Reviews

This prequel to Fate/stay night offers up quite a bit to make it an improvement over Stay Night in a number of areas. Whereas Stay Night focused on the chemistry between Saber and Shiro, Fate/ Zero offers up a greater focus on the relationships between the seven Masters and Servants seen throughout the series. The series offers up greater interactions between the fourteen thus offering up diverse levels of chemistry between them such as the friendly and awkward banter between Water and Rider, Irisviel and Saber's formal interactions and the strained bond between Gilgamesh and Tokiomi. This focus also expands upon exploring the mentalities and backgrounds of the characters that get their focus at a number of points with some of the notable characters in Fate/Zero, especially with what we learn of Shiro's adoptive father Kiritsugu.

As I covered, Saber and Gilgamesh are around in this series and you also get to see appearances from Sakura and Rin as children. However, Fate/ Zero is more darker in its plot as we come to learn of disturbing and tragic developments concerning several of the characters in this series through either their actions or backgrounds, as well as a number of Masters and Servants being quite merciless in trying to kill off one another. Adding to this darker mood is considerably more intense violent content, some of which was censored for the TV airing of the series yet I could tell what happened behind the censors wouldn't be a pretty sight. Expect the twisted pairing of Caster and his Master, Ryuunosuke, to contribute to a good amount of Fate/ Zero's censoring with their violent activity. As a matter of fact, much of the focus on this first half of Fate/Zero is on the Masters and Servants dealing with the duo as their violence on the populace of Fuyuki City make them have no regard for the rules of the Holy Grail War.

Unfortunately, Fate/ Zero lacks a proper resolution as this is only the first half to the series as it ends during a major plot development and a number of elements with plot and characters are left unresolved, particularly the conflict with Caster. I also thought that a filler episode involving Rin was a big waste of time as it did little to advance the show's plot or develop any of Fate/ Zero's characters.

As you can expect from their earlier work in the form of the Kara no Kyoukai movie series, Ufotable pulls off quite the impressive visual presentation with Fate/Zero featuring vivid colors and plenty of detail in the designs of characters and settings. Most impressive of all is the show's animation used to full effect in action scenes as character movements are fluid and the battles can get quite intense at points. There weren't too many noticeable shortcuts I could find with Fate/Zero's animation.

Overall, this first half to Fate/Zero was a solid start to the series which introduced its major characters, fleshed out some of their backgrounds, got an ongoing plot from the murder spree of Caster and Ryuunosuke and got a slick-looking presentation to boot. Even though it had some rough areas, I still look forward to seeing Fate/Zero 2 in April 2012 to see more of this prequel to the Fate franchise.