures from all over the place (I figured VN screenshots weren’t going to cut it). I have read the VN front to back (so to speak) all of once (though I did revisit certain scenes) and I will not be trying to claim that I’m some expert on the subject or that my interpretations of certain characters are backed by some kind of authority. All the thoughts and opinions presented below are just that – thoughts and opinions, and not factual statements. After a brief debate with myself about whether I could overcome my inherent laziness and write that long a piece without it spiraling hopelessly out of control, I decided to give it a shot.
I should also apologize for the length of this post at first, I wanted to take a very quick, cursory look at the visual novel but then the more I got into it, the more I felt like I wanted to write about everything about it the characters, the story, the themes, the world-building and so on. That’s a warning to anyone not knowing what kind of scope I’ll be looking at, best also an invitation to everyone who’s been holding back in previous posts to let loose with the spoilers and information.
#Fate stay night visual novel length full#
This particular post will be diving into the Fate/Stay Night visual novel, with FULL SPOILERS. First of all, I’m sorry for the delay there was a mini-crisis in my life that ended up throwing me for a loop and as a result I haven’t had the chance to post anything here for the last two weeks.