Dear Listeners, It has been ten years since that calamity. Though you survived, the memory of flame-scorched rubble haunts your dreams each night. Closure slips away from you in the vagaries of time and, a decade on, you settle back into a relatively peaceful daily routine. It would be truly terrible if you were to die multiple times in one night through no fault of your own. It would really suck if you got pulled into a death game that had an unnerving connection to the most traumatic moment of your childhood. If something that awful happened you'd probably at least want some kind of good fortune to balance it all out. Maybe getting to know a cool knight with a sick sword or something. Yeah, a cool sword could make this all alright. This week we begin our four episode series on Fate/Stay Night, a tremendously popular and influential Visual Novel from Type-Moon and the first main entry into the vast and sprawling Fate series. Sara and Runa are joined by friend, fellow podcaster, and Fate enjoyer MK as the three of them begin unpacking the massive warehouse of material that is Fate/Stay Night (2004). Reading along in the recent remaster (2024) which is based on Fate/Stay Night's Realta Nua release (2007), this episode focuses on the Fate route which is the standard first route players experience when booting up the game. In this route, we initially follow the prologue and Rin Tohsaka, a highschooler and mage who summons a Heroic Spirit, a Servant who occupies a special Class and will be her chess piece within the Holy Grail War. After a few hours with Rin though, we shift to our protagonist's perspective: Shirou Emiya is a fairly normal high school boy apart from how he was the sole survivor of a catastrophic fire 10 years ago, and the fact that he, too, is a mage. He can only use reinforcement or strengthening magic though, which he employs to repair broken space heaters and the like for his school. One night while Shirou is at school after dark, however, he's cornered by a man in blue spandex with a giant red spear who kills him dead. It's alright, Shirou gets better - unfortunately his assailant follows him to his home where Shirou staggers backwards and accidentally summons a Servant, Saber. Looking up at this majestic woman clad in a knight's silver armor in the moonlight, Shirou enters the Holy Grail War without fully understanding how, why, or what he's supposed to do in this situation. The Fate Route of Fate/Stay Night focuses on establishing the core ideas of the game and its world, particularly surrounding Servants, Mages, and the Holy Grail War. A real, powerful magical artifact manifests within Fuyuki City and provides the power to summon Heroic Spirits of past Kings, Champions, Gods, Demons, or even Fictional characters from the past, present, or even future. These Heroic Spirits conceal their identity and use the moniker of their summoned Class as a pseudonym - Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. Only a Servant may touch the Holy Grail, and only one Master & Servant pair may use its power to grant their deepest wish. In the Fate Route, we also see the game's first romance play out between Shirou and Saber with mixed results. In spite of its shortcomings, Fate introduces a wealth of information and details which we'll be carrying forward into our next episodes on the remaining routes of the game. As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more! Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're
