I've known about the Fate series for a quite a long time and finally decided to get into it, starting with this Studio Deen adaptation. I did quite a bit of research into the watch order and found out that you're basically spoiling yourself or ruining your experience in some way or another no matter which anime you start with, and that playing the Visual Novel is by far the most optimal way to get into the series. However the Visual Novel has never been officially released in English, and I really don't want to go through the pain of getting a Japanese copy and patching it, so I decided to start with the anime. The two biggest watch order arguments I've seen out there are whether to start with Fate/Zero or the Fate/stay night Studio Deen adaption. Fate/Zero is a prologue and from my understanding was created with the intent that you had already finished Fate/stay night before you played it. As someone who is heavy into the Monogatari series, I'm a pretty firm believer that the author's release order is the ideal way to enjoy a series, rather than chronological order, so I opted to start with the Studio Deen adaptation even though everything I've heard about it has been nothing but slander, claiming it to be a terrible slug of a watch that does a horrible job adapting the Visual Novel it comes from, being mediocre at best. It's not like I really had a better way to learn the basics of the universe and experience Saber's route anyway.
But to my surprise, this anime was nowhere near as bad as I had heard it was. I'm not claiming it is a masterpiece, and as someone who has read plenty of Visual Novels, I could tell pretty easily when they rushed some segments of the story or poorly adapted them (especially the H-Scenes), and it honestly did hinder my enjoyment of not only the episode but a small portion of the overall arc a bit. But since I'm someone who hasn't read the visual novel and hasn't yet seen the other fate routes adapted by Ufotable, I don't really have anything else to compare it to that would cause it to ruin the entire series for me, or make it unwatchable. The fact is that this Studio Deen adaptation did a great job of hooking me into the Fate universe, explaining the core concepts of the story and world enough so that if I watch any other iteration of fate, I have a basis on what's going on. That alone makes the watch worth it for me, as it establishes a good majority of the characters, solid development, and lore that I couldn't grasp as well if I just jumped right into Fate/Zero, and I think helps cement it as the starting place for the Fate series, rather than something you should skip.
As for the quality of the show, It's not bad at all. You're watching a Visual Novel adaptation, so it'd be kind of crazy to expect anything more than a good story and good dialogue, which I think were delivered on. If you watch this adaption after you play the VN then, of course, it's going to be lackluster in comparison, no anime is going to be better than the VN it came from, the anime only has a limited number of episodes to adapt a much longer story. I can completely understand complaints that an anime fails to capture any of the magic that the VN creates (Such as the Chaos;Child anime adaptation) but I don't feel that's the case with Deen/stay night. I'm someone who was just interested in the Fate universe and found the anime to be very gripping and it caused me to become heavily interested in the world of Fate. The fight scenes were actually pretty well animated for a visual novel adaptation that came out in 2006, the majority of them feel very fluid (The fights with Kuzuki and the Assassination were particularly nice). The story is told in such a way where I don't feel like I'm missing out on any part of the original Fate route, It doesn't feel like any major plot points were flaked out on just to make sure the anime finished in time. I do think more character development was needed (Especially in the cases of Rin and Ilya who I have no idea why their characters are motivated in the ways they are), but I don't know if that's a flaw on Studio Deen's part or if the first route is intentionally written that way; regardless, It sparks interest to watch the other routes and figure it out.
My point is that the Studio Deen adaptation of the Fate route is not a bad show and deserves to be seen as a great starting point to get into the Fate franchise. The story, characters, and fights are all just good, nothing more, nothing less. The pacing of the storytelling combined with the superb plot written by Kinoku Nasu makes for a very enjoyable and enthralling watch that comes with good fight scenes and art reminiscent of the VN itself. It's not a super amazing show and it isn't an abysmal watch, it's the telling of the original Fate route from the Fate/stay night Visual Novel, delivered in a digestible and accessible form, making it a solid anime and a great place to start your journey into the Fate franchise.
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