

I don't play Fate/Stay Night visual novel, but I'm quite a fan of the anime
series, mainly because of its historic sense — with those people from the
legends and all. However, I've spotted a flaw — albeit not a fatal one — and
it bothers me a bit.

In the universe of Fate/Stay Night, Saber is the legendary King Arthur (or
rather, Arthuria) Pendragon that comes from Celtic legends. With such a
background, I expect her to use a Western fencing style (though the term is
not exclusively used in the Western world the way that word means today).

While Arthuria did, in fact, fight with the Western fencing style throughout
the anime in all her real battles, I've noticed that, especially in her
training with Shiro, she used an Eastern fencing style.

Was it ever explained in the visual novel if she learned the Eastern fencing
style before or anything? The age in which she lived in was all but related to
the easternmost part of the world.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-07-30T14:57:14.250
23668
2015-08-24T10:30:02.103
2015-07-30T16:43:47.670
2604
15970
question
fate-stay-night
Did Saber ever learn Eastern fencing styles before meeting Shiro?


In the Fate/SN world, heroes learn everything they need to know about about
age they were summoned in. Knowledge such as how to operate common machinery,
customs, and language are automatically learned during their summoning. As an
example, Saber learned how to ride motorcycles in Fate/Zero. Motorcycles did
not exist in her age, but she knows how to operate one nevertheless. This is
also the reason why there is no language barrier between Saber and Shirou.

As Kendo is a common sport in Japan and a martial art involving swords, Saber
could have learned this particular Eastern fencing style as part of the
Japanese customs she had to learn from her summoning.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-07-30T16:47:27.863
23674
2015-07-30T16:47:27.863
293
23668
answer


I'm going to expand my comment on Frosteeze's answer into my own answer.

Servants have special skills and abilities by virtue of their class. These are
granted to them by the grail system, and may give them abilities and skills
they did not and could not have possessed in their actual lives/legends. In-
universe this is to help bridge the (vast) cultural and linguistic gaps
between summoner and Servant, and to make sure a Servant's capacities aren't
ruined because they're scared of the demonic picture box, or can't conduct
themselves in society even in the simplest of ways. Out of universe, this was
probably just to make the writing easier and the characters more relatable to
the reader.

On the flip side, the class can also restrict the servant: Cu Chulainn would
have had greater use of his rune magic as a Caster class, Hercules would have
had access to several of his NPs in any class other than Berserker (and would
have probably been more powerful as an Archer), etc. To go on a tangent into
the more complicated interactions, Saber's legend includes a mythical spear,
so you might expect her to be able to be summoned as Lancer, but due to the
overwhelming association of her to Excalibur (both in her own mind and in
legends), she can only ever be summoned as Saber.

In Fate/Zero we see several instances of this from Saber.

The first is when she is boarding a plane to Japan with Irisviel. She explains
to Iri that she is aware of what a plane is and is not alarmed by it. The
grail provides her with this information to give her the fundamentals of the
time and area of the war she is summoned for. This is also why she and every
other Servant speaks fluent Japanese, incidentally. Or why Rider has no issues
with reading Japanese texts, despite it being questionable at best if she
would have even been literate in any language in her myth. But more
importantly is what she says immediately after that. While she knows what a
plane is, she has no idea exactly how it works or even how one would fly it.
Nevertheless, she knows that as soon as she sits in the pilot seat she would
would have zero problems flying it expertly. This is due to her Ride skill: it
lets her "ride" or "pilot" anything up to a certain degree of mystery, and her
rank B in particular easily includes non-magical transports such as planes and
motorcycles. She also expertly rides a super-charged performance motorcycle
later on in Fate/Zero.

The Saber class also has intrinsic sword skills, and they will work in the
same way: the grail will provide them knowledge of how to use their "sword" up
to the proficiency level dictated by their skill. In the vast majority of
cases (except, say, Zero Lancelot), a servant would only ever use their Noble
Phantasms or other weapons that came with them at the summoning. As such,
while Saber probably was not provided with intrinsic knowledge of actual kendo
combat--though as part of the generic cultural information she probably knew
what it was in basic terms, what a shinai looked like, etc.--, she was granted
expert level proficiency with the style from simply holding a shinai.

Fake Assassin (and even True Assassin) also has weapon skills, and in Fake
Assassin's case they exceed Saber's. You might note how well Fake Assassin
handles Saber, despite her fighting in a foreign style with an obfuscated
weapon. And similarly for how Saber handles a foreign opponent with what
should be an unfamiliar style. This is probably part of the standard trope of
legendary fighters being able to read their opponents and know their fighting
style after just a few exchanges, and would be encapsulated by the weapon
skill involved.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-24T10:30:02.103
24315
2015-08-24T10:30:02.103
8024
23668
answer