The next day was still an afternoon shift, but Akira left an hour early to find an internet cafe near Akihabara.
In 1999 Japan, the manga cafes that would later be everywhere did not exist yet, nor were there simple internet cafes like those in China. However, the "internet-capable cafe" format had already begun to appear.
For a minimum price of 300 yen for a cup of coffee, you could go online for 30 minutes. Staying longer required additional fees, making it quite expensive.
Writing up to this point, I hope readers will remember our domain name. It is quite cozy to read Taiwanese novels during leisure time.
Although Akira had occasionally hung out in internet cafes with friends in his previous life, he would never have spent such money this time if it were not for something he wanted to confirm.
Fortunately, after spending the money, he did find the result he was looking for.
"It seems it really doesn't exist."
Akira looked at the blank search interface before him and sighed, but he did not feel anything special. He had simply resolved a doubt in his mind.
After the sudden idea last night to adapt Fate/stay night, another question had occurred to him.
Did Nasu Kinoko and Takeuchi Takashi exist in this world?
According to his past life's memories, in 1998 Nasu Kinoko and Takeuchi Takashi formed the doujin circle Takebouki and began serializing the novel The Garden of Sinners on their personal website.
But that was his previous life's timeline, and it seemed that Nasu Kinoko and Takeuchi Takashi did not exist in this world, or perhaps they had not yet started creating The Garden of Sinners.
Of course, neither case would prevent him from adapting Fate/stay night.
Having finished that, there was still some internet time left, so he surfed the web for a bit.
At present, the largest portal site on the Japanese internet was Yahoo! Japan. Clicking into it revealed a screen full of text links, divided into sections such as search, news and weather, finance and stocks, entertainment and communities, and a collection of free services, all full of the atmosphere of the era.
Although the internet content of this era was far more sparse than in the future, as a member of the digital native generation, he felt a long-lost sense of peace and comfort the moment he connected.
Browsing aimlessly, he clicked into a chat room to watch netizens chatting. Even that alone felt quite interesting to him.
Furthermore, compared to the future internet environment where abstraction, chaos, and extremism coexisted, the current environment was undoubtedly much simpler and more innocent.
When the waiter reminded him that his time was almost up, he stood up and left with a lingering sense of interest, ready to begin that day's part-time job.
Once he had money, he would definitely get himself a computer first.
He suddenly had a new goal.
...
...
Aside from the manager Kayo, he was not very familiar with the others in the shop, including the assistant manager. So after the peak customer hours passed and things quieted down, Akira let his mind wander and continued thinking about last night's problem.
The original game Fate/stay night did not exist in this world, so logically, no one would complain no matter how he changed it.
In that case, a lazier approach would be similar to the 2014 Unlimited Blade Works anime, taking content from only one route, or even just copying the anime directly.
Moreover, the story of the Unlimited Blade Works route fit the tone of Shonen Jump very well.
But he felt this approach was somewhat wasteful. After all, the content of the other two routes was not bad either.
Therefore, what he was considering now was how to maximize the content of Fate/stay night while ensuring quality and success.
In Fate/stay night, although the three routes have a fixed play order, they are parallel storylines that do not interfere with each other, and Nasu Kinoko clearly stated that the endings of all three routes can be considered true endings.
The Fate route serves as the beginning, with Artoria as the heroine, telling a standard Holy Grail War without too many surprises or twists, establishing the worldview and basic values.
This route focuses on the shared ideals and beliefs of the protagonist Emiya Shirou and Artoria, with the core being the persistence and inheritance of ideals.
During the battle, the two see the light in each other and the heavy fate they bear, come to understand each other, and finally achieve mutual redemption. Saber accepts her past self and finds peace, while Shirou becomes firmer in his ideals. It showcases a pure, idealistic heroic sentiment.
The Unlimited Blade Works route features Tohsaka Rin as the heroine and introduces Archer, who is Emiya Shirou from the future. It deeply questions and analyzes the ideal of being an "Ally of Justice," with the core being self-reflection and the choice of ideals.
As the future Shirou, Archer personally demonstrates the despair and nihilism that this ideal can bring. However, after experiencing intense confrontation and a clash of philosophies with Archer, Shirou still chooses to accept this contradiction and fate.
At the same time, Tohsaka Rin's presence provides Emiya Shirou with new possibilities and guidance, allowing him to avoid moving toward the future represented by Archer and giving him the chance to move toward a brand-new future.
The Heaven's Feel route features Matou Sakura as the heroine, subverting the tone of the first two routes, delving into the darker side, revealing the truth of the Holy Grail War, and exploring the intense conflict between personal love and traditional justice under extreme circumstances. Its core is the opposition between personal love and the world.
In this route, Shirou discovers that Matou Sakura is closely connected to the dark side of the Holy Grail War. After a series of events and struggles, he decides to abandon his ideals to protect Sakura, even at the cost of making the whole world his enemy, declaring, "I will be an ally only for Sakura."
In summary, because the three routes express different themes and have different plots, it is unrealistic to integrate all their content into one perfect combined storyline.
However, although the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works routes have different themes, they also share many similarities. With some adaptation and pruning, integration is possible.
In contrast, the theme and story of the Heaven's Feel route are too different from the first two. Without extensive adaptation and pruning, it is almost impossible to merge it with them.
Furthermore, compared to the first two routes, the Heaven's Feel route contains too much material that does not originally belong to it, resulting in weaker completion, lower quality, and even poorer characterization of Matou Sakura.
For example, the part of the plot that reveals the truth of the Holy Grail War should have belonged to Illya's route. However, because Illya's route was cut, it had to be placed into Heaven's Feel, leading to reduced development for other characters, including Matou Sakura.
Not only that, over the years, many people have speculated that more than just the Illya route was cut from Fate/stay night.
For instance, there might have been a Caster route where she is picked up on the way home from school on the first day, a Rider route where a contract is signed in a branch of Heaven's Feel, or even a Matou Shinji route focused on revealing the truth of the Matou family.
Also, speaking of Matou Shinji, one must mention a major point of controversy in the Heaven's Feel route, which was one of the main reasons he became an anti-moon fan.
And this leads to one of Nasu Kinoko's darker and more twisted tendencies.
When depicting female characters suffering hardship and oppression, Nasu Kinoko often uses sexual oppression as a narrative device, as if there were no other way to portray suffering.
Matou Sakura is one of the representative examples. Others include Caren Ortensia from the Fate series, Kohaku from Tsukihime, and Asagami Fujino from The Garden of Sinners.
If only one or two characters were written this way, there might be room to discuss the necessity of such portrayals. However, when so many characters receive the same treatment, it suggests a consistent personal preference.
Moreover, even the backlash regarding Mash's "Lady of the Lion" incident in Fate/Grand Order Chapter 2.6 can be seen as a mild reflection of this tendency.
Fortunately, as a commercially popular game, this aspect never fully came to the forefront, and Mash avoided a similar outcome.
In short, he strongly opposes this way of depicting suffering and sees no benefit in it beyond catering to questionable tastes.
On the contrary, the drawbacks are clear. It can deal a serious blow to a character's popularity.
Among the three main heroines of Fate/stay night, Artoria stands at the top by a landslide due to her widespread influence. Although Tohsaka Rin is not as popular as Artoria, she is still a top-tier and widely beloved character.
As for Matou Sakura, her popularity is noticeably lower than that of the other two.
There are many reasons for this, but her experiences are undoubtedly one of the key factors.
And this is something he will never allow to appear in his version of Fate/stay night.
Returning to the main topic.
Over the next few days, Akira spent most of his energy thinking about the adaptation of Fate/stay night.
Adapting and integrating the three routes was already difficult, but there were other issues that needed to be addressed.
For example, one of the main villains in Fate/stay night, who is also a very popular and widely discussed character in the entire Fate series, Gilgamesh.
In Fate/stay night, Gilgamesh was still a relatively simple villain with great power, an extremely arrogant and conceited personality, and a strong desire for destruction and plunder. His character was rather flat.
It was only later that Nasu Kinoko began to favor him, making him appear frequently in subsequent works while gradually expanding and refining his characterization, allowing him to become a more complex and widely appreciated character.
However, no matter how much his character was developed later, his initial portrayal in Fate/stay night remains a lasting flaw, which is why many people both dislike and admire him.
Now that he was adapting Fate/stay night, he could not simply follow the same approach. Instead, he needed to reinterpret Gilgamesh's actions based on his later, more complete characterization.
This approach would not apply only to Gilgamesh, but also to other characters and events in similar situations.
In short, as he organized the information about Fate/stay night in his mind, one idea after another emerged, and Akira's thoughts gradually became clearer.
Besides integrating and adapting the plot, he also began practicing his drawing every day, as this related to another key factor in the success of Fate. Not just drawing skill, but the art style.
To be precise, Takeuchi Takashi's art style.