Wrong. Fate/stay night pretty much took everything that was amazing and a breath of fresh air from Fate/Zero and turned it back into the generic anime tropes you see in basically every show. You remember how in Fate/Zero, all the characters except for one were actually adults and because of this the tone and setting of the story was very mature, leading to one of the most suspenseful and serious anime you’ll ever see? Well now everyone’s in f*cking high school and 90% of the plot happens in f*cking high school! Remember how in Fate/Zero, each and every character was given equal and significant amounts of screen-time, leading to them all receiving great character development resulting in one of the richest cast you’ll ever find in any fictional work? Well kiss that good bye, since now you’ll spend all your screen-time with Generic Nice Guy Harem Protagonist #347 or with Frustrating Tsundere #288. Because that’s what we all want…right?????
None of this helped either by the fact that Type-Moon isn’t very original with their character designs. Making Fate/Zero fans say, “Hey, this is the same as the last one,” every-time a “new” character is introduced in the series. (Yes, I know that technically Fate/stay night came out first, but let me have this one joke damn it!)
Despite all these flaws, there is one saving grace to this show that makes its inclusion as one of the Top 10 or so anime of 2014 absolutely necessary. It has quite possibly the best animation you will EVER see in an anime TV series. Everything looks phenomenal in the show, from the set pieces to, backgrounds, character designs, and the action scenes, oh god the action scenes. They’re so incredible and intense that you’ll need a surgeon on hand in order to screw your jaw back into place after watching the fantastic fights in this show.
I also realize that my own personal enjoyment with this series was heavily influenced by comparing it to Fate/Zero the entire time, and for anyone whose crazy enough to have not watched that masterpiece yet, that won’t be a problem at all. The premise to the show is still great, and is good enough to keep you hooked onto the show even through all the High School BS. There are also some really awesome characters to be found in this show as well, mostly on the Servants side of things with Archer being the stand-out so far. Hell, even our female lead, Rin, can be a cool gal whenever she decides to be competent.
Mix all this in with an all-star voice-acting cast, an amazing opening, and great OST’s you end up with a really good anime. Does it live up to the reputation of Fate/Zero? No, but practically nothing can. Besides being a pretty good anime with some of the greatest action to ever grace the Silver Screen is a great thing to be on it’s on. Plus, we can always hope that the next season will rectify some of these flaws.
