u/MadnessMantraLove

What can you tell us more about Tokei, the theme song of Final Chapter?

Nasu: Tokei's theming didn't come from any Nasu demand. All I told Sakamoto was that the ending theme should acknowledge that the whole journey was over and Chaldea was no more and invite to carry the feelings and experiences gained through it into tomorrow. She told me she was also interested in making it a masterpiece deserving of its release date, which was on the 30th anniversary of her singing career. I decided that she would finish the song first, and then I would write the chapter script around it. However, my thoughts upon receiving the song were, "Wonderful. There's nothing in the plot I need to change for this song."

Takeuchi: My impression listening to the demo was that it was like the song was welcoming me back to my hometown. While the song was being produced, I was negotiating the ending animation that would go with this theme.

Nasu: I've always wanted to work with Director Shuu Hiromatsu again after he made the animations for our 8th Anniversary video.

Takeuchi: He was the recommended man to make the ending animation, so I got him on the job. We had a meeting about its contents before production started, but the only thing we requested was for him to feature every single Servant in it.

Nasu: (laughs) That's the kind of absurd demand that should only be made to fellow Type-Moon members!

Takeuchi: Oh, c'mon (laughs). There's no way you wouldn't be sad about your favorite being absent. Watch the credits animation to see for yourself Director Shuu's solution to the herculean task of fitting 400 characters into a 5-minute video. Also, Shuu was the director not only for the credits animation but also for the epilogue animation after it.

Nasu: I was going to write the Tokyo Station scene in prose, but Director Shuu was willing to do it, and there's no doubt the scene is better done this way. Showing a video that leaves the answers up to the imagination is more beautiful than describing it in garrulous text, so I handed Director Shuu the plot plan to show what scene we had at the very end and left the rest up to his discretion.

Takeuchi: I was personally a bit unsure about this, to be honest. Because I always want to close things off with Nasu Kinoko's words! I even felt that, depending on how it turned out, I would have to go to him and make him include additional Nasu text after the ending animation. But then the video was delivered, and when I saw we were closing on, it felt genuinely right.

Nasu: Oh, you know what I was envisioning there. Tie the bow with prose before the credits roll… then come back at the very end to show that beautiful video… A double-dip conclusion, an ending art forbidden since time immemorial.

Takeuchi: On the original instructions, the closing shot was a red sunset. But when Nasu saw the finished video, he asked to replace it with a blue sky because the dusk was too depressing. My opinion as an illustrator is that the red sunset looked more dramatic, and I believe that was the sense Director Shuu was also trying to prioritize, but he ultimately said changing it to the blue sky was for the best.

Nasu: The evening is easier to associate with finality, after all. Throwing in a dusk after you already showed the end of everything is just bad. What comes after the end of all is the start of a new day. That's why the blue sky works. I wanted those two to have a chance encounter under that blue sky and start a new day together. A new date, if you will. Without that, the player leaves the game on an emotional low. The red sunset was incredibly beautiful, but I asked for a blue sky there.

Takeuchi: This goes beyond the ending animation's direction. Everywhere, a lot of care and attention went into the story's aftertaste, and all those details come together to create that overall gentle atmosphere of it.

Nasu: By some miracle, it was also sunny in the real Tokyo Station when its Final Chapter scene came out.

True. After the end, that blue sky stuck around as the new title screen.

Nasu: 8 years ago, the plan was to end service as soon as Final Chapter concluded. I was planning for an "FGO is concluded" screen to go up on December 31st, but you can imagine it's not that easy to close the doors with all that excitement from the playerbase and how long this has been a part of my life… There was another draft for an all-white title screen, but I went with the blue sky with the express intention of signaling it wasn't over yet.

Did I understand that right? You're saying that, at first, there was a plan for the big twist actually ending FGO?

Nasu: I was legit going to leave the end of service up to player choice. "Beating Maris ends FGO. Now you also freed Kinoko!" was the plan.

What about your mention in last year's interview that you wanted to let the players decide how the game will end?

Nasu: I meant the Final Chapter raids. Remember the interface saying "X Until the End of Grand Order"? The question that was meant to ask was whether people would still play the raids knowing that the game would end for real if it hit zero.

Oh, so that banner was where the votes were being tallied.

Nasu: Hence the banner breaking, rejecting the idea FGO would end. It's difficult to notice, but shortly before entering the final battle, when the protagonist stands up, you can hear all the cracking at the moment the banner breaks. That's communicating that our combined wills will end Fate/Grand Order, but that's not stopping us from proceeding.

I'm glad I asked, because while I was playing, I didn't believe for a second that this would actually end the game.

Nasu: At first, I wrote in more explicit terms that this would be the end, actually. But I toned it down a little after Lasengle requested to leave the text vaguer or else it could invite all sorts of troubles. As my last resort, I asked if they could make the credits brick the app until New Year's morning, but they told me they could not.

(laughs) You could have given me a heart attack.

Nasu: The players would be going into a panic over the game being no more, and our word to them would be "Well, yeah, you were part of this, all of us ended it together!" (laughs)

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