Fate/Zero is one of the best anime I have ever watched! It does a brilliant job in each and every aspect and it has so much going on for it that I could recommend it to almost anyone!
The setting is the same as in it's sequel- Fate/Stay Night; Seven mages (the masters) summon themselves a servant of one out of seven classes. once all are summoned, starts a seven on seven tag team battle royale where the winning pair wins the holy grail, an omnipotent object that can grant any wish to both the master and their servant.
The concept is great overall, but the one thing that makes it SO MUCH BETTER then any Fate/Stay Night adaptation is the characters. Unlike the bland, annoying characters from Fate/Stay Night, the characters in Fate/Zero have a lot more depth to them. Each character has a different ideology, different motivations and a different interaction with their partner which make the entire situation much more realistic. All characters are good and relatable and it's really hard to point out a bad guy at times.
The story is very character driven and no character has any plot armor. It's almost impossible to predict anything in this series, since any character may do anything (including dying) at any given moment and you find yourself sitting tight on your chair not knowing what to expect, mindlessly watching episode after episode.
The only weaker parts are the beginning and the end. Since this anime also targeted people who didn't watch Fate/Stay Night, the first episode is a 40 minute long boring exposition that feels more like a documentary. But even though the anime also targeted people who didn't watch Fate/Stay Night, it still had to live up to it's pre-existing sequel, resulting in a pretty anticlimactic ending that doesn't make much sense.
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed watching it. The characters and story are amazing and as for the slow start and the anticlimactic ending, I can look the other way.
The animation is absolutely beautiful. The quality is nearly cinematic with beautiful character design and special effects. You can see animation of that quality in many other anime, but only in recently released anime and even then, not consistently in each frame like in Fate/Zero.
The soundtrack was composed mostly by Yuki Kajiura. Enough said.
The music in this show is perfect for it, portraying the overall vibe of the show very well and adding to it, creating a lot of suspense in any given moment, whether it's an epic battle or a simple conversation.
The voice actors (in both the original Japanese and the English dub, mind you) all did a wonderful job and they all fit their characters very well.
I highly recommend you watch this anime, because I believe that anyone can find something to like about it. The beginning might be slow and the ending might be weird, but these are just two episodes and this anime is too good to ignore because of them.
