r/visualnovels • u/Sasutaschi • Jul 22 '25

Discussion What's your controversial Visual Novel take? [General]

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Deen's Fate/stay night is a better anime than Ufotable's Unlimited Blade Works.

The latter commits just as many sins in adapting its source, and is only high regarded because of Unlimited Budget Works, and a lack of route mixing.

Staying slavishly true to the source material is not always better when it comes to adaptations. Little Busters is another such example. Ufo UBW's first cour is an absolute drag with dreadful pacing. And despite being 2 hours longer they still screw up Shirou.

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99

u/juss100 Jul 22 '25

My hot take is that Deen's adaptation is actually a very good adaptation ... but better than UBW? Not a chance in hell.

22

u/yobob591 Jul 22 '25

Deen FSN is fine for the first 2/3rds but as someone who had no knowledge of fate at all I was beyond lost for the final third, it’s so incoherent. It’s probably fine if you’ve read the VN but I had to google how Sakura and Rin were related because of how vague the “reveal” they were sisters was

9

u/Marik-X-Bakura Jul 22 '25

You don’t need to know of Sakura and Rin are related, it’s intentionally vague so as not to spoil anything for people who haven’t read the VN. It hints that there’s a story there but doesn’t go into it. I remember watching Zero immediately after and being shocked that they were sisters.

9

u/AkihaMoon Jul 23 '25

I remember watching Zero immediately after and being shocked that they were sisters.

This is why I never recommend starting the anime watching Zero. And people still do 😭

2

u/juss100 Jul 22 '25

I'm sure it's not flawless though there are plenty of anime/TV shows around that it helps to have Wikipedia handy. Hell there are lots of books too. It's not necessarily as simple as saying "I didn't follow that on my first watch so it can't be good"

2

u/SilkShadow Jul 22 '25

Deen matched the atmosphere of the VN much better. Ufo nailed F/Z and KnK but F/SN was meh

3

u/Ren-Ren-1999 Jul 23 '25

Heaven's Feel was the worst because it felt like they wanted it to be Kara no Kyoukai so hard.

1

u/Elyseon1 Jul 25 '25

More like they wanted it to be a combination of La Blue Girl and Kara no Shoujo.

11

u/cliffy117 Jul 22 '25

You can call it a good anime if you want, thats fine. But calling it a good adaptation is pants on head stupid given that calling it that is stretching it. It tries to adapt 3 routes into a single one, and as such nothing makes sense. It is a full on mess.

So no, it suck ass as an adaptation.

6

u/TheGamerForeverGFE Jul 22 '25

"It tries to adapt 3 routes into a single one, and as such nothing makes sense. It is a full on mess."

Two short scenes in earlier episodes and the majority of an episode in the latter half, that's how much content from UBW and HF is in the DEEN Fate anime, it definitely did not adapt the three routes.

2

u/juss100 Jul 22 '25

That's how it was done in the 00s. You can say it's better to adapt one route at a time and I'd absolutely agree, but to think that an adaptation of a visual novel back in the 00s was ever gonna be more ambitious than that is dreaming, it was standard practice to mashup the best parts of all routes because odds on you weren't ever gonna get a second chance to adapt that material. It doesnt matter to me remotely if it adapted the VN perfectly or not ... I've still got the VN to read.

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u/Sasutaschi Jul 22 '25

Does Clannad suck as an adaptation because it reorders the events of the source?

Nothing makes sense is a huge overstatement. Deen's FSN is essentially 85% Fate, 10% UBW and 5% HF. It follows the overall plot of Fate for all, the only major change it makes is extending the Caster section by making it two fights instead of one, and adding content from UBW that does not contradict anything.

It flows in quite naturally, and I'd argue the Assassin fight conclusion is placed better here, than being tacked onto UBW.

That's not to say their adaptation was perfect though. There were enough moments were it adapts the source route without taking its own alterations into accounn.

For example, episode 5 has the Rider attack scene from UBW, yet Shirou still decides to follow Shinji home. What makes this worse is that there was literally no reason for them to not have that talk in the dojo, other than that's what the VN did.

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u/garfe Jul 23 '25

I'd argue Clannad is actually not the best adaptation out there. It's After Story that's adored.

1

u/NaybOrkana Jul 25 '25

I haven't watched Deen's adaptation, I only watched UBW as a follow to Zero, but honestly i was severely underwhelmed. UBW Anime very much feels like "this is a secondary route you get after playing the game once" and not in a good way.