Anime: Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works (2014)

Nine years after the release of the original Fate/Stay Night, here I find myself writing a review for none other but Fate/Stay Night. However, this is not just another repeat/summary but rather a completely different route, and one that brings FSN into alignment with the events of Fate/Zero. For those who have watched the original FSN, the beginning may seem familiar but soon the divergence becomes strikingly apparent. For those who have watched the FSN UBW movie, this is a much more thorough version of that movie (unfortunately, you will know most of the large plot twists already). For those who have watched Fate/Zero, you'll finally get your contiguous story line. If you have been in a vacuum and not seen any Type Moon works of the FSN series, I recommend starting with Fate/Zero.

This review encompasses both seasons of this latest iteration of FSN and will use Fate/Zero as a standard for comparison (and will assume that you have watched it). Oh, and most importantly, this is the Tousaka route (the original FSN featured Saber's route and the upcoming movie FSN Heaven's Feel will showcase Sakura's route); Tousaka addicts rejoice, this show overflows with Kana Ueda's spot on tsundere performance.

So how does the latest FSN stack up? The production values are right up there with Fate/Zero and the story is pretty much an extended version of the UBW movie. I do feel that some characters had a much diminished role as compared to the original FSN, and overall it isn't as dark (and male-voice dominated) as Fate/Zero. Nonetheless, this still ranks as a must see; it truly sets the bar for what you can get for what ApexE aptly terms "Unlimited Budget Works". Moreover, if you happen to be a Tousaka fan, this is an absolute no brainer.

If you're so inclined as to pick up this show, do note that there is a special episode 0 (Rin's version of episode 1 really) and episode 25 (epilogue that tidies things up nicely).

Animation:
The overall animation is absolute eye candy. The list of outstanding qualities in this show was so long that I literally had to jot notes to keep track of what I liked. To start, the colorization is very well done, and is at the very least on par with Fate/Zero. One of the best animated sunsets I've ever seen was in Fate/Zero; they must have heard me or something as they once again do an amazing transition, this time at the very end of the epilogue. Backgrounds are in general sharp and well drawn; I particularly liked the nighttime cityscapes. As with Fate/Zero, expect the color palette to create a dark, somewhat menacing atmosphere- the show definitely feels a bit darker than the original FSN.

There were some rough edges in the production, however. The show has some of the best looking CGI-generated water that I've ever seen, yet also has some of the most mechanical-looking walking students that I've witnessed. Character-wise, all the characters from FSN return though with differing importance from the original- there's a lot less of Sakura, Ilya, and Saber than in the original (though Saber's behavior here fits more with her performance from F/Z). What particularly stood out for me was the attention to the character behaviors. From the way Tousaka prances her way across the screen to Ilya's effortless, innocent expression while telling Berserker to kill others, the subtle details really show that they went the extra effort to make this truly a work of art.

You won't be disappointed in the action department either. The battles here, though brief, are amazing to behold. From the smoke that billows around Saber's invisible sword to the bright sparks from clashing blades and shockwaves after body attacks- everything is top notch. Granted, if you don't like gore and blood, some parts of the show may be a bit dark, but assuming that you survived F/Z you should be fine here. Ecchi is really not a focus here, and despite the H-nature of the original VN, you won't be seeing a lot of skin ship between Shirou and Tousaka. That being said, an embarrassed Tousaka in brassiere hugging a pillow is perhaps adequate recompense.

Sound:
As much as I hate to say it, I prefer the music in the original FSN and F/Z to the work here. There are definitely throwbacks to the original such as the reuse of Disillusion as an insert song, but the OP/EDs and BGM just aren't as memorable. The show has a total of two OPs and two EDs. The first OP has some good vibes but doesn't have the mystery or strong melody of Disillusion. The second OP comes across similarly; it's a decent OP but feels a bit slow considering the show's brisk pacing. Ufotable's association with Kalafina continues with both the EDs, the second of which is the stronger of the two.

The VA cast should be familiar to those who watched the original. As far as I could tell, the entirety of the original cast returns for this grand reunion. Despite the almost decade since the first FSN, everyone sounds as you'd expect- perhaps only even better given their seasoned experience. Regardless, Kana Ueda is hands down the queen of this show, and gives an absolutely superb performance.

Story:
Emiya Shirou has never known happiness; he felt that he never deserved any as the sole survivor of the great fire at the end of Fate/Zero. As fate would have it, this novice user of magic (and adopted son of Emiya Kiritsugi) happens to witness a battle between servants and is literally forced into being a master. Luckily, due to his catalyst, he unknowingly summons the strongest of the servants - Saber. However, will her strength be enough to balance out her master's weaknesses? Doubly lucky, Shirou finds that one of his schoolmates (Tousaka) is also a master. Despite her initial assistance, how long will her help continue given that this is a battle royale?

The show starts with a brutal, hectic introduction with an engaging yet strikingly similar plot to the original FSN. Pacing is quite masterful as the show does a great job of balancing action-packed episodes with breathers to fill in more background. The central plotline mirrors that in the UTW movie but does a bit more to explore of side plots. For example, Ilya gets a nice episode that connects well to the events of Fate/Zero. However, there isn't as much of a balance in terms of exposition compared to the original FSN, and the master/servant relationships and mechanics of the battle for the grail are somewhat glossed over. There is really only one single story line, though there is a bit of a rise in intensity to mark the end of the first season.

If I had to pick what was the strongest facet of the story, it would have to be the execution. The background, interactions, and events all built throughout the show until the final glue of the epilogue ties it all together. The weakest aspect is Archer's decision-making; let's just say that there were plenty of chances to carry out his original mission. Overall, the show has a strong, but not flawless story.

Character:
A lot hasn't changed from the original FSN. Emiya is still self-sacrificing, Shinji is still the turd, and Gilgamesh still refers to everyone else as "mongrels". What has changed is the drastic shift in focus towards Tousaka, Archer, and (to a lesser extent) Caster. I was actually rather disappointed in the amount of progress in the Shirou/Tousaka relationship, it all felt somewhat juvenile, especially compared to the relationships in Fate/Zero (granted they are much younger here I guess). That aside, the main cast is definitely a dynamic set that grows and adapts throughout the show. Again, the real gems of the show for me were in the small details that weren't in the original; these include scenes like Tousaka getting flustered and Saber's adorable inability to use a bat in a batting cage. Really, the rating for this section will highly depend on how you mesh with the above-mentioned characters. Luckily, for me, the show had my basis covered.

Value:
FSN is an entertaining addition... er... partial addition to the Fate animated universe. Though it doesn't add much more in terms of story to the UBW movie, it does add some interesting character tidbits. And the production, by itself, should make it worth your time. As for re-watch, once you understand the main twist, it's funny re-watching and seeing the irony in a lot of the character lines. Despite the intense expectations coming after Fate/Zero, I think Type Moon delivered a strong hit, definitely check this one out.

Note: This review only covers the first half of Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. Another separte review will be made to cover the events in its second half.

---

Review
Fate/Stay Night, released all the way back in 2006, was a unpolished work. It had potential, its setting was solid, the idea was interesting and the events achieved a high degree of quality for a shounen. It was, however, plagued by a harem-inspired concept, simple characters with a lack of impact, and most of all, a mediocre production by Studio Deen.

When we got in 2012, however, ufotable took the franchise and started anew with an outstanding work they did on Fate/Zero and its two seasons. Instead of a harem-infested show with average quality, we had a dark tale filled with bretrayals, secrets, black magic, and cruel deaths. It was one of the best action series in a few years, so it was a nice move to remake the bland Fate/Stay Night and explore all the potential it had.

The tale is about Emiya Shirou and his participation in the Holy Grail War that was not completely finished by the end of Fate/Zero. The aftermath of the bloody conflict led to a short time of peace, but once again the mages are ready to clash against each other, putting their servants and their own skills to test.

---

1. It's completely different
   Although the core of the show is the same as it was in Fate/Stay Night, the atmosphere and the events here are completely revigorated. This first half introduces us to the setting of New Fuyuki City and the Holy Grail War, giving us an insight about Emiya Shirou and his main ally, Tohsaka Rin, as well as their respective servants: Saber and Archer. While this focus is basically the same as in 2006's show, it feels far darker, more mature, and absurdly more exciting. We have no harem episodes, no abuse of blushing girls, and no fillers whatsoever. From episode 0 to episode 12 there is intense presentation, lots of action, and a detailed explanation of what is happening.
   
   Darker and faster
   First of all, Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works is a lot darker in every sense. The important events happen during the night, the characters are more scheming and mysterious, the color palette is filled with dark shades, and there are serious turnovers in the tale with a few unexpected deaths and a sense that Shirou and Rin can be penalyzed by their innocence and lack of skill at any moment.
   
   Another important thing is how animation is handled. Whenever combats happen, they are outstanding, with first class battle coreography, tension, superb lightning effects and fluid animation. Although they are not abudant because the show focus a lot on dialogue and explanations, when they happen you will certainly be pleased.
   
   This is about Shirou and Rin though
   Well, you get a glimpse of Lancer and Rider, an episode with Illya and Berserker, a short introduction to Assassin and Gilgamesh, and a bit more of Caster. All of them, however, are just quickly tossed aside so Shirou and Rin can evolve and be explored. This works to make both characters more appealing and interesting, even if Shirou is still a sore excuse for a protagonist, but it could certainly be better if you had more on the other mages and their servants in these first twelve episodes, especially when two of them are 45 minutes long and you also have a bonus episode 0 with another 45 minutes showing Rin's point of view of the starting events.
   
   It works to get your attention
   Even with the two protagonist getting a bit annoying by the last part, all the amazing events that happen in this first season work wonders to grab your attention and lure you to the second season. The tension building by the end is great and there are rarely annoying course of actions as they usually happen in shounen shows, so you will certainly finish these twelve episodes wanting for more.
   

---

Comments
Well, finally. Fate/Stay Night was interesting back in 2006, but was so bland and unexciting that I was never able to truly recommend it to someone else. After Fate/Zero released I started saying "well, you can watch Fate/Stay first, but it is a bit boring", but now I have a show to truly recommend for shounen fans and anyone wanting something darker and more mature.

As a whole, Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works is more complete than the 2006 version, with more detailed explanations, better outcomes, and an overall greater sense of fulfillment, but when compared to Fate/Zero it can be a bit less mature, mainly because the protagonist is a dumb generic guy who wishes to help people around him and Rin is not much beyond a tsundere template. For a show that focus that much on these two poor characters, those wanting more scheming like what happens in Fate/Zero may be quite disappointed.

The second half gets better in terms of surprise, but it still fails to cover the empty ground left in the character department. Still, there are few show as amazing as this in these last seasons.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/dwva6g3pnwrpw8e/FSN.jpg#

Well, here we are once again with Ufotable adapting a Type Moon work. If it sells, why stop doing it; right? I mean have you seen how all related series sold? From the atrocious older version made by DEEN, to its prequel Fate/Zero, to its loli fan service spin-off Fate/Kaleid; this franchise is a goldmine.

And you need to be aware of what exactly you are getting yourself into in case you don’t already know. The Fate franchise is affiliated with the most famous porn game of all times, and has a ridiculous amount of fans who defend it to the death. For example, if one of them reads the previous sentence, he will go apeshit and explain in a wall of text how it is not a porn game; it’s a visual novel, the ultimate masterpiece of storytelling, with exceptional writing, amazing characters, complicating terminology, and intellectual battles. How many good books have these people read that are not shitty visual novels, and how many games have they played that are not erotic visual novels? 95% chance, the answer is zero. As it happens with all fandoms, they are filled with fanatics who are inflating whatever is going on, while being in denial. It has sex scenes, it has fan service, it has harem, it’s a porn game; you can stop trying to call it otherwise. It tries to be more, but eventually succeeds only into becoming a badly written battle shonen with fancy terminology.

If you keep your expectations low, you will enjoy it as a rule of cool type of show, filled with lots of flashy battles, extremely polished visuals, and poser characters you want to cosplay as, or have as your waifu. It’s a very fun show if you see it just as a spectacle. The problem surfaces when you DON’T see it simply as a spectacle and instead try to make it seem like it’s more than that. I said you should keep your expectations low but how is that humanly possible when the anime was hyped all the way to the moon as soon as its production was announced, and how can you possibly remain calm and reserved about it when it got an average score of 9/10 before it even began to air. I am not kidding you; it was placed instantly at the top ten highest rated anime of all times before the first episode was even out. The average dropped since then, but that doesn’t take away the power of its delusional fandom.

And let me prove why they are delusional, starting with the premise. Seven people get a super warrior each and fight each other because there can be only one. The winner gets a wish and becomes a puela magi. What complicates this one line of a story is how the tiniest and most unimportant of events needs to be stretched out to last as much as possible, and a plot that could have ended in 2 episodes if it was pragmatic, is instead stretched to last 10 times as much. How is that possible, you may ask? Is the show mostly made up of fillers? No, but it’s instead filled with lots and lots of extra fluff that do not allow the average viewer to realize he is watching something that has no progress.

It keeps you distracted with constant infodumps. Half of the whole show is people talking and explaining shit. And by explaining, I don’t simply mean they explain their strategies to the opponent or comment on everything that happens in case the viewer has his IQ lower than that of an ape. It does that too, but it is a drop in the ocean before the dreaded infodumping. Dear lord, they talk for hours about how magic works and what it can do and what are the limitations, and they use fancy words, and they explain it again, and then they go over it every time something new appears, and SHUT UP ALREADY!

This is what made the source material so famous. It’s a porn game with a complicated terminology you can talk about for hours, that makes you look smart and not like a ronery who faps to cartoons. And by the end of the day none of all that matters because IT’S MAGIC; IT MAKES NO SENSE. Even if it was science that for some reason the porn game managed to present it in a completely realistic manner, it would still not mean anything, since it still works in any random way the writer wants it to work.
- Rin needs to train for a decade, be fully aware of how magic works, and chant for a whole minute for something magical to take place. This is meant to explain why learning magic is a hard thing to do. And yet Shiro casts commands, summons super warriors, learns epic spells in seconds, and avoids death rays without having a clue of what the fart is going on, thus debunking the previous claim.
- They keep saying there are rules that make sense, and waste half the show explaining them, only to then reveal:
• Caster who has the power of Rule Breaker,
• Assassin who doesn’t run out of energy without his master around,
• Lancer who feigns death twice in five minutes, only to die the third time,
• Gilgamesh who jumps in the death game out of nowhere, and screws up everyone with a power nobody had any chance of surviving against, besides the bland MC and his constant asspulled power ups and plot armor,
• and Archer who stays alive, even when he was clearly killed.

Adding to all this mess is the very bad writing.
- If half the show is explanations, the other half is characters fooling around and not doing what they are supposed to be doing. I am not kidding you, none of the characters take their roles seriously; they are in a death tournament where it is “kill or be killed” and treat everything as if it’s an amusement park.
• Rin, who really wants to win in this death tournament, saves the life of another contestant, explains all it needs for him to survive in this war, and then proceeds into trying to kill him, thus rendering all that she did so far to be completely pointless, only to regret it and fall in love with him.
• Ilya lets her enemies escape because it was a fun game and wants to play more, while Gilgamesh is not killing his enemies because he doesn’t want to get dusty.
- Ilya and Berserker don’t have their backdrops reveiled, until they are one minute away from dying.
- Shinji and Caster’s first Master don’t even have much of a character or a backdrop story, and are there only as generic one-dimensional villains for the audience to hate.
- As if all that weren’t enough, there is also a significant amount of characters, such as Saber, Rider, Sakura, even Kotomine, who are not doing much in the whole show, even though they seemed to be far more important in their introduction. The reason for that? Because the anime wasn’t adapting the route of the game in which they were vital.

How do the fanboys excuse all that:
“In the visual novel you had options of what you would do, so it doesn’t seem that bad over there”.
I don’t give a damn about the porn game, and this is a review of the anime. Oh, there is also:
“How could we get to know the characters if they would be killed right away and the show would be over in a few episodes? That’s impossible to happen if the show made sense. After all, it’s dumb entertainment for shonentards, so it’s ok to... WHOOPS! I meant sophisticated storytelling for mature people such as myself; there is nothing wrong with this anime; it’s perfect.”

Ok, you are not convincing me, it’s still stupid. There is so much plot armour for the protagonist, and so much plot convenience when not killing people, even when they should normally do, to the point I no longer care about the characters because their conflict feels staged. I also can’t see this show as dumb action because they keep trying to trick me (and fail) into believing it is far more than just that. Hey look guys, it’s famous historical figures from the past, brought to the present to fight! And they talk about ideals and philosophies! Isn’t it amazing?

... No, it isn’t. It falls right into the pretentious territory, a thing which I happen to hate because it wants to make the viewer over-think stuff and trick him to believe he is smart for doing that. The illusion breaks when you get unforgettable quotes such as “people die when they are killed” coming from a guy who cheats death three times per episode because he is a bland shonen protagonist. There are also no consequences in a story where they keep telling you a wish can change the whole world, when the world is otherwise completely autistic to this war and its participants. Yes, they keep saying that they cover it up, but just what is there to cover when they cause a dozen explosions per episode, injuring or killing hundreds of people, and none in the city sees or hears the slightest thing. It’s as if the characters all suffer from chuunibyou and the battles take place only in their childish minds, with the adults walking by and shaking their heads upon seeing them doing all that make-belief nonsense.

So down to it, what is this show exactly? It’s a silly fighting shonen with very good production values that pretends to be intelligent by overcomplicating everything. It’s full of fan catering, wish fulfilment, and escapism, with a naive plot starring a bland shonen protagonist full of childish ideals, doing silly teen romance shenanigans with a plethora of female archetypes (Rin: Tsundere, Saber: Culdere, Sakura: Yandere), and a ton of bravado for the sake of giving importance to things that are otherwise shallow. It’s fun if you still like Naruto but not if you are past the age when you still like teenagers with superpowers and unforgettable quotes such as “the archer class is made of archers”. And don’t you dare say that just because I am correct, doesn’t mean I am right.