Anime: Fate/Stay Night

Introductionary Words

I will keep this review very short since probably everything has been said about this show already. I think the fact that I've only seen this now gives me some insight into more contemporary productions I would probably not have had otherwise.

Art & Animation

It would certainly be unfair to compare this to recent productions. However, even if such a thing had been done, the show would make a decent impression. Animation is mostly good, with a few genereic and hardly animated scenes being the exception. CGI-use is very limited and effects are solid. Artwise it is a mostly conventional shounen-show with little distinct qualities.

7/10

Sound

In general, the soundtrack is very good as expected of Kawai Kenji. It does, however, suffer from some nasty repetition even for a show with only 24 episodes. Voice-work is generally satisfying with a general tendency toward overacting. Sound effects are very good.

8/10

Story

I was very happy with the first two thirds of the show. The concept of the Holy Grail War is neatly presented and offers some interesting plot points. The pacing is at first also exquisite, with some steady story and character progression included. Luckily, the show doesn't have the need to spoon-feed everything to its audience right away, which keeps the suspense-factor and the audience's mind intact.
Alas, the quality takes a severe dip in the last third, where the show unconvincingly increases the melodrama, which actually works against it (which is typically not the case for shounen-productions). To make matters worse the pacing does definitely go on ultra-fast in the last couple of episodes, which is very unfortunate in light of the otherwise good story presentation and progression. The ending was supposed to have a huge impact but left me rather unattached instead.

6/10

Characters

I haven't read the source material, so I will only be able to grade the characters on what is here. The main protagonist is standard-shounen-material, which supposedly is a shame, since there are a lot more elements to this character in the manga that didn't make it into the anime. Or so I'm told. As it stands, it's as 08/15 as it gets (whiny, weak at first, overcomes all hardships against the most improbable odds and, of course, annoyingly selfless).
Then there are the servants and other masters. Luckily, these are far more interesting, with Saber having several interesting facettes to her character in particular. The antagonists are somewhat lame, but still above your average-shounen villain, especially the masters that were added involuntarily to the "game".

7/10

Value

As part of a greater whole the show certainly animates you to either read the source material or check out the various other animated productions related to it. Having not seen anything else yet, I can't say whether or not the prequel Fate/Zero will result in a re-run of Fate/Stay Night, but the show itself has enough stand-out moments to visit part of it again, I'd say. I will award an extrapoint for the fact that the show still holds up today despite the risk of being flooded by all the shounen-garbage out there.

7/10

Enjoyment

Was hooked for the first 17 episodes or so because of nice fights, many mysteries and an interesting overall setting. Lost interest towards the end but the solid script kept me going to its final conclusion. I will probably have a look at Fate/Zero because of this show, too.

Recommended if you want to see some "classic" shounen-material that doesn't entirely make you feel braindead.

7/10

5.1.15 - Shadowbroker

I watched this series after watching a couple of anime shows on netflix. Netflix showed me the newer version of the show Fate | Zero and upon reading that this one came out first I watched it first. My initial take on the show in the first few episodes was good it had action and some drama. It quickly became too much love and not enough action for my tastes. I feel that I would not personally recommend this show to a friend.

This review is based on the anime alone. I have not played the game or even looked up information about the source material. I am reviewing the anime by itself. Now, on to the review:

Animation
Fate/Stay Night doesn’t quite stand up to some other anime of its age and genre in the animation department, but it does have some neat character designs and choreography.
The best thing about the animation is the character designs. The characters of almost every single Servant just ooze charisma. The masters aren’t half bad either. The characters are also easy to tell apart and each character’s appearance matches their personality well. Proportions for the women are realistic and beautiful at once.
The fighting scenes are not as fluid as those in many other action anime. However, choreography for the fights is excellent. Each character uses their weapons in a way that is both realistic and cool at once. The fighters use the land around them to their advantage with neat little acrobatic stunts that fit in seamlessly with the fight as a whole, which is also fun to watch. There is also a superb use of light that really makes the fighting and sorcery scenes work. Colors are done well too.
The worst thing about the animation is that quality noticeably wavers throughout. Sometimes proportions are off, or people stand still for so long it gives the impression that you accidentally hit the pause button. Some fight scenes are not nearly as fun to watch as others. And there is a shockingly bad use of CGI in a certain scene. But overall, the animation is above average.

Sound
The vast majority of Fate/Stay Night’s cast are well known Voice Actors, and it shows. Each of the Servants sound compelling regardless of the actual lines they are saying - the dialogue is superbly written, but even if it wasn’t these voice actors would make it sound cool. They really sound like Legendary Heroes. The Masters give excellent performances as well. It’s always obvious who is talking, as all the voices are very distinct from each other and also match their character’s individual personality. Tones are perfect for each situation and emotion.
The in-story music is just incredible. The music can carry a scene that would have been lackluster on its own and make it incredibly moving and meaningful. Soaring vocals and exquisite instrumental renditions blend perfectly together. It’s definitely worth getting the sound track. The openings are typical J-Pop. Heard alone they are a bit above average, but they certainly aren’t as magnificent as the in-story music. The ending was slower and of slightly higher quality than the openings.
Sound effects are good, but since the music and voice-acting is so incredible they fade into the background by comparison.

Story
Ah, the story. Fate/Stay Night has a very sleek and fascinating story at first glance. However, under scrutiny everything comes apart at the seams. There are an insane amount of plot holes. I could pick it apart for an entire page without running out of plot holes to mention, but I won’t – there would be spoilers. I’ll just say this: if you want to enjoy Fate/Stay Night, just accept all the occurrences and don’t stop to think about any of them, just let it flow over you. If you do that you’ll enjoy the ending, which is pretty solid, and be pleased by the plot twists thrown in that make so many things you thought were unimportant relevant to the story. If you scrutinize things, even a little, the whole story could be ruined, so if you are the type that has to think about what happens in Anime go ahead and check out the source material first, which purportedly clears up a lot of the most appalling plot holes. The plot, while not entirely sound, is cool.

Characters
Almost all the characters in Fate/Stay Night are charismatic and interesting. However, besides the two leads most of the characters do not behave in a rational manner and their relationships with each other don’t really make much sense. Added to that, their backgrounds are never gone into and their characters never developed fully, which is a pity as many have lots of potential as Heroes of Legend or Magicians. The exceptions to all that are the two leads, Shirou and Saber. Their relationship with each other is being focused on throughout the anime, and it deepens and evolves continually. The love story is excellent, their clashing morals, motivations, and roles intriguing. And they each get lots of good development throughout the series. However, even the two leads never quite seem like real people rather than characters, although they aren’t stereotypes either. Well, putting that aside, almost everyone is either likeable or fascinating.

Value & Enjoyment
I enjoyed watching Fate/Stay Night. The plot kept my attention, the main characters were well developed and the others were interesting to watch, and the fighting scenes were cool. It did have its flaws with the numerous plot holes, but I think if I had checked out the source material first that wouldn’t have bothered me nearly as much, and the lack of characterization for the other characters would have been made up for too. As a companion to its game, this is probably excellent. As a standalone anime, Fate/Stay Night is in a gray area between “slightly above average” and “good”.
I recommend it if:
You can watch a plot without dissecting it
A love story in a primarily action anime appeals to you
You like love stories that are serious rather than comedic, and that get their drama from something besides catfights and love triangles
And, of course, if you’ve already played the game

Review
Fate/Stay Night brought the battle royale genre to the spotlight. It deserves some respect for what it did, but that doesn't work as excuse for a show that is unpolished, slightly boring, and can only offer some good action moments. Yeah, this could be a cult classic if only it was delivered with an older, more serious audience in mind.

This is about the ongoing Holy Grail War, an event that take places in Fuyuki City each sixty years or so, when seven mages are selected and gifted with an heroic spirit that will work under him. These seven mages and seven heroic spirits must fight each other following a very strict set of rules, and the last one standing will be the victor and receive the blessing of the Holy Grail, which is anything they wish. For this, Emiya Shirou, a guy who doesn't have a much of a magic talent, is presented with Saber, one of the strongest heroic spirits.

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1. There's more going on
   A good thing in Fate/Stay Night is the fact that many things are amiss in this Holy Grail War, especially because another broke just a few years ago and not sixty. The show has lots of references to its past, secrets, a few twists and turns, many small details, and other stuff that fans can dig in and explore.
   
   Shounen Basic
   While it's not completely original, Fate/Stay Night has some nice unique elements (which were copied by many animes released after it) and some very good pacing. Common elements like the main character's hidden power, the interaction between the weak and courageous guy with the strong and shy girl, the school environment, the home temple, etc, are here and make it more of a typical shounen fare, yet emotional conflicts occur, which make the series a bit more serious than the average teenager show, but sadly are not the main focus.
   
   Harem...
   When not progressing with the main plot, the series take too much time being a harem anime and throwing female characters into the main guy's life, which really takes out almost every seriousness the show had. I wouldn't mind a show with an abundant female cast, but Fate/Stay Night is quite a dark show, and making stupid excuses just for the sake of building a harem for the protagonist is extremely annoying. Not only that, but the show also try some comic relief with a pretty lame execution.
   
   And the cast is lacking
   Characters are very simple and follow the stereotypes strongly. You'll have the weak but courageous girl, the shy and serious girl, the tsundere, the mysterious girl, the mad friend, etc. They evolve during the series, but not in a good pace. While you see some very good development during the first episodes, for the rest of the series they remain pretty much the same. Besides the main character getting new powers, the cast evolve almost nothing during the last half and you'll see them having their same shyness, same powers, same lack of resolve, etc. Because of the show focusing too much on the harem part, female characters suddenly change their whole personality only to find and excuse to be near the protagonist, and this clearly take out of the good part of them.
   
   Kind of ugly too
   Art style is very similar to TYPE-MOON as it should, but that does not make it good. The art department is very lazy since the first episodes, which is made clear simply by comparing the opening animation to the actual anime. This lazyness is more perceptive in some parts, but it's hard not to be annoyed by it during the first episodes. Animation itself is simple even for its time, action scenes are scarce and most of the series is presented with static drawings. While this happened a lot more back in past seasons, in Fate/Stay Night this is clearly more of an issue. If you don't mind some characters looking like dead people because of their brightless eyes you may even take a liking to the art style, but in overall is very weak and simple.
   
   A misplaced sound direction
   Well, the first opening music doesn't even match the animation shown during its presentation, much less the rest of the anime. While the soundtrack is not really bad, it's completely misplaced in the series, making you feel like you'll be watching some sort of tragedy mixed with drama, but in reality the show is more about shounen fights and harem than anything else. Voice-acting is also just average, but it has many parts where the lipsynch is simply bad, a rare thing to occur with animes.
   
   As I said, it has its worth
   Fate/Stay Night brings some good plot elements and mix some good things. It tries to be serious, but fails to do so because of some childish elements and a focus on harem show more than action. It's moved by a good plot and pace, has some unique elements that were copied over and over after it, but can't find a true identity to itself. Being completely original is close to impossible, but the strong part of Fate/Stay Night is that it avoids the flow of animes that came before it and brings something new to its age. Today it can be classified as typical due to many other shows with similar elements like Shakugan no Shana, Kaze no Stigma, Index, etc, but back in 2005 it was almost unique.
   

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Comments
Despite its average art and animation and bad sound selection, Fate/Stay Night is a fun anime to watch. The good plot pace helps, the combats have some good outcomes and the harem parts can help distract from the silent treatment the show has sometimes for those who like this. This harem is also where the show fails, mainly because it takes too much of the plot and changes the atmosphere without the need. If you like some good shounen series filled with well made super-powers, interesting fights, a bit of harem and comedy, you'll probably love Fate/Stay Night, but if you watch expecting something more serious like some seinen, you'll be disappointed.

Fate/Stay Night is classified as seinen here on AniDB and as well as other areas, but I simply can't see how the show is targeted at 18+ audiences. While it's more serious than the typical childish shounen, it's clearly less mature than Evangelion, Fafner, Ga-Rei Zero, Scrapped Princess, etc. In fact it's much more similar to shows like Blood+, Shakugan no Shana, Kaze no Stigma, etc. Despite this weirdness in the age classification, the show is good enough and can please older audiences like any others that have some good plot and more depth, and is a fun series to watch.

Those who watch it today may find it's animation and sound a bit dated. While this is true, you must respect the fact that this show was launched back in 2005 and even then it had flawed production quality. This can harm the experience, but can be overlooked by the good plot and well used elements.

I've heard quite a bit about this show before watching it and I must say, it lived up to my expectations. FSN is a dark thriller-action with elements of magic and a hint of romance. Overall, the show was a blast to watch and maintained a very high bar of quality throughout. Don't be surprised if you find yourself forgetting the time and continuously watching marathon style.

Animation:
First, I'll point out that the characters are well drawn. Unlike many of the more recent animes that I've watched, the characters actually look (not necessarily behave) mature rather than just cute. In addition, there are very many battles here in which FX is heavily used in a very effective fashion. Note that there is blood, no Elfen Lied, but still a considerable amount. And yes I can't get enough of Rin Tohsaka.

Sound:
The voice acting was well done, I thought Ueda Kana did an especially awesome job for Rin. She made her sound cunning yet cute.

For OP/ED, the first OP and ED were both above average, enough so for me to get the entire OST. As for the background music, it fit the magical theme PERFECTLY in most cases. Certain tracks are extremely good while others are average to very good.

Story:
I'll start with the negatives since there aren't very many. Don't expect heroes to coincide with what you know the heroes to be. They are only loosely based on historic figures and the anime takes its liberty to modify what it sees necessary (King Arthur = female??). Also, there are many intricacies such as the real identity of Archer (really really cool) that you may not get at first.

As for the actual plot sequence, it is superbly done. The viewer is kept waiting to find out who is Shiro's next opponent and then, once the plot plays out, rewards the watcher lavishly. Watching the uphill battle between the odd pair of Shiro and Saber (the weakest, pseudo-magician and the strongest servant) and the other masters was very intense. Throw in another magician (Rin) and her Archer servant and you have one awesome action adventure.

As an aside, there is also the question of a romantic developmentn between Shiro and Sakura/Rin/Saber.

Character:
Shiro is a dynamic character. From the beginning, he seeks the idyllic dream of champion of justice. His only passion is to help and protect others, at whatever cost to himself. Others find this do-goody personality very annoying since he seems completely uncorrupted whatsoever. However, by the end, he is fighting for a completely different reason. Shiro and Saber begin as a master/servant relationship but after a few battles, it is apparent their relationship develops into something further than just that. I found this development to be very well done and planned out, quite a bit of foreshadow if you look for it.

There's also Rin! She seems to be an amazingly talented magician yet it is obviously clear that she has some feelings for Shiro (and a perfect example of what Tsundere should be). Overall, the development of the characters is done extremely well. You'll realize that even the villains will have some good points.

Value:
This show is not too long, and is very action-packed and plot-driven. It might start out a little slow but the overall show is very fast paced and will keep you on your toes. I re-watched it right after finishing to pick up on more subtleties.

Just finished this show a couple of moments ago, the hype I got before watching this was IMENSE, but after sitting trough it all I can definitely see where it comes from... for the better and the worse.

I will refrain myself from commenting on the show before I give my view on specific issues. I will try my best to refrain myself from spoilers, but rest assured, some will exist SO if you didn't watch it yet you are better jumping straight to my conclusion.

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Animation
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In simple words it’s GORGEOUS. If you take into account it’s from 2006 it gets even better, surely nothing that year can get remotely close to it, and even for today standard’s it is top notch, specially on the color pallet department.

The backgrounds, the CGI, the still animations, the fight sequences... everything clicks beautifully, but what really shines are the character designs and the color employed on the scenes.

This show is definitely worth HD (I got the THORA release) and I wouldn't settle for anything lower then 720p, it really deserves it.

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Sound
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I've tried my best to find issues with the sound, but to put it simple it’s not bad at all!

The songs are catchy in their own merits and somewhat memorable. They do come off occasionally on the wrong scenes but for the most of the time they are spot on.

Aside the soundtrack, the sound effects are also ok and fit the scenes they take part into.

The voice acting is also pretty well done, and I would like to add a special note that the English and German segments are amongst the best I have ever seen in an anime (as cheesy as they might be).

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Story
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This show reeks ambition so much it ended up being smacked down by the usual budget / time frame reality, and this is the part where we feel it the worse.

More than once I felt like I needed a manual to watch the show and it wasn't included. Terms they use all the time never get explained and this gets in the way of understanding stuff every now and then, it’s quite annoying and you have to put up some effort to understand stuff based solo on the sentence context.

The arc's are well staged, but again the lack of proper treating and over ambitious director leave us with some problems. It is aggravating that some important stuff that happens later on have to rely on quick flashbacks to pack any meaning and even then the results are quite bad.

This gets the most aggravating when we deal with relationships between characters, but I will write about that on the latter topic.

Overall the story is nice and has a tremendous amount of care to it, sadly the director didn't have time to fulfill all he had in mind and it suffers a lot from it. If I had to pinpoint what areas suffered more I would have to say the romance. The action can carry itself pretty well due to the beautiful visuals and the drama focus on the “sacrifice” aspect most shounens drag from so no biggie, but the romantic relationships between Shirou and Saber are awkward to say the least, and his relation with Rin and Sakura are simply “deleted” from the plot halfway through for no apparent reason!

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Character
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All the characters are well made. They all have distinct traits, they all have particular looks, they all have background, objective and dept, but the problem is most of the time this is all crammed up so much it end up not living to the expectations.

I could go on in this subject for hours, but instead of pointing out how obviously Saber lack proper introduction about her past, or how Shirou desperately needed some more development and diversity or even how some characters like Sakura disappear from the plot after a few episodes (and we actually miss the continuation) I will just use my favorite character as an example, Rin.

Rin is an astonishing character that actually carry the show trough its worse moments all by herself, but the lack of episodes this show is plagued with (it deserved at least another season) makes some of her most interesting aspects lack and most of her relationships with other characters underdeveloped.

Why does she care so much about Sakura? Is the preach a fatherly figure to her? Does she love Shirou? I really wish all these aspects where developed, but instead they throw a few flashbacks and rush everything out to the point they don't make the slightest sense and hurt the otherwise REALLY cool character she is.

Even her relationship with archer is crammed up to the point he barely shows his face and 5 episodes latter they kill him and we are supposed to care?! And that is another major issue, the servants have NO development AT ALL so all the cool traits they own are wasted since we don't know who they are, why they fight for or even their origin... we don't even get introductions to them it’s just sad.

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Value/Enjoyment & Conclusion
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From the moment the show start to the end its quite clear the director set the standard on the stratosphere but sadly got smacked down by reality mid way through it. Either lack of budget, lack of time or both the fact is, most of the show builds such a tremendous hype around itself and sadly don’t live up to it leaving many shortcomings by the end.

I do however congratulate the director for taking the hard route and abiding itself for making a complete show instead of a “first part” that would never seen an end. Still, it hurts to see so much potential being left untouched.

I would say this show is really worth for people that like the genre, this IS a shounen after all, and even though it have many qualities that deviate from the standard and make it different, the typical affair is all here… like people never EVER getting killed, the main weak protagonist with untapped potential and the usual good = good | bad = bad ordeal where every good guy is a saint and every bad guy have snake eyes, do rough voices and have a satanic smile… so it does tick all the boxes for the standard show.

Now for other people that are not all that into shounen, I would still highly recommend this but with a warning, you WILL get disappointed. This anime was destined to be a masterpiece but it faced shortcomings that hindered expectations in every possible way. This would’ve been bad on a regular show, but the amount of greatness this anime reeks is unparalleled and this just make it all the bitter.