Goldie Sparkle was probably one of the characters who appeared most often in Type-Moon spin-offs. Even Emiya Shirō, the nominal protagonist of 'Fate/stay night,' had not enjoyed such favored treatment.
Precisely because Gilgamesh appeared so often, his words and actions differed greatly across different works, and audiences' impressions of him naturally varied as well. Some liked his arrogant kingly bearing, while others utterly despised his actions.
This was especially true in the 'Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]' route, when he personally dug out the heart of Emiya Kiritsugu's daughter, Illyasviel von Einzbern. Audience dissatisfaction toward him reached its peak there. Of course, his fate at the end of the anime naturally made viewers cheer in satisfaction.
Kamiyā Yuu did not think digging out Illya's heart counted as one of the King of Heroes Gilgamesh's black marks.
The reason he called him Idiot-Gil in 'Fate/stay night' was entirely because of his idiotic lines, idiotic behavior, and idiotic combat performance.
He clearly had the setting of an invincible Servant, yet he was defeated by Emiya Shirō, who was still only a half-baked magus. His combat performance might not even compare to Assassin, the weakest Servant in 'Fate/Zero.' After all, Assassin was still set as possessing superhuman combat ability and could crush Kotomine Kirei in close combat if Kirei did not use Command Seals.
The overly crude and direct way the work handled Goldie Sparkle's settings was also a black mark.
For example, there was an interesting setting worth mentioning here: that golden armor, which piled vulgarity into splendor, possessed the ability to nullify attacks around the level of an A-rank Heroic Spirit. There had even been a record of Saber being unable to break through its defense when he simply stood there and let her strike him.
For some reason, however, he did not wear it in the UBW route. Otherwise, even if Emiya Shirō's pile of counterfeits kept hacking away until the 'Unlimited Blade Works' Reality Marble collapsed, it was unclear whether they could break through his defense.
In every route of 'Fate/stay night,' there was only one reason Goldie Sparkle lost:
He acted like an idiot, and Emiya Shirō possessed mysterious plot-driven combat power full of authorial malice.
The best example of protagonist Emiya Shirō's mysterious combat power was probably this part of 'Fate/stay night': Archer barely managed to kill Berserker Heracles six times by using 'Unlimited Blade Works,' risking his life in the process. Then Emiya Shirō projected Saber's Sword in the Stone and, together with Saber, achieved seven kills with a single strike.
'Excalibur' itself was only an A++ Noble Phantasm.
That plot was practically spelling out, "If Emiya Shirō isn't given an instant-kill cheat, there is no way to justify this scene."
'Fate/Zero' was an ensemble anime.
Every Heroic Spirit and Master participating in the Fourth Holy Grail War had their own distinctive traits: the domineering king and weak princess combination, the justice duo whose values clashed, the serial killer pair with similar worldviews, the miserable pair, and so on.
Whether the characters were hated or loved, Kamiyā Yuu wanted to present their essence as much as possible, rather than deliberately magnifying certain personality flaws to manufacture character traits.
In the main story of 'Fate/Zero,' Kamiyā Yuu wanted to avoid as much as possible the kind of plot from the Fifth Holy Grail War that could not be explained through normal logic, such as Emiya Shirō killing seven times with one sword.
What Kamiyā Yuu least wanted to see was a situation where, one day, viewers were discussing his work but couldn't settle on a conclusion, only for someone to suddenly jump out and say:
"People who seek realism in a fictional world must have something wrong with their heads."
That sentence was the greatest possible mockery of a work with sloppy settings.
...
'BIUBIUBIU' bullet-comment video website.
'Fate/Zero'
Total views: 7.901 million
Followers: 324,000
Total bullet comments: 128,000
Overall rating: 9.8
Comment section:
["Holy crap! Who is this guy covered in gold sparkles? Claims to be the oldest king? Did he ask our great China's Yan Emperor and the Yellow Emperor? — Half-Dream, Illusion, Drunk Without Trace"]
["Uh, upstairs, Gilgamesh is a figure from Sumerian mythology. It is indeed generally recognized as the earliest civilization in the world. — Waiting for Your Wardrobe Malfunction"]
["Zhao Yun, kill him! Just seeing that arrogant face makes me want to punch him! — Screwing Up Makes a Masterpiece"]
["Saber is King Arthur! The Blue Sea translation group has already translated the character side-story novel 'Twilight of the Knight.' Lancelot also appears in that side story. Judging from the weird hostility the Berserker black knight shows toward Saber in the anime, could it be Lancelot? — Qingxia Weiyang"]
["Link to the translated novel, please! — Cold Xiao Xiao"]
["The fight scenes are amazing. I rewound the Zhao Yun versus Saber exchange more than ten times. The smoothness of the action is seriously great! — A Beauty to Win Your Smile"]
["Need you even say it? The animation director is Director Kamiyā Yuu. Strongly recommend watching his breakout work, 'RWBY.' That feels like the peak of animated fight scenes! — zjdhs8"]
["A classmate recommended this to me. Feels pretty good! — V Wandering Person"]
Looking at all these familiar comments, Kamiyā Yuu truly felt an inexplicable sense of nostalgia and warmth.
The way people spoke in Japan differed greatly from that in China. For example, Japanese insults mostly revolved around the same few words: pervert, idiot, big idiot, bastard, and so on. Meanwhile, if all the insults from China's various regional dialects were gathered together, they could form an entire novel.
Kamiyā Yuu moved his mouse with his right hand and continued aimlessly browsing the pages of 'BIUBIUBIU.'
The Bilibili he had created had now grown considerably. Although it still could not compare to the peak of Bilibili in his previous world, it had reached roughly one-third of that level. All kinds of high-quality videos were appearing one after another.
'BIUBIUBIU' was not only a bullet-comment video website, but also a social platform.
It imitated the operating model of forums from his previous world while incorporating many advanced systems that complemented the video platform structure. Aside from greatly increasing the website's popularity, it further improved user activity and user retention.
Now, major domestic video websites in China have already noticed the sudden rise of BIUBIUBIU, yet they have not come up with any effective way to suppress it. As a result, they could only hurriedly introduce bullet-comment functions nearly identical to Bilibili's in an attempt to attract users.
Faced with competition, BIUBIUBIU's response was to retreat while the tide was high.
After gaining sufficient fame and a stable user base, Bilibili restricted the inflow of new users. Simply put, just like in his previous world, it introduced various entrance exams and basic etiquette education for bullet comments.
At the same time, Kamiyā Yuu had BIUBIUBIU adopt an "ostracism" system and establish three principles for bullet-comment management.
First, if a bullet comment was reported by more than five official users, the system would directly delete it.
Second, each official user had ten reporting opportunities per month.
Third, if a user's bullet comments were deleted more than twenty times within a fixed period, that user would be demoted to a non-official user and enter the official review stage. Only after review would the site consider whether to restore their official user status or permanently leave the account as a non-official user.
Although this method would hurt some website users, it was indeed one of the most effective ways to maintain bullet-comment quality.
It greatly improved the standard of comments while also making users treat their accounts far more seriously.
Kamiyā Yuu had not founded BIUBIUBIU merely to create a simple bullet-comment video website.
In the future, he also planned to develop it into China's own comprehensive ACG company. At that point, it would launch a series of novels, manga, and eventually even anime.
BIUBIUBIU's current approach was laying a solid foundation for that future.
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T/N: This novel is starting to annoy me... 🤦♂️ But since I've already invested so much time into it, I'll finish translating it anyway. 🚀📖