Geekatana Anime Review: Fate Stay Night

My introduction to the Fate series back in 2006 was through a friend of mine and being as I'm a fan of Tsukihime series I sort of jumped into this head first. This was based on a visual novel by Type Moon after all. Although the visual novel has three routes the first anime adaptation of the novel that came out in 2006 was based on the Fate route. The other two route being Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel.

Since Fate Stay Night was the first animated adaptation released I'd decided to review this but I will compare this to the other two a little bit just so folks know where this first one stacks up compared to the rest of the routes.

Fate Stay Night is about the tale of the fifth Holy Grail War, a royal rumble battle between seven masters and their seven servants to attain the Holy Grail which is an all powerful wish granting item. The story's main character Shiro with basic magic ability finds himself caught in when he witness a fight between servants and accidentally summons his own servant in the form of a beautiful girl named Saber who is known as one of the most powerful servants there is.

Story wise the plot follows the fate route with some elements of Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel added in. The plot twist are nice but a bit rushed and at times the story feels a bit too long than it should be and can be overwhelming but not enough to be confusing. It's a good jumping point if you want to get into the Fate franchise but sadly feels very generic in terms of stories of this type of genre. The servant fights feel episodic and doesn't have the weight a battle royal war should be.

The characters are all interesting except for the man character Shiro who comes out as your generic male protagonist. For a character Shiro isn't bad but he pales in comparison to the rest of the characters like Saber and Rinn. You know it's a bad sign when the side characters are more interesting than your main character in any anime.

Visually the anime is great back in 2006 but it has since started to show its age. The visual novel is an eroge/adult game for the PS2 so the folks at Studio Deen had to cut a lot of the kinky stuff out. In its place though is a certain badly done cgi dragon instead of somehow just explaining out of context in another way.

The character design overall specially Saber outfit is well done and is one of my favorite and it's been a basis of many Saber design concept to follow in the years to come. The music is another good thing about this series as it reflects the overall feel of the Novel and applying that to series itself.

Flawed as the series though this did started the Fate franchise and cemented Type Moon as a name for anime/otaku fans everywhere. It has since spawn sequels, prequels, games and spin offs. It also relegated Saber and a lot of the female characters into otaku waifu status for better or for worst. It has one of the best character female arcs with well develop female characters something we will later see more as the franchise moves forward.

Imperfect as Fate Stay is it is still an enjoyable show and is a good starting point if you want to get into the fate series as it has most of the essentials down about the Grail War and the Servant and Master rules without overly confusing. And believe me it gets very complicated from here on out as the franchise goes forward.