Fate/Zero

I'm sorry, but this anime is simply atrocious.

I honestly don't understand the appeal of Fate/Zero at all. It's been praised by so many and it has a really high rating, however, I just can't stomach it. Mind you, there are some minor spoilers of first four episodes just to be able to shed light on why I rated the show so low without being automatically reported. Not that it won't happen regardless.

First episode has to be the most boring, pointless episode I ever watched. Absolutely no effort was made to spark the interest of the viewer or to summarize the story properly. It threw at ... you an enormous amount of information about many miscellaneous things in an incredibly monotonous voice and without any proper order. Throughout the entire episode there was nothing that kept me engaged whatsoever. As if I'm supposed to be intrigued and eagerly listen to ominous, rambling, mumbling old men in robes telling us something of great importance is coming.

Second episode had some seriously annoying and edgy characters introduced. Waver Velvet - incredibly annoying character who all he does is whine in a super annoying voice. Waver Velvet's familiar or whatever it's called, the summoned guy, the 'i'm the strongest'. *googles* Rider, right. Awful character. And he has over 5000 favorites?
Then we got the edgy scene where they brutally kill a kid with apparently some straight out of hentai tentacles to appear to be dark and serious. Then I realized, this show must have been made for fourteen year olds, and reading through the comments nothing was more obvious than that. "This got so dark!" or "Giglamesh is so cool!" were some of the comments I encountered.
Ah, yes, you dear naive teen, just wait five years when you realize how bad one-dimensional characters Ryuunosuke Uryuu (literally read his description) and Caster (I'm evil cuz I'm evil! Fear me!) are.

At this point I was already exhausted from nauseating boredom and cringing from awfully designed characters, but I decided not to give up yet, because I believed there had to be something interesting about the show. The fight scenes must be beyond interesting, should be absolutely ecstatic, I'm sure, because that's the reason so many people praise the series. I was deeply disappointed.

To be honest, I didn't even remember the third episode even though I just watched it so I went to skip through it again just to remind myself what was happening in it. Ah, yes, we were following the life of aforementioned Waver and Rider, more old men in robes mumbling and towards end apparently some affair got revealed, at which point I couldn't care less about. I watched it three times and haven't remembered a thing, that's how much of an intriguing episode it was.

Final episode I watched before deciding to throw this back into abyss, was FINALLY some actual action. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, and dear slaughtered children. Something was actually happening in this episode, besides idle chat or boring monotonous speeches. Unfortunately, sixty seconds in I realized I'm not going to have fun watching it nor I am planning on continuing the anime past this point. The first fight was turned into a series of inner and outer monologues and made my immersion completely impossible and I couldn't keep bearing it.

I tried to like this anime, I tried watching it three times, but I cease here. This anime is simply not for me. If I were to summarize it in one word, I'd have to use the word 'childish'.

When I first started this anime, I thought it was very good, but then it took a turn for the worse and became piss poor. Why you say? Maybe because every character falls into a generic archetype, such as, Irisvile (weak defenseless female), Saber ( strong female), and a boring protagonist who hardly ever shows up, and is apparently cheating on his wife. Now getting to the story, for the most part, it consists of Irisvile clinging to Saber's underwear while acting as a defenseless female who has no where better to be but involved in this Grail War which the shows speaks of a ... lot. The pacing is absolutely horrendous, constantly wasting episodes upon episodes on fights that don't result in a servant getting defeated; basically, people just show up and leave, not progressing the story at all in any way or form. However, despite all these negatives, the only positive aspect is the graphics/ art, they are incredible, but this does not excuse a show of as poor quality as Fate/ Zero.

As someone who has not previously watched anything related to the Fate franchise, I went into Fate/Zero with no expectations. I knew of the popularity and praise for Fate/Zero on its own, however it never caught my attention and never became something I wanted to prioritize; for whatever reason, it didn't give me a good vibe. Now, having completed the first season, I can safely say that my vibe was correct in steering me away.


Fate/Zero has a lot to offer. A war for a mystic object, the Holy Grail, is happening, and magic-wielding contestants are given the ability to summon legendary heroes to do their ... bidding and fight for the sacred prize that will give the victor extraordinary power. It might not be the most original premise, but there's an interesting twist Fate/Zero throws into the mix; the legendary heroes are based off of real-world historical figures - King Arthur, Alexander the Great, Gilgamesh, and so on. As a fan of history and mythology, this is what piqued my curiosity. I didn't know this before I started the series, but once I watched the first few episodes, I thought maybe I was wrong to avoid the series as I did. However, as I watched more, I realized that I had jumped the gun.


With the premise being a war, one over such a powerful relic, you'd think there would be a lot of fighting. But the major downside here is that there's not, it's all talk. A hell of a lot of talk. I've watched a lot of shounen series, they're some of my favorites, however the amount of talking in Fate/Zero is groan worthy. The first episode, which is almost fifty minutes long, is nothing but exposition thrown into your face, stuff you'll easily forget by the time you start the next episode. It was enough to make me want to fall asleep. And unfortunately, the same can be said for about 80% of the remaining twelve episodes. The saddest part is that most of the talking was unnecessary and didn't help explain much in the series. There's still a great deal missing and a lot I don't understand about the war or how everything is supposed to work. Perhaps more is explained in the following season, but the lack of happenings in this season has put me off it. Every once in a while I'd even forget who is who, as there is little time spent on learning about certain important characters and more time spent on talking about nonsense.


I mentioned that there's not a lot of fighting, but what little there is was nicely done. The show definitely looks good and shines when it comes to the action. Battles are displayed gracefully and will hold your attention with an interesting mix of physical prowess and magical tricks. The characters themselves are a mixed bag. The heroes are a colorful group, each with a distinct personality that is thankfully not cookie-cutter. Saber, the lead character and the representation of King Arthur, is quite the standout. Genderswapping historical figures is a reoccuring theme in anime, however it's mostly used for fanservice. Not here. Saber is treated as a character with morals, purpose, and honor. Like the knight that she is. It was certainly refreshing to see. While we got a good look at most of the heroes, the show unfortunately lacked time on the masters of these fighters. Why they were fighting in this war, what they wanted out of it, and all other crucial information that would make you care about what was happening and who would come out the winner. There are bits and pieces tossed around, but most of it was lost in incessant prattling.


After much talk and little action, Fate/Zero ends with the promise of a new fight between heroes. Unfortunate, as it could have possibly been avoided had they decided not to include an episode dedicated to the daughter of one of the masters and her day out on the town. With such an epic sounding premise, Fate/Zero disappointed me with lots of nothing. Many questions still remain, and what I was given left me feeling hollow about the series. I'm not sure if I will continue onto the second season. Even if it gives me answers and actually moves itself along, I'm doubtful that I'd care at this point.

Fate is an anime. At this point I'd usually give some detail about the main story, or characters, but it's a bit difficult to given what I saw. The first episode was 45 minutes in length, which I've got no objections to, GTO comes to mind as another anime with a long first episode, and one that was executed quite well to establish the main character and basis for the story. Fate's opening episode was about as disconnected from the notion of being enjoyable as possible. 45 minutes of consecutive exposition, just one character explaining to another how the story worked. This isn't me trying ... to be hyperbolic or witty, that's exactly what it was, and to top it all off, I barely even managed to take in most the information, and was extremely confused, perhaps because I was so bored out of my mind. From what I did gather, there is a Holy Grail which grants people immortality, and so 12th century historical figures have been "summoned" to fight over it, and also magic and swordfighting and everything else you expect exists in this universe, but it takes place in the modern day, but these people still have their medieval castles and palaces and the rest of it. The lore was extremely convoluted, a combination of the story's own, real-life ancient history, as well as mythical ancient history (Zeus and all that shit). It would have been less convoluted if they actually got the history right, though, we've got one character, named Iskandar, who mentions he's from Ionia, yet 2 episodes later, he sees a book on Alexander The Great (or as he's also known, Alexander of Macedon, which is not the same place as Ionia), and comments on the fact that someone wrote a book about himself, I'm not going to expect absolute historical accuracy in something like this, but getting your character's names and birthplaces right is as basic as it gets.
The characters were just boring. Plain and simple. Too many of them, I can't remember the names of any except King Arthur, and the aforementioned Iskandar, who I'd probably forget if not for the error. Too many characters, not enough details, and I just don't care about any of them. Who am I supposed to root for? What are everyone's motivations? It's just so poorly thought out, it's like the script was never refined, and it's a natural byproduct of having so many characters, you can't really flesh out any of them. Doesn't help half the characters are extremely fucking edgy, I wouldn't mind so much if it was a black and white good versus evil, but those don't usually work so well when you're changing protagonists every other episode.
I thought maybe I'd grown a bit tired of having the plot explained to me for so long, maybe once the action started, and it began to pick up the pace, then finally I would be on board. Can't really say that's the case, it was just uninteresting. The physical clashing of swords didn't interest me much, and when they were utilising invisible ones and healing magic and a bunch of other shit, that just made it even worse. They even went with the anime cliche of having our characters explain their thought processes, moves, and how they were going to circumvent those of their adversaries, but it still didn't make much sense to me.
Animation was nothing to speak of, can't give any details about the OST, so it couldn't have been that great. All in all Fate's a bit of a convoluted mess: too many characters, too many ideas, too much everything. In regards to fighting, to quote Hammering Heinz "You hit somebody with your fist and not with your fingers spread."

Let me say it straight: I'm reviewing only the first part of the show, since it is a split cour. Everything written here applies only to S1. Also, I'm a huge fan of the original VN and Nasuverse as a whole. I guess, the review definitely has some bias.

Sometimes, a show needs exposition, because otherwise it is impossible to tell a complete and logical story. The exposition is needed to set up the characters, the stage and the events leading to the main part of the series. The first cour of Fate/Zero is such a case: it is just an infodump containing everything necessary to ... understand the plot of the second half.

The problem with such shows is that you need to make them interesting to watch. And Fate/Zero spectacularly fails in this regard, offering pointless, long and dragged dialogues (for people who have read the visual novel Fate/stay night, like me), atrocious pacing, fillers in a 1-cour series and somewhat unique, but shallow and one-dimensional characters.

The main premise of the story is simple: 7 mages and their 7 servants are battling for an ephemeral prize: The Holy Grail, an omnipotent device which can grant a wish for the winner. The premise itself is definitely interesting; the main problem is its execution. Let me say it straight: it's awful. There is very and very little plot progression over the course of the series. It tries to intrigue the viewer in the first couple of episodes (if you manage to bear that 40-minutes infodump in the first episode), but after that we are left with 11 episodes of pure, unspoiled, forgive me, Lord, Glasslip. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's what it is: NOTHING happens-. Occasional dialogues about the eternal don't count.

I have a small chart, which can show you the structure of the show:

Episode - what happens
1 - infodump
2-9 - talking and a couple of fights
10 - A GODDAMN FILLER
11-12 - talking.

This pretty much summarizes everything what happened in the first cour in terms of story. Don't get me wrong: I adore dialogue driven shows like Monogatari and Tatami Galaxy. Hell, I even enjoyed Heaven's Feel route of novel af. Fate/Zero tries to pull the same trick with its pacing and dialogue-driveness, but it falls short. The dialogues are plain and generic. Not to mention that sometimes they suffer from bad writing and induce cringe.

However we are starting to forget what was the purpose of the first cour. Introducing the characters. I must say that Fate/Zero doesn't perform well in this regard, too. The characters, while having their unique traits, are simply shallow and not interesting. New characters lack in depth, old characters became worse. Saber is a highlight of the show, however her character is more of a whiny 14-year-old. Yes, she is stoic, but her ideals are completely idiotic. She is much more well-written in FSN, but here she, again, lacks in depth. Gilgamesh is an arrogant prick, as always, but he is even more unlikable in Zero than in FSN. Kiritsugu is your average edgy protagonist, no more, no less. Other masters and servants are either generic and plain (Kayneth, Tokiomi), or are severely underdeveloped (Kirei, Kariya, Waver). Looking forward to the S2.

But I must say that the production level of the show is simply amazing. The graphics are stunning, and the art is faithful to original Takeuchi designs. Music by Kajiura is amazing, too. No complaints on this part, however it is not enough to cover the faults of other aspects of the show.

Overall, Fate/Zero S1 wasted its potential to become a great exposition for truly glorious events and actually is a series of pointless and boring dialogues with some occasional fights. The heaviest disappointment I've had yet.

+Production quality
+Sound and music
+Nasuverse is always welcome
-Atrocious pacing
-Shallow characters
-Dragged dialogues
-Fillers, goddammit

3.5/10

Note: This is a review for both seasons.

Story: 1- Just as it says, the story is put simply...pathetic. It starts off with an hour long episode full of cringe worthy exposition. Where...get this...the majority of time that could be used for less wasteful things such as getting us to care about the characters is spent on more exposition, more exposition, and even more exposition. All the while they talk in circles! Oh but don't worry, you'll get even MORE exposition with each and every episode accompanied by cheap forced melodrama and pretentious preaching which holds little to no substance or value. Oh and can't ... forget about the dark nature of it. Because dark=good, right? Haha, yeah no...

Art: 5-Art is alright. Nowhere no as good as people make pukotable out to be. But it's okay if you like a bunch of wonky CGI clashing with a bunch of crappy excuses of character designs, I guess...

Sound: 6-Lol wow, can I say overrated? I was told Zero's music was great and...well it's really not. Don't get me wrong, it's good, just not great. Having Kenji Kawai instead would've really payed off here. Still, like I said, much like the animation it's still fine in it's own way, just not as good as it could've been.

Character: 1-And now we're back at the actually bad stages. These "characters" if they can even be called that lack two of the most basic factors, depth and development. Let's start off with depth, shall we? Most of these characters are either complete jerks or just not worth caring about. Listen Urobutchi, if you're going to randomly kill of your characters for pure shock value, AT LEAST MAKE US CARE! Then it might actually work...Anyway as a result, this ended up as darkness-induced audience apathy. I didn't care about any of the characters, so I didn't care if they all killed each other or not.

Now moving on to the MC, Kiritsugu and oh my...what an absolutely horrible character he was from start to finish. He has absolutely NO redeeming qualities to speak of. A man who is willing to betray his own family (I'll leave it at that as to not spoil anything) solely for his own personal gain. There is literally no reason to root for him, and honestly if I had cared about any of the other characters, I would've rooted against him. And when that happens both the writer and the character have failed in one of the most basic aspects of a story. However out of all the characters who originated in this show, there was a small beacon of hope, known as Rider. He was a very good character...in concept...Sadly Urobutchi didn't even do the best he could with him. Oh but don't worry the characters are ADULTS and that's ORIGINAL! That automatically makes them awesome! Again, no...maybe if they had actually been executed in a decent manner, I might have considered giving it points for that but they don't act any more like adults than the typical High School MC does so no...

Enjoyment: 1-Yeah, clearly I did not enjoy this. After all how does one enjoy something that fails at nearly every corner and turn of the road, and only barely passes in a small few areas? It was a complete and utter waste of time that I'll never get back.

Overall: 1-So, we've got exposition in circles, cheap and forced "drama" and "shock" value, a horrible main cast of characters that might as well be replaced with rocks, along with mediocre animation and music. Now compile all that with a story that tries so hard to be dark and doesn't end up as anything but laughable instead and you have yourself the big old waste of time that is known as Fate/Zero. This really does NOT live up to the undeserved hype. So if you haven't seen this yet, do yourself a favor, and AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS. Watching this would be a mistake and a horrible idea.

** Story **
Season 1 is completely unnecessary. There were no real conflicts. Each story arc leads to a hero battle, however, the fights inevitably end with a third party interruption, with absolutely no resolution. This implies the conflicts weren't necessary at all to the overarching story.

Strong premise, dilly-dallying execution.

Story rating: 3/10

** Art/Aesthetics **
As a Tsukihime fan, I absolutely love the character aesthetics.

... Art: 8/10

** Animation **
Animation is completely different from aesthetics. The fluidly and detail in each sequence was lacking. The fight scenes had cinematic shots (3 point perspective wide angle launches, landscape shots, extreme close ups, slow motion, etc) which would awe an inexperienced viewer. Seeing through all that, all that's left are lazily choreographed fights.

Let's take Saber for instance. Saber is suppose to be the strongest hero, specializing in god tier sword fighting. Yet her swordplay is restricted to 2 moves: swipe and jab. She performs no meaningful parry/counters, feints, etc. Why is her repertoire less interesting than an 8-bit NES sprite? Because it's so much easier to animate, and make up the deficiency with cinematic details (i.e. wind rushing during attacks, ground cracking after taking blows, electrical discharge, etc). Those are all cheap tricks in the literal sense: they're cheap to animate and take little imagination.

Animation: 4/10

** Sound **
I'm a big fan of Yuki Kajiura. With that said, the soundtrack was bland and unmemorable. Nothing compared to Noir or Madoka Magica.

Sound: 3/10

** Character **
Initially, characters showed strong potential for realistic development and depth. The first episode did an excellent job of establishing clear and real motivations. However, they all devolve into one-dimensional dark tropes.

Let's take Saber for instance. She's suppose to be a strong female lead, with experience leading an entire nation as a King. As the series progresses, it turns out she's an emotionally distraught insecure 15 yo girl. The authors devolve her into the vulnerable female trope for ecchi reasons (i.e. helpless girl needs a real man for emotional support), and it just blasphemous to her character.

Character: 3/10

** Enjoyment **
Despite all the flaws, I enjoyed the show enough to finish it. I'm fond of strong female characters, and I kept on watching for Saber's shining moment - unfortunately that never comes.

Enjoyment: 6/10

** Overall **
This is not a series I would recommend to an adult - it's just not worth the time. With that said, I can see why it appeals to teens and newcomers of the genre.

Overall: 4/10

This review is going to trigger butthurt Type-Moon fanboys, so bear with my opinion if you've got even the tiniest bit of maturity.

Fate/Stay Night, a show, more like a visual novel or better eroge, which roughly translated to porn game in English which gets overly hyped recommended.
However, this is a prequel to the cringey harem/romantic comedy antics trash that is the main series, thus I thought it'd be something else, having a different director etc.

In the end I was wrong.


Story : 4
The plot isn't any different than the sequel: same holy grail war, same classes, same plot devices that ruin the whole show, totally predictable ... outcomes, character deaths, and tons, I swear tons of useless dialogues about alternative strategies or edgy bullshit that will make you fall asleep the moment you forget this anime is labeled as "action", but I can't expand this part much because I'll end up boring you either way.

ART: 9
Ufotable is my favorite animation studio so far, I can't complain about animations, except for the episodes which lasted longer than usual, I appreciated their efforts in Kara No Kyoukai, and I encourage the studio to pick up better shows.

Sound: 5
Where's the sound? It was just here because it had to be, besides the openings, there weren't any soundtracks that I could recall from the show apart from edgy music thrown here and there.

Character: 1
I must say the first episode or pilot managed to introduce very well each character, too bad half of them are going to die the next episode for whatever stupid reason they make up to erase a character from the show. However, there's one thing that made me grind my gears, the main character, Emiya Kiritsugu, let me tell you why I hated so much this character: he was firstly introduced as a mature and grown man, then we get to know his past and background, and this is where Fate/Zero jumps the shark. Kiritsugu's logic makes no freaking sense, he kills few people to save many, kill one to save a hundred, but does it apply everywhere? Why did she kill Natalia when she said she was going to retire? Why did he kill HIS FOSTER MOM and why did he kill his father without thinking twice? I don't believe it can be settled with "you're the only guy who can do this because you can", it makes no fucking sense whatsoever, he isn't human, the characters aren't human, just a massive cluster of edgy shit with somewhat "psychology" when they barely show some human traits like in the case of Kirei. Forget the depth, where's the fucking logic in the first place?

Enjoyment: If I could rate it 0 I'd do it, but let's just say 1
The only enjoyment I ever had from this show was the fact that it was over. I felt like if I had been freed from a cage I was forced to stay in for several days, do you know that feeling? I guess you do.

Overall: 3
I fail to understand why people praise this literal piece of shit, because I can't define it with anything else but shit, when it's but a generic, boring, cringey and nonsenical shows for edgy kids. I'm not watching a Fate/Stay Night anime, play a VN of it, read a manga of it EVER again. If you're a beginner, you'll enjoy this show, if you're someone who's looking for dark and deep anime you're in the wrong place.

This review covers both seasons because they're both parts of the same story and reviewing them individually is stupid.

Fate/zero is yet another badly written anime by the shitty writer gen urobuchi and this review explains why.

I'll talk about the good aspects of fate/zero and then the majority of the review will be the bad aspects (because there are too many) the mediocre aspects are anything that i don't end up mentioning

The Good:-
1- Great Visuals that make the scenes and the backgrounds in the anime look great, but the anime doesn't have alot of animation in it.
2- high quality instruments and sound effects, but the soundtrack ... itself is not that amazing in fact most of it is forgettable.

The Bad:-
1- the grail war in this anime never had any clear rules at all.
No rules were mentioned at the beginning, instead the writer inserted any rules he wanted as the anime went on, even the basis of how magic works were unclear and he wrote them as he went on and made magic adjust to any given situation, which shows how badly written this anime is. An example of this is Kirei blocking Kiritsugu's origin bullets using command spells which doesn't make any sense.

2- Character problems:-

The masters
Kiritsugu Emiya: used to live happily in an island and after like five minutes it turns into hell with zombie infection, so cheesy and unrealistic, then he kills his father who raised him because he was only partly and indirectly responsible for the zombie infection and it was only by accident, it seems like the writer doesn't even know how people normally behave.

Kotomine Kirei: starts as a normal guy who works with tokiomi but after archer tells him that he seems intrested in kariya's tragedy he gets rewritten into a one-dimensional villan by instantly betraying tokiomi and seeking the grail that will help him understand himself, which is dumb since an individual normally understands himself more than anyone else, like i said earlier, the writer doesn't even know how people normally behave.

Matou Kariya: who suffers to join the war so he can save sakura, but fails to do so and suffers even more, the only reason he exists is because the writer is obsessed with tragedy, kariya's story has no point, no meaning, it's a complete waste of time.

El-Melloi Archibald Kayneth: an uninteresting and boring asshole.

The servants
Saber (king arthur): ripping a character straight from historical books into your anime without bothering to include her background which is necessary to understand her unremarkable struggles in the anime, it seems like the writer has achieved new levels of bad storytelling.

Berserker (Sir Lancelot):same problem as saber.

Caster & his master(Gilles de Rais & Ryuunosuke): both of them don't even care about the grail, they simply spend their time killing kids and talking about how they enjoy killing kids, they're too delusional to even see the possible consequences of their actions like being the first ones killed in the grail war, which actually happens, but why are these characters in the anime anyways? oh yeah because they need SHOCKING scenes in it to attract viewers who only care about SHOCK FACTOR.

Archer (gilgamesh): an egoistical asshole with hax god powers (which he used to kill rider) he doesn't have to worry about anything thanks to his hax powers, which lets him remain as an egoistical asshole with zero character development till the end, he could have also won the war straight from the beginning but he doesn't care about the war, why is he in this anime again? You can remove him from the anime without any changes.

3- Shoehorned philosophy & themes.
The writer adds unnecessary philosophy & themes to the anime with a very bad handling of them.

- the anime wasted time by having rider and archer talk about how they think saber was not a good king, her life as a king was not shown in the anime and wasn't even part of the anime story in the first place, so why are they discussing it? It makes no sense, even if it made sense it still wouldn't matter because it doesn't affect the anime story, and why are they referring to her as king? she's a woman which makes her a queen.

- after lancer's death saber complains about Kiritsugu's evil actions in the grail war, out of stupidity she forgets that he will use the grail to end war.
then Kiritsugu claims that honor and valor are the cause of war and bloodshed, yet any one with half a brain can tell how stupid that claim is, the people who got honor from war did it by not commiting war crimes against anyone during war and did what it takes to reduce the losses and hatered of war after it was over, the war itself was not caused or started by them ,The people who cause or start a war usually do it for other reasons without bothering to think of the consequences, they can't do it because of honor since it has no way of starting a war by itself, there is always another reason behind it, if the writer knows of significant bloodshed caused by honor he should mention and explain it, otherwise it comes of as pretentious and stupid, another fact is almost everybody nowadays knows that war itself is bad and nobody think's that war itself is honorable or anything, yet Kiritsugu acts like he figured out something special, it's as if the writer lives in his own small world and keeps including topics in the anime that he himself doesn't even understand.

4- The ending:-
Which literally ruined the entire story with it's bullshit.
At the beginning everyone talks about how the grail will grant any wish and nobody doubts it at all and they do all it takes to win the grail but then right at the end it's revealed that the grail won't actually grant any wish, more specificly it won't be able to grant the wish of the winner (Kiritsugu) and then it explodes and kills everything around him, this happened because the grail was cursed before fate/zero and that's only known in other parts of the fate franchise which you have to through to understand this because it wasn't mentioned or probably foreshadowed at any part of the fate/zero anime, if fate/zero doesn't even make sense on it's own and has many writing problems then how can it be any better than the rest of the fate (porn game) franchise? even if the grail got cursed, then why didn't any of the characters know about the curse or doubt the grail? it makes no sense either.
and this ending basically makes the entire anime feel like a pointless waste of time.

Kiritsugu, after bad writing destroyed everything he was doing without any explained reason is still happy because he saved and adopted shirou at the end which ties this with fate/stay night, yay i don't care.

Many people consider this as the better anime of the Fate franchise (the franchise is awful in itself). The first problem is that is a prequel of a bad show (Fate Stay Night), and it tried to be more serious when the original show was stupid. I'm gonna tell you the main issues that this prequel have (this review covers both seasons of Fate/Zero):

1) The battle royal premise. It is a battle royal that will lead to another battle royal full of sexualization, lack of tension, teenagers with revolted hormones, stereotypes, edgelord shit and meaningless dialogues (many of them are memes currently). Reliance on the ... original source limits the freedom of writing and forces many situations presented in this show. Why did they try to make a psychological thriller that gonna end in a retarded fighting shounen in the next show?

2) The bastardization of mythological figures. They converted Arturo Pendragon and Excalibur myths in a waifu that was made to warm up otakus for example.

3) The show is pretentious. The premise of the show doesn't have anything serious, is a fucking battle royale against "mythological" figures to the death, how can this be taken seriously? The show doesn't even function as mindless action. There are few fights with a lot of pretentious dialogue that goes nowhere by not ending in several cases. It's supposed to be a battle royal to the death and no character of importance dies for multiple episodes. The battle royal is not really that, is basically the other teams against one in particular (like Dragon Ball Super).

4) The characters are forgettable. Many of them are summarized as a negligent or sadistic. One of the main characters change the band/team becuase the script wants it that way. The reason of the change is stupid and it does not square with what had been introduced of the same. A character sholudn't be changed drastically with a few dialogues. Other main characters have a past and a reason to be part of the battle royal and that's it. During the show, they don't have a real development.

5) Edgelord levels. The way that some characters suffer before they die are unjustified and it's only a resource to get audience's attention. Also there are filler episodes in order to show this suffering, in other words, more edgelord shit.

6) The philosophy of the show. Is simple, retarded and childish at the same time (in the context of the show): If you kill, you are a bad person. So if I kill someone with the same attitude as Hitler, I am automatically a bad person no matter how many lives I have saved by doing that.

7) The logic of the world: if the show is placed in a first world type, how is it possible that no one has noticed the magicians and supernatural powers of the characters?

The only good things that this garbage has is the soundtrack and animation.

In conclusion, it could have been better if Urobuchi have made an spin-off instead of a prequel (it would have failed anyways knowing the mastermind behind this franchise).

I decided to check out the Fate series because I read so many good things about it, however I came away highly disappointed.

I read up on which series to start with and Fate/Zero was a general consensus for where to start. So I started watching and found myself very confused. I had some sort of idea of the broad story but couldn't put the pieces of the puzzle together. I stuck it out though and I made it to episode 17 and couldn't take anymore. It was just too painful to watch.

My takeaway is this:
1) I felt that the story ... had the framework of what could be a great show but that's about all it had, and it seemed unfinished at that. As a result I had to give the story a 1, it was too fragmented.

2) I couldn't keep track of some of the characters and actually had to look up who was who even after 17 episodes. This is inexcusable and pathetic.

3) The production quality was excellent, so at least it had that going for it.

Summary:

Unless I'm missing something, and perhaps I need guidance from a true fan, this was very confusing and I had no clue what was going on half the time. Some of the battles were great but there were many instances that didn't make sense and a true masterpiece shouldn't need to be explained. The content that existed seemed polished but show seemed unfinished. Having questions while watching can be a good thing but questions and confusion are two different things.

Rider and Saber are the only redeeming qualities in this, and Lancer to a lesser extent.

I initially heard about the Fate series over a decade ago when there was a sudden fervor to create content from the manga, video games, and the anime. It dominated the anime sections of online quizzes, Google Images, art websites, comment sections, and so on.

Given that I had been drawn to anime by that point, it comes as no surprise that I was interested in checking it out. Unfortunately, I didn't have the means of getting my hands on the series. When I saw it become available on Netflix, I knew that there was no longer an excuse to wait. It was finally time to ... watch.

I looked up how others recommended the series be watched by newcomers who hoped not to be confused by the large, shiny, and daunting ensemble cast that dominated the big screen. More than one article insisted that this was the place to start and I, who lacked any prior engagement with the series or visual novel, was the target audience. Lovely. Thank you, Internet.

While the high-quality artwork, animation, and acting were all quick to stand out to me, the painful, often cringe-worthy, flaws were as well.

The series immediately pushed off on the wrong foot with a giant information dump that lasted two episodes. (Approximately 44 minutes.)

Don't get me wrong.

It's not unusual to have a series set things up before jumping into the story, but there is a difference between engaging exposition and what is essentially an ongoing lecture with points repeated so many times that you want to roll your eyes at whoever decided to make this the curriculum.

And even points that aren't repeated end up being memorized not because they were compelling, but because they were delivered in such an unnatural way that viewers can't help but laugh at how hard the writers must've worked to insert it.

You would think that between long, arduous information dumps, there would be some type of character development. Disappointingly, just about every conversation in the first season ends up being a non-starter that doesn't give the viewer any interesting information.

When characters die, there is never anything lost. For a series that seems to revel in portraying tragedy and torture, they really don't try to leave any lasting impact on the viewer. Deaths end up being anticlimactic or, worse, pointless altogether.

By the end of the first season, you're left still unsure of most of their motives. With war being so serious, you would think that there would be some kind of explanation, but less than half of the characters had even a superficial explanation by the end of the first season. It really makes a person wonder what the point of continuing is.

In my case, I continued into season two because I was held to the reputation of the series. Season two expanded on multiple characters, yes, but by the end of season two, I knew the names of maybe two characters in total and they weren't especially memorable either.

On the bright side, if you're looking for a drinking game, here are a few:
- Take a shot every time a character coughs/vomits up blood. (And if you make it into season two, add a shot for every time a character gets held by their neck, choked, or strangled.)
- Take a shot every time Waver whines or complains.
- Take a shot every time that there is an information dump. Two shots if the information dump was uninteresting or pointless. Three shots if the information dump was in the middle of a fight.

To summarize, the story itself is pretty basic and that's fine, but if it's going to be basic, then it needs more interesting characters to drive the story. It needs characters with proper development and motivation, not just a whole bunch of human and spirit props that the writing team can't even juggle.

Pros:
- Gorgeous artwork and animation.
- Nice music. Mostly appropriate usage.
- Solid acting.

Neutral:
- There was some wonky mingling of different art styles at a few points, but nothing that actively ruined my immersion.

Cons:
- The characters talk too much about nothing. It's so bad that they even interrupt violent fights for information drops.
- How can characters talk so much but develop so little? By the time any development occurs in season two, it's already too late to form any meaningful bonds with any of the characters.
- The series supposedly targets people new to the Fate franchise and does a poor job of it.

I don't recommend this series.

I will preface this "review" by saying that I am more or less just expressing my thoughts about this anime from what little I have seen, and should mention that I was recommended to start with Fate/Zero by multiple people to watch the series. As of this review being up, I am watching Fate/Stay Night, the first entry released in the anime series.

To sum up, I have a strong suspicion that Fate/Zero expects you to understand lots of plot points going into its first almost hour long episode. In the first twenty minutes, we are introduced to upwards of at least six characters, and long ... scenes are drawn out longer than they need to for the sole purpose of exposition dumping. Even if the show anticipates you've seen the previous entry, this first episode is laughably bad, almost borderline cringe inducing. Plot points are thrown at you in ludicrous fashion, often through jump cuts. Characters exist solely to relay plot details and bombard you with information without giving you an *incentive* or *reason* to care.

By the third episode, I was so mentally exhausted from trying to follow all the established plot points that I just gave up and picked up Fate/Stay Night. I will come back and modify this review if and when I decide to complete this series. This shows tendency to throw you into the deep end with terms and characters, while just having introduced many in prior scenes, make this show a jumbled, confused mess that is more likely to give you an aneurism than actually entertain you.

My first foray in the ultra ubiquitous Fate series! I can't believe this is what people lose their shit over! Gen Urobuchi already has a permanent spot on my shit list for when I watched Suisei no Gargantia empty a whole clip into its own foot halfway through the season, or when Psycho Pass was worse Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex for entire 22 episode runtime. Two leads are setup to be these very interesting morally grey characters with complex reasons for being the Holy Grail War... and then the plot proceeds to do literally nothing with them. We learn very little about ... them (or practically any other character, for that matter), and very little happens to advance the plot either. Because Fate/Zero came out after Fate/stay night it seems to assume you're already familiar with the world, the rules, and the other characters/families in the Holy Grail War, so it does not give an explanation for any of these things, while talking down to you about everything going on. It seems to think having the show stop dead in the middle of the runtime to have an episode starring Rin from F/sn to reiterate that the bad character is bad. I didn't forget, Urobuchi, you're just a bad writer, and I don't care if Rin is here either, can the plot go forward? Several people attempted to argue with my opinion that the show was poorly written (and not even written for some parts of it), by spoiling almost the entire second season because they didn't remember most of the plot is regulated to the back half of the story, or outright telling me that the second season is akin to the second coming of Christ. Slow shows are fine. Nothing except set up happens in the first season.

(ENG vers.)
Reading the synopsis of this anime, the concept of the world and the story seem very interesting, but all the interest in it is wasted with a progress that is completely boring to watch. In the first few minutes of the first episode, countless information is thrown at the audience in a very poorly thought out way, making it extremely difficult and tiring to understand the plot, with almost 50 minutes of just loose dialogue without prior context. This is tedious.

Other than that, most of the characters are not at all charismatic and their fights are not exciting, both due to terrible direction and ... uninteresting/generic powers to see, in addition to the battles being completely random and in random places just for script convenience. Honestly, the only bearable episode of these twelve is only the tenth, while the rest didn't give me the strength to risk a second season.

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(PT-BR vers.)
Lendo a sinopse desse anime, o conceito do mundo e a história até parecem muito interessantes, mas todo o interesse nele é desperdiçado com um andamento completamente maçante de se assistir. Logo nos primeiros minutos do primeiro episódio, são jogadas ao público inúmeras informações de uma maneira muito mal pensada, tornando extremamente difícil e cansativo o entendimento da trama, tendo quase 50 minutos só de diálogos soltos sem um contexto prévio. Isso é tedioso.

Fora isso, a maioria dos personagens não são nem um pouco carismáticos e as suas lutas não emocionam, tanto por uma direção péssima quanto por poderes desinteressantes/genéricos de se ver, além das batalhas serem completamente aleatórias e em lugares aleatórios apenas por conveniência de roteiro. Sinceramente, o único episódio tragável desses doze é apenas o décimo, enquanto o restante não me deu forças pra arriscar uma segunda temporada.