① The Double Truth: The Shingon School

This allows for Kuzuki to slay Rider and almost kill Saber due to his unique fighting style. The Double Truth: The Shingon School assumed she was a villain through and through at first, but then her story turned out to be a pure love story, which is exactly what we were aiming for Area Studies U of Tokyo. If he were to go against Caster for some reason, the battle would The Double Truth: The Shingon School down to whoever manages to get the first strike. Gabbay John Woods editors. Add on his unexplained ability to travel through Singularities on his own, Bedivere's comment that he feels similar to Merlin, Holmes' lack of confirmation for his identity in the Epic of Remnant trailer note While not confirmed, his voice and general demeanor have fans agree that he's the narrator, and the lack of identity is a striking contrast to Jeanne explicitly stating her name for Observer on Timeless Temple and Goetia stubbornly clinging to "Solomon" for Cosmos in Richard Serras Life And Art Analysis Lostbelt. Over the centuries, the Kamakura New Religions gradually became the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan. This was often directed, fairly The Double Truth: The Shingon School Dropshippers Research Paper, toward assimilative traditions like the Kyoto School.

Rishukyo (Shingon chanting)

Though Summer BB's presence takes a dark turn in the second half. Oniland Halloween involves Oni-themed theme park and magical girl parody. Holy Samba Night Christmas has Quetzalcoatl of all people, become a Santa wearing a samba suit because she misunderstood the word and get involved in a wrestling tournament for the Holy Grail with her heel self. Breather Boss : After the nightmare that was Demon Hound Barghest , you face off against Black Wolf , and while you're locked to three servants, with one being Mash Kirielight, it's just enough to fit in both Altria Caster and Tamano-no-mae, and that boss suffers from a status ailment that deducts his HP by 40, each turn, meaning that you can simply wait it out and watch as he self-destructs.

Of course, the only things annoying about him is that upon breaking his first HP bar, he inflicts a party-wide stun that can't be removed for three turns except against Mash, though since he tends to target her unless he is using his NP, it kinda renders it moot, and while he does have a 5-use Guts, said Guts only revive him by 1 HP, meaning that it doesn't take long for him to fall after he self-destructs.

Breather Level : The Salem chapter of Epic of Remnant is very story-centric with only nine chapters and several 0 AP segments, thus it has much easier and fewer battles compared to other EOR chapters. The only major stage-wide gimmick is that early fights will have both player and enemy levels halved. Broken Base : While it's not a new issue for the Fate series, the question of whether the Historical Gender Flip Servants are overdone, silly Fanservice , or whether they do represent interesting takes on the source material and at least lend the cast a bit of gender balance. The disparity between the treatment of the different servers, particularly the North American server, is a hot-button issue. One side is dissatisfied by lesser rewards for the same events, lack of professionalism by the NA staff during the very occasional livestreams, and nearly complete lack of communication on social media.

Meanwhile, the other side is just happy that the game is in English, and feels that the former perspective is outweighed by the many quality-of-life updates, particularly the lower quartz cost to roll the gacha for the first year of release. The gap has also significantly narrowed with time, and NA is more likely to receive updates chronologically earlier than JP did, cooling this divide with time. The alterations made to Emiya Alter in the NA server are almost guaranteed to spark arguments whenever they get brought up. On one side, you have people who like the change because it makes him look less like a racial stereotype, and argue that localization is not censorship and people shouldn't try to equate the two just because not localizing would offend someone.

On the other side, you have people that dislike the change, see it as censorship, and argue that it goes against the claim by the NA team at launch that there would be no censorship. Agartha is easily the most controversial story arc in Epic of Remnant. There are fans who appreciate that the pseudo-Singularity tried to look into deeper themes of political science and the historical mistreatment of women, and there are fans that think that setting everything in a Lady Land where women oppress and enslave men, sometimes sexually, is not only disgusting but makes the villains come across as Straw Feminists.

There are those who appreciate its unconventional takes on its historical figures, such as the Caster of Nightless City essentially deconstructing the idea that Scheherazade would be mentally whole and happy after her ordeal, and still being married to a tyrant, however reformed , or the Rider of the Resistance inverting the usual Historical Hero Upgrade servants are subjected to and blackwashing the character into a monstrous symbol of the excesses of global colonialism , and there are those who feel these things result in a cast too full of jackasses to care about.

It's even in dispute whether or not it gave much-needed screentime to Astolfo and d'Eon, or whether it introduced them only to squander them with endless streams of bad jokes about their Ambiguous Gender. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that the humor is poorly-timed and tin-eared, with even the chapter's fans admitting it badly damages the tone of some scenes. Shimousa, easily the most popular Epic of Remnant chapter in Japan, is much more controversial in the West.

For every fan who loves the presentation and cool sword fights, another complains that it spends far too long twittering in fight-jargon. It is written in a very different style from every other chapter in the game , and extensively references both Japanese fantasy and historical literature and Japanese history and mythology with an all-Japanese cast and no theme-breaking characters, meaning that while it made for a cool and deep story to those Western fans sufficiently familiar with Japanese culture and history to see what it was going for, some were left scratching their heads, bored and confused , leading to the criticism that the cast is largely random Japanese people no one outside of Japan knows or cares about who can't shut up about how cool each other are.

Worse, it tinkered with the gameplay via Character Select Forcing , meaning some bosses were harder than they normally would be due to having to use a story-upgraded Musashi rather than the player's Support list. It all seems to boil down to whether or not you are familiar with and like the conventions of classic, spiritually-infused martial arts movies and books. Osakabehime's localization utilizing Fangirl Japanese has one camp finding it endearing, fitting, and funny while the other side feels that it hurt or doesn't work with her background and original characterization. The Tokugawa Labyrinth event, in both gameplay and story. In the former case, fans enjoy the unconventional, experimental event structure, and appreciate that it is very merciful in terms of both AP and farming requirements, while critics dislike the drawn-out nature of the dungeon-exploration gameplay , especially if they prefer a more traditional mission structure and find the exploration scenes more Padding than atmospheric.

Those who dislike it complain that Kama's Fatal Flaw of apathy undermines her ability to project threat and menace, and that disproportionate focus is given to Kasuga-no-Tsubone that could've gone to almost anyone else, a fairly obscure figure outside of her native Japan , but who is treated as one of the most famous and important women in Japanese history, even ending on a tease of her one day being a playable servant that international audiences know has yet to amount to anything. Pseudo-servants as a concept.

Essentially, whenever one shows up, there's dissension in the ranks between those who are glad to see a familiar face from the constellation of Type Moon mythology, especially when the spirit in question makes sense and is largely dominant Muramasa fusing with Shirou was popular enough that fans clamoured for him to become playable for years , and Parvati and Kama each inhabiting the light and dark sides of Sakura's personality is widely seen as inspired and those who feel that the mythological figure they've fused with is now "wasted" and never going to show up, since the "host" influences the being possessing them to some extent. This is most prominent with Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, whose personalities are almost-entirely dormant after fusing with Waver Velvet and Reines Archisorte, respectively, but it also affects many others, especially after strange fake revealed that an Ishtar devoid of Rin's influence is effectively a completely-different character.

While Mash as a character is generally well-received, her Ortinax kit from the Lostbelt arc has divided fans. It is unmistakably a Nerf to her previous Game-Breaker status, but no one can seem to come to a consensus on if she still has viable usage as a Buster-crit and taunter tank, or is now pretty much useless as a unit. Captain Obvious Reveal : Koyanskaya actually being Tamamo-Vitch of the Tamamo-Nine is something that pretty much the entire fandom saw coming since her debut. Not only is she illustrated by Wada Arco, but she has plenty of Tamamo's design traits specifically her hair and eye color and retains both many of her speech and darker personality quirks. Tellingly, during the Solomon Singularity, after players were done farming materials from Barbatos, they went straight to Flauros to make him pay for all of his slights.

And just to be sure, the players still sometimes use the Battle Cry that sounded more like " And this is for Olga Marie, you son of a bitch! Do you have a playable Servant that you somehow hate Columbus is a popular example for this? Worry no more, watch as you call in Chen Gong and then sacrifice that hated Servant as a damage bomb to your enemy. After she viciously killed many members of Chaldea and spread misery and sorrow throughout the other Lostbelts, Qin Shi Huang takes it upon himself to essentially keep her trapped, helpless beneath his charms set on her and eternally tortured until he finds a way to properly seal her, and until he does find such a way, he'll torture her to the point she can't even consider doing anything else ever again.

He ends it all off with a cold remark of "Remember the suffering of the people you've killed until now". For that matter, finally being able to take it to her in her infantile Prized Beast form in Lostbelt No. Sure, she's still apart of the That One Boss Boss Rush that plagues the chapter, but to finally kick her ass after all that she's done is epic nonetheless. After over 3 years of ruining people's lives, turning Pepe's Lostbelt into a hell of a place , and just being an absolute dick, Ashiya Douman at long last gets his comeuppance in Heiankyo, where you are able to beat the shit out of him with your servants along with Kintoki's giant mech.

After the horrible things they've done to Altria Caster and her friends, as well as Morgan's Inner Circle , watching all of the fae get brutally massacred in Part 3 of Avalon le Fae is very much this, especially since it's established that the vast majority of them are horrible pieces of garbage, and they've ALWAYS been garbage even from the very beginning, so they're finally getting what they completely deserve. Outside all those, Lostbelt 6 also provides the agonizing Rasputinian Death of Beryl Gut, which after the shits he has done especially backstabbing and murdering Wodime and his very-very un-tragic past, which the players definitely appreciate even at the cost of Pepe's Heroic Sacrifice.

Character Tiers : As one might expect, and more heavily debated than many. Almost every tier list has Waver and Merlin at the top because of a major consensus that they are useful for almost any fight. Meanwhile, on the other end of the scale, Chloe von Einzbern from the Prisma Illya crossover, Rider Kintoki from the Onigashima event, and Ryougi Shiki from the The Garden of Sinners event can only be described as ridiculous which itself says it all, really.

Another part of the game's design is that lower-rarity does not automatically mean the character is flat-out inferior. Yes, they start with lower level caps, and even at equalized level via Palingenesis their stats are usually lower Some noted above under Bribing Your Way to Victory are so useful that they're often considered " low-rarity EX tier ", in that even for a player with a strong gold lineup otherwise, their skills and NPs make them valid picks over even five-star characters. Each of the card metas can be subjected to various tiers.

The Japanese version's metagame for difficult gameplay content for most of Observer on Timeless Temple and Epic of Remnant was heavily Buster-oriented, because between Buster-based supports, especially those who enabled Buster critical hits Merlin is notably the last and strongest of these and Buster-based damage dealers in general Jeanne Alter, Musashi, Raikou, and Ishtar players could tear through even high-level enemies and bosses, even after the introduction of break bars in an attempt to curb their destructive power. However, after the release of Caster Altria, the Buster meta was viewed less favorably as unlike a team of two Castorias or a team of two Skadis, a team of two Merlins can not cause NP Loops to happen, but it gained more favor after Koyanskaya of Light came out since her skillset allows Buster NP Loops to happen.

Prior to the release of Caster Altria, Arts-based teams with damage dealers Saber Lancelot, Nero Bride, Chloe, and Swimsuit Altria , general supports Waver, Tamamo, and Holmes , and excellent tanks Mash, Jeanne, and Georgios were often seen as the "alternative" strategy, with "stall" teams based around grinding enemies down over time, and many tricks that worked even for players who sank less or no! After the release of Caster Altria, the Arts meta started to be viewed as the top tier card meta as it is very easy for Arts damage dealers to spam their NP. Due to an initial dearth of Quick supports, Quick-based Servants were left behind in the dust, with the only two major exceptions being Jack and Rider Kintoki.

However, with the arrival of Scathach-Skadi from the third anniversary gacha, combined with various Rank Up Quests on various Quick servants, the Quick meta is back on par with the other two card types, allowing for more powerful and fun Quick team compositions. As of the release of Caster Altria, the quick meta is now viewed as the "alternative" strategy to NP Spam.

Complacent Gaming Syndrome : Most parties tend to just have Waver, Merlin, Skadi, Tamamo, or Altria Caster as the support party member on the frontline to take advantage of the high damage boosts and powerful NP gauge charge they offer. Starting NP Craft Essences are favored for equipping on Servants so they can activate their NP faster against the enemy or get a head start on buffing the party.

Typical team compositions for hard content such as challenge quests have one damage dealer of any class, and 2 supports usually Casters equipped with Fragments of The supports stack several damage-boosting buffs on the damage dealer and the damage dealer then in turn with a probable crit boost given by Fragments of generating stars every turn use their NP or Brave Chain to burst through the enemy's HP. Complete Monster : Ashiya Douman , Caster of Limbo and the "Beautiful Carnivore", harbored an intense drive to surpass his lifelong rival Abe no Seimei that led him to commit numerous atrocities for the sake of becoming all-powerful. Manipulating Amakusa and corrupting the Heroic Spirit Swordsmen in the Shimousa Epic of Remnant , he indirectly causes all the mass murder and sacrifices done there as an experiment for his true goals.

He later manipulated Arjuna Over Gods in the Indian Lostbelt into accelerating the cycle of destruction and recreation to cause constant misery, death, and suffering for the inhabitants out of sheer sadistic delight. Allied to the Foreign God and the Crypters, once they're compromised, Ashiya slips away to Hell Mandala where he repeats many of his deeds from Shimusa upon the new denizens.

Creating his own means to become a Beast, Ashiya Douman stopped at nothing, not even constant genocide and the destruction of worlds over time and space, if it meant proving his superiority. Assimilating the Demon God Pillar and throwing it away after torturous servitude, Beast-III R took over Seraphix using her dark charm and charisma, culminating in using its Planetarium to torture , near-dead young Masters over and over into summoning Servants that repeatedly killed one another in a recreation of the Moon Holy Grail War.

Enslaved by her own ego and thirst for pleasure, Beast-III R is nothing more than a self-absorbed, narcissistic hedonist who viewed all of humanity as mere tools to satisfy herself. Continuity Lockout : While the game takes efforts to assume the player hasn't seen anything else in the Nasuverse before and explain things properly, certain aspects can be confusing without prior history of the Nasuverse. Many servants retain memories of prior Holy Grail Wars, and therefore, prior installments of the franchise.

Many times they'll make reference to events they experienced in these Wars, but without proper context, the references come across as cryptic. Some characters like Elisabeth even carry their Character Development with them, meaning that their portrayal might seem odd without knowing why they seem to act so differently from their historical selves. Certain events act more as stealth sequels to other installments, such as SE.

Made more egregious for the western fanbase however due to a case of No Export for You. The anime adaptation of the game goes straight from Fuyuki to Babylon , skipping six story chapters in between. Because of that, those who haven't played the game will most likely be lost going into the anime. Crack Pairing : Olga Marie is shipped a lot with the protagonist. However, their obvious connection Nursery Rhyme being partially composed of Hans' stories , in game synergy, and matching, cute designs for the most part have inspired fans to pair them together. This also extends to shipping Dantes with either of the two and is sometimes shipped with Jeanne Alter instead. In there, fake Brynhild became very obsessed with the former, this pairing then become very popular.

She looks exactly like Jeanne Alter, and shares some of her attack animations as well as her idle combat pose with Brynhild. The fandom promptly came to the conclusion that this wasn't actually a younger version of Jeanne Alter, but instead her child with Brynhild via, varyingly, magic, Chaldea's science, the Throne of Heroes, the Grail, sheer love , or some combination of the above. Medb and Scathach, which came almost out of nowhere and is a bit strange considering the fact that canonically Scathach views Medb as a Manchild with sexual outbursts. Robin Hood and Ibaraki have been getting fanart together shortly after the Halloween event, due to Ibaraki enjoying the sweets that Robin shoots down her mouth.

Avenger of Shinjuku specifically Lobo is shipped with Enkidu and Kintoki since the latter two have a close connection with animals a wolf even summoned Enkidu in strange fake. It's less of a romantic relationship, though, and more of a master-pet bond. The former pair even got acknowledged in one of the summer Craft Essences. Hijikata has a close relationship possibly romantic with Okita, yet it's not uncommon for him to be paired with Musashi or Carmilla since he's seen flirting with the two in his My Room lines. Andras is also not an unpopular pair for him. Ozymandias and Da Vinci because of a R doujin that featured them as a couple and when they were featured together in a Camelot rate-up banner, fans joked that even DW ships them.

In-game, he does compliment her for her beauty and intelligence and says he wants her to be his concubine, but apparently he doesn't impress her much. Jack and Nursery Rhyme at one point capture both of them and declare them "Dad" and "Mom" respectively. Outside of memes, the two actually do have pretty good synergy with each other in gameplay, which helps fuel the ship further.

With Gorgon already having some Tsundere tendencies, this led to fanart of them being shipped. Since Arthur's "White Rose" costume was released, people began to ship him with Nero Bride since they look like a new couple in their wedding. Sometimes with Amakusa as the priest. Other times they'll pair him with Altria , since Extella gave her a "White Rose" costume of her own. Becomes somewhat of an Ascended Fanon during the "Murder at the Kogetsukan", as Lancelot and Raikou are the heads of the Violet family as father and mother, respectively. However, it turns out they are not really paired and only wrongly assumed both in and out-universe since it is later revealed that Lancelot's "wife" is actually Euryale, and Raikou is one of their "daughters".

While not much attention was made to this, the pairing finally gained traction after being expanded further in the New Year "Sparrow's Inn Activity Log" Event, leading some fans to believe that Medb's secretly weak to Gap Moe due to Skadi and Medb's interactions. The pairing got started when it was revealed that Daybit's Lostbelt was located in South America, the same place where ORT has been sleeping for thousands of years, which drove lots of speculation that was further fueled by a certain piece of info revealed in the Olympus chapter.

When the memes depicting Wodime calling Daybit for help exploded, the pairing also gained traction as one of Daybit's common responses was that he was too busy " fusing " with ORT-chan to answer. What makes it extra crack-tastic is that Daybit is a loner by nature and according to the Character Material book ORT is too alien to ever understand earthly concepts, and trying to romance it is just asking for trouble. Arjuna Alter and Oberon quickly began to rise as a pairing, merely because of how similar their poses were in their Final Ascension artwork. Cue the "Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars" memes and edits putting them side by side, and even putting them together in one picture.

Crazy Is Cool : Gag Servants can fall into this, especially some of the wackier Altria variants; how else would one describe an evil genderbent King Arthur who's also a gunslinging biker maid in a swimsuit, or one who's also a Sith Lord otaku from space? Creator Worship : Whenever Kinoko Nasu is announced to be directly writing a story, the fans react with extreme joy that he'll make the story, be it a Singularity or other Nasuverse works, epic and awesome as proven with Camelot to Solomon. Altera in an even more Stripperific outfit than usual, riding a sheep? Sigh, whatever, DelightWorks. The sheep can fly by shooting rainbows out of its butt?

What, are we referencing ancient Nyancat memes now? What the hell? That is the point at which you're likely to collapse from laughter when seeing Christmas Altera in action for the first time. One of the Servants that you can obtain, and thus burn is Jeanne d'Arc. The first Crypter and Servant team you face is Kadoc and Anastasia. Due to class advantage, one of the best Servants to battle them with is Rider Sakata Kintoki. Someone getting hit and run by a motorcycle? A princess getting hit and run with a motorcycle multiple times to save the world?

Someone being disillusioned with someone they looked up to is sad. Roman saying that his image of Marie Antoinette is "falling apart" after she makes it sound like she wants to sexually dominate both Jeannes and Atalante going through minor Heroic BSoD and having to use the Holy Grail as an excuse for why she won't be broken by finding out that Artemis is hopelessly romantic are both hilarious. Crossover Ship : As of late March , fan works started having Belial together with Kiara due to both of them being similarly Too Kinky to Torture and having their events released at the same time in their respective games. Cry for the Devil : The Lev Lainur met during the game is a monster, no question.

However, the man he was before and his fate warrant some sympathy. In many iterations of the Kaleidoscope, Lev always becomes the thrall of Goetia due to his family, the Flauros, being the descendants of the Demon Pillars like the Makiri. However, the Clock Tower short story illustrates what differs in other iterations compared to here. Now, Lev is remembered by both the characters and players only as a monster and agent of Goetia. As reprehensible as Kiara is during the SE. Several of the entry logs she left drive home the point that for quite some time, she was just a scared young woman that wanted to help people, only for Zepar to turn her into a Beast before he soon regretted it. They were eventually nerfed and are now almost laughably easy compared to back at launch, although they have maintained their irritatingly high critical rates, which can spell trouble for unprepared players.

Chimera-type enemies. They are commonly Berserkers, meaning that only a few Servants can defend themselves against them, have a higher crit chance than most enemies and their skill either boosts their own Attack and Crit Strength or everyone's Attack and Crit Strength. They also generally have more health than most other enemies would have, so good luck killing them in one turn even if they are Berserkers. To make things worse, they tend to pop as mini-bosses in events, making farming harder.

The Enforcement Knights in Camelot are one of many foes that the player has to deal with, but they stand out as being some of the most frustrating enemies you'll come across. They have massive amounts of HP, making it seem as though they are better-fitting as bosses, but after the first few times you fight the Saber ones, the game throws them in groups at you, while also introducing Lancer, Archer, Berserker, and Ruler variations. The main reason they are so hard to kill though is the skills for the Saber, Lancer, and Ruler variations titled "Oath of Destruction", which increases their Attack and Defense for two turns, and three turns respectively. While frustrating on its own, they have a tendency to spam the skill in rapid succession, resulting in often a single Knight having their Defense up so high that even level 90 and above Servants with class triangle advantage will do virtually no damage to them, even if a Noble Phantasm is used.

Not to mention buffing their damage means they can casually kill most Servants, especially Berserkers. Not helping is that they have other skills that can increase critical hit chance, or their special attack damage. In fact, Enforcement Knights are commonly cited as among the hardest enemies in the game, even years after release, simply because of how durable they are. The Lahmus that appear in the latter parts of Babylonia aren't just demonic in appearances , but also in gameplay. And what's worse is that unlike most other enemies with their bulk, they'll attack in groups of at least 2, and once they start appearing, they'll be the most common enemy you'll face.

At least they stop showing up after their story arc is over, and have not been reused for any Free Quests or subsequent events. Their upgraded counterparts, the Bel Lahmus, are even worse. They couple NP drain with their buff removal, have even more HP, and they have an Arts debuff on their special attack instead to cripple any Archers that you might bring. The only saving grace is that you'll usually only have to fight one of them at a time. The one time you do fight a swarm of them, you do get King Hassan as story support, and his insta-kill effects will be more likely to trigger against them. Hydras, introduced in Agartha, are Archer-type giant enemies, with an innately-high crit rate, critical hits that damage the entire party at once, a short charge bar for a party-wide poison breath attack that deals high damage, and they have a skill that not only increases their attack power but applies Buff Block to the entire allied team.

And like chimeras, they are gold enemies and get three actions a turn. Maha Naga from Lostbelt 4. Essentially a combination of Hydras and normal Dragons, these enemies not only have a lot of HP, but they have a nasty buff removal called Heavenly Tuning, which also buffs their own crit chance. Since they hit everyone normally with their attacks, they are incredibly tanky and hard to kill, and if you try to beat them by buff stacking, they can wipe it away and attack anyway. What the game also doesn't tell you, is that they have hidden coding that will have them focus on attacking Evil aligned characters, so if you don't plan for that, you can end up losing a unit to them.

Treating Dr. Roman like the Butt-Monkey he is in game has largely fallen out of favor after his Heroic Sacrifice against Goetia. Draco in Leather Pants : Kiyohime, which is somewhat impressive, given the game already gives her a decent amount of Historical Hero Upgrade. Despite her negative qualities already being played down and her positive ones being played up, a surprising number of fans push that to the extreme and basically act as though she has no negative qualities at all, when the game still doesn't shy away from the fact that she's extremely likely to murder her "husband" over a petty slight.

Ending Fatigue : You'd expect Septem to end after finally giving Lev his comeuppance. Instead, Altera shows up and the chapter continues for a little longer. Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game : Response to the writing has been mostly positive, owing to the interesting narrative and the large amount of character interaction especially Nasu-written ones. The gameplay, on the other hand, has been criticized for being full of repetitive and irritating fetch quests needed to power up Servants, poor game balance and an infamously frustrating gacha.

For a long time, this naturally posed a problem for English speaking fans With the advent of the US version, this trope quickly occurred for most non-Japanese players as they were mainly playing to finally get access to story content that had been non-accessible for two years. Epileptic Trees : Thanks to the The Stinger of the New Year OVA where someone actually found the Time Throne and took one of Solomon's rings why didn't the person also take the 9 other rings on the throne as well will be a mystery for the likely duration of Chapter 2 combined with this single frame in the opening for Part 2 showing a cloaked man wearing a tattered lab coat with white pants and shoes made many speculate that Dr Romani has returned from non-existence!!

After what happened with Galahad in Camelot and the Downer Beginning of Part 2, is it any wonder why fans want to believe it's the good doctor? Lostbelt 5 eventually reveals that it is someone who looks like Romani but is heavily implied to be Goetia, creating further speculation. While Fou did sacrifice his powers and intelligence to revive Mash after her Heroic Sacrifice with a normal human lifespan , many questions if he will stay a mindless animal forever. A lot of people are left wondering if he's just faking it, because Sion notes that he's growing new sapience and events show him talking normally with no change whatsoever, or never lost it whilst being a Deadpan Snarker , and that it is possibly a trait he picked up from Merlin.

And whether this possible regrowing of his powers will result in the same Fou or something closer in nature to Primate Murder. The identity of the Foreign Priestess is largely an unknown, leaving her rife for guesswork as to who or what she is. Evidence used for this idea is that she is depicted as reaching out to Mash in the opening for Cosmos in the Lostbelt , and that Riyo's Learning with Manga! Lostbelt 5. Another popular theory is that it possibly hails from the Solar System as some kind of Greco-Roman related entity, with supporters pointing towards that it's intentionally rigged the game entirely in favor of Wodime's Atlantis Lostbelt where the Greek Gods have reigned supreme for millennia and originally only wanted to bring that Lostbelt back with no competition whatsoever.

After his trial quest had him repeatedly refuse to answer whether he was a fictional character or the genuine article, many have begun suspecting that Sherlock Holmes is not who he claims to be. When Holmes tries to pass it off as his job as a Ruler making it so that he doesn't spoil all the mysteries in the world, Archer likewise calls bull saying Holmes had numerous ways to get around that. Holmes quickly changes the subject however.

He even explicitly tells Mash when they meet in Camelot that his true identity and essence is slightly different than what she believes. People have pointed out that his circumstances as a Ruler are rather suspect. Morgan Le Fey from Proper Human History is also shown to have the requirements of this class as she was chosen by Britain itself to rule her home country, but Uther's ploy manages to prevent that, and even then, she's still treated almost like goddess thanks to one of her Split Personalities being the personification of Britain. Holmes meanwhile is not a deity, and was never a leader. Even in life, his official designation was as a consulting detective.

Holmes says the Grail made him a Ruler rather than his standard Caster, since as a Ruler, he is forced to maintain the mysteries of the world and can't go around solving everything, but said claim comes across as odd. Add on his unexplained ability to travel through Singularities on his own, Bedivere's comment that he feels similar to Merlin, Holmes' lack of confirmation for his identity in the Epic of Remnant trailer note While not confirmed, his voice and general demeanor have fans agree that he's the narrator, and the lack of identity is a striking contrast to Jeanne explicitly stating her name for Observer on Timeless Temple and Goetia stubbornly clinging to "Solomon" for Cosmos in the Lostbelt.

The only characters Yamanaka has illustrated since then are Holmes and the Alien Priestess. Mash is a Demi-servant bearing the Heroic Spirit of Galahad , albeit limited at the time due to their refusal to aid Chaldea requiring Mash be powered by the Orthenus armor and a command seal be used. After the conclusion of the Sixth Lostbelt, a lot of fans came to believe that Holmes is part of the Pretender class due to his change in class as well as having a lot of similarities to Oberon-Vortigern note They both have an antagonistic relationship with Tamamo Vitch as Holmes declares her to be his greatest enemy while Oberon outright calls her disgusting, both are significant fictional characters from European literature, and they both have some relation to the Ruler class as Oberon's class was initially displayed with the Ruler card before being corrupted to a Pretender card.

There's a red-haired female gunslinger that briefly appears in the epilogue of Saber Wars 2 event for a dialogless conversation with Billy the Kid. Speculation about her identity is still rampant since it remains unanswered in the game. Needless to say Daybit Sem Void brings a lot of theories. The fact that his name is a Significant Anagram of David Symbiot has also made people wonder if he's David Bluebook, and if so how he ended up seemingly time-traveled to the past to get recruited into the A Team after seemingly being killed. Oberon-Vortigern has gotten this treatment as while he was the Final Boss and overall villain of the sixth Lostbelt , he committed a huge Kick the Son of a Bitch moment by finishing the destruction of the Fairy Britain.

Especially the older Lancer Altria Alter. Subverted with Rider Altria Santa Alter , who is trying to be a better person than her other forms, and Okita Alter, who, despite being an Alter Servant and Counter Guardian, is pretty friendly and even Adorkable at times. Carmilla, who is basically Stripperiffic and Dominatrix combined with a murderer. Cu Chulainn Alter , according to Medb. She lusted after him in life, so she asked the Grail for an 'evil Cu Chulainn' who is her fantasy version of him.

Should we take a detached, scientific approach that analyzes the occurrences of words simply in their own contexts as objectively as possible? Or should we try to engage them so that they become our language and we can write or even speak in the style of the most ancient Chinese prose and poetry? How can we best understand language: with the detachment of a philologist or with the engagement of a poet? The philosophers of language in Edo-period Confucianism debated such issues. The emphasis on ancient texts, language, and meanings inspired another group of scholars to pursue an entirely different direction. The blatant sinophilia of some of the Japanese Confucians vexed those Japanese who wanted to deepen the appreciation of their own ancient language and texts.

The oldest Japanese texts such as Kojiki had been written in the eighth century, before an effective orthography for Japanese had been fully developed. As a result, many parts of those most ancient texts were nearly unintelligible to later readers. Philologists and literary critics in a movement called Native Studies kokugaku took up the task of breaking the code by discovering, for example, that ancient Japanese had vowel sounds that soon dropped out of use by the time the orthography had been standardized. That helped account for many apparent discrepancies and allowed for insights into ancient expressions.

See the entry on The Kokugaku School. In the early ninth century esoteric Buddhism supplied the philosophical underpinnings for what was, in effect, a quite similar view of reality as a field of interdependent, internally related events that are always in flux. That is roughly how the situation stood for much of the medieval period with one notable exception. For a creation or cosmogonic theory formulated in diachronic time, the point is clear enough. What comes first creates what comes next and hence the latter is ontologically dependent on the former. The remarkable point is that this claim, so common in Abrahamic theories of genesis as well as most classical Greco-Roman cosmogonies, seems to have been mostly unargued in Japan before the medieval period, primarily because Buddhism and Confucianism place little importance in their philosophies on creation myths.

Buddhism in particular favors a cyclical rather than linear theory of cosmic time and, therefore, in claiming the ontological superiority of buddhas over their manifestations as kami, the argument was based on a metaphysical or logical argument, not an appeal to a chronology of creation. Certainly, we find that emphasis in Native Studies, in both its early philological and literary project as well as in its focus on Kojiki.

That language was understood to consist of word-things koto imbued with the creation of the spirit of ancient Japan yamato no damashii. See the entry on The Kokugaku School, section 3. For example, Jiun Sonja — was a Shingon monk whose career ran counter to the typical pattern in Edo Japan in that he was first a Confucian and then became a Buddhist. That inspired Jiun to investigate the roots of Buddhism, but in that case the relevant texts were in Sanskrit, a language barely studied in Japan at the time. Based on his research, Jiun argued for a new form of monasticism based on what he understood to be the original principles of Buddhism that preceded and transcended the various sectarian forms of Buddhism known in Japan.

Thus, Jiun represents yet another example of an Edo-period thinker who used philology as a means of unearthing the origins and philosophical principles of a tradition—in his case Buddhism—in much the same way as his contemporaries did in Native and Confucian Studies. By contrast, Jiun pointed out, the Confucian virtues derived from a blind acceptance of texts claiming that the ancient Chinese sages had lived in a utopian society of harmony. In other words, Buddhist ethics emerge from an analysis based in the engagement with immanent reality, whereas Confucian ethics are based in the detached study of texts considered authoritative. As sinophilia increased among Rinzai Zen monks in the later medieval and Edo periods, many Rinzai monasteries became centers for practicing the arts and letters, much in the tradition of the Chinese literati and often to the neglect of traditional Zen disciplines.

Occasionally, Rinzai masters like Hakuin Ekaku — reacted against this development and urged a revival of intense and rigorous forms of praxis. One teaching that would have important ramifications for later events was an increasing emphasis on death as a theme. Of course, the former occurs only at the moment of battle and the latter should be a mentality of egoless engagement within all the events of everyday life.

By convention the modern period in Japan is considered to have begun with the demise of the Tokugawa shogunate and the formal restoration of the emperor to power in and continues until today. Although a smattering of information about the West had trickled into Japan during its period of closure starting in , the intelligentsia were shocked at how far Japan had fallen behind technologically. Forced to accept severely unfavorable trade agreements first with the United States and then Britain and Russia, Japan realized that it had to modernize quickly or fall victim to Western imperialism.

That challenge inspired much of the philosophical thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In response, increasing emphasis was placed on the acceptance of Western philosophical theories along with Western technologies and social institutions. As for utilitarianism, they admired its consequentialist ethics that used an empirically derived cost-benefit analysis to determine what would bring maximum happiness or pleasure for society as a whole. Beyond the practical considerations—the increasing military weakness of the Tokugawa control within Japan, persistent economic instability, recurrent peasant uprisings, the imminent threat of foreign invasion, and so forth—three philosophical ideologies had coalesced to support the overthrow of the shogunate and restoration of the emperor.

First, the Mito School, a think tank of intellectual historians who for centuries were writing a comprehensive history of Japan, had developed a political interpretation of the imperial system as kokutai, basically a theory claiming that from time immemorial the emperor has embodied the state in such a way that the two are inseparable. Specifically, because of that embodiment, the celestial kami who created Japan, the Japanese land, and the Japanese people are in a holographical relation reflecting, containing, and depending on each other. According to those mythic narratives, the celestial kami had appointed the imperial family to rule over the land. The Imperial Restoration also required a third, militant ideology.

The practical exigencies had become so dire that the shogunate might have crumbled without the support of the three philosophical ideologies, but once the revolution was complete the ideologies formed the political theory behind the new imperial state. Following models developed by Germany and Italy, for example, the new Japanese state honed its own identity as a nation state by basing itself in ancient myths of racial uniformity, warrior heroism, ethnic purity, and a claim to a primordial linguistic homogeneity. The more the academic philosophers ventured into ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and even philosophical anthropology, however, the more likely they were to encounter government censorship or even imprisonment.

Yet, in stressing the importance of the cultural and ethnic dimension of human existence, they sometimes found themselves either wittingly or unwittingly considered allies of the imperial state ideology. Edifying narratives of Edo-period virtuous often samurai Confucians made their way into the National Morality curriculum and the Confucian emphasis on academic study was esteemed as a model for the modern student. Yet, because a prevailing view was that Confucianism was a foreign tradition based in archaic texts instead of empirical data or utilitarianism, it seemed to many Westernized intellectuals embarrassingly unmodern. Yet, he did little to contribute to the Japanese Confucian traditions of Japan since philosophically, after eight years of study in Germany, his own academic philosophical sympathies remained very strongly planted in the German idealism which he promoted vigorously in his home department at Tokyo University.

Buddhism was in a different situation from Confucianism, however, because it was both a religion and a philosophy in premodern Japan. The major Buddhist reaction was institutional, trying to be less visibly an exception to the new order, at times even encouraging monks to marry and have families in service to the national program supporting population growth, for example. There was also a philosophical response, however. As a result, some of the brightest young Buddhist seminarians were enrolled in philosophy programs at the Imperial Universities, creating a synergy between Western and Buddhist philosophy in Japan that continues in many quarters until the present.

In addition, intrigued by the manner in which Christian theology was drawing on nineteeth- and twentieth-century European philosophies, pockets of so-called Buddhist-Christian dialogue began to emerge and fully blossomed in the post-censorship era after The postwar period has brought three general developments. This was often directed, fairly or unfairly, toward assimilative traditions like the Kyoto School. In response, the immediate postwar generation or two in most Japanese academic philosophy departments escaped into Western philosophy, often carried out with a sense of purity that rivaled the earlier ethnocentric movement.

Consequently, the large majority of Japanese academic philosophers trained in the latter half of the twentieth century have pursued philosophy according to methods and themes hardly distinguishable from those of the West. This movement has generated increasing interest among philosophers in Europe and the United States, especially those from the more Continental influenced traditions. In some quarters, for example, the Kyoto School is beginning to be recognized in philosophical forums, taking a place alongside other schools of global significance such as the Marburg or Frankfurt Schools. Lastly, with the greater availability of translations into European languages and the sprouting of learned societies for Japanese philosophy in Asia, the United States, and Europe, there are increasingly signs of cross-influence and hybridization.

Western philosophers, even those who do not consider themselves Japanese specialists, are participating in the cross-pollination of ideas. As a philosopher does not need to know Danish to be influenced by Kierkegaard, a philosopher no longer needs to know Japanese to be influenced by, or even contribute to, Japanese philosophy. The last section of this article outlines some themes in Japanese philosophy that may in the future stimulate philosophers of various backgrounds and national origins. When Japanese philosophy considers itself a Way rather than a Wissenschaft , it stresses engagement over detachment. As an enterprise that may transform both knower and known through a bodymind theory-praxis, that Japanese version of philosophy seems to parallel some aspects of Western philosophy in its original, ancient Greek form which also emphasized loving wisdom rather than detached knowledge as well as knowing oneself rather than impersonal analysis.

Thus, the study of Japanese philosophy raises not only philosophical questions, but also opens into metaphilosophical questions about what philosophy is, whether there are different kinds of philosophy, and how different models of philosophy may interrelate. Philosophers often think of reality as consisting of elements that are discovered, engineered, combined, and adapted to meet the needs of their particular systems. In thinking about those elements of reality, Western philosophy has often depended on primary concepts like things , facts , stuff , sensations , subject , object , being , substance , essence , attribute , quality , and so forth. As that list of elemental concepts has become standardized, it has served as a glossary for future thinking and further philosophical initiatives.

Philosophers may discover or even craft new elements, but they do so against that preexisting background, like filling gaps within the periodic table. Commonly, those elements are thought to be fixed entities that are connected or acted upon by relational forces such as causes or agents. Change may also be understood as occurring through the interaction of forces in dynamic opposition, including dialectical opposition. By contrast, Japanese philosophers typically view reality in terms of a complex, organic system of interdependent processes, a system that includes themselves as the knowers.

Thus, the point of departure for the analysis is not a separation between knower and known. The field consists not of things as much as events or processes such as event-words koto , interpenetration , generative force ki , performative intuition , pure experience , naturalness jinen , and so forth. In most Japanese philosophies, oppositional polarities do not create dynamism, but rather, dynamism is the primary event out of which the polarities can be abstracted after the fact.

The polarities have no independent existence of their own and so cannot cause anything, but only have explanatory value for how the dynamism flows, showing its vectors of activity. How might a field model of reality—especially one that explicitly places the thinker within the field being analyzed—challenge the way classical Western philosophical problems have been posed and addressed? For one, philosophizing would seem to emanate not from the thinking thing res cogitans but from the field of bodymind praxis. If, as the Japanese model suggests, reality is a field and includes the philosopher within that field, then the Way of philosophy is a theory-praxis event within that field.

The implication, then, is that philosophizing involves the bodymind as a whole and not just the mind. In other words philosophy is an embodied cognitive activity. Again, this would not be alien to the ancient Greek philosophers. Philosophy is as much a product of philosophers as pottery is the product of potters. Therefore, to what extent, if any, can a philosophy transcend time, place, and culture?

There would be no philosophy without a flesh-and-blood philosopher and as a human being that philosopher is encultured in a particular social milieu. Like karma, that milieu conditions the philosopher even as the philosopher conditions that milieu. Most Western philosophies, as well as Abrahamic religious theologies, think of personal identity as a discrete, independently existing, autonomous agency. That view in turn generates certain assumptions about creative authorship, ethical responsibility, and religious faith in a transcendent reality.

Such a view of personal identity is seldom found in Japanese philosophy, however. Instead, the self is defined by a field of interdependent relationships. Confucianism sees the defining relations as a set of interpersonal roles, Buddhism as a broader set of interdependent events or conditions. All that together—artist, medium, reality, and audience—comprises kokoro in its fullest sense. Kasulis Yet, both agencies—artist and muse—were discrete individuals. How would a philosophy of artistic creativity be different if it is one with no discrete individuals, but instead a complex process of an auto-generative field?

That would seem to be a provocative question for comparative aesthetics. See entry on Japanese Aesthetics. As mentioned in section 3. Yet, from a Western philosophical standpoint, it may seem paradoxical to speak of an ethics without either principles or a sense of responsibility. One way to open a dialogue with the West on this issue is to consider the critique posed by the aforementioned medieval Pure Land philosopher, Shinran, who argued against making rationality the basis for ethics. Engagement with the events as they occur, by contrast, enables a form of knowing that allows a compassionate response, the true basis of ethics. Detachment from events not only feeds the ego I know what is right but also thwarts the internal relationships that make compassion possible.

Shinran argues, the attempt to know what is right and to apply rational principles undermines rather than enables true moral behavior. See the entry on Japanese Pure Land Philosophy, section 4. In light of that analysis, on what grounds can we prefer an ethics of responsibility over one of responsiveness or vice versa? That is, our ethical theories reflect our understanding of what it means to be human. Presumably, the same philosophical anthropology informing our ethics would also underlie, for example, our theories of knowledge, aesthetics, and politics. If that is correct, ethics cannot be a subfield of philosophical inquiry separate from other subfields.

Again Japanese philosophies often challenge the sharp bifurcation between the prescriptive and descriptive that has been assumed by much Western philosophy since David Hume. The Japanese notion of agency without an independent agent has ramifications within religious philosophy as well, especially in relation to faith. Again, Shinran has the most philosophically sophisticated explanation. In fact, Amida Buddha as a person is only a heuristic device allowing me a focal point for my entrusting faith so that I can surrender all senses of ego and self-agency to it.

Once I do so, I as a discrete entity disappear into the field of as-ness, which is Amida in its true, impersonal form as infinite light. In other words as long as there is a subject having the entrusting faith, that faith directs itself to depend on the power of the object the Vow of the personal Amida. Yet, if there is no subject, the object must simultaneously disappear as well. Yet, even some theistic religions on the mystical end of the spectrum may speak of a God that disappears when engaged fully in a faith that overcomes dualism.

The aforementioned Kyoto School includes thinkers like Ueda Shizuteru and Nishitani Keiji who have pursued comparisons with Meister Eckhart on precisely those grounds Ueda At least since Aristotle see his Metaphysics , Western philosophers have commonly assumed that the primary meaning or truth of words lies in their ability to refer to already existing realities. Often implicit in that assumption is that 1 reality is fixed, or at least stable enough to be pinned down by linguistic expression; 2 context is not necessarily determinative in meaning; 3 the audience is irrelevant or at least externally, not internally, related to the meaning of the expression; 4 the semantic and syntactic, but not phonetic, aspects of the language carry the meaning; and 5 language defines and restricts the possible meanings of things or events.

Every one of those assumptions has been challenged by major Japanese philosophers, both classical and modern. In fact, some important thinkers have in one way or another denied or at least qualified all of them. From the Buddhist standpoint of reality as a field of interdependent events in continuous flux, if words stand in external relation to that reality, they are perpetually trying to hit a moving target. If instead language arises from engagement with the field itself, then the words, reality, and speaker will express the moment together as part of the flux. As the contexts change, so also will the forms of expression.

Because the cosmos of things and the utterance of words are both vibrations, truth-words shingon arise from the resonance among the three. Thus, the same presence may shift its meaning as the field shifts. My book may become a paperweight as soon as a puff of wind begins to blow away the papers on my desk, for example. The audience as well is part of the field shared by words, speakers, and things.

Different expressions are used in addressing different people. So words are always being adjusted. Mori Arimasa — noted that Japanese syntax demands multiple levels of formality and politeness indicating the social space shared by speaker and listener. That characteristic, he claims, gives the language an inherently second-person, rather than impersonal, third-person feel JPS — Another way Japanese philosophers of language analyze how words can address the fluidity of the field of impermanent, interdependent events is to develop theories that focus on the predicate rather than subject of the sentence as the nucleus of meaning. The sentential subject is usually a noun that refers to a substance and the predicate its attribute.

To capture a world of events rather than things, on the other hand, one can focus on the meaning as emerging from predicate, the subject becoming in effect a modifier rather than a cause or agent of the event. JPS — A final strategy for approaching the word-thing relation is to turn the usual Western assumption upside down and claim that there are no things mono at all until language fixates events koto by imposing names on them. That is, words do not refer to pre-existing things, but rather, words create things. The psychiatrist-philosopher Kimura Bin — has analyzed the human compulsion to stabilize and reify the flow of events as an effort to reinforce our sense of a discrete ego JPS — Ueda Shizuteru — , a member of the Kyoto School, has developed a detailed theory of language along similar lines JPS — That is not the whole story, however.

These themes and approaches suggest just a few of the riches in Japanese philosophy that might intrigue a philosopher from any culture. As Japanese philosophy becomes better known and increasingly accessible through translation and Western commentaries, it seems likely it may engage an ever wider circle of philosophers worldwide, becoming a resource for Western philosophy as Western philosophy has historically been a resource for it. Japanese Philosophy First published Fri Apr 5, Philosophy as Engaged Knowing 2. Hallmarks of Japanese Philosophical Analysis 2. Five Fountainheads of Japanese Philosophy 3. Historical Periods of Philosophical Development and Interaction 4. Possible Contributions to Philosophy at Large 5.

Autonomous Self 5. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo eds. Hulme, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Johnson ed. Harootunian, H. Kasulis, Thomas P. Ames and Peter D. Hershock, eds. Kasulis ed. Anthologies of Japanese philosophy in translation deBary, Wm. Theodore, et al. Viglielmo with Agustin Jacinto Zavala eds. Party Inherit. Arcana Level Strength If unhurt during turn, extra attack activates.

Further allied attacks gain link damage. Izanagi-no-Okami as he appears in Persona 4 The Animation. Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro in Persona 5 Royal. Persona 4 Personas. Persona 4 Golden Personas. Persona 5 Personas. Persona 5 Royal Personas. Universal Conquest Wiki. Na ta Taishi. Gi rimehkala. O kuninushi. Ka rtikeya. Tz itzimitl. Cu Chulainn. Ya mata no Orochi. Arcana Level Strength. Deals severe Almighty damage to all foes. Recover full HP and SP after a successful battle. The word of power that banishes all the world's curses and falsehoods. Greatly raise attack, defense, hit, and evasion for 3 turns. Fully restore HP and SP after victory.

Next magical attack inflicts 2. Fully restore HP of party and cure all non-special ailments. Survive one fatal blow with HP fully restored.

One way to open a dialogue with the West on this issue is to consider the critique posed by the aforementioned medieval The Double Truth: The Shingon School Land philosopher, Shinran, who argued against making rationality the basis for ethics. On an unrelated note, Caster was a magus on the tier of True Magicians. Though Summer BB's presence takes a dark turn in the Nietzsches Belief In The Existence Of God half. Which means that the battle between The Double Truth: The Shingon School two is clearly swordsmanship. Takeuchi: He'd be the worlds most serious supermarket cashier. Education Connecticut Coll.