For the Grumpy and the Selfish

Today I found myself pondering about Donald Duck. He’s been a favorite cartoon character of mine since childhood, but pinpointing the precise reason hasn’t been easy. By all means, Donald Duck SHOULD be a pretty unlikable character: prone to fits of anger and violence, sometimes greedy, sometimes selfish, sometimes just plain cruel, he seems designed to act as a foil to Mickey and co. more well-meaning and passive attitudes while still remaining as part of their group. Most of his early material portrays him as the butt of the joke (for example, trying several get-rich-quick schemes and failing miserably) and even now he seems to be inherently incompetent at everything he does or tries. It’s a bit difficult to track down the specifics of his personality and he’s been written by so many people and corporate machines that it’s virtually impossible to have a clear image of him (or any of the core Disney characters). However, the basics are always there, hidden as they may be.

It was only while drifting my consciousness away during an awful grammar class that it hit me: could it be possible that I like him precisely because of everything mentioned above?

So, about Lucid9…

Lucid9 is a visual novel created by Fallen Snow Studios that had its first part released during 2016 on Steam. I also happen to be working on it now. Who would’ve guessed.

Something like this.

Fate/Stay Night won’t ever get a satisfying adaptation

I’m sorry Rin.

I mentioned about a week ago that fans tend to think of visual novels as collections of short stories rather than full products. Again, whether this is a good or bad way to engage with this particular medium is not for me to decide, but this mentality does bring its share of problems; putting at risk the overall quality of a possible anime adaptation is one of them.

This dawned on me as I watched the last few episodes of ufotable’s Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. To put things in perspective, Fate/Stay Night is a visual novel with 3 routes titled Fate, Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel respectively. Back in 2006, Studio DEEN adapted it into a 2-cours show, mostly focusing on the Fate route but mixing it with chunks of the other two. While they were trying to satisfy fans of the franchise by doing things this way, the plan backfired, and with reason: each route is very different from one another, and you’d need some crazy planning skills in order to make everything fit into 24 episodes. The end result left a lot to be desired: there was just too much information to take in, too many plot points, too many characters that died as underdeveloped husks of themselves; events just didn’t happen in a way that’d let us know or care more about these people. It was frankly quite a mess.