Fate/stay night

Information of Anime

Shirou Emiya lost his parents ten years ago in a big fire & was adopted by Kiritsugu Emiya, who later pasted away six months from now.  Because Kiritsugu was a sorcerer, Shirou learned magic from him.  However, he is very limited in it but continues to train to become a protector of justice.  One day, Shirou witnesses a intense battle between two people.  Could this be the part of the mysterious incidents where people have died from?

Fate/stay night is based on the ero visual novel game by TYPE MOON.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story is about seven sorcerers or Magi competing in a deadly competition for the Holy Grail.  It's said that this item will grant a wish.  To help them compete, the sorcerers summon one of seven servants that are based on different classes.  Rin Toshka is one of the seven sorcerers completing for the Holy Grail with her servant Archer.  Shirou, who doesn't know about this tournament, gets caught into this battle when he witnesses Archer & Lancer fighting in the school courtyard.  Because of a rule that no one should know about the tournament, Shirou pays for his life as Lancer kills him.  But Rin saves him by replacing his internal organs.  Despite what's going on, Shirou accidentally summons a servant named Saber.

By summoning Saber, Shirou gets more confused about the situation he's in until Rin takes him to meet the supervisor of the war.  There, he learns about the Holy Grail & the rules of the war.  Learning what happened ten years ago, Shirou finally decides to fight to prevent that incident from happening again.  Along the way, Shirou learns more about the Holy Grail & the desires for it.

Because of the rules, Archer questions Rin what she would do if she sees Shirou again.  The result is to kill him which was attempted when she see him at school.  Because of outside interference by a servant name Rider, Rin proposes a truce with Shirou & cooperate with each other to find the master who placed a force field on the school grounds.  However, Archer questions Shirou about his views of ending the Holy Grail war.  From here, Shirou tries to take on the war by himself which frustrates Saber as she thinks he can't survive in the Holy Grail War like this.  But after understanding him, she decides to train Shirou in swordsmanship to understand the concept of battles.

As Shirou undergoes training, he starts to see some master differently, such as Ilya being a innocent girl who's really not interested the Holy Grail war.  Also he gains some tips from others, such as Archer.  Also, during his battle with Shinji, who tricked him, & Rider, Shirou begins to understand that he can't fight alone in the Holy Grail war.  Also, Saber begins to understand more about Shirou & warns him that his beliefs of saving others before himself will be something he'll regret in the future.

With the defeat of Archer & taking his advice, the story makes a turning point.  Shirou begins to use his magic of tracing more efficiently by creating weapons without wearing out his mana.  This leads to the defeat of Berserker.  This causes Ilya to join up with him & the group.  Also, Saber becomes more feminine after the incident where she restores her life from Shirou physically.  Also, Caster plans to summon the Holy Grail by force using Sakura as a vessel to contain the grail.

During this arc, things get interesting as quite a few of surprises occur as well as deaths.  Also, we learn about Rin & Sakura being sisters that were separated at a young age.  What makes it more interesting is the appearance of a seventh servant named Gilgamesh, an old servant that lived for ten years after the previous Holy Grail War.  Saber fought him before & couldn't win at the time.  From here, Saber tells Shirou the truth of what happened ten years ago & how his father, Kiritsugu Emiya, was her master & commanded her to destroy the Holy Grail.  Deeper into the story, we find out that the seventh master is none other than Kirei Kotomine, the father of the church that's watching the war.

During the final arc, we learn many secrets of how Kirei was secretly hiding his servant for ten years & him being the one that illegally touch the Holy Grail.  Also, he killed Kiritsugu Emiya.  In order to force the Holy Grail out, Kirei kidnaps Ilya to use her as a vessel for the grail.  We come to a showdown between Kirei versus Shirou & Gilgamesh versus Saber with the good guys going for the win & them destroying the Holy Grail to save Ilya.

The show ends with Saber going back to her world & Shirou going about his normal daily life.  We switch to Saber's time as she wakes up from her sleep & dreamt of the war of the Holy Grail.  Having her sword thrown back to the lady of the lake like in the King Arthur legend, she goes into a deep sleep.

My Personal Review

Fate/stay night is one of many animes of 2006 that's getting a lot of hype.  Originally a 13 episode show that turned 24, this show may not be for everyone.  People that didn't enjoy the Tsukihime anime will probably may not like this one.  However, TYPE MOON wasn't too happy with the way the Tsukihime anime turned out since the company wasn't part of the scripting team.  This time, they are deeply involved with Fate/stay night so this may draw more people in.  However, some people that don't have any background about the series are slowly turning away from it mainly because of the wrong idea they had about the show.

Animation

The drawings are actually the same ones from the game almost.  The way the characters are design are virtually identical, which is a good thing for people that played the game.  Even the eyes are the same.   Expect they look a bit animated than manga.  For example, Sakura Matou is more cute looking than the game.  Colour wise, it's pretty dull as in not bright.  When Taiga Fujimura is drawn with thick black lines, those are the times when the colours of the characters stand out bright.  But it's not bright as other anime shows.  Around episode 5, the quality goes down.  It looks like they are using different animators.  You can tell by looking at some of the characters' faces, such as Saber.  The differences are very noticeable.

The backgrounds are pretty good & are a bit fuzzy. Examples of this are the trees & bushes.  They are drawn like art paintings.  Because of this style, the colour toning was good since it's pretty dull already.  This really creates that dark mood for the show.

The animation movements are quite good at the moment.  There are none of those weird sudden changes between scenes like where a character falls on his left, but somehow falls on this right instead in the next scene.  But, this problem appears later in the show as the animators ignore the distance between the characters & the objects near them.  In many case, we see one scene where a chatacter is stand about two or three arms length around from something.  When they start to fall or lean against the object, the distance is shorten by a lot.  It was as if the distance between them as just half an arm's length away.  There are some silly movements such as how Fujimura rushes to her classroom.  As for the fight scenes, they are very smooth & natural.  Although it's not very exciting to watch at this time, I would like to see a lot of work in this area.  The ending theme animation scene is well done.  The wind blowing on Saber's dress & the tall grass moving really looks good.

Sound

The sound effect are a mix of reality & cute.  Most of the time, it's reality.  The cute & funny ones tend to show up when Fujimura is in.  The sounds are quite nice & clear.  The timing & volume is on the mark during the fast paced fight scenes, which is quite important.

The seiyuus cast here really do a good job with their characters.  Rin's voice, performed by Kana Ueda, is one character that I need to get use to.  Hard to picture her voice on Rin's character.  But the performance is pretty good.  There are times though where the volume tends to drop to whisper mode.  I have no idea why it's that quiet.  Sometimes, the sound effects overpower the voices.

The music is ok.  The problem with it is that it's too low.  I really need to turn up the volume just to listen to them.  Also, it seems to lose its impact over time as you hear it a lot.  It lessened the mood.  The opening theme song is remixed for the anime & it's pretty soft for a show like this.  The original was more heavy.  Personally, I don't like disillusion much & found the TV version better.  However, it doesn't really set any mood.  The ending theme is quite nice as it matches Saber's animation pose in the field.

Story

Although it's got some intense fight scenes, the show is mainly in the talking department.  There are talks about the Holy Grail, but I think it will focus more on the character development side instead such as Shirou & Saber.  The goal for the Holy Grail will most likely be a factor to the character development than the desire for it.  We see Shirou & Saber develop a lot as they try to understand each other.  The biggest turning point of the show occurs when Archer gets defeated by Berserker.  From there, we learn about Saber & Shirou's past ten years ago during & after the previous Holy Grail war.

When the story enters its last two arcs, the number of fight scenes increases.  But they aren't as exciting as before.  The amount of talking increases as well as we see the relationship between Saber & Shirou increase with the struggles they have together in having views different from one another.  However, the process looked confusing as Shirou seems indecisive about Saber.  He loves her as a woman, but doesn't want to step on her pride as a knight.

As for the ending, I found it to be descent.  Although it wasn't the best, it was somewhat complete.  There were some stuff left in mystery that was solved a bit in the game, such as Sakura's mana powers.  Also, it seems to be a totally new ending from the ones I've read about from websites.

Overall Conclusion

Fate/stay night did meet most of my expectations.  I haven't played the game, only looked for information so my knowledge of the series is a bit limited.  The show does take its time in explaining the Holy Grail war at a reasonable pace.  So people with no background about the series can follow along nicely.  I would however suggest watching it with interest as it has a lot of talking involved.  The show had a lot of potential to be a good series from the start, but I felt it was just so-so at the end.

Fate/stay night gets an eight out of ten from me.  The story is quite interesting, despite the fact it left some holes here & there.  I think this is because the writers were trying to squeeze all three storylines from the game into this anime show.  It sometimes may the relationship between Saber & Shirou hard to understand at times because of this.  The fight scenes are exciting, but loses its excitement near the end.  As someone who likes TYPE MOON works & is interested in this series, I did buy the DVDs for this show when it became available in Canada even though it isn't the best.