Reviews

Sep 21, 2020
Reviewer's note: This is my 19th entry into the Fate franchise overall. I would not recommend this series to anyone who's not sufficiently acquainted with the franchise (i.e. having watched the Fate/Stay Night universe, at a minimum)


✪ Genre: action (swordplay, gunfights), contemporary fantasy, drama, magic (spellcasting), seinen, superpower


✔Positive Aspects✔

◧ Animation: even though every studio after Ufotable attempted to replicate its level of animation, only A-1 Pictures came incredibly close with the series under review. The studio uses the same combination of colors, of moderate to high saturation/moderate to high illumination, with the characters 'popping out' against the more 'muted' landscapes and man-made structures. Wonderful work, although it could have been a little crisper, especially during the highly destructive action sequences.

◧ Character development: the creators do an excellent job of consistently and gradually contribute to our understanding of the characters' beliefs, emotions, thought processes, motivations for participating in the Holy Grail War by elaborating on their personal histories both in-between and during the action sequences. Even though at least half of the deuteragonists' personal histories were, unfortunately, not depicted through flashbacks, we, nevertheless, we do get to understand them well enough through their current actions.

Elaborating further, there are (2) points which are worth mentioning:

1) The first point refers to the fact that it's genuinely hard to differentiate between heroes and villains and not because the characters switched, and some of them more than once. Unlike the other works in the franchise, the majority of the characters were not really interested in acquiring the grail, some of them not even nominally. This was, even more, the case with the Heroic Spirits. Due to the sheer amount of Heroic Spirits involved which are coming from very diverse backgrounds and widely deviating eras, the majority of them were constantly walking this implausibly thin line between heroism and villainy.

2) The second point applies only to the Heroic Spirits and the fact that they are conceived in a radically different manner compared to the Heroic Spirits in other Fate franchise entries. There's a very glaring incongruity between the Heroic Spirits' skillsets and their classes. Most of them, do not really exemplify their respective classes since they seem to be occupying more than one, with some of them occupying as many as 3 classes. This may strike as very peculiar to some of you, but I found this feature to be a breath of fresh air.

◧ Plot: out of all the Fate spin-off works so far, the only ones that I found to be spectacular are Fate/Grand Order: Babylonia and this one. The notion of a "Great Holy War" which is fought against 2 sets of Heroic Spirits from each class is absolutely interesting. The plot is itself greatly enhanced by the very unique development of characters that the series is pursuing.

◧ Soundtrack: mostly a collection of slow tempo orchestral music, usually based on different combinations of various instruments (violin, viola, flute, percussion, piano) and piano/new age piano pieces. More uplifting pieces could have been used during the action sequences, but it nevertheless worked out well.

◧ Action sequences: reiterating my compliment, A-1 Pictures does a wonderful job of replicating Ufotable's spectacular works. Specifically, it successfully alternates between various camera perspectives (first-person, second-person, third-person) coupled with different camera 'heights', while utilizing quick zoom-ins/outs, and the occasional Michael Bay-influenced, heavily distorted & slowed down sound effects at the beginning of and the moments before the impact of high-energy attacks. The result is not as breathtaking as that of Unlimited Blade Works, but it is pretty darn close.


✘Negative Aspects✘

Honestly, this is a phenomenal series that does not seem to suffer from any egregious flaws. Since I have already elaborated on some of its minor shortcomings in the previous subsections, I shall not restate them.


Overall: I am uncertain as to why this series is rated at 7.1 on this platform and 6.4 on AniDB, but it is without a doubt one of the very best works in the entire franchise, hence my rating of exactly 9 out of 10.


P.S. For further reviews of the Fate franchise, please take a look at my profile.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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