Story:
The story follows seven groups of Mages (people that are like wizards) how engage with one another using their magical abilities and their servants who are legendary heroes from through out history in a battle royale for the holy grail in what is called "The Holy Grail War".
Impression:
If you're not already aware this is supposed to be a prequel to the Fate/Stay Night anime so it pretty much works off of the main concept, actually the first episode is about 40 minutes long and spends all that time just establishing the story and characters which does a pretty good job of kickstarting the series in a very epic manner (if you sit all the way through it).
Watching this is a lot like watching an intense game of chess were all the opponents try to figure out how to subdue one another until the final conclusion, however if you are more into fights and only fights in anime then this might get a little boring as there are some episodes where almost no fighting really happens but when the fights do happen, they really happen, the action and the entire anime in general is very well animated.
This tends to be a bit of a more mature anime meaning they don't use the typical high school based formula, most of the characters are grown adults and are a little more serious, and there isn't any filler in the series. This show does tend to be a bit edgy at times as it goes into more adult themes like war, vengeance, there is even a serial killer that has a bit of an obsession with the insides of humans who strangely becomes instant BFFs with his servant as a result.
The only major con that I can name off is the ending for this series were it kinda bridges into "Fate/Stay Night" as if it were telling you to watch it which makes sense for a prequel but this anime could have easily stood on it's own and the tones for both shows were a little different for me, I guess you can think of them separately and this can still be an enjoyable anime.
Sound:
The sound managed to add an epic feel to things, though at times I think the sound wasn't very noticeable, however the first opening sequence and even the ending sequence for this anime were very good as they complemented the show very well and kept you wanting to watch more but of course half way through they changed them even though the opening and ending that they used wasn't bad either, this is the sort of dilemma I see in a lot of anime series.
Character:
Like I said before a lot of the characters are full grown adults though a lot of them are flawed and even damaged and have their own ambitions and reasons that they want the holy grail which is something that is explored though out the series though some characters don't get a lot of development and are shoved to the side a bit or they are saving the character development for later in the fate/stay night series.
To start off Kiritsugu Emiya aka the mage killer, who deep down seems to have a bit of a hatred for mages but has a desire to end all wars and will do it by any means necessary, which I kind of respected out of him, though his methods caused him to clash with his servant Saber who he rarely talked to which is strange compared to the other masters and their servants that at least showed some kind of closeness but not these two.
Then there is Saber, the female king of knights. Saber in comparison to a lot of female characters in anime was unique to me because 1. she wasn't a fan service girl and 2. she never really acknowledges herself as a woman or at least she didn't tie her self to any certain gender roles and she simply did what she did best.
Next is Waver, a scrawny boy and Rider the tall muscular servant that Waver summoned. These two are probably the funnest pair of characters to watch as they almost seem like polar opposites, one being a little timid and nerdy and the other having tons of charisma and is never afraid to charge head long into danger, and together they make one of the best duos in anime.
Archer, Archer is kind of a prick, just putting that out there.
One thing that is fun about some of these characters as that the servants are famous figures from history and they give you some clues as to what they are, some are real some are from myth, it also helps to have had some education in ancient history or a lot of hours of watching the history channel.
Sub vs. Dub:
To get straight to the point, both versions are pretty solid, if you like watching dubs then you are definitely in for a treat if your kinda in the middle you might watch the dub out of necessity, and if you think all english dubs of anime are HERUSY!!! Then the sub is alright and manages to be pretty entertaining, this isn't the sort of anime that is spontaneous in it's dialog, you don't need to feel the words as they are being said all that much in order to under stand what is going on.
With that being said here is what I thought of them (you can skip this if you want).
For the most part I liked the Dub better, they had put together a great cast one being Liam O'Brien who didn't have a hugely big part but I have to say this was one of his best performances and further cemented him as one of my favorite voice actors in anime dubs, One character I kinda liked in both Japanese and english was Saber, even though I'm a little more attached to the english saber the Japanese was pretty entertaining during the battles, another was Berserker who sounded so intense in Japanese, as one of the other voices I felt really stood out in Japanese. Other than that I also liked Caster a little better in english as his voice hit a little closer to home in terms of creepiness and the sup prize Johny-young Bosch performance that was his master mainly because in Japanese caster just sounded like some old guy and his master Uryu's voice was kind of annoying. Archer was more of a prick in english and Rider and Waver had the same presence in both languages.
I would like to speak for the other language versions other than Jap/Eng but those dubs are hard to come a crossed.
Final verdict:
I'm giving this one a 9/10 mainly because it was almost perfect but not quite.
