Caster Gilles de Rais played the role of a source of mental corruption in the 'Fate/zero' anime.
In the side-story character novel 'Bluebeard' written by Kamiyā Yuu, he played the role of the final boss. The story used several other abducted children as its primary perspective, following their attempts to escape his castle and, in doing so, fleshing out his character from the side. The death of Saint Jeanne d'Arc left him devastated, causing him to withdraw to Machecoul. From there, he became obsessed with forbidden knowledge and attempted to resurrect Jeanne through evil sacrifices. Every day, he used the 'Prelati's Spellbook', which recorded forbidden knowledge, to seek out sacrificial victims. Children in the town disappeared one after another. Although the residents were terrified, there was nothing they could do, nor did they know what was causing the children to vanish so frequently.
The novel's plot unfolded against this background, inventing a young boy as the protagonist and following his desperate attempts to escape Gilles de Rais's castle. The novel's overall atmosphere of horror was similar to that of a thriller. In the end, of course, the boy managed to escape. After he informed the adults in town, the local lord dispatched a knightly order to subjugate Gilles de Rais, who had already tortured more than three hundred children to death, and sent him to the stake. The flames burned for an entire week before both he and the grimoire bound in human skin were reduced to ashes.
With him serving as the boss, the novel's ending could at least be considered satisfactory. However, its oppressive and terrifying atmosphere could easily leave readers mentally uncomfortable. 'Bluebeard' was the only 'Fate/zero' novel with an age restriction on purchases.
Kamiyā Yuu had defined him as evil through and through, mainly to firmly establish the tone of 'Fate/zero' and define it as an anime with a certain degree of substance and depth. Caster Gilles de Rais died to 'Excalibur', and to some extent, he became an important supporting figure for this portion of the story.
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The day after 'Fate/zero' finished airing.
At Yosuganosora Animation Studio, Kamiyā Yuu tirelessly buried himself in checking storyboards.
"For the aerial combat portion, Goldie's Noble Phantasms and the fighter jet controlled by Lancelot are both moving at high speed. If we want the scene to look smooth, animating on ones would be the best choice. The key animation department has plenty of manpower, so the increased workload caused by the rapidly changing visuals shouldn't be a problem for now. We also have enough in-between animators."
Kamiyā Yuu conducted the final directional check on the storyboard for Episode Seventeen of 'Fate/zero'. After confirming that nothing needed changing, he placed it on his desk and waited for someone from the key animation department to come pick it up.
He had decided to animate this section on ones. The aerial combat sequence was similar to a fight scene, but its requirements were more than a level stricter. The key was conveying the smoothness of the fighter jets' flight, meaning they could not use some of the shortcuts commonly employed in fight scenes to reduce the amount of drawing required.
Animating on ones meant twenty-four drawings per second. Those twenty-four drawings had to connect into a complete shot, creating what was known as full-frame animation. There was also a common misunderstanding here: did animating on twos mean only twelve drawings per second? That was undoubtedly correct, but it did not mean that the animation itself only contained twelve frames in that second. Rather, each drawing was held for two frames to maintain visual continuity while still meeting the video's frame-rate requirements.
The frame rate of film and television works was already fixed, generally using twenty-four frames per second as the standard. Animating on twos used twelve drawings to express one complete action. The difference from animating on ones lay in the smoothness of the motion changes. Animating on ones gave twenty-four changing frames. Animating on twos gave twelve changing frames and twelve held frames. Extending the same logic, animating on threes naturally meant eight changing frames and sixteen held frames.
The X in "animating on Xs" represented the interval between changing frames. Animating on threes meant that each drawing was held across three frames before changing to another, continuing until the full twenty-four-frame requirement was met.
Nor did having more drawings per second necessarily mean better animation. That usually depended on the storyboard. An entire anime could not possibly be produced entirely on twos or threes. The method used would be determined according to the changes in the key animation.
For example, major battle scenes would definitely use a "high-frame" mode. The range of movement of the combatants would inevitably increase, which meant the proportion of key animation needed had to rise as well. Taking animation on ones as an example, an ordinary scene animated on ones might contain fewer than eight key drawings, defining the beginning and end of a character's movement, while the remaining drawings would be filled in by in-between animation.
However, when a character's movements changed drastically, the proportion of key drawings among the drawings required each second would rise sharply. It was even possible for every single drawing to be completed directly as key animation.
For example, in his previous world's nationally renowned Japanese work 'Neon Genesis Evangelion', there had once been a battle scene composed entirely of key animation. That combat sequence had still been animated entirely on threes, yet the production team handled it extremely cleverly.
If the proportion of key animation was not increased during an intense fight scene, too many in-betweens could easily cause the visual effect to fall short. If a character threw a punch and there were too many in-between frames, the punch would certainly look extremely smooth, but at the same time it definitely would not convey the intended impact. Instead, it would feel soft, sluggish, and carry an indescribable sense of wrongness.
Although the all-key-animation sequence in 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' was animated on threes, the main characters' movements changed distinctly and carried tremendous weight, allowing that battle to achieve an effect no worse than animation done on twos.
Of course, not every anime could get away with doing that. The all-key-animation combat sequence in 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' was a battle between Unit-01 and an Angel. Animating entirely on threes happened to convey the immense heaviness and tremendous force of giant machines like Unit-01.
If Kamiyā Yuu tried the same thing with the duel between Lancer Zhao Yun and the 'Ionioi Hetairoi', the audience would instead see Zhao Yun moving slowly and clumsily, creating an overwhelming sense of incongruity.
The same principle applied to the aerial combat in 'Fate/zero'. To convey the fighter jets' high speed and agility, there were certain requirements for the ratio between key animation and in-between drawings. The all-key-animation approach used in 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' was unsuitable, but so too was the complex and constantly changing style used for Lancer Zhao Yun's battle against the 'Ionioi Hetairoi'. Overall, the production difficulty placed relatively high demands on the in-between animation.
The aerial combat plot had originally appeared around Episodes Fourteen and Fifteen in the original work. The main reason it appeared in Episode Seventeen of the remake was that the character conflicts during the 'Holy Grail Dialogue' were more intense, while the 'Ionioi Hetairoi' occupied more of the storyline.
It was not a major problem. Each episode of Kamiyā Yuu's remake of 'Fate/zero' was around thirty minutes long, and the anime's total story content was already considerably longer than the original version. If they still exceeded the runtime limit in the end, then they could simply make the final few episodes extended editions like the first episode.
They had money. They could afford to be willful.
"Now that Episode Seventeen is done, the storyboard schedule afterward is a little more relaxed. I'll use today to see how the 'Throne of Heroes' game is coming along."
Kamiyā Yuu stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment, then picked up the desk phone and dialed the key animation department.
"Beep, beep, beep~!"
"Yes, Director. What can I do for you?" After the call connected, a cautious female voice came through. Kamiyā Yuu recognized it as belonging to Uehara Etsuki's current assistant director.
"Mm. I've finished checking the storyboards and direction. You can come get them anytime."
"Understood. Please wait a moment, Director."
The call ended. Within a few minutes, the female assistant director who had answered the phone knocked and entered. After greeting him, she took away the key-animation storyboards whose direction he had just finished checking.
"Click~!"
Kamiyā Yuu locked the wooden office door from the inside, then picked up the desk phone again and called Kamiyā Sora.
"Sora, unless something unusual happens, try not to let anyone disturb me."
"Mm, understood." Kamiyā Sora's calm reply came through the receiver.
Only after finishing all this did Kamiyā Yuu turn on his computer, log into his email account, and find the game files that [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio had sent him not long ago. Mizuhara Raiko had sent him the current game build and development report according to his instructions so that he could inspect them.
He had already read through the development report once. The game's production progress was considerably faster than he had expected, so after receiving the game files, he had not been in any hurry to inspect them. Now that he finally had some free time, he began analyzing the game itself.
In truth, the rapid development progress was still because of the conversation he'd previously had with Mizuhara Raiko. Feeling that she had been looked down upon, Mizuhara Raiko had issued a strict order to the production department. Even now, the development team at [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio was trapped in a miserable life of nonstop crunch.
This was a bold experiment for Kamiyā Yuu: his first attempt at using consciousness itself to write system code and analyze what the code did.
"I'll give it a try first."
Kamiyā Yuu took several deep breaths to adjust his physical and mental state, then followed the sensation that had long since become familiar and entered that peculiar spiritual world.
Within this world, it felt as though he had touched the space of consciousness while simultaneously remaining within reality. Everything seemed excessively illusory, yet real at the same time.
The moment his consciousness came into contact with the data inside the computer before him, a mass of garbled characters instantly appeared across the desktop before vanishing just as quickly.
The game files already downloaded onto the computer opened automatically. A black window appeared, displaying rapidly refreshing streams of code. Kamiyā Yuu's consciousness came into contact with the code within those files and analyzed it without making any modifications.
Within the depths of his mind, a faint consciousness conveyed the simplest possible information to him.
"Recording data···"
"Recording data······"
"Recording data·········"
"18%."
"29%."
"57%."
"88%."
"100%."
"Replication complete."
"Huff~~ Hah~~!"
Unable to sense how much time had passed, Kamiyā Yuu's unfocused, lifeless eyes suddenly moved. He braced his right hand against the desk and gasped heavily for air, like a drowning man who had suddenly been rescued and was greedily sucking down every breath he could get.
Kamiyā Yuu looked at his trembling right hand. Even after shaking it out, he could still feel a strange aching numbness. He immediately gave a bitter smile.
"The side effects are always this bad every time I get absorbed in it and wake up."
Just now, his consciousness had connected with the 'Matrix Space' from his previous world. Based on the data fluctuations sensed through his consciousness, Blake had created another copy of the 'Throne of Heroes' game itself inside the 'Matrix Space'.
After resting for a while, Kamiyā Yuu reclined in his office chair and closed his eyes, letting his consciousness sink into another world.
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Upon entering the consciousness space, all the side effects and sluggish discomfort caused by his earlier contact with the data vanished.
A strange sensation arose.
It was as if, moments ago, he had merely been an infant too weak to even lift a stone. Yet upon returning to the consciousness space, that infant had suddenly grown into an adult, making the feeble strength he had possessed as a baby seem like a joke.
"Blake, how did it go?"
Within the pitch-black 'Matrix Space', the scenery of a research laboratory began constructing itself.
Blake emerged from the shadows wearing a white lab coat. When her beautiful, cool features saw Kamiyā Yuu, she seemed to breathe a sigh of relief before reporting, "It went fairly smoothly. I observed the data Yuu's consciousness came into contact with in that world and replicated it here. The accuracy rate is one hundred percent. It's just that the burden on Yuu's body in that world isn't small."
Kamiyā Yuu waved his hand dismissively. "I can just rest in the consciousness space for a while. It's not a major problem."
"Mm. Then I'll report the results now."
Blake's cat ears twitched. She extended a hand and swept it through the air. A transparent screen appeared within the virtual laboratory, displaying all of the code and structural design of the 'Throne of Heroes' game.
"This is the game framework reoptimized according to Yuu's requirements. In theory, even if Yuu uses an ordinary computer to directly modify the game's code, you should still be able to complete the game's optimization within ten hours. I've also prepared the subsequent game code and framework design plan. If the game company on Yuu's side modifies the game according to this plan, things will become much easier for Yuu in the future."
Blake spoke softly. After Kamiyā Yuu's consciousness replicated the entirety of 'Throne of Heroes' inside the 'Matrix Space', it had taken her less than three seconds to completely optimize the game.
From the game's structure and UI layout to its underlying code and everything else, it had been comprehensively optimized to near perfection. Even then, she had taken into account the fact that Kamiyā Yuu could not handle too great a workload, specifically designing the optimization plan to require the least possible time and effort from him.
Kamiyā Yuu looked at the game-code information displayed on the transparent screen. With a thought, he absorbed all of it into his memory.
After pondering for a moment, he reached out and rubbed Blake's silky black hair and soft cat ears in satisfaction.
"Thanks for your hard work."
A hazy blush appeared on Blake's cool and composed face. She seemed to greatly enjoy Kamiyā Yuu rubbing her cat ears.
"Then I should probably head back. I'm still technically at work in that world. See you again in three days."
Seeing Blake's little face flushed red, Kamiyā Yuu found it rather amusing. Like teasing a kitten, he could not resist letting his right hand slide down to her chin and gently scratch it.
Although she did not have the fluffy texture of an actual cat, the perfectly recreated skin of a young woman inside the 'Matrix Space' still made him reluctant to take his hand away.
Unexpectedly, that action immediately snapped Blake back to awareness. She took Kamiyā Yuu's right hand and placed it back atop her silky hair before calmly saying, "Mm."
Kamiyā Yuu smiled.
It seemed Blake really did like being petted that way.