Don't Call Me Master, Call Me Director

Shinji's lips curved into a slight smile.

"I... I understand."

Despite her reluctance, Artoria yielded to Shinji's tyranny for the sake of snacks.

"Saber, you have to try harder~ for more delicious food."

Shinji smiled as he petted Artoria's head, displaying the cunning he'd learned from his cute sister to perfection.

"Hmph, you despicable Master, threatening me like this."

Artoria unhappily slapped Shinji's hand away. She walked over to the rest area, tore open a bag of snacks, and began eating them in a huff.

"As expected, the glutton archetype is Artoria's deeply ingrained trait," Shinji chuckled softly.

Snap.

Suddenly, Lancer Cú Chulainn's hand landed heavily on Shinji's shoulder. He looked at Shinji with a teasing gaze, clearly thinking:

Haha, Master, you're actually bullying a girl.

"You're still laughing!" Shinji, fuming, kicked Cú Chulainn in the rear. "I told you to go easy on Shirou when you fought, and you still blew out the lightbulb! If you keep this up, I'll dock your pay!"

"Got it, Master."

Seeing Cú Chulainn's grinning face, Shinji wasn't sure if the casual fellow had actually taken anything to heart.

These Heroic Spirits were top-notch when it came to fight scenes, their movements a delight to behold. Shinji had more than once felt that his decision to summon Heroic Spirits to make movies was absolutely the right one.

"It's just that their basic acting skills aren't quite up to par."

Shinji sighed helplessly.

From the start of filming until now, these guys had caused more than just a few incidents.

"I hope they'll improve later on."

Shinji waved for Artoria and Cú Chulainn to hurry up and prepare for the next shot. He himself went to re-examine the warehouse set.

Details determined success or failure. As Shinji's first film, and one that would likely be released worldwide, he had to make it perfect.

"A bunch of uncooperative brats. Heroic Spirits really are problem children."

Master Shinji tapped his shoulder with his clapperboard, his face full of helplessness.

"Haha, Shinji, you're really working hard as a director."

Shirou, who had changed into an identical costume, walked over with a smile.

"Shirou, don't just stand there gloating. I won't go easy on you during the shoot just because you pity me."

"Haha~ So strict."

Shirou shrugged as he looked at his childhood friend and close companion.

"Well, I expected the hard work. If I couldn't persevere through this, I wouldn't have chosen to make movies in the first place."

Looking at the busy set, Shinji tapped his clapperboard rhythmically.

"Do you have confidence?"

"Of course. This is the beginning of a great project that will change us Mages."

Shirou glanced at Shinji, saying with a hint of envy, "Yeah, Shinji, you're always so confident. Sometimes, I really wonder where you get all that confidence from."

"Probably... because I'm a genius."

Shinji gave a profound smile and walked over to the dolly track behind the director's camera.

"Let's do that last shot again. All departments, get back into position quickly!"

Shinji made his routine inquiry into the megaphone.

"Props?"

"OK!"

"Set dressing?"

"OK!"

"Lighting?"

"OK!"

"All departments ready..."

Shinji took a red baseball cap from Sakura and put it on backward. "Fate/staynight, Scene 4, Take 35... Action!"

Snap.

As the clapperboard sounded, the most classic scene in the Nasuverse was recreated before Shinji's lens.

The bright moonlight, the holy knight maiden, and that line, etched into the DNA of every Nasuverse fan.

"Servant, Saber, has answered the call."

"Tell me, are you my Master?"

Chapter 2: You Can't Choose Your Prop Poster Lightly

Matou Shinji was a transmigrator who called himself a veteran otaku.

Before his transmigration, Master Shinji not only enjoyed things commonly liked by ACG enthusiasts such as novels, games, and anime, but he also had some research into derivative fields like Hollywood movies and Tokusatsu.

Like the vast majority of transmigrators, Master Shinji died in an accident and then, for some unknown reason, inexplicably transmigrated into the body of a 7-year-old blue-haired boy in 1994.

Transmigration was originally a good thing for an otaku like Shinji, but when his cheap old man called his name, told him he had a sister named "Sakura," and that they were returning to their old home in Fuyuki City, Japan, Shinji felt the world was doomed.

Matou Shinji, a character from the famous anime Fate/stay night, was the most incompetent Master in the Fifth Holy Grail War.

Moreover, in all three routes of FSN, Shinji's ending was not good. Except for the UBW route, which could barely be considered a peaceful end, Shinji died more miserably in the other two routes.

As for resisting fate... thinking of a certain old monster in the Matou Family, Shinji felt it was difficult, very, very, very difficult.

Therefore, for the first few days after his transmigration, Shinji was in a state of anxiety, fearing he would be toyed to death by some old ET maggot.

Fortunately, this situation did not last long.

When Shinji truly came to the Matou Family and understood it more deeply, he realized the gap between his imagination and reality was as obvious as comparing the bust sizes of King Blanket and Lancer Artoria.

The world Shinji transmigrated to was indeed the Nasuverse, and the elements of the Nasuverse he was familiar with were all present, such as Magecraft and the Holy Grail War.

But it was very different from the Nasuverse he remembered; the mystery in this world was nearing exhaustion.

For some unknown reason, Magecraft in this world declined rapidly after entering modern society, reaching a point of mere survival.

Taking the Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City as an example, the quality of Heroic Spirits summoned became worse and worse.

Based on the Matou Family's data, Shinji inferred that the Heroic Spirits summoned in the first Holy Grail War already differed greatly from the Heroic Spirits in FZ and FSN that he knew.

By the second war, the quality had declined, and their strength was completely unable to meet the standard, only slightly stronger than ordinary people.

Thus, the originally "famous" Fuyuki City Holy Grail War, after only 2 sessions, ended without a trace.

From this glimpse, one could see the overall decline of Magecraft in this world.

Under such a grand backdrop, the wish of Nasuverse Mages—to reach the Root—was even more of a fantasy.

Gradually, the Mages of this parallel world of the Nasuverse changed their mindset. They no longer pursued mystery diligently and began to treat Magecraft as a somewhat magical traditional craft.

Influenced by this concept, the bloodline inheritance that was originally common in the Nasuverse also began to decrease.

On one hand, the descendants of Mages felt that Magecraft was useless, even less useful than a Technician Training Manual, which at least could provide them with a stable job.

On the other hand, Mages could not be sure if their next generation would meet their expectations and inherit their Magecraft.

But to let the Magecraft passed down through generations be extinguished was more unbearable to them than killing them.

Therefore, the master-disciple relationship began to flourish in the world of Mages. Mage educational institutions like the Clock Tower became even more prosperous than in the original Nasuverse, becoming the most central locations in the Mage community.

These differences from the ordinary Nasuverse were not a bad thing for Shinji.

No, it should be said it was a great thing.

With the fading of mystery, the Matou Family's ancestor, Matou Zouken, did not live to be 500 years old.

During the Second Holy Grail War, that old maggot died because he could not extend his lifespan and went to the Western Paradise.

Of course, Shinji suspected more that the other party simply took his own life because the Holy Grail's advent was hopeless.

Although Shinji's current grandfather was also named Matou Zouken and looked exactly like Master Yoda from Star Wars, this Grandpa Zouken was just an ordinary elderly Mage who doted on his grandchildren.

The most direct manifestation was that Shinji's status in the Matou Family changed from "[an expendable tool]" in the original work to the true young master of the Matou Family.

Moreover, even though Magecraft had declined, the Matou Family's identity as landlords had not changed.

In the original work, the Matou Family lived by renting out Ley Lines. After the decline of mystery, these Ley Lines withered one by one.

Seeing that these Ley Lines were useless, Matou Zouken, who had just become the head of the family, waved his hand and directly used these lands to engage in real estate.

What's more, with the boom of the Japanese economy after the war as a backdrop, Matou Zouken's actions indeed added considerable wealth to the Matou Family.

Even though the collapse of the real estate industry during the subsequent bubble economy greatly reduced the Matou Family's wealth.

Even so, the wealth accumulated by Zouken before that, even if it couldn't make the Matou Family top-tier wealthy tycoons in Japan, was at least enough to be considered local tycoons.

Looking at it this way, the decline of Magecraft was truly beneficial and harmless to Shinji, the transmigrator.

With a wealthy grandfather who doted on him immensely, Master Shinji lived a life of being catered to from childhood.

And Shinji's performance did not disappoint Matou Zouken.

Perhaps it was due to transmigration, but Shinji, whose Magecraft talent was trash in the original work, actually became the person with the best Magecraft talent in several generations of the Matou Family.

Especially in Magecraft such as hypnosis, suggestion, manipulation, illusions, and barriers, Shinji learned them with remarkable ease.

Although due to the general environment, Shinji's Magecraft could not compare to the geniuses of the original Nasuverse, in this Nasuverse, it was enough for him to earn the title of "child prodigy."

Matou Zouken regarded Shinji as the hope for the future of the Matou Family.

The only thing that displeased Matou Zouken was that Shinji was not very skilled in the Matou Family's traditional creation of Familiars, absorption, and water-attribute Magecraft. Compared to his talent in other Magecraft, there was a significant gap.

This was mainly because Shinji himself was not overly focused on these aspects.

Rather than playing with those insects or reviving Magecraft, Shinji, as a veteran otaku for two lifetimes, wanted to do things he liked—such as turning his favorite anime works into live-action movies.

Master Shinji's dream, held since his previous life, was to see his favorite ACG works adapted into blockbuster movies with Hollywood-level special effects.

The reason for specifying "Hollywood-level effects" rather than just "Hollywood movies" was naturally due to Hollywood's peculiar aesthetic and certain damn industry rules of "correctness."

Now that he had finally become a young master in this life, Master Shinji naturally intended to fulfill this dream himself.

Even better, the development of commercial films in this Nasuverse timeline was much slower compared to the same period in his previous world.

Whether it was due to the will of some "Kinjishi-jin" or if the Nasuverse timeline actually had a setting for alien Star Wars, the movie that changed the commercial model of the film industry, Star Wars, did not exist in this timeline.

Since even the progenitor of commercial films was absent, most commercial films inspired by Star Wars had also vanished.

Although many classic movies and TV shows still existed, such as the famous The Shawshank Redemption and Jeremy Brett's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which even the Nasuverse's Sherlock Holmes praised, many blockbuster commercial films were almost entirely missing.

Influenced by this, the commercial exploitation of films in this world remained at the most primitive stage of relying on box office revenue and video rentals.

There were no music CDs, no merchandise, and certainly no high-end strategies like movie-game tie-ins.

In this timeline, film was an art form, and watching movies was an appreciation of art.

"Enough! How can I possibly make good commercial films with you bunch of idiotic artists!"

Faced with this world's distorted film industry, Master Shinji slammed his hand on the table, deciding to build his own perfect entertainment industry empire.

Furthermore, relying on his identity as a Mage in this life, Master Shinji conceived a world-shattering plan—to use Magecraft to film all sorts of anime works.

Through his research into Magecraft, Shinji discovered that many forms of Magecraft could be applied to the production of film and television works.

For example, Magecraft could be used to create various props; Familiars could be used with Magecraft to control animal actors; Explosion Magecraft could create safer yet more realistic explosion effects; and certain Illusion Magecraft could be used for post-production special effects in movies...

These Magecraft techniques could not only reduce the production costs of film and television works but also improve their quality.

It could be said that the relationship between Magecraft and film production was far closer than Shinji had initially thought.

After all, even in an era dominated by CG special effects, Hollywood still required a large number of modelers, pyrotechnicians, and other special effects workers, let alone this film industry that was still relatively backward in all aspects.

Looking at it this way, the cost-effective Magecraft filming method might just have a significant market.