Gen Urobuchi's "Fate/Zero"
"The Holy Grail War is a competition that decides the ownership of the Holy Grail through intense battle royale. While there have been many conflicts over supposed Holy Grails in the past, this term refers to those specifically based around Masters summoning Servants and meeting in battle until only one pair is left to claim the Holy Grail..."
This is how one would describe the entire premise of each of the storylines within the Fate franchise. In addition to its rich setting despite that there are anything else in the Fate's world that was missing, such as more of the so-called the 'Holy Church', and of the so-called the 'Magic Association', which are quite interesting themselves, despite the Fate series are rather focused on the coverage of respective Holy Grail Wars, each of its storyline played with creating backstories of the Servants as well as their interactions with the other characters, especially the back-and-forth interactions between a certain Servant and his/her Master(s).
For those who do not have a clue about some terminologies involving the Holy Grail War of the Fate franchise, Masters are titles given to certain individuals, usually a magus, who had been chosen to formally participate the Holy Grail War by obtaining Command Seals through the Holy Grail itself and forming a contract with a certain Servant.
On the other hand, Servants are Heroic Spirits (Heroes who achieved great deeds and were worshipped after death through spreading those deeds) summoned by the Holy Grail for the purpose of competing under Masters. Servants are classified into one of the seven standard classes namely Saber (Knight of the Sword), Lancer (Knight of the Lance), Archer (Knight of the Bow), Rider (Mounted Soldier), Caster (Magus), Assassin (Silent Killer) and Berserker (Mad Warrior). Each one of these heroes wield skills and armaments made from humanity's illusion called the Noble Phantasms.
That being said, each of the storyline can be quite difficult to fully understand if one did not know the information about the backstory of a certain Servant although just like what I had said, some stories can be altered in a way it will looked interesting for the Servant and Master interactions. This is mainly due to that history itself is quite vague to be considered real, even if there are significant evidences that contributed towards a certain field of interest, like Leonardo da Vinci (a female Caster Servant in a certain game called "Fate/Grand Order") and his well-known painting, the Mona Lisa, towards art, especially those that had happened before the early 19th century, where photography is not that apparent until that point. This is especially true for any mythological storyline involving certain characters like the Arthurian Legend, the Greek mythology, the Irish mythology, etc. As for me, a well-thought-out usage of said storylines being incorporate into another storyline to create extended purpose to the overall narration made immersion towards that storyline more effective to me as a reader, rather than putting such references quite literally without any creative change/through namedropping to serve a little purpose that can either benefit a little or harm a lot to the overall narration of such storyline.
Of course, it can be a hard task to make the reader to remember those historical/mythological references while reading that kind of storyline, but the task can be rewarding since it will felt that those historical/mythological figures are truly 'alive' on that storyline rather than being utilized for some limited purposes. Of course, regardless of criticism and of praise about many fictional stories with or without these mythological/historical allusions, the most important aim of these books/movies/TV series is to be read and appreciated by its target audiences (but mostly to sell a lot of these books and to be recognized. Never a bad thing though).
Back in the Holy Grail War storylines of the Fate franchise, the premise itself is an interesting take for a good battle royale concept. After all, every participant in each war is chosen to have his/her wish able to be granted by the magically omnipotent chalice depending on how it interests them. Each of the storylines varied in some concepts from one another such as the number of participants joining (or rather, the required number of Heroic Spirits to be utilized in order to perform its actual purpose) but the end concept still remained the same. Like what I had already said, this kind of set-up is really basic as it was a competition after all just to win a certain prize, similar to those concept seen in Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" trilogy and in George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" series (or simply put, the well-known "Game of Thrones" TV series), both of which are plot-driven works regardless of the development of their characters. Because of this concept, such storylines will work effectively better as plot-driven works rather than as a character-driven ones. It does not mean that one particular storyline cannot be considered a character-driven one especially with the "Fate/stay night" visual novel being a clear character-driven story that focused more on the main protagonist's growth throughout it rather than the war itself, which means it leaves the Fifth Holy Grail War hanging without him fighting someone.
Regarding this concept played in the Holy Grail War, this entire battle royale is seriously flawed. As the Grail required the energy of all seven Servants to help activate the Great Grail and open a hole to Akasha, it would mean that all Servants includ`ing the winning Servant would have to be killed, and since the Grail can only be held by Servant, activating the Greater Grail, let alone retrieving the Holy Grail, cannot be achieved, as Masters are incapable of doing so without a Servant. This flaw made the Grail capable of only granting wishes to Masters and Servants.
Because of this, the storylines varied in perspectives to be focused on regardless of success, mainly because the aims of the authors for their own works completely differ from one another.
Perhaps, the one storyline that truly stood out among those works in terms of utilizing this concept in a most convincing way in my opinion would be "Fate/Zero", which is going to be the light novel to be focused by this review. That is, provided that Rhyogo Narita's "Fate/strange fake", which also has yet another interesting take for the Holy Grail War storyline with some of the rules being altered yet again (just like "Fate/Apocrypha") and yet the Grail War itself continued despite the changes, and is currently published as a light novel under the Dengeki Bunko label.
"Fate/Zero" is a series of light novels made by Gen Urobuchi (with the cooperation of Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi) which focused on the events of the Fourth Fuyuki Holy Grail War from the perspectives of different participants of the said war. As anyone who is aware of this series will tell that this event took place ten years prior to the Fifth Fuyuki Holy Grail War, which involved the events that took place in Fate/stay night.
As a side note about my thought about the author, Gen Urobuchi had been the only writer that had been involved in anime industry, I am still completely aware of its name until now through his works "Puella Magi Madoka Magica", this light novel series and "Psycho-Pass", along with the aformentioned Rhyogo Narita ("Baccano!" and "Durarara!"), Kinoko Nasu ("Kara no Kyoukai", "Tsukihime" and "Fate/stay night") Chiaki J. Konaka ("Digimon Tamers" and "Serial Experiments Lain"), Naoki Urasawa ("Monster" and the manga-only "20th Century Boys"), Osamu Tezuka ("Astro Boy" and "Kimba The White Lion"), Akira Toriyama ("Dragon Ball" series) and quite surprisingly, Reki Kawahara ("Sword Art Online" and "Accel World")... that is, without the aid of any search engine.
As such, this series served as the prequel to "Fate/stay night". This means that the conclusion of the Fourth Holy Grail War is already determined through the appearances of some of them in the next Holy Grail War (with one exception, as that character made an exclusive appearance only in the "Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (TV)") and the assumption that none of the seven chosen Master-Servant pairs will actually succeed in this event. Because of this, the story was written by the author in a manner that it IS clearly established as a prequel for a good reason.
That reason in itself is that Urobuchi's aim towards "Fate/Zero" is not to provide a complete closure until the storyline of its sequel "Fate/stay night" happened, despite that these works were done by two authors that have distinct writing styles. Granted, Kinoko Nasu is the one who gave Gen Urobuchi the task of creating the prequel story and this prequel can actually standalone on its own with some of the remaining significant events being invoked in its sequel. After all, "Fate/stay night" gives the proper conclusion to the consequences of its prequel. This means "Fate/Zero" was given the act to provide the missing puzzle pieces for the entirety of this Fate storyline ("Fate/Zero" and "Fate/stay night"), particularly on the backstory of Shirou Emiya's adopted father (Kiritsugu Emiya) and his ideals as a hero being transferred to his son (given a slight focus of the Unlimited Blade Works route with regards to Shirou's ideals); on the backstory of the Fate version of Arthurian legend (one of the main focuses of the Fate route); and on the backstory of the familial conflicts between the Three Families of the Beginning, specifically on the Tohsaka family and the Makiri/Matou family with regards to Rin Tohsaka and Sakura Matou and on the relationship between Illyasviel von Einzbern of the Einzbern family and Shirou Emiya (two of the main focuses of the Heaven's Feel route).
That being said, for those who will be reading this light novel or who will be watching its TV adaptation in the future if you are still reading this review, it would be advisable to read/watch the entirety of "Fate/stay night" (the visual novel) first it before going to "Fate/Zero" to provide the maximum understanding of this Fate storyline (while the other information about the world of Nasuverse can be provided through its other works like "Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners" and "Tsukihime").
One certain question is raised here: What makes "Fate/Zero" stand out among the other works within the Fate franchise despite that it suffered on its status as a prequel (which already provided a foregone conclusion even before the story began) like, as always, George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequel trilogy (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith) to its sequels, its original trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi)?
The answer is that "Fate/Zero", which is clearly a plot-driven story, took more focus on the journey (interactions among the characters) rather than on the destination (characters attaining the goal), answering the mystery behind that destination given in "Fate/stay night", by providing the readers about the major events of the Fourth Holy Grail War.
Said events include presenting all of the fight sequences among almost all of the participating members of the battle royale, with all of them can be described as either mature and strategic (every battle that had happened on the first two volumes of the series but one from the second volume); or glorious, tragic, enthralling or beautiful (every battle on the last two volumes of the series and that one battle I excluded beforehand [since it is a completely instant annihilation to the point that the author doesn't even bother describing it] fits well on either one of the three or even all four of them) on each one of them.
However, strangely enough for a thriller (like Koushun Takami's "Battle Royale" novel), there is really only one battle that can really be described as intense and that would be the battle between two certain Masters on the fourth and final volume of the series. Also, strangely enough for a thriller and action story, the action is not as much as most other action stories out there, but when it does, it really does well given the descriptions I could tell from each one of them. Because of this, none of those battles are considered pointless given all of the circumstances played for each one of the characters on those battles, as well as their abilities each one uses. The reason for this is that each of the fights has a particular theme that played by the participants' acts such as chivalry, pride, mystery, showmanship, entertainment, etc. This is all dependent to the point of view of each of the characters in the story. Of course, that one fight I considered to be intense happened to have a particular theme of finding answers. After all, these two people had been wondering on knowing the reason about one another's participation in the Holy Grail War as Masters.
Perhaps, to compensate for the lack of sheer number of fights (though all of the fights are rather significant to each of their own), some of the other segments of the series were given to focus on forming temporary alliances, well-planned/decisive strategies, acts of betrayal and deception, clash of ideals and glorious/crippling/meaningful deaths among all almost of the participants of the war (or even those who do not as well). This is expected for a light novel (treated as a novella among Western audience) that also aimed towards older audience aside from the Fate franchise fans, despite that some people claimed light novels are supposed to be targeted towards young adult demographic (personally, light novels can be just as worthy to read as other books in my opinion. I even thought that some light novels like this book and Isuna Hazekura's "Spice and Wolf" are targeted towards older audience. Like someone in Goodreads said a year ago, "light novels are like normal novels but with less salt and trans-fat."). After all, each of the Masters (well, almost every one of them), who had received the Command Seals from the Holy Grail because of their wishes/reasons, visible or hidden in their hearts, had appeared to win the war for those reasons.
As an extra though, it is very notable that even that the 'Skills' that the Servants used also have an effect on them in the plot, like Saber's Riding, Assassin's Presence Concealment, Archer's Independent Action, Caster's Mental Pollution and Rider's Divinity. These terminologies cannot be much of a problem if one is well-versed to the mechanics of the Holy Grail War (including the statistics of the Servant which is very dependent to the Master each one served, specifically Luck). Otherwise, these terminologies are treated as what they literally meant by those who do not, which can be a bit troublesome if one condsidered the Riding skills that both Saber and Rider have.
It is easily not as simple as that though, given Gen Urobuchi's storytelling capabilities (being known for his dark style, nihilistic themes and tragic plot twists) and aims for this series. And because of those storytelling capabilities, he made "Fate/Zero" a (Greek) tragedy storyline... and an interestingly impressive one at that.
As one will look at "Fate/Zero"'s entire cast, the characters, especially all of the participants in the Holy Grail War including their assistants (Irisviel von Einzbern and Hisau Maiya for Kiritsugu Emiya (Master of Saber) and Saber's team and Sola-Ui Nuada-re Sophia-Ri for Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald (Master of Lancer) and Lancer's team), have given well-defined and complex personalities, ideals, specified backstories (though the Servants' backstories will be completely understandable if one is aware of their histories such as the information about their Noble Phantasms [and the reality behind most of the extent of the name of each of the Noble Phantasms such as Saber's The Everdistant Utopia, Avalon/Avalon: The Everdistant Utopia and The Sword of Promised Victory, Excalibur/Excalibur: The Sword of Promised Victory), and most importantly, well-thought-out worldviews and flaws that are dependent on their actions they made in the story more than anything else.
Of course, on Urobuchi's part however, like most of his own works, the characters served more as physical embodiments of their ideals more than actual people. That being said, the focus of the story is on their interactions and not the characters themselves.
Also, while all of the actions the characters made were true to their personalities and ideologies and the fact that this series has an ensemble cast, the sacrifice of focus towards some of the other characters in favor of focusing more on some specific characters (especially in Kariya Matou (Master of Berserker) and Berserker's case in comparison to the other participants).
As a side note about the characters specifically some of the Servants like Rider/Iskandar and Saber/Arturia Pendragon, it is very notable that they give their thoughts that historic records are never meant to be one-hundred percent accurate, through their conversations with the ones closely associated to them. Also, in Saber's case alone, the implications of her character being a man instead of a woman to be a 'perfect ruler' (or a little girl, since in the Fate franchise, she does not age ever since she drew The Sword in the Stone/Caliburn) opened up the social issues concerning the female populace and the political issues concerning female leaders (which are some of the focal points in the Fate route of "Fate/stay night") as well as the questions about the true meaning of kingship through the so-called the "Holy Grail Dialogue" between three certain Servants (this entire conversation does really not have any closure until the Fate route of "Fate/stay night"). Upon reflecting their personalities (even those Servants that I haven't mentioned here) with what they have been depicted by certain people through historic/mythological records through history books and myths, I always felt that these characters seemed to be 'living' (i.e. the physical embodiments of certain historical/mythological figures) as they made conversations with others and told them their experiences in the past as if they are aware of it.
How did these characters make to be connected to the story being a Greek tragedy?
To simply put, "Fate/Zero" is one of the books (or even one of the animated series/TV shows) that I thought that have follow the structure of an ideal tragedy storyline or an ideal tragic plot that Aristotle proposed through his work Poetics.
In this case, "Fate/Zero" is filled with an all-grey morality where neither of the participants is considered to be totally good or completely evil , with the Masters either being in the Holy Grail War for their arguably selfish reasons (Waver Velvet (Master of Rider) wanted recognition from others, Tokiomi Tohsaka (Master of Archer/Gilgamesh) wished to get to the Root for his family, Kayneth also wanted recognition through his pride as a Magus of a well-known family, and Kirei Kotomine (Master of Assassin/Hassan-i-Sabbah) sought to know the answers about the reason why one without a central purpose in his life was given a chance to win the Holy Grail War, granted he does not have a wish to begin with), have genuinely good intentions but will do incredibly questionable actions in order to attain their goals (Kiritsugu has a wish to save the world through the complete elimination of conflicts and Kariya wanted to save a certain daughter of a woman whom he has an unrequited love with) or are plain evil (Ryuunosuke Uryuu (Master of Caster/Gilles de Rais), for being cheerful and openhearted, wanted to have fun by doing his current hobby (murder)).
All of the seven Masters summoned their Servants, regardless of the ways, in order to formally begin the Fourth Holy Grail War. More often than not, their Servants mirrored the personalities of their Masters either in a positive way (Ryuunosuke and Caster (their own personalities), Kariya and Berserker (their backstories regarding certain specific loved ones) and Kirei and Assassin (their capabilities and some of their personalities)) or in a negative way (Kiritsugu and Saber (someone who followed the codes of chivalry and honor [the latter] versus someone who doesn't have one [the former]), Kayneth and Lancer (chivalry against pride as well as an extent to Lancer's fate because of Sola-Ui), Waver and Rider (initially someone seeking recognition against someone wanting respect) and Tokiomi and Archer (someone who wanted to own something he sought as a Magus against someone who claimed that he owned everything in this world including the one Tokiomi seeks).
Also, most of them had their own ideals and wishes also played at stake on the fights in the Holy Grail War (since only one of the seven pairs should win this event no matter what, despite of whether they are aware of the Holy Grail's actual purpose). This is the reason each of the fights (and a certain dialogue) played a specified theme. For instance, Saber and Lancer's battles played the theme of chivalry on each of their exchange of blows and Kariya and Tokiomi's battle played the theme of familial conflicts because of the misunderstanding between one another.
Because of this, the Fourth Holy Grail War is not just a clash of swords but also a clash of ideals. And because of the existence of the clash of ideals all throughout the fights, conversations and dialogues, this war had create multiple tragic pay-offs among certain characters who may inevitably die in either a good way or a bad one and who may have ideals being either remained in-tact or got crumbled because of the realization of their actions. Among all of the characters though, the utilitarian Kiritsugu, being the main protagonist of the light novel and the adopted father of the future main protagonist Shirou Emiya in "Fate/stay night", is a special case since his actions was focusing more on his wish to attain a miracle to end all conflicts more than on his personality... and whatever happened throughout the story means a big deal to his life after all.
Most of all, the ending of this series (and the beginning of the sequel) fits perfectly to the story and the characters and the transition from this series to "Fate/stay night" does made complete sense considering its intention of not giving a complete closure for this Fate storyline. However, it does not mean that "Fate/Zero" is about attaining the sad ending like most of the non-Greek tragedy storylines do. After all, according to Aristotle, the aim of Greek tragedy is to arouse in them sensations of pity and fear, and to purge them of these emotions so that they leave the theater (story) purified, with a heightened understanding of the ways of gods and men. In this case, with all of the consequences that had happened in the Fourth Holy Grail War, the series had attained the aim of Greek tragedy through the actions of most of the surviving characters among the ensemble cast after the events, but most specifically, on the focus on the conversation at the end of the story between two characters which is already predicted through "Fate/stay night".
Of course, of all the positive things I give to this series, regarding its unique approach of a battle royale concept and the series being a formal Greek tragedy, even I am more focused on the storytelling method and overall writing over anything else when it comes to books, I can be bothered by Gen Urobuchi's writing style as some of the moments he described some of the things much longer than it needed to like weapons and armaments used by Kiritsugu as well as the motorcycle used by a certain Servant. Also, if I am not aware of Nasuverse concepts, I would have the difficulty to understand the terminologies used in the Holy Grail War specifically the Skills and the Noble Phantasms.
As for matters between this light novel and its anime adaptation done by ufotable, there are some differences that may change the interpretation of the events due to the lack of characterization done in the transition from the light novel to the animated series, such as Hisau Maiya's background and some of Sakura Matou's actions. Perhaps, the only one that made a major difference between the two would be that one event that focused on the one of the two daughters of Tokiomi Tohsaka, Rin Tohsaka and her acts of heroism (and realization) as their outcomes are hardly similar to one another.
I always thought there is a lot more that I wanted to say about this series such as expanding my thoughts about its unique approach of the battle royale concept (since the fights are notably not as intense as those on most other battle royale stories I had read/watched by far like the novel "Battle Royale" and the TV series "Future Diary") and my opinion about its status as a light novel that seemed to follow the formula of creating a Greek tragedy storyline. But I thought this might be enough to make an attempt to convince someone try reading the light novel (or watching its faithful anime adaptation) in order to understand the situation that not all light novels are just for young adults or that "Fate/Zero" is a worthy to read.
As of this point though about the matters of the Type-Moon company, I only hoped for the success of their future projects (anime adaptations of "Fate/Extra: Last Encore", "Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel", "Fate/kaleid Prisma Illya 3rei", "Fate/Apocrypha" possibly, etc.). After all, I find their original source material to be at least good to read (except "Fate/Extra" since I personally haven't played it myself). But for now, I always find this series that got my full attention when it comes to the ideas of the Holy Grail War... and with that, here is my personal rating...
Four-and-three-fourths Holy Grails out of five (9.5/10)
(I wonder if ratings really matter at all honestly, although what I gave here is just what I thought about the series)
