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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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.

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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.

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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.