After hearing alot of good things about this anime, mainly how breath taking some of the scenes were as well as how it had a good plot and basically was a good anime to watch, i finally decided to see how good it was.. although fate/stay night does have some well orchestrated fighting scenes, the downfall is easily in how big the storyline is and how the anime could not possible cover it all.
Story:
The story is somewhat generic where we have our usual main protaganist who starts off pretty useless but then gains a power which helps him to aid the "good" side. The plot is generally simple and not too complex in that there are 7 masters who each have a servant, using these servants, the masters must kill each other to obtain what they are fighting for: The Holy Grail. The one problem with the story is despite its simplicity it is explained in a complex way due to the complexity of the characters, from watching this it is clear that the character's personalities is what is the main contribution to the storyline, due to the time constraints of the anime however, there are many characters who just get hardly any development which leaves many gaps in the plot since this is an adaptation of the visual novel, they could not possibly fit in everything at once. The result is, an enjoyable but poorly executed storyline in which there is no true closure.
Art:
I thought the art was very well done, from an anime made in 2006, it has held up quite well, the animation during the fight scenes is crisp and dynamic and are very difficult to complain about, the anime looks great and hardly ever has a quality drop which is a very positive thing for a shounen anime like this.
Sound:
The sound in this anime was average at best, i thought the character's voice actors did a terrific job, but the actual music did not feel like it fit the show at some points. Usually with fighting scenes you have high pace music but fate/stay night does things differently by using melodic music with an orchestra feel to it, im sure some people would enjoy the music but i was not one of them, thought i did not mind the music that much, it was repetitive though since a few songs play constantly.
Character:
This is the category that breaks Fate/stay night. Since there are so many characters in the anime, (7 servants / 7 masters) and each actually have quite interesting personalities, were never really given an insight into any of their pasts or what their true desire is in fighting in this war. Often it seems like the characters just have nothing better to do then to fight, The main protaganist is also extremely useless for the first half of the show which is painful to watch, some characters background's are not explained at all which provides alot of confusion to the storyline. Without spoiling too much, the characters although full of life and definitely interesting, are never fully developed enough, Rin who is a master in this game is actually developed quite nicely, however a similar character to her Sakura is hardly given any back story yet has an entire sequence based on her in which we have no idea what her significance to Rin is exactly.. this continues on and really never stops since even Saber's back story is not explained enough.. i could go on and on about the potential alot of these characters have, but i cant blame the producers because as a 24 episode series, explaining everyone would have needed probably double the amount of episodes.
Enjoyment:
I did enjoy the series, but this felt like more of an introduction for me then an actual anime, the pacing in this slow is not that great, in which there are some episodes where hardly any fighting is done and the anime tries to attempt some characters development. Although it works in Rin's case and even Saber's. It really annoyed me how some characters dissapear or contribute nothing to the anime for maybe 12 episodes, and they will randomly show up again, this creates an inconsistency because the show tries to be emotional and tries to show the relationship between saber and shioru, but in my opinion falls short, that being said, i felt the second half of the show (12-24) was far better then the first half.
Overall:
I give this anime a 7/10, which is pretty generous. I just feel like after watching 24 episodes of this, nothing was really resolved. The anime does have an ending yes, but it just feels forced.. without spoiling anything, i realize the producers could not get every character developed and thus explore each branching storyline so ill accept that there.. but the one thing i cant deny is fate/stay night has some extremely good fight scenes, its just bogged down by a pretty boring plot, characters that are not developed enough and no real conclusion to anything.. Im actually going to play the VN since im extremely interested in the other characters.. so if the anime's goal was to get one interested in the characters.. it would be a 10 for sure.
Since this review is purely opinionated, feel free to agree or disagree with it. I understand many people enjoyed this anime a considerable amount, i was just not one of them.
