Fate/Zero 2nd Season

As the Fourth Holy Grail War rages on with no clear victor in sight, the remaining Servants and their Masters are called upon by Church supervisor Risei Kotomine, in order to band together and confront an impending threat that could unravel the Grail War and bring about the destruction of Fuyuki City. The uneasy truce soon collapses as Masters demonstrate that they will do anything in their power, no matter how despicable, to win.

Seeds of doubt are sown between Kiritsugu Emiya and Saber, his Servant, as their conflicting ideologies on heroism and chivalry clash. Meanwhile, an ominous bond forms between Kirei Kotomine, who still seeks to find his purpose in life, and one of the remaining Servants. As the countdown to the end of the war reaches zero, the cost of winning begins to blur the line between victory and defeat.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Saber Main

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Emiya, Kiritsugu Main

Irino, Miyu Japanese

Gilgamesh Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Kotomine, Kirei Main

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

von Einzbern, Irisviel Main

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Toosaka, Rin Supporting

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Rider Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Emiya, Shirou Supporting

Noda, Junko Japanese

von Einzbern, Illyasviel Supporting

Kadowaki, Mai Japanese

Matou, Sakura Supporting

Shitaya, Noriko Japanese

Takeuchi, Takashi Producer, Original Character Design

Iwakami, Atsuhiro Producer

Mori, Yasunori Producer

Doi, Yoshinao Producer

Reviews

Sep 25, 2024

GeNeTiC7123

Recommended

Before Demon Slayer there was Fate UBW but, before UBW, Ufotable had Fate Zero. Even till now, I don’t think this anime has aged a day. It reminded me of how back then when it came out I was like “If animation looks this phenomenal now, I can’t imagine how it would look like in a decade” Little did I know that just so little would have changed by then. Not to put anything down but, I’d argue that this looks way better than 95% of anime these days. Enough of how it looks though but if I dwell too deep into this anime I’m ... afraid I’d write over 10 paragraphs and I’d rather not. All I’m going to say is that this is truly the “Ufotable” experience, you can’t get better than this. Love
Demon Slayer and UBW but when it comes to plot, animation and the soundtrack…..oof the soundtrack. I’d say those three things make up the anime equally; I just cannot imagine it with one of those factors missing. To address some criticisms. “This is too edgy or the beginning is slow” Firstly, the characters not being common annoying anime tropes or archetypes isn’t edgy, them behaving like how an actual person will behave isn’t bad. I remember how back then people would call Kiritsugu an edgelord but literally in the first episodes he breaks down and shows emotions from scared to sadness. Now is the beginning slow yes, yes it is but it’s better to get into the viewer’s head the idea of the holy grail within 25 minutes than to still be explaining that concept 10 episodes into an anime (Sorry UBW). Not only that but in my opinion it does that narration in a natural manner,whether it is boring or not depends on the viewer and that is completely fine. I’m not implying “OH this is mature, it’s not an anime revolving around high schoolers and school…no” Waver, I’d argue is the least flawed character in this series which is a cast of pure adults so that outta let you know. Shoot I ended up writing quiet an amount still…XD. To end it off. This is Ufotable’s Magnum Opus.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jun 17, 2024

Manthors

Mixed Feelings

I gave it a 6 for the second season because the art style is gorgeous, the animation is top-tier, and the soundtrack is amazing; otherwise, it would be a 4 or a 3. Note that I gave it a 9 for the first season, so what went wrong? Simple: 0 levels of satisfaction regarding all storytelling decisions. I will not give any spoilers, but I will make some analogies for you to understand what I meant. And YES, I KNOW Fate/Zero is a prequel to the story. But every anime has to provide you with some level of satisfaction without the need to start a ... new anime. This one left me with bad taste.

Story: They messed up. Everything detailed, built, and explained will explode into something you will think: "Really? I watched 2 seasons for this?". My level of satisfaction went as low as it could. Uninspiring, hopeless, no glory, loveless, lame. The conclusion will make a lot of you feel the entire anime was just a filler arc. Some of you will enjoy it, but if you like to pay attention to the storytelling aspects of this anime, you will feel the same as I do. Considering that this anime WANTS to have an intricate and complex story, I can't ignore it. They built one and decided to finish in the most. "Yeah, cool, we don't care about all we tailored so far; let us just shock people with the ending!"
Imagine you are watching Lord of the Rings, with all that character building for Frodo and how he goes through Hell by bearing the One Ring. However, in the end, when Frodo is in Mordor, an orc comes behind a rock and stabs him. He dies, and the orc laughs and leaves. That's how the climax storytelling aspect of Fate/Zero felt for me.
Now, how did I perceive the ending? Imagine the same scenario I pictured above, but now imagine that Aragorn dies in his final charge, Gandalf is corrupted by Sauron, Sam gets depressed and develops agoraphobia, Legolas betrays the elves and turns into an Orc, Galadriel becomes an alcoholic, and Gimli just goes into some tavern and drinks beer while thinking "yeah, things were grim, but I love my axe." Yeah, I am not kidding; that's the feeling I got. The feeling of "I watched all of this for this conclusion."

Characters: Rider is the best, with the best, and probably only, development among the Heroes. Saber is boring, stays boring, learns nothing. Archer starts as a prick and ends as one, and nothing changes. The humans? It's the same thing, static development, except for the Rider's master. Word of advice: Do not expect anything interesting about humans.
Note about Saber: I have no idea why, among all the cool personalities they came up with for the heroes, they chose the one they gave Saber to be the protagonist's personality—the most cliche, boring, lifeless, and annoying of all (aside from Archer). Saber's personality prevents you from developing any emotions; you do not like her, hate her, and feel close to her in any way. It is the definition of a default-neutral-frozen personality. She will only glimpse a potential development for 1 minute at the end. By far, Archer is one of Fate's most disgusting characters, but at least he makes you feel something (as is expected from a written character).

That's it. You will see the second season because we need to know the ending. Some of you will think, "WOW, this is so awesome," and that is OK; it is your taste. But a lot of you will feel the same way I do; for those, keep your expectations really, really low.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 26, 2024

elgorreado666

Not Recommended

Funny

This has to be the worst piece of fiction ever created, forget about anime or manga, this is by far the worst piece of fiction I've ever come across. Every character is extremely unrealistic with a contrived personality and character development, the plot is awful and inconsistent and none of it was the slightest bit compelling at the end, there were no themes, no nothing, just a bunch of half-assed ideas that ultimately amount to nothing.

It wasn't even the slightest bit enjoyable. Ufotable is by far the worst animation studio out there. The anime is 90% talking but they don't even manage to give ... it a decent presentation to make it engaging and make the audience actually care about the nonsense that's being discussed, thing that even the worst slice of life anime can get right. Just look at the first episode from the first season, there's a 5 minutes or so scene of just two guys walking around in circles around another guy and we should be expected to care about what they're talking about. I can only imagine what the ufotable team was thinking when adapting this "oh yeah so the novel says they're walking around in circles, let's do right just that cuz we at ufotable make anime productions that are faithful to the source material" You can tell they just made a 1:1 copy of the novel and then decided to call that an anime adaptation for some reason. People also seem to praise the "action scenes" despite them being only like 10% of the anime and mostly consist of goddawful CGI and still-shots of people talking to one another in the middle of the fight for no reason.

Regarding the last point, people often criticize Fate/Stay Night because the masters hardly try to kill one another, but in Fate/Zero it's the servants themselves that are constantly putting off their duties. They spare each others lives like a million times and they expect us to think it's smart because "knights are honorable" and this is supposed to be one of the series' themes that ultimately amounts to nothing but oh well, this anime really just doesn't know what it wants to be.

There's also a subplot about a character being injured for like 8 episodes that only gets solved by creating another contrived subplot that lasts for another 4 or so episodes and at that point you'd come to realize how stupid the author thinks it's audience is if he expects you to think an entire subplot about a character being injured is anything smart or at the very least "innovative". This is peak mediocre writing, I assure you that any seasonal anime currently airing has better plot points than a character being injured and waiting for another character to just un-injure them.

Fate/Zero shines from a remarked lack of originality. It does nothing new and does nothing well, all of the ideas it has you've either seen them before or could find them getting done properly elsewhere. Kiritsugu reminds me of Kazami Yuuji from Grisaia, except that Yuuji actually thinks and acts like a human being and not like a robotic killer machine because the plot asks him to. All the flashbacks about him and Natalia just felt like a bogged down version of Asako and Yuuji's past. I didn't even remember who Natalia was, even less Shirley, Maiya I only remembered because she appears in the opening; and that's because these are not characters they're just plot devices.

Fate/Zero sucks at making you feel attached to characters because no one actually acts like human beings, they're just poorly written characters, there's nothing else to it. I first watched Fate/Zero in 2015 and it was the first Fate I've watched, and I always thought it was bad but over the years I thought "perhaps now that I've watched all of it I'll better appreciate it as a prequel" and no, it remains the same dull and pretentious crap I remember watching back then.

Do not watch. If you wanna get into Fate I recommend starting with Unlimited Blade Works. Actually, I think that at no point you should ever check out Fate/Zero since it's just bad and it doesn't tell you anything important that's not made clear in any of the Stay Night's routes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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