The Marvelous Schizophrenia of Nero Edition
New info came out, new vids, link below
please use archive.is/2016/08/26/elizabeth-bthory-gawain-lu-bu-get-gameplay-trailers-fateextella/
Because sadly they have a monopoly on these videos, it seems, and I can't find them anywhere else and making webms of them all the time is a pain.
I was just going through Nero's intimate exchanges in Extra and I realized something very interesting–
Nasu is a hack.
No, really, he is and the absolute imbalance of whether to present Nero as a villain or as a dindu nuffins wavers throughout the whole game. It's infuruatingly inconsistent, and the little bio you get on the servant card or whatever basically brushes off the entire crux of Nero's despotic name, you know, the flagrant and horrific extermination of Christians.
That said, I think something great came out of his inability to figure out which direction to go with this character, and that is the very quiet not to both lurking insanity and longing for Christian love.
First, at numerous points throughout the story Nero makes it clear that, despite what the bio says and despite what the idiot protagonist likes to think on his own, she did indeed
- set fire to Rome
- persecute Christians
- make blood-sports celebrated among her people
and just in general act like a blood-letting fiend.
The story first gives us an incredible moment where Nero, as prideful as she is, at last admits that the reason she never gave up her identity to the protagonist earlier was because she was sincerely afraid of what he would think of her. She knew her reputation and the genuineness of her concern (to the point of tears) is really something.
How would Nero behave if he was resurrected as a Servant? Prideful, entitled, haughty, obsessed with the arts, etc. Sure, but what about his past? Would he hold regret all he had done?
—Sadly this gets deflated the instant Nasu decided to be a typical Jap and bang on about "muh pride" and how beautiful "muh pride" is and that regret means nothing with "muh pride", but the real soul of that moment was in how she found acceptance from the Master she was coming to adore.
Acceptance? Yes, and more…
Earlier than this we get to assume what kind of emperor Saber was before we find out her identity. If we say that she was likely a very benevolent ruler, she begins very excitedly, desperate to affirm our assumption as the truth…and then she falls silent. The narration tells us that it seems something, a memory, came to her mind then. And so she closes the conversion by saying her asking us to guess what kind of ruler she was had been a "tasteless" question.
This is the first instance of genuine humanity we find from her. The other dialogue options produce gag jokes to some extent. Yet here we begin to see real flesh and bone in Saber, and real remorse.
Even earlier than that we learn that Nero detests the Deus Ex Machina contrivance of old plays, wherein a deity from on high would descend to fix everything right, right all the wrongs, and give everyone a happy ending. And yet, though she detests it, the particular story she was spouting off about to the protagonist inspires her.
Why? Why is this story different for her? Because it exemplifies why people need a Deus Ex Machina– that is, an external force and deity to make everything right.
Saber even says as much, and then, before the discussion is through, she makes a certain allusion to her own desires (which we can figure come from her final moments).
Yet another sincere, quiet moment from her, and our first instance of a particular kind of longing…
Jumping ahead, Nero begins telling us of her life story by comparing it to a story, a grand drama, and so she closes off by doing the same. Notice, however, that this is very clearly not a fake story for her. She relates true events to a play to distance herself from them a bit, like anyone in pysche 101 can tell you. During the story Nasu flits again back and forth between "Nero just loved too much" and "muh pride" and "Nero nindu nuffins but she was totally evil and crazy but NUFFINS!!"
Nero automatically assumes that the protagonist knows the truth of the mystery of the fire in Rome which many claim was started by Nero, and which is said to have been in part the catalyst for Christian persecution by Rome (because it's said that Nero was being accused and shifted the blame onto them, which I'm sure the Jews of the Sanhedrin were all too happy to help that notion along). This is a HUGE HACK COP-OUT
Why? Because then Nasu would have to do the hard work and research genuine history and bring up the horrific persecution of innocents at Nero's command, and, you know, that's hard.
Or maybe it would just make it hard to sell plushies of her. Who knows?
Then, finally, Nero and the protagonist brush against a certain subject without fully mentioning it: Christian love aka agape love.
Didn't read, but Nero is best saber.
Iskandar master race
Why are there so many Sabers?
Nero did nothing wrong.
semiticcontroversies.blogspot.ca
In the Fate universe Nasu said they all have a common ancestor, in real life Takeuchi is the president of Type-Moon and head artist since Saber is his waifu and prints his company and Sony a lot of money.
He only thinks she's beautiful because she's unobtainable. Apparently Mashu is closer to how he images his personal waifu material.
Watch it for yourself.
When on the subject of the Roman people's "betrayal" of Nero (it was the other way around, Nasu, that's why it ended up that way), Nero begins describing the fundamental flaw between the people she loved yet who did not love her.
>But the love the masses embraced was something much more tender. I did not see that.
>…No, I did see that. But then what they called "love" was foreign and incomprehensible
The protagonist then keeps a vague leg on a hedge between thinking she just loved too much and that the people did not understand her love–even though nero's words are very self explanatory.
She even states outright:
>I regret that I could not share in the love the masses embraced so naturally.
The most telling moment, however, is when the protagonist produces their own conclusion as to why Nero hesitated to kill herself so many times. Nero, flustered, said it was because death is frightening and painful, but the protagonist considers the differences in Nero's love and the people's love and concludes:
Fear of death
Denial
I have to love, the way they do
Why is this so interesting? Because agape love as defined by the Christian faith is known as a godly love, the highest form of love which man can only know once they repent of their sins, accept Jesus Christ as Lord, and enter into the redemption of God. This form of agape love?
Is self-sacrificial love which demands nor expects nothing in return
More than just Jews and even Cretins were turning to Christ during Nero's day. The early church was exploding in number and size, and for all the persecution it continued to grow. Many Romans, the untouchables of the society, were even hunted down and tossed to the lions as sport or crucified and/or set on fire in public. It was a nightmare.
And yet, try as Nero and his ilk might, he could never quench the erupting fire of the church.
In short, I believe this moment and these words are an allusion to Saber's inability to grasp this newfound form of love that was sweeping her people, and by comparison, the mad love of their deranged emperor was no love at all– even though she, in her delirium, believed it to be.
In the end her final thoughts were on that form of agape love she simply could not grasp and had never received, could never receive. Perhaps, from those final moments, comes her sympathy for the desire of a Deus Ex Machina, a savior of sorts which could right all these wrongs and give her the love she so dearly longed for– and yet, it would seem, not even God (the ultimate Deus Ex Machina) had mercy on the pitiful suicidal despot.
TL;DR While the writing is atrociously schizophrenic I think it actually works in the end, and though Nasu's gotta Nip hard with his "muh pride" insertions, Nero is ultimately an excellent form of living irony: The very thing she would become infamous for bloodily hunting down was the very thing she would blindly yearn for in her final moments
Of course, this is just my take on all of this. I like the character a LOT in Extra despite Nasu's inability to just keep a consistent focus on what kind of character she was.
oh okay
yes
That's retarded. Even Hitler is closer to being innocent than Nero.
Because Saber is the Mickey Mouse of Type-Moon