1 You've got to admit that it has the cutest King Arthur that you've ever seen. ;p

I shan't press you on the topic; tastes do differ. Gotta say, though, that the Wiki article didn't do much for me back when I first found it; it's a little confusing (not that the plot is, y'know, straightforward). Most of the endings are a lot happier than they let on, though, and "most everyone survives" is close enough to possible that they brought 'em all back for the sequel, Hollow Ataraxia. (Though, to hear tell, the main merit of said sequel is Rin's magical girl transformation...)

2 Steven, the article makes it sound much drier than it was. I BAAAWED my eyes out when Saber decided to return. But like I said, it's not a great among greats kind of show. IMHO it beats pants off Shana, but you finished that and quit this, whereas I did the opposite. Maybe tastes.

3 The thing about Shana is that it is written to the romangst formula.  F/SN is written to the tragicangst formula.  I thought, when I finished it that Rin and Shirou would eventually hook up, given their similar outlooks and both being practicing mages.  Poor Sakura would be disappointed, but she felt like a weak match, given her lack of magic skill.

Then I read an earlier version of the spoilers (they've been tremendously augmented since then.)  I really felt like, after reading the earlier version, that the writers must have hated their characters for all the crap they put them through. But the final straw was when I read about Archer's origin .  After that, I was really crushed, and very down on the series for some time.

About the only way I can deal with it is to assume that timelines branch, and he was from another one.  Given the multi-pathed nature of the game, that's not a stretch.

4

There's long precedent for branching timelines in anime. It's a major factor in the Android/Cell story arc in DBZ, for example, in particular as a result of time travel by Trunks.

The way that Toriyama explained it later, every time Trunks arrived somewhere going backward on a time jump, there was a branch point. In one future, Trunks is killed by Cell who steals his time machine. In another branch, Trunks kills Cell in that attempt; we're shown it at the end of "Cell Games".

I saw a chart online one time that showed all the branches and how they related to the overall story as told.

So it is far from implausible that they were thinking in terms of branching timelines when dealing with Archer in this story -- especially since he was deliberately hoping to change his own past.

5 I've been wanting to mention Ubu's second spoiler for some time...

It's one of the areas that left me uncertain about the show.  On one hand it is different twist that there is canon outside of the anime.  They did hint at the origin but the hints were weak, weak, weak. Also, they did encorperate the outside material better than .hack ever did.

On the other hand, it left a large portion of what should have been an interesting story untold.  Time that could have been used instead of the constant barrage of Shirou's "oh whoa is me... I'm not good enough" or yelling "Sabre!!!!!1!!!" crap.

6 Oh. ICK.  I just went back and read some more about Sakura, Shinji, Fate/Zero so on.  Steven was right; Sakura knew a hell of a lot more than she let on.  As to the how and why, that pretty much seals it.  The writers of this series were rotten, rat bastards who just want to make their characters suffer.

I knew Sakura and Rin were sisters, but I didn't realize that Sakura had been "adopted out" to Shinji's family.  I just didn't get the implications of Shinji not being a mage, Sakura being Rin's sister, and yet Shinji controlled Rider.Ick, Ick, I'd like to get my hands around the senior Matou's throat and strangle that sunvabitch.

Suddenly, I'm glad my order still hasn't arrived. 

7 Archer wasn't so much trying to change his own past, as he was pissed that things had ended up going so wrong. (You sometimes see "Archer's past" described as the "Ilya route" - she figures prominently in it, and it explains why there isn't a "normal" Ilya route in the game, thank god.) Definitely a different timeline - there's no way to reconcile "what happened to Archer" to anything that happens in any of the paths or the anime.

However, even though Archer is moody and emo and depressed and pissy at Shirou for being the hero-wannabe of his youth, in every scenario, Archer himself remains that hero. Even though he's practically the antagonist in UBW, he still does the "damn, I can't believe I'm doing this hero thing" act at the end. No wonder he gets along so well with Rin!

The Rin/UBW endings are basically the "happy" endings - one Rin and Shirou in a relationship ending, the other "harem with lots of sex", and the only really unfortunate deaths were Ilya (not that THAT one bothered me) and Lancer (lovable rogue, heh). Fate (and the anime) had more of a bittersweet flavor, though the game implied pretty strongly that it was Rin's eventual victory; Sakura wasn't really an important character in either the Fate or UBW routes. It's only when you get to HF that you get ghastly nightmarish kill-fests... I don't really know if I want to actually play through it when they finish the translation.

I do think that Shirou did a poor job in trying to convince Saber, on the Fate route, not to go back. Her argument was that she had done a poor job as king, and that she ought to find someone more qualified. His counter-argument, which boiled down to "who cares about that," didn't get much traction. He'd have done better to try to convince her that, er, King Arthur was a legend for a damned good reason, and that said legend was better than an actual good administration would have been. But Shirou's a high school student in Japan and probably isn't an expert on ancient British politics... though he could have tried! ;p

8 As to the rotten rat-bastardness, yeah, basically correct. You oughta see Tsukihime, which had two fairly straight-up stories with happy-ish endings like Fate, then three "other" routes full of incest, child abuse, rape, and other unpleasantness. (The anime does not have those things in it! But it's hinted at, so you can conclude that those things did in fact happen if you'd already played the game. If you didn't like Fate, don't watch Tsukihime either.)

But I got hooked by the doujin anyway, not the show. ^_^;

9
Bah, that's nothing compared to Nice Boat.

F/SN is still on my list of "anime to see", but since I haven't made much progress on that this year (I guess Avatar counts, sort of), it's not going to happen anytime soon.

It's kinda quirky, but personally, when it comes to anime these days, I almost *want* some degree of spoilage.  Too many series have Eva (or worse) endings, and I just hate a punch-you-in-the-gut-The-End ending.  I guess it goes to why I read or watch fiction in the first place, but I'm willing to put up with all sorts of nastiness to the protagonists on the condition that they (or at least the ones I care about the most) make it out o.k. in the end.  If a series refuses to do that, or worse, outright delights in crucifying the characters at the end, then I'd rather kinda know that up front so that I can watch it with a "popcorn" attitude, if I watch it at all.

10

Well, you sure don't want to watch Venus versus Virus then. I haven't been so pissed off by an ending since Mahoromatic.

I know what you mean about a bad ending ruining a good series; I had that experience with Cowboy Bebop. Which is why I included the "Is the ending satisfying" section in my reviews.

11 I hunted up a clip of the finale few minutes of Venus Vs Virus on youtube after you wrote that, and I concur with your take.  Not on my list, anywhere.

12 The manga ended in the last couple of months, and I've wondered just how the mangaka finished up the story.

13 As to the "Nice Boat" the guy was a schlepp, and the neither of the women were much better by the end of the show. Not even the dead one was likeable.

That's not true in F/SN, which is an example of just one bad thing after another happening to good people.  They were right to leave Sakura's back story out of the animé, even at the cost of having to fill time with Shirou moping about.

14 Watch the spoilers, please.