Rin does have emotional indecisiveness, as Shirou does; I agree that saying it makes her more realistic as a woman is a bit sexist, because I see it as a realistic portrayal of a human being. Rin and Shirou are Masters who must fight but fundamentally they are still people so human emotions will still come into it. Of course, Rin’s tsundere-esque personality traits make her more endearing to me as well… ^_^’

Rin is my favourite character too. I remember some (slightly sexist) comments from a fellow anime fan who I respect, who said that Rin’s emotionally driven indecisiveness, especially with regards to wanting to be Shirou’s enemy or ally, made her realistic as a woman. This was before the word “tsundere” was in wide use, IIRC.

@Peter S: while it’s refreshing to see a male lead with guts, Shirou is a bit slow on the uptake in terms of putting his ideals into practice. The manly desire to step up and do the right thing is admirable but when your female comrade is considerably more capable, it’s not very practical. Planetes is one show that I REALLY want to watch all the way through now.

@coburn: yeah, you might not have been sloshed enough! ^_^ It took a while for me to get into the series for the reasons you outline here, but after a couple of discs it got kinda addictive…I have the second disc of Shana to watch in the next couple of weeks and if the first disc and the movie version are anything to go by, I think I’ll enjoy that too.

@gaguri: I haven’t even watched the third Mummy film, although the first was a fun blockbuster type of movie that’s light entertainment. Some stuff is meant to be taken seriously and as such is better viewed on your own so you can quietly think about it, but this series isn’t really one of those.

Having just started Shana, I’m also finding it fairly similar – but far more enjoyable.

Planetes is one of my favorite anime and well worth the time. I actually feel that the first disc is the weakest!

*SPOILERS*

I had the accidental pleasure of playing the game while taking a course in Arthuriana and, once we make allowances for F/sn being a visual novel, made in Japan, its interaction with Arthurian stories is quite interesting. To simplify brutally, there are two medieval traditions of Arthurian texts: the earlier, ‘chronicle’ tradition tends to focus on Arthur as a martial hero, and a hero who fights on foot, while the later, ‘romance’ tradition focuses more on Arthur’s knights as its heroes – they tend to face romantic and chivalrous challenges which are less about fighting, and when they do fight they tend to fight (starting) on horseback. The Grail and the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle belong to the romance tradition. (For the cleverer medieval writers, and for writers after the medieval period, the lines blur again: Malory’s Arthur is a blend of the two.)

Apart from the presence of the Holy Grail, F/sn seems (by accident or by design – probably the former) to be more in the chronicle line: Saber, not any of her knights, is the central figure, she fights on foot, and what we see of her past is dominated by battles. Part of the story is her growth out of that entirely martial mindset into what we might, perhaps, call a romance.

*END SPOILERS*

My probably unwanted digression on a pet subject aside, it’ll be interesting to read what you think of the game. If nothing else, I think it fills in a lot of the gaps in the anime.