Doctorkev Does Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

What’s an “Ataraxia”, you ask? Caren tells me it’s a fancy greek word meaning “tranquility”, favoured mainly by pseudo-intellectual VN writers who want to make everyone think they’re clever.

When is a sequel not a sequel? When it’s a tonally incongruous and chronologically discordant follow-up like 2005’s Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, a “fan disc” that succeeds TYPE-MOON’s 2004 smash hit visual novel Fate/Stay Night (hereafter referred to as FSN). Last month, I finally succeeded in completing my journey through FSN’s dark and traumatic third route, Heaven’s Feel. You’d have thought such suffering would have put me off continuing with anything written by main writer Kinoko Nasu, but you’d be wrong. Several of my online weeb friends rate Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (FHA) as the very best that the Fate franchise has to offer, so how could I not read it next? It’s not like my curiosity has ever led me down the wrong path, right?

Whereas all three of FSN’s routes take around 60 hours on average to read through in total, FHA is a differently-structured beast that takes around 30 hours to complete. There aren’t any separate routes, and it isn’t a story that requires the use of a flowchart to complete either. That doesn’t mean it’s a linear narrative though. It’s something completely different — a very granular story that seems deliberately designed to be either sensibly digested in small chunks or binged like a crazy person at a Chinese meal.

The gang’s all here!

FHA is set several months following the conclusion of FSN, but it doesn’t specifically follow any one of that game’s routes — no, it’s a weird merging of timelines where Shirou Emiya won the Holy Grail War, destroyed the Holy Grail, and none of the servants or masters died (apart from Kirei Kotomine who was destined to die in every route). There are convoluted lore-related reasons why the timeline is like this (something to do with Rin Tohsaka messing around with a copy of Zelretch’s multiverse-piercing Jewelled Sword), but they’re not important. Even creator Kinoko Nasu advises “it’s best if you don’t think too much about it”. What this means is that Shirou and his friends/rivals and most of the servants from FSN are all still alive and well, living their peaceful lives in Fuyuki city, and for some reason Shirou is reliving the same four days over and over and over again, Groundhog Day-style.

Map screen example. The cutesy character icons’ expressions change when clicked — it’s adorable.

Each day is split into sections — morning, afternoon, evening, and the player is presented with map screens of the Emiya household, both sections of Fuyuki city (Shinto and Miyama, divided by the river Mion), and Homuraha Academy. At different times of day, character icons appear on the map and selecting them leads to a visual novel scene — some of which may be short, others lengthy. Watching a scene causes time to progress, not unlike a Persona game. Due to the infinite time loops, characters will always be available at the same time and place, so there is no danger of scenes being missed, and only select scenes move the overall story forward.

Illya is very excited to get more screen time. There are multiple jokes in FHA that she never received her own FSN route. Although an Illya route was planned in the early stages, it was eventually cut. Probably for the best, I don’t want to imagine what abominable H scenes could have resulted…

Unread scenes are helpfully marked by a floating “NEW” above the character icon, while story-progressing scenes are marked with a floating exclamation mark. I generally waited until I had read all of the available “NEW” scenes before progressing the story. There’s a handy skip function that lets the player skip from day period to day period, or even day to day. At the end of the fourth day there is a scripted (thankfully skippable) scene that resets everything back to day one. There are no penalties for “failing” and resetting. I must have run through hundreds of iterations. It’s a mechanic that on one hand encourages taking one’s time, while on the other subliminally pushing the player to read “just one more scene…”

So maybe they make up for the lack of FSN Illya H scenes in FHA? Oh thank God no. This is just a very chaste brother/sister snuggle. No creepiness.

While there is an underlying serious and dramatic story, about 90% of FHA is comedic slice of life fluff, some of which is extremely funny. I wouldn’t recommend reading this without significant familiarity with the characters from FSN, and I’m not sure that anime-only watching is sufficient to catch all the deep references. It reads very much like fan-fiction, however it’s written by the official writers! (Not all of it is written by Nasu himself, some sections are contributed by TYPE-MOON’s other writers.)

When Saber’s ahoge (cow’s lick) is pulled, she transforms into her evil Saber Alter persona. She still eats lots in this form though, though generally it’s hamburgers she craves rather than the more refined dishes she usually ingests.

Much of the comedy stems from shenanigans in and around the Emiya household, as the hapless Shirou’s Harem Protagonist EX skill causes almost every main female character to take up residence in his (admittedly enormous) house. Despite having mansions of their own, Sakura Matou and Rin Tohsaka move in part-time (though for various plot reasons, Rin is absent for the first half of the game). Saber is still around, eating Shirou out of house and home, her love of food growing to kaiju-like proportions over the course of the story. Sakura’s fairly terrifying servant Rider (Medusa) is present and correct, as of course is adult-woman-so-she-should-know-better-but-doesn’t striped-sweater-wearing Taiga Fujimura. Even disturbing little/older/inhuman/sort-of-sister Illya escapes from her overbearing maids to sexually harass/torment Shirou semi-regularly!

Poor Meduseless (as she is referred to by her very cruel, bratty sisters).

Although most skits are primarily comedic in nature, others illuminate poignant backstories for some servants, introducing lore and elements later referenced in Fate/Grand Order, among other TYPE-MOON works. We’re first introduced to gorgon Medusa’s twin older sisters, Euryale and Stheno via a couple of funny Cinderella-like flashbacks, where they are shown to bully and belittle their (towering) younger sister. Their ultimate fate, however, is tragic. Caster Medea also gets a backstory (like Medusa’s it’s taken from classic Greek mythology), that describes how much of an asshole Jason (of the Argonauts fame) was. There’s nothing funny about poor Medea’s past. At least she finds happiness in the modern day with her extremely stoic high school teacher (and emotionless assassin) husband Souichirou Kuzuki.

This should look kind of familiar to Prisma Illya fans…

In fact, FHA is responsible for many subsequent Fate spinoffs and running jokes. FHA marks the first appearance of Rin’s magical girl transformation and associated sentient magic wand “Kaleidostick Ruby”, without which manga and anime Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya wouldn’t exist. (It’s hard to say whether this is a net positive or negative for the world at this stage.) Super-chill slice-of-life/cooking manga/anime Today’s Menu For Emiya Family lifts whole scenes almost wholesale from FHA, and is the closest thing that exists so far to an FHA anime (though studio Ufotable did announce plans for an FHA anime back in 2021 — we’ve heard nothing since). Many of FHA’s comedy elements are revisited in 2011’s hysterically funny Carnival Phantasm anime, such as Saber’s cuddly lion doll and Berserker’s bizarre Bah-sah-car transformation.

Bazett gets ready to kick some servant ass with her shiny electric balls.

With appearances limited to main story nodes are FHA’s two new female characters, who any fan of the aforementioned Prisma Illya will recognise — Irish mage Bazett Fraga McRemitz (not exactly the most authentically Irish-sounding name) and liturgically-incorrect Church Priestess Caren Hortensia. In the original FSN continuity, Bazett was lancer Cu Chulainn’s original master, before she was murdered by creepy priest Kirei Kotomine. Her very much alive presence in this sequel is a significant mystery that isn’t fully explained until much later. She’s generally very serious, and to be honest I found my attention wandering during her lengthy scenes — not just because the very soporific music used made me drift off to sleep. Her fighting ability is ridiculously broken, and is another example of prime Fate Magic Bullshit in its mechanics.

She is not as innocent as she looks.

Caren Hortensia is a weird character, similarly inscrutable to her deceased father Kirei Kotomine. I guess in this world priests aren’t expected to be celibate? Unfortunate Caren was abandoned as baby by her asshole of a father following her mother’s death, and was left in the care of another abusive priest to be groomed as a priestess (again, not a thing in mainstream Roman Catholicism… though she does dress like a slutty nun). Along with her disturbing innate ability to manifest in her own body the symptoms of cursed individuals she comes into close contact with, it’s no wonder she grew up psychologically broken and twisted, delighting in the suffering of others. Much like with Kirei in FSN, I found it very difficult to really get a handle on her bizarre personality and why she acts the way she does. Caren develops an uncomfortable relationship with Shirou — both oddly supportive and antagonistic, but to go into details would border on massive spoiler territory.

Angra Mainyuu/Angry Mango/Edgy Boi and his tattoos/poor sartorial choices.

The third new main character is someone whose existence was integral to the plot of FSN, though it isn’t until FHA that his concept is embodied and we truly get to meet him — avenger class servant Angra Mainyuu. He’s a figure from Zoroastrianism, an innocent village boy who was imbued with blame for “all the evils of the world” as a kind of proto-Christ figure, who lived a life of solitude and misery in sacrifice for the happiness of everyone else in his tribe. In being summoned by the Einzbern family during the third Holy Grail War (they cheated), his essence of hatred against humanity is what corrupted Fuyuki City’s Holy Grail in the first place.

Shirou slashes at the creepy black monster things that overrun his city at night.

There’s a lot about Angra’s true identity and function within the story that isn’t illuminated until very late on in the game, though there are plenty of hints that something is very amiss before the reveal. It’s a great twist, even if it does rely on screamingly tortured Fate non-logic. I’m sure it must be Nasu’s main hobby to starve himself for weeks before ingesting Peyote/Psilocybin/LSD to induce hallucinations of bizarre magical counter-mechanics that inform his frankly insane backplots. You’d need either a PhD in Nasunomics (not a real subject, as far as I know) to understand some of this stuff, or at least a significant personal stash of hallucinogens. There’s a reason the TYPE-MOON wiki runs to hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. Anyway, it’s probably best not to get too deep into the weeds of the story mechanics. Often with Nasu it’s best to just nod and smile, while backing away slowly, and accepting the story contortions for what they are.

A traumatised Rin in Zelretch’s trunk, along with Kaleidostick Ruby just hanging out there in the corner.

Some apparently throwaway scenes introduce deep lore cuts that have only just recently been followed up in other TYPE-MOON works. For example, there’s a hilarious scene where Shirou and Rin end up trapped inside high-rank mage Zelretch’s magical wooden trunk, making phone calls to alternate universe versions of themselves three years into the future, and some of the story beats mentioned have only just now been elaborated on in the latest The Adventures of El-Melloi II light novel, 18 years later. It’s crazy how so much of this stuff is so closely interconnected.

Am I a bad person for finding Medusa’s interactions with Mitsuzuri hilarious?

Our established characters also get some development (most of which is comedic) — especially rider Medusa who develops a hilarious (if perhaps somewhat problematic) fixation on poor Ayako Mitsuzuri, former archery club captain. In FSN, Rider harvested mana from high school students by sucking their blood, and it appears that Mitsuzuri must have tasted particularly amazing. Although Mitsuzuri has no recollection of why she ended up in hospital with anaemia, she’s clearly instinctively terrified of Medusa, who can’t help herself from getting up close and personal with her. It may be that Medusa just wants another tasty snack, but Medusa as a predatory lesbian is also kind of funny… (Fun note — in one of the Heaven’s Feel movies, there’s a blink-and-you’ll miss it scene with Medusa — seemingly lovingly — laying an unconscious Mitsuzuri’s body down, presumably post-exsanguination.)

Rin and Luvia. They love each other really.

Rin receives a true rival/equal in Luviagelita Edelfelt (who made a very brief voice cameo at the end of FSN), a similarly stuck-up and rich mage who appears to be distantly-related to Rin. I remember watching Prisma Illya and wondering who the blue/blonde version of Rin was, and it seems she originated here, along with her repeated mispronunciation of Shirou as “Shero”. Her part in this story is fairly minimal, though.

L-R: Yukika Saegusa, Kane Himuro, Ayako Mitsuzuri and Kaede Makidera. Mitsuzuri is ok, but the rest of them bore me senseless.

FHA also introduces a trio of female high school friends (Saegusa, Himuro and Makidera) whose job seems to be to mostly fill more time. Generally I found their scenes pointless and dull, especially the excruciatingly long three-part Himuro the Love Detective story, accessible from the “Eclipse” side story menu. During this ridiculously drawn-out comedy skit I felt my will to live draining away as if Medusa herself was sucking my blood. I would advise skipping this, but you can’t if you want to unlock 100% completion, which is a pre-requisite for the epilogue/true ending. Achieving 100% is mostly easy, because you can’t miss scenes, but I found that after I’d read everything I’d only reached 99.2% completion and had to do a google search to find out how to unlock one remaining scene. The solution was not obvious, and involved watching a certain scene twice. There was no indication from anything in the game that this was required, and seems like a bit of a bug.

Gilgamesh actually being helpful for once.

The climax of the main story is definitely worth waiting for — it’s an all-out action spectacle where every master and servant band together for a common goal — a complete inversion of the usual Holy Grail War premise. Even imperious asshole Gilgamesh helps out, in his own way. (FHA features the first appearance of Kid Gilgamesh, by the way, who appears later on in Prisma Illya. He’s a much less dickish version of himself!) The conclusion is affecting and emotional. I’m not quite sure that this story would adapt at all well to animation — despite some really cool scenes, the story is incredibly bitty and the slice of life stuff is almost completely divorced from the rest of the plot. I’d still love to see the climax animated by Ufotable though.

Illya and Berserker ride into battle. I love her excited, determined expression. Poor berserker doesn’t get a whole lot else to do this time.

Just prior to the climax though, there’s a horrible scene involving Caren and one other character. In the censored version it involves bloodsucking, but in the uncensored version she essentially induces the other character to rape her. It’s really really really nasty. There are other explicit H scenes, but they’re not mandatory to progress the story, and can only be accessed from the aforementioned “eclipse” menu option. There’s an extended H scene for each of the main female characters. They’re not quite as awful as their equivalents in FSN, but in general the writing of explicit sex scenes is not TYPE-MOON’s forte, and I’m glad that their recent work has seen fit to banish them altogether. Much like her previous FSN H scene, Rider’s FHA H scene capitalises on her ability to manipulate and fool the senses, so comes off as rapey and exploitative. Ugh.

Sometimes an image can speak for itself. This is genius.

Thankfully with most of the questionable content divorced from the main story progression, we’re left with an oddly-constructed (mostly) non-linear narrative with a gradually-developing central plot that comprises only a fraction of the reading time. The vast majority of scenes are fairly standard domestic/school comedies, though FHA is absolutely at its best when it does creative and absurd things with its premise. I particularly loved the scenes where Rin and Saber are replaced by Barbie dolls who go on a tour of the real world. There is no good story reason for this to happen, but it doesn’t matter. It’s gleefully ridiculous.

I love this scene.

Another scene where Saber over-enthusiastically joins in with a group of kids for an impromptu soccer match is so delightfully sweet and bonkers. Other interactions between servants at their day jobs are funny, especially man of many occupations Cu Chulainn who at times is a fisherman, fishmonger, restauranteur or barman. Caster goes shopping like a dutiful housewife but is completely confused about cooking and procuring ingredients, while Rider appears somewhat sly and threatening wherever she goes. Allowing these characters to bounce naturally off one another in a non-wartime setting sets up all kinds of hilarious interactions that would have been impossible in the previous game.

Poor Saber Artoria can’t swim. (See FGO for her archer variant’s creative solution to this…)

Sakura steals a kiss. Surprisingly, of all the girls, it’s probably Sakura who is most forward with Shirou. Possibly because everyone else is terrified of Dark Sakura.

Rin+inflatable ring+sparkles=culture.

Swimsuit fans get plenty of material to appreciate with multiple trips to the local indoor swim resort. No, I’m not posting a picture of Illya in her swimming costume, I don’t want to end up on a watchlist. You can make do with the above three. Each of these beach episodes are very sweet and funny, they’re not at all creepy like the H scenes.

If you’re more of a maid costume enjoyer, then FHA also has you covered.

Overall I had a lot of fun with FHA, despite some overlong and unfunny skits that grossly overstayed their welcome (Love Detective Himuro mainly) and a very thin main story that only came alive in its final few scenes. In many ways, I wish I’d read this years ago because it would have made so much other Fate stuff make sense. (As much as Fate stuff makes sense without that Nasunomics PhD.) Of course it’s not available legally in English because TYPE MOON seems to hate my money, but the easily-available fan translation reads pretty well, and the patch install is effortless. I can only hope that this, along with its predecessor, will get an official release. Next on my itinerary is Witch on the Holy Night, the only TYPE-MOON visual novel to get an official English translation. I’ve already read through most of it, so hopefully you can expect an article from me about it soon. Thanks for reading!

Saber does some great Action Poses.

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia
Developer: TYPE-MOON
Genre: Visual Novel, Fantasy, Romance, Comedy, Eroge
Platform: WindowsPC
Writers: Kinoko Nasu, Aramoto Kei, Hoshizora Meteor, Morisaki Ryouto, Hikaru Sakurai
Character design: Takashi Takeuchi
Music: Keita Haga (KATE) and Daisuke Nagata (James Harris)
JP Release: October 28, 2005 (PC), November 27, 2014 (PS Vita)
Text Language: English (with fan-patch installed)
Audio Language: Japanese (with fan patch to add PS Vita audio)
Age rating: 18+
Installation instructions: The patches you need are on this site, you will need to find another way to install the game files themselves, either by purchasing the game from Japan or using… other… means…

Plush Rin and Plush Sakura bid you adieu.

Doctorkev Does Fate/Stay Night: Part 1: Fate route

Doctorkev Does Fate/Stay Night: Part 2: Unlimited Blade Works route

Doctorkev Does Fate/Stay Night: Part 3: Heaven’s Feel route

Muv-Luv Extra, Unlimited and Alternative Review: They Made Me Do It.

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