Guilty Gear Strive Dual Rulers is a pathetic marketing campaign made for the sole purpose of shilling a new character called Unika before she is added to the roster of the game Guilty Gear Strive. That sentence alone could be my whole review but because I am a fan of this franchise I will go into more details about this anime issues.
Guilty Gear is an anime fighting game franchise started in 1998 and developped by ArcSystemWorks and Team Neo Blood. It was created by one man by the name of Daisuke Ishiwatari, this information is important as unlike most game director, Daisuke Ishiwatari is at
...
the same time the game director, lead developer, main illustrator, main composer, scriptwriter and voice actor of the main character of Guilty Gear. Making him not only one of the most talented and versatile artist ever but it also means GG is his entire love child and every minute detail of the franchise can attribute their paternity to him.
In essence, even If I don't want to discredit the works of hundred of animators and devs, Guilty Gear remains the lifetime work of one man alone, and for this reason it has established itself as one of if not the greatest and most influential anime fighting game franchise of all time.
Many people of what forms the "FGC" (fighting game community) praises Guilty Gear for a couple of very specific aspects; its crazy cast of diverse distinctive characters, its very dense and confusing lore spanning across multiple medias, the intense fast paced rythm of its gameplay, and most importantly its many MANY influences taken from Daisuke Ishiwatari love of hard rock, metal, and the Bastard manga especially.
Absolutely none of the things I have listed can be found in Dual Rulers.
Once again, this show first purpose is to advertise a new character that is to come to the latest entry in the franchise, Guilty Gear Strive. Strive is already a very contentious game within the Guilty Gear franchise, as it is both the highest selling GG game ever by a wide margin but also the game that has strayed the most from the series core roots, overall it's almost a soft reboot.
However, Dual Rulers managed a feat that was hard to achieve by being even less faithful to Guilty Gear than Strive was, to the point it feels more like a knock off or a fanwork than an actual official product, and it would be more respectable as a fanwork than what it is.
The core issue about this show is that promoting a new fighting game character by dedicating an entire anime to it is something that was, to my knowledge, never done before and that could only amount in the most convenient and forceful story you could ever put out.
If the whole purpose of the anime is too sell us Unika then let's see, what and who is Unika?
Unika is a mysterious girl who came from the future (I-no) to eradicate all remaining Gears (Valentine), she wears a bunny (Elphelt) looking mask, wields a huge weapon amplifying magical energy that can also transforms into a motorbike (Sol), it is later revealed she is the daughter of (Ky kiske) and (Dizzy), making her the adoptive sister of (Sin Kiske), as well as a Gear able to grow the same tail as (Dizzy) and wield the Thunderseal, (Ky)'s iconic weapon since the first entry.
As you can see, I've put the names of some other Guilty Gear character into parenthesis, if you know them and their story you can quickly figure out why. Everything in Unika's story has been done before in Guilty Gear, not only that but better, she is redundant within Guilty Gear mainly by being part of the Sol/Ky/Justice family tree. Ky having a child with Dizzy, an half gear from the race he fought his whole life, was an important part in his character development changing his worldview that was brilliantly told along the games. Sin's reason of existence is in his name, "Sin" as his whole story was too come along with the fact he's the child between a human and an ennemy of humanity, his goal he achieved was to prove to the world he choses the life he wants to live and comes to terms with his dad after they rejected each other for years.
Unika isn't that, she came from the future (because that's convenient), she wants to kill Gears (because it was too hard to find another motivation for her), she has the voice of Yui Ishikawa (because 2B sells hella if you know what I mean), she is a new addition to the whole Sol/Ky family tree because that's easy to market and will create bajillions of fanarts on the internet. The goal wasn't artistic integrity, it was money, everything in this show was made for money. In other words, Unika is a fanfic character made official, she doesn't tell anything that wasn't already told
The whole supporting cast present in Dual Rulers are Guilty Gear, mainly Guilty Gear Strive, most popular characters. Sol is the protagonist of the whole story but his deuteragonist Ky (his Ken to his Ryu) is sidelined pretty early, his son Sin takes his place as Sol and Sin used to be the protagonist duo of a previous game entry, Guilty Gear 2 Overture. The rest of the cast is composed of fan favorite Johnny (2nd highest strive peak players post release), Baiken, the dedicated coomer waifu known to have more mains that there are Guilty Gear players, the very VERY marketable Valentine trio of Ram, Elphelt and Jack0 who makes about 50% of all GG fanarts by all three together, and let's not forget the most important, Guilty Gear biggest controversy, a character that has become more popular than the game it came from itself (like Morrigan in Darkstalkers), the infamous Bridget. What I'm getting at here is that none of the character present are there for actual story purpose, for a simple reason that most if not all of them are either pointless or have already finished their stories prior to DR. Johnny and Baiken aren't characters in Dual Rulers, they are just here to fight, Valentine trio is just here to fight and fill the void in dialogues with technobabble and Bridget is here to look CUTE, at all time she/he needs to be cute, because every microsecond where Bridget isn't cute on screen is one less Bridget figurine we will not sell you get it? I forgot to mention 2 other GG regulars that are present, Axl and Leo, Axl is treated like a running gag, despite being arguably more important to the story now that he ever was, and Leo is on a permanent Discord call probably doing webcam ERP with an egirl that's why we never see his lower body because he ain't wearing nothing below his waist.
Now where are the rest? Where is Zato? Millia? Faust? Potemkin? Chipp? Anji? Giovanna? Goldlewis? Nagoriyuki? Happy Chaos? May? Delilah? My goat Testament? Surely they aren't there because the story doesn't need them? No, obviously, they aren't there because THEY DON'T MAKE MONEY! You'll get cameos of them at best but nothing else, because they don't matter. Story doesn't matter. I've pointed this out in the episode threads but why the head of the FBI Goldlewis isn't there when the president is attacked? Why is Baiken roaming around the world alone after promising Delilah she would stay with her? Why is Testament still in Hell's Forest despite living in Illyria's castle since Strive? Because we don't need them, they do not generate the cash.
The newest character featured in the show could save them all could he? Welcome the new big villain of the Guilty Gear anime, Nerville.
A scientist obsessed with Gears (Crow) who travels from the future to become a god or something after fucking up a virus turning all Gears mad, it doesn't matter. In the end he becomes a terrible CGI abomination, attacks the whole planet with his army of CGI abomination clones, the excuse is to show Guilty Gear characters fighting during slideshows because you know, it needs people fighting to keep your attention. Kinda like the Guilty Gear X drama CDs volume 2 featuring Dizzy first meeting with Testament that doesn't feature any fighting and is one of the best part of the GG story and was written by the same fucking guy that has written Dual Rulers.
It's the third time already that Guilty Gear has featured a "save the world" type of plot after Ariels in Guilty Gear Xrd and Happy Chaos in Strive but unlike those two, Nerville is a bland character devoided of any personality or charisma, he has no bearings at all in the GG lore which is a shame because if they used a similar character that was already present he could have had some leniancy. You can tell Nerville was the villain from his first ever appearance and he has half an episode dedicated for him to spill his terrible backstory, at the end he dies never to be seen again.
The story in itself just revolves around a sucession of macguffins while trying to make Unike likeable to the audience. The most pitiful attempt is by pairing Unika with Bridget just to bait shippers and fujos, selling your character to your fanbase by associating her with the biggest tourist character in the franchise that is already getting so much focused compared to your long lasting roster members, is just so telling of how much care was actually put into this product. The ending climax is literally Goku's Genkidama, it is absurdly cliché to the point of parody.
I obviously have to mention the whole presentation, which is the most jarring part of this show but for me, the least important.
This anime is presented as a 3D anime, which is a blatant lie, it's an half 3D half 2D slideshow anime, and it is made clear since the first episode. Every single backstory elements are depicted in 2D stills, every close ups are in 2D, many fight scenes are in 2D, all instances of narration are on top of 2D still frames. The problem is that these 2D shots weren't made because they wanted to, they just couldn't animate all these segments in 3D so it resulted to the studio half-assing most of the show with 2D stills to gain time or just because they didn't have enough money. The 3D in itself isn't that bad actually, the show does move properly when it should but the camera work is so terrible there isn't a since direction for any shots. Every single action scenes are a confusing mess of aura, speedlines and lighting beams that would bore to death anyone past the age of 12. Visuals I can forget but music is an element I cannot forgive. Guilty Gear music has cemented itself as one of if not the best fighting game (or video game) music you could find anywhere. Pure unfiltered hard rock and metal taking influences from all the biggest bands and artists in rock history, from Queen (Daisuke's favorite band), Guns&Roses, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Skid Row, ACDC, so on and so forth. The music in Dual rulers is unremarkable, unconsidered, it makes you wonder if it is present in the first place. A franchise which whole identity was its influences of rock and heavy metal now has one of its entry an anime featuring none of it, at this point would it even be Guilty Gear?
Coming back to the beginning of this review and the implication of Daisuke Ishiwatari. What I didn't mention is that Guilty Gear Strive is the first time in the franchise Daisuke has stepped back from the creative director role replaced by Akira Katano. What I mean isn't that Daisuke stepping back ruined Guilty Gear, however what I mean is that Daisuke as the providential man IS what made Guilty Gear good in the first place. At the heart of it, Guilty Gear main appeal to the major part of its fans was its honesty, it is the lifework of one man containing all his stupid passions and power fantasies. Guilty Gear was originally a bold take in fighting games that went against the mold of the genre by bringing an universe completely opposite to what was fighting game before in franchises like Street Fighter, Tekken or King of Fighters. What is funny is that Guilty Gear originated the subgenre of fighting games known as "anime games", and quite like anime itself as a counter culture, Guilty Gear thrived upon its fast-paced shocking insanity where everything seemed to be so original and never seen that you could only find it there and nowhere else. Nowadays, Guilty Gear is also like anime, it is the establishment. This is allegedly what Strive was created for and by proxy, Dual Rulers as well. It was made to catter to the broad casual audience that has long since accepted mediocrity. Guilty Gear the gaming franchise isn't dead but Guilty Gear the concept for sure will not survive very long if more products like these are put out.
Heaven or Hell, this anime was Hell for sure, but at no point I was ready to Rock.
May 24, 2025
Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers
(Anime)
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Guilty Gear Strive Dual Rulers is a pathetic marketing campaign made for the sole purpose of shilling a new character called Unika before she is added to the roster of the game Guilty Gear Strive. That sentence alone could be my whole review but because I am a fan of this franchise I will go into more details about this anime issues.
Guilty Gear is an anime fighting game franchise started in 1998 and developped by ArcSystemWorks and Team Neo Blood. It was created by one man by the name of Daisuke Ishiwatari, this information is important as unlike most game director, Daisuke Ishiwatari is at ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 11, 2025
Mirai Nikki (TV)
(Anime)
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Mirai Nikki is very likely to be the worst written anime to ever become popular and certainly the worst anime I have ever seen.
At the root of it is a citation of ex-anime youtuber Digibro who said in defense of SAO against Asterisk Wars in one of his videos: "There are shows of bad ideas, and there are shows of no ideas, this is a show of no idea", which is something I think defines Mirai Nikki in every possible instance. The most egregious thing in this show's writing stems from the fact there is not one moment where real world logic applies to anything happening ... within the universe the characters are inhabiting and the anime never once claims itself to be cartoon where it could bypass this issue, even worse, Mirai Nikki takes itself completely seriously, like to an excruciating extent. I could list every incoherences and plotholes within the plot (and I already did several times on episodes discussion threads) but it would actually take me several hours to be exhaustive and I can even to pinpoint everything. Therefore, I'm going to be quick with the biggest offenders: Murder, despite being at the center of the entire script, is never once treated like a severe and serious act by any of the characters. Something I cannot tolerate is how much the writer expects you to be empathic towards all the psychopaths filling the whole cast and discard every despiseful acts they commit during the show. Minene Uryuu is introduced as a clear antagonist and a terrorist, she plants c4 and mines in a school and blows up multiple classrooms, the story insists upon the fact she has killed a numerous amount of children and yet, every time she appears afterwards she is considered as somehow of an anti-hero with a grey sense of morality and not once her previous acts are frowned upon by any other character, worse than that, multiple character ally with her without second thoughts. I have no issue with having serial murderers as protagonists however they need a reason to explain their vicious actions especially if it's this extreme and when death is supposed to be taken seriously. Minene Uryuu has no reason to ever be forgiven, she is a terrorist from beginning to end, she kills dozens of children during her first appearance and never feel an ounce of remorse about it, she gets to be one of the few who stays alive and got away scot-free with everything she commited. She isn't the only one, Kurusu Keigo has no problem with executing a child in cold blood during an interrogation despite being a police officer, Hinata's father had killing dogs and is presented as a tragic figure, Mao was ready to stab another kid for no reason and of course Yuki's father killed his ex-wife without any care and for no other reason than she angered him a bit. Second issue is how no character seem to have any opinion about all the supernatural elements occuring around them. Not at one point a single character was even shocked by how absurd and terrifying the situtation they are in is. Many, MANY characters who aren't involved within the Death Game are aware of its existence, the future-reading devices and the possibility of the winner becoming god itself, such as Yuki's friends Hinata, Mao and Kosaka, Nishijima, Akise and else. In the world of Mirai Nikki, this death game is supernatural, in other words, a supernatural element occuring in the real world, despite its sudden happening and enormous stakes (the whole world will end if no one wins), once again, all character seem to have little to no care about their possible fate and condition, all of them just take part in this game and with the exception of Yukiteru, are totally fine with killing dozens of people. At no point anyone questions Deus Ex Machina role into this and why would the fate of humanity be on their shoulder, all of them just roll with it. Yuki's friend group is so unbothered by this they all seem to have an active deathwish by taking part into so many events where they would get kill easily, especially involving the serial killer psycho Yuno Gasai. Nishijima manage to reach the state of a parody character when despite being well aware of the situation, just asks for marriage an assumed child murderer terrorist who's fate was either to be killed or become god, he's knows it and just wants to fuck her anyway. Violence in Mirai Nikki is also a subject of complete nonsense, everyone is invincible except when the show needs them to die. Minene, Yuno, Yuki and others are shown multiple times to tank c4 and grenade explosions point blank without suffering any wound or injury, how hilarious then when at the end of the show, Minene happens to come across a claymore mine and despite noticing it early and dodging, she still loses part of her arm by an explosion she would have ignored in any scene beforehand. Some characters survive getting stabbed, others do not, Kurusu is equipped with a bulletproof vest in case the unarmed child he intended to kill would somehow manage to overpower him but Nishimija doesn't bring one when attacking a building filled with corrupted pistol wielding guards alongside a terrorist. Yuno is particular is the most incomprehensible character in terms of her actual capabilities. She is shown overpowering grown adults and easily swinging axe, wielding special units SMGs like MP5 without ear protection, has feats of superhuman stamina and yet, she is also often shown to be overpowered with ease by other teenagers like Akise or Yukiteru. The threat she actually incarnates never works because she is either all powerful or weak when the plot needs her to be. Coming back to the argument of Mirai Nikki being "a show of no idea", it's a problem which concerns all characters in the show even the main couple to an extent. The entire premise of Mirai Nikki is centered around the "death game", a very popular story archetype in which many characters take part in a battle among themselves and where only one person will win and survive, it was mostly popularized by the movie adaptation of Battle Royale, but also worldwide phenomenon tv serie Squid Game or also critically acclaimed VNs and anime Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero. In all of those examples, the story focuses mainly onto the characters, their life, ideals, motivations, and their relationship and reason towards participating in this death game. In the case of Mirai Nikki, literally zero character have any more personality or depth beyond the one trait they embody, I could just name the 12 important characters in this death game by their trope and that would resume their entire character. There's the asocial main character, the yandere girlfriend, the serial killer teacher, the solitary terrorist, the police officer, the blind cult leader, the crazy guy who wants to be a superhero, the vengeful kid, the dad who likes dogs, the couple who really loves each other, the evil mayor and the mama in charge of an orphanage, that's the only trait of personality they all have and none are ever expanded upon. The story is so unconcerned with their existence that apart from 3 of them, the majority gets barely 2 if not one episode of screentime before dying and 4 of them do not have more than 5 lines of dialogue in the entire anime (3, 12, 10 and 8). As for the death game itself, it is simply absurd how nothing about it is explained and in how it doesn't hold any subtext or purpose beyond being a pretext for action to occur. To make some comparisons, in Squid Game, the aforementionned is a metaphor about how South-Korea's socio-economic system can reduce individuals life to a point where dying would be a better fate than living under society, and in Fate/Zero, the holy grail war is fake quest where the true nature of its participants is revealed in hope of attaining their wish. In Mirai Nikki, the death game comes from nowhere, for no reason, involving random people for a quest which ended up unresolved. The writer just throws at you Deus Ex Machina and Murmur expecting you to already know who they are and what are their purpose and you remain asking yourself what are their deal for the entire story while they just talk about unexplained concepts like causality. This would have work for a mystery show, the grail isn't much explained in Fate either but here it doesn't because the show isn't a mystery at any point, the author never wants you to ask yourself about the death game, he just uses as a setting and do not extrapolate beyond. At the very end, Murmur and Minene fight each other using godlike magical abilities and you're supposed to accept they can do that because it wasnt foretold at any moment before, just for the sake of having a climatic boring shonen fight. On top of what I said before about the shallowness of these characters, all of them have no desire at all towards achieving the goal of this death game. Some of them are downright denying the wish of becoming god yet still participates in the game and for the few who wants to become god, it's always for such trivial things it feels like they do not even realize the plot they're taking part of, Kurusu wants to heal his son and that's it, the mayor throws a vague line about the roman empire and nothing else. You cannot be attached about a story premise the characters are actively avoiding at any possible instance, if they don't care about becoming God, while would I care about them being part of this game and why would they take part of this game in the first place? Them being forced into the death game is also an idea that's entirely unexplored apart from the main character even though him and Yuno are the only one doing anything of importance, which transitions into my next point. Mirai Nikki is the most predictable I ever had the displeasure to come across. I would have never expected when starting this anime about a death game to be this incompetent in depicting a death game. First of all, discovering each participants identities, which is one of the keypoint of Fate or many other death game stories, is completely ignored because everyone's identities are BARELY hidden behind some weird silhouettes but if there was still doubt, the anime goes out of its way to spoil them in the opening anyway. Virtually everything that happens can be predicted minutes if not entire episodes before. Every other participants are killed by Yuki and Yuno, this makes any possibility of suspense disappear, after the second fight you already know how every confrontation will turn out and they all turn out the same. The show becomes the most pathetic monster-of-the-week possible because barely anyone poses an actual threat and it feels like none of them would actually fight together if Yuno wasn't participating. All betrayals are obvious from the beginning by the very premise of a death game, what is even crazier is the way Yukiteru still acts surprised about getting betrayed for the 4th time while he also betrayed another participant before. You can tell who's going to die and who's going to live just from their character design alone, after all it doesn't matter because everybody ends up dead just for shock value and yet not a single death feels remotely impactful, sometimes they are laughable in the way some characters go from obsessed murderer to depressed crybabies when they're about to die. The whole script is so formulaic it doesn't stray once from the scheme it established in the first episode; they're trying to find a diary user, they stumble upon them, they struggle or lose at first, then yuno goes insane and kills them/ they get a pep talk and decide to kill themselves. No character manages to escape the game, no character tries to cheat the rules, no character attempt to stop the games and no one but the main cast look to kill each other. Funny thing is, when the show is actually unpredictable, it doesn't expand on its ideas whatsoever, 2 characters are revealed to be openly homosexual and lesbian at the very end, only to be both killed mere seconds afterwards or made irrelevant. Last thing I want to say is how boring, ugly and souless the whole presentation is. Never seen such lack of idea in both visual quality and visual direction. The whole anime is absolutely filled with CGI assets, most criminally Deus Ex Machina which looks so old and dated it makes modern ugly CG looks like ILM tier in comparison. Everything is shot in the most unimaginative way possible, actions scenes are a chaotic mess of characters flaying around. There is no sense of space and locations seem to become either gigantic or miniscule when they need to be. Once the camera is away by just a few meters for a wideshot everyone turns offmodel for the derpiest faces possible. Sakuga is absent, the 2 only money shots are still frames of Yuno's crazy face, which, I know for a fact, are the only sequences anyone remember from this edgefest. The anime never ever moves and when it does move it's janky and jarring, all attempts to close combat is hilariously bad and considering no balistic works like it should with people missing bullets from centimeters away and infinite ammo, most fight scenes are as uninteresting as they could be. Fire is useless and doesn't harm anyone, neither do explosions, falling debris will only hurt ennemies but the good guys will stay unscathed, for an anime where writing only exists for action to take place, action is not once entertaining. Also I need to shout out the composer, he was so bored scoring the anime he recycled all his tracks twice at least and managed to incorporate the funniest sound effects inside them, I'm almost sure some of these sound effects are actual memes, I have no idea if they actually come from this show but considering how ridiculous they are it would not be a good point. This show has also one of the most confusing approach to displaying sexual content. Nudity often happens early in the show but the tits are always censored typical of anime but at some point, Minene Uryuu is undressed and her tits are entirely shown uncensored on screen, same goes for number6 and Yuno soon after. Nudity appears and disappears at regular intervals in an absolute tasteless way, it's always for the most basic fanservice but it's so random and misplaced it's obvious the only reason of showing bare tits is to seem even more """mature""". Mirai Nikki still fails at everything though, because the only times where showing nudity would seem reasonable, the ending sex scene between the main couple, is cut short by lasting barely 30 seconds to completely annihilate the little impact this moment could have had in displaying their relationship. This is insane for me to say for how rare it is but I must say it as well, this is the worst seiyuu performance out of any anime I've seen. Yuno first, has the single most annoying anime girl voice imaginable, she screeches constantly and keeps alternating in range in an attempt to create personality, the reason this was her only notable role isn't surprising to me. Yukiteru's seiyuu isn't better, she makes Asta's voice sounds bearable, crying and whining without stop for the most shitty Shinji impersonation possible. Ishida Akira is bored out of his mind, Norio Wakamoto as well is doing his king brittania's voice and it once again almost reaches parody by making him spew broken english words to sound cool, it's just terrible and he clearly has no idea what the hell the story is even about. No one even wants to put a decent performance, there's no aspect of this anime deserving of it. This is a very long rant but the sad reality is, I actually have nothing compelling to say about Mirrai Nikki. Despite everything I have written, it's the quintessential fast-food anime. It was never made to be deep, original or tell anything, it was made to sell merch, dvds and manga volumes because the main girl has an attractive design, nothing more than that. Mirai Nikki never even existed, it was just Yuno. The whole premise of the story is just having a yandere as a main character, everything else built around it was just a pretext for her to exist and do things. There is no symbolism, no metaphor, no subtext, no morale, no message, no desire to convey anything from the author to the viewer, it isn't art, it's a product, and a failed one. I hope this edgefest remains forgotten by anime culture for the decades to come until it falls into absolute obscurity, and it's already on a good path to do so.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Mar 4, 2019
Fate/Zero 2nd Season
(Anime)
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[This review contains spoilers and concerns the whole Fate/Zero anime because it's hard to analyse each part alone knowing the whole serie, it's also very long if you want to read everything]
I have to say, I'm not a big fan of Fate at all, but the thing that I like with the franchise and the reason why I think it has become so popular is the "promise" of Fate. I haven't read Fate/Zero novel so I'll be covering my experience of the anime, I also haven't read Fate/Stay Night VN but I've watched both F/SN 2006 and UBW (still reading HF's manga) I mean a battle ... between 7 masters each commanding a servant based on either History or Mythology with unique abilities including Magic and real weapons in a urban city, with high violence, intense lore, mysteries, mindgame etc. All of that to acquire an artefact which can grant any wish you want, IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES. How many characters and psychologies you can exploit and write with such a concept ! According to MAL, Fate/Zero has an higher score and is overall better than Fate/Stay Night, the reason I often see is because the story is more mature and better written, but is that entirely the case ? Indeed the characters (Masters, Servants and side characters) are way more mature and relatable than Emiya and his Top Tier harem, but concerning the purpose each character has in the story, Stay Night feels way more realistic than Zero. STORY : 8 Let's start with the plot : It's the same for all Fate series (sorry it just bothers me that people to give an higher score to Zero plot than SN while it's the same story but with different characters and motivation and almost the same goal for some routes). The main difference being that Zero is prequel, so we know HOW the story is going to end, and that said, everything that happen in Zero must properly lead to the start of SN. But it isn't entirely the case. The pacing is good except some slower episodes, it's not the best thing that almost every character dies in the second part and make the whole kind of unbalanced. CHARACTERS : 7.5 That's also a point that people often use to promote Zero, all characters are different and interesting, with their own backstory, goals and personality. In this iteration, our main protagonist isn't the highschool kid Emiya Shirou but Velvet Wav... I MEAN SHIROU'S FATHER, EMIYA KIRITSUGU ! My bad it's just that usually the main protagonist is supposed to be the one with the highest screentime and which evolve and take decisions all along the serie so I mix them up in my mind ... That's the biggest problem of Zero, people acclaim it to be like "The mature story which follows adults traumas during a war" but I swear that half of the show is dedicated to the relation between Waver and Iskandar and it's not a bad thing, but why the hell Waver's not designated as "Main" on his MAL description ? To prove me right, everyone's according that the destruction of the grail should technically be the "END" of Fate/Zero, the moment where Kiritsugu discovers Shirou's body in the ruins of Fubuki is instantely the beginning of the "Fate" route of SN. Then, why there is an epilogue of Waver's story arc right after it, okay this is a prequel but let us at least finish the story with our main characters. And we got like this bittersweet boring dialogue between Waver and his uncles and aunts that goes nowhere and feels completely out of tone because it follows a tragic event of the city's destruction, and they're just like "lul idk what happened but i'm proud of you kid". There is also an epilogue about Kirei's and Rin's future but it's informations we should already have because this is a prequel : we know that Kotomine is hiding Gilgamesh, we know that Rin's will be the head of the Tohsaka family and we know he will be his mentor. So why showing us Tokiomi's funeral if it's useless, just to show us that Rin's mother is alive and braindead ? Incredible, no one cares. "But we see a dialogue between Shirou and Kiri at the very end of Zero what do you mean" Yeah a dialogue cut straight out of Fate/SN with the exact same lines. There are so much better way the could have shown us the end of Kiri story arc, he could have been doing a inner monologue of his regrets, burning a photo of him with Iri and Illya to represent that he wants to forgot his past, I don't know something original maybe. Well anyway, the cast overall is really great but some of them are really put in the shadow. The most developped ones being Waver as I said (even if he's a bunch of clichés but still cool to watch progress), but of course Kiritsugu have a lot of development (recessed in 2 flashback episodes), Kirei is probably the most interesting character of the whole, each of his appearance feels either terrifying/mysterious and make you question yourself of how does this guy thinks and his interactions with Gil are the best dialogues in all of the serie. I agree all of the Masters have good designs and personality but the rest of the cast still basic tropes and really die like a bunch of idiots honestly, even if it's what's good in Fate : you can't escape your destiny, and death can happen at any moment. Tokiomi is handsome but you hate him just because he acts like a coward and his death just make him even more ridiculous but make Kirei more badass, Kayneth is an obnoxious fucker the serie wants you to hate and does this well (Lancer do not deserves him), Ryuunosuke is just a psycopath and dies so quickly it make you think how not a single cop could have shot this guy before (his interactions with Caster stills pretty nasty and fucked up but in a good way). Kariya should have been the most tragic one of the bunch and redempt the honor of the Matou family but ends up failing everything, he failed to honor is name, he choked his only love interest and failed to save Sakura before dying in front of her, good depiction of madness actually. He does not even seem like a Master when you think about how his servant his doing whatever the heck he wants to do and never use a single command spell by himself. As for the Servants it's way better than Masters, Gilgamesh is sexy and sassy as ever but deserves more screentime with his clever and manipulative side and less moment of showing him as a pretencious OP guy who insults any person he meet. Rider is probably the best character in Fate/Zero, no debate possible : his design is cool, his over-the-top dumb muscle guy makes him funny as hell and badass, he has by far the best voice actor, he starts as a servant, progress as a king, dies as a legend, will be remembered as a friend, perfection. Lancer is such a cool guy with a lot of honor, not the most original of the bunch but his death is the most terrific and heartcrushing one of all. Does Assassin exists ? I'm sorry he was so invisible I thought he haven't done anything cool the whole show, at least he dies first, too bad his Noble Phantasm seemed original. Caster is such a FREAK ?! His voice is obnoxious but fit him so much, his obsession for Jeanne is touching me as French guy with a little patriotic side (If only Jeanne was a big tiddy blonde girl), Ufotable did a great job showing his inhumanity by doing hardcore killing of children. His death almost made me shed a tear while I was hating since his first appeareance, the dramatic end of a man who lost the figure who kept him sane, and so became the very thing he swore to destroy, very good hateful character. The plot twist of Berserker could have been great if done better, according to novel readers they were more flashback of his past, don't know why they cut it, he was really not interesting overall, just your average "ARGHGHGHG KILL EVERYONE" madman (that was not the image I had of Lancelot). And now we're reaching Saber, the main girl of our story, or the second one, no even the third one ? Wait how many characters were more interesting than her ? Yeah almost all of them ! Once again the part I hate the most about Zero, trying to convince me Saber is a main character while she clearly ISN'T ! She spend most of her screentime being mad for no reason, her interactions with Iri are cute but feel blank, she talked perhaps twice with Kiri ... "Relation with your servant is the most important part to win the grail war" as they say. She's just a shell of SN's Saber, she still has the same "fight with honor" but it's used in just like 2 eps, the kings reunion and after Lancer's death with Kiri. Those are also the best dialogue of the serie but I would have like to see more of her trying to live in Fubuki like Rider, preparing strategies, exposing her weakness and psychology, to be brief, more of the SN Saber, okay perhaps they didn't wanted to exploit Saber as much as in SN but then why is she the biggest character in both covers of s1 and s2, marketing obviously ? Characters in Fate/Zero are diverse, it's true, but except Kiritsugu and Kirei, none of them feels different than what we already have in other Fate (except Rider best man). Side characters are mostly here to serve the plot and backstory, Iri/Maiya for Kiri (endearing but I expected better of them), Waver's fake family, Sola-Ui for Kayneth, Zouken for Kariya etc ... The show even reach a certain level of fanservice by adding Sakura, Ilya and Rin to the story, just because they also appear in SN. I agree of the backstory utility of Sakura and Ilya but Rin is useless to the main plot, while she even get a whole episode dedicated to her to just show us she was a strong mage since her childhood, no way dude. (saving those kids didn't stopped Ryuu/Caster and improving her relationship with her father while we know he's gonna die anyway is useless). The backstory of Kiritsugu brings a lot of depth to the character and it's truly original, but I can't help but think he just took by himself all the worst decisions that led him change his goal and abandon his past life, the turnover seems a bit drastic considering of what he'd done during the whole serie. ART/ANIMATION : 9 It's hell of good, I don't know what else I should say, it's just beautiful for 2010. Close-ups are always perfecly drawn, fighting scenes are epic, particle effect are used just as enough to make the magic feels real, Ufotable shows everyone CGI can look good if you know how to use it : Berserker, monsters, vehicles, spells, weapons looks gorgeous even in 3D (except a small problem of framerate sometimes). My only complain would that background art aren't that great and characters ESPECIALLY WAVER seems off-model with messed-up face half of the time during panoramic shots. MUSIC/SOUNDS : 8.5 I'm not an expert, but I can say music fits every situation perfectly. Dramatic when it needs to be, sad, mysterious, disturbing and most importantly COMPLETELY EPIC with all these chorus singing together. Not a single sound effects seems off if I remember well, but it's not the most important part of a serie dedicated on plot and characters. They could have more thrilling sound effect during death scenes though. Openings and endings are especially good and epic, I think I prefer the first Opening more than the second one because the animation and clips used feels more "FATE", second season's ed is one of the saddest Eds I've heard, no need to put flashback of Kiri/Iri relationship, just show all of it in a single ED and every shot is palpable, fantastic job. Voice acting is on point, all voices fit and do their job perfectly (especially Rider), Kirei and Kiri feels like empty human weapon, Iri is sweet and brainwashed, Caster and Kayneth sounds like sadistic fuckers, Waver is a relatable crying kid but a smart one, Saber and Gilgamesh put their all their throat into actions, and once again Iskandar the great is a badass omg ! ENJOYMENT : 9.5 Even after everything I said, I enjoyed the majority of Fate/Zero, but mostly the second season more than the first one, more dramatic, it contains better dialogues, better fight scenes and conclusion of character arcs (and doesn't have a filler episode). Of coures the second season feels better because it use properly all elements the first season set up. But the anticlimatic ending is probably the reason why I could never give Fate/Zero a 10. For those still thinking you can start the Fate franchise by Zero : Absolutely not in any case. It was created as a prequel and SN's plot twists are more interesting than Zero's plot twists, the main reason a part of the old cast is still there is because the serie is adressed to Fate fans and not newcomers. Fate/Stay Night starts with a colossal fight of 2 hidden figures which you think have destroyed the city, but at the end of Zero it tells you that they never fought at all and city's fire is due to the grail's implosion. And thus Maiya, Ilya and Saber died for nothing because Kiritsugu turned back his mind. It becomes a story about how someone can fail because of him ambitions but it's not the kind of story that appeal to me, I'm sorry, or at least not this way. This is not the most analytical review possible but I put in what I wanted to say about Fate/Zero (or what I could remember about a week after finishing it). English is not my first language so I hope it's still readable by any audience (otherwise I'll be pissed) FINAL SCORE : 9 Perhaps I will come back to Zero years later and take it down to 8, or perhaps take it up to 10 I don't know. A rewatch is always possible and I'll do it when I find the time, thank you if you have read this (because it took me some time and is kind of messed up)
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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