Because I can think of no eloquent way to segue into it, I’m just going to come right out and say this: Fate/Prototype is probably the most pointless OAV in existence. That’s not to say that it’s particularly bad, since it’s certainly well produced and could easily be stretched into a full length series would it not essentially be Fate/Stay Night, except with a gender-swapped protagonist and her gender-swapped servant. It’s just that it serves as nothing more than an advertisement for something that doesn’t exist, showing scenes of beautiful action spliced with ominous looking text set to dramatic music. It’s something I would expect from a trailer or a preview, and since this is apparently neither of those, I’m left questioning the function of something that essentially says “We could have made this, but we didn’t. Have these fantastic production values anyway.”
In short, all Fate/Prototype did was showcase an alternate way that the Fate franchise could have panned out, with us getting a bishounen Sabre instead of the dour beauty that we know and love. It’s a neat idea, but it’s quite forgettable, and hardly recommended… or would be if one diligent fansubbing group that shall go nameless didn’t take it upon themselves to painlessly put it to text, then put said text into Google Translate until it came out with something vaguely resembling cohesive English. Well, that about covers it, so here are a few of my favorite screenshots to make up for the rather skimpy content.
And, the best for last…
Hope all my readers had a good New Year.
Those fansubs were a riot; you picked some classic screencaps, too. I enjoyed the OVA though. Doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s fanservice for Type-Moon fans like me.
These subs made it something that I would actively recommend to anybody if they’re kept as the standard. I don’t think it’ll happen, but you never know.
And I don’t think Nasu knows how to work anything that isn’t “Cool, but ultimately baffling.” Not necessarily a bad thing, but this OAV is a perfect example as to why it doesn’t really stay in my memory.
I merely think that this is just a glimpse of what could have been, had Nasu not needed to tweak the characters to appeal to VN readers.
And is that an actual fansub group? I saw a version on youtube with subs like that and I thought it was just some idiot putting subs for the sake of it. Woow.
It was an actual fansub group, yes. For awhile, that was the only one available, and it was absolutely hysterical.
Wow that translation is hilarious. Reminds me of those Eden of the East movie translations a while back. Ah, fansubbers that can’t speak English… I’d take ones that can’t speak Japanese any day…
Same here, my friend. Same here. It’s just way too silly.
Well, the translation was a true stroke of genius. The “translator” probably watched the episode without sound and simply ‘guessed’ what the characters said and that he even remotely came close to what was actually said is where the genius-part comes in. I have no other explanation for this…
But aside from that… I was actually glad that this idea got discarded when they made Fate/Stay Night. Not that Fate/Stay Night is that much better but this version uses its characters to devolve into a sequence of flashy shounen-battles with whiny melodrama. That’s at least the impression I got from the bits that were shown.
I think maybe it was somebody Japanese who didn’t know much English. Either that or somebody with hardly any understanding of Japanese, though I suspect the former since the subtitles roughly correlated with what dialogue I could understand.
It would have been pretty much the same as Fate/Stay Night turned out, I think, just without all Shiro’s Sexism. Nasu isn’t exactly known for breaking the mold, after all.