Type: Television Show
Episodes: 24
Rating: TV-14
Runtime Per Episode: 30 min
Director: Yamaguchi Yuji
Produced By the Fate Project, Studio DEEN, and others
Year Produced: 2005
A widely publicized visual novel turned anime, Fate/Stay Night was reserved just for the ending because of my love for it, and no matter what happened, I wanted to end on a high note (for me, not you. I don't really care what kind of "not" you end on, so long as you read this far).
I guess you could call this a cult classic, but I don't think it would be right to do so. I do know that the term "GAR" originated from here, but that's about as far as it infiltrated public opinion in so much as internet jargon (and I'll explain GAR later).
The visual novel was produced by a company called Type-Moon. If you know titles like Tsukihime or Melty Blood, then you know Type-Moon. They make good stuff. Though my current non-existent budget only allows me to buy Fate/Stay Night at the moment, I'll be getting the other two when I have the time to strike it rich.
If you're interested in buying these, I'll provide you with a link to a place that I know carries the Fate/Stay Night titles. There's also Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, and Fate/Zero, which are the top two on my shopping list.
The thing that you have to know about visual novels is that they are like those picture books that you might have been interested in when you were a kid. The way their set up is that they tell you what's going on, then give you a couple of choices on what to do, and then the story modifies around your choices/actions. It's pretty fun.
That being said, there are numerous endings, as well as entirely different story paths in visual novels, and Fate/Stay Night is no exception, and the visual novel version of it has three scenarios; Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel, all of which have been semi-combined into the anime, meaning that there are parts of all of the scenarios in the anime, but there are also a bunch of parts that are not there.
Emiya Shirou is the adopted child of Emiya Kiritsugu, who died quite a while ago after saving Shirou from a soon to be grizzly fate. The whole reason Shirou was orphaned in the first place was that the block that his house was on apparently exploded for, killing almost everybody, and leaving everything else in fiery chaos.
Shirou is generally over it by now, and is now living with his adopted elder sister Taiga in what I would call a mansion. Shirou is a high school student who attends the same school Taiga teaches at... in fact, Taiga is his homeroom teacher! But that doesn't really matter right now. What really matters is Shirou has a cute underclassman named Sakura coming over to his house every day and making him feasts. I don't know why (except the obvious, and does this happen all the time in Japan, and if so, how in the hell does it start?), but I'll go with it.
There's an important thing that you need to know about Shirou... he's a magician. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to try and sugar-coat it right now. His father (here meaning step-father) was a magician too before he died, and he's apparently taught Shirou a couple of things. Shirou's best at what's called "tracing", or determine the base materials that make up things, and using that power, he can find structural problems in appliances and stuff like that. He's also pretty decent at "strengthening" materials, which is just how it sounds.
He obviously keeps this a secret and nobody around him knows, not even Taiga.
All around the city there have been strange incidents that is beginning to scare people, people are passing out from suspected gas leaks, and the police obviously have no idea what to do.
One day, Shirou is staying late at school cleaning up when he hears something outside. When he goes to investigate, he finds two warriors battling each other with a lance and swords.
Unsure of what to do, Shirou is quickly found out by the warriors and is eventually chased down by the lance guy. After having seen the fight, it is some kind of law that Shirou can't be left alive... but a law for what?! And just like that, the lance guy kills Shirou.
End of Story? No. You might wish it was, but then you'd be missing one of the greatest characters of all time.
As Shirou is lying there in the hallway, dead, someone comes to him. His classmate TÅsaka Rin, the master of the swords guy (I realize that this is starting to confuse the hell out of you right around now, but all the more reason to watch the anime or play the game).
Rin is horrified by Shirou's death, and... somehow revives him. Freaking magic, man. Seriously.
When he gets back home, Shirou is still a little anemic, I mean, he got run through the heart, how could he not be?
When things couldn't get much worse, the Lancer guy, who's gotten away from the other guy (Rin's servant), finds him again. We don't know how, but we just accept the fact that this guy has a bug up his ass about Shirou, mostly because he saw something that he shouldn't have. The fact that he is a magician doesn't seem to earn him any points with Lancer, who eventually chases him down again into some kind of storage shack.
Just when Lancer is about to deliver the killing blow, something happens and a beautiful girl blitzes out a magic circle and beats Lancer back. She turns to Shirou and asks him if he's her master.
A "yes" would be an awesome answer here, by the way. If any cute girl comes up to you and asks you if you're her master... say yes. I know I will. Girls... since you're generally not considered to be as perverted or horny as guys, I don't know what you should say, but general consensus is that if it's a guy, it's up to you, and if it's another girl, guys will try to watch.
I loved this anime, end of story. It was nicely timed and well developed, and had a lot of awesome Taiga and Saber moments.
The plot line was a bit jammed in the beginning, to the point where I had to pause the anime a couple of times in the first several episodes to read the subtitles and the explanations that the subbers made.
The art was awesome. Among my top ten artists of all time. Woot to the max.
The animation was nice and smooth, and since there was a lot of action sequences in there, I had a lot of time to analyze it. There wasn't too much in the way of innovative animation that I could see, but that didn't change the base line that it flowed well.
Japanese is always the best. The actors that were in this weren't in a lot of other stuff that I remember noticing them from (but that means hardly nothing), but the actress for Saber was in more than a few things that I've seen.
And another thing... has every actor/actress that I've seen in all the animes that I've ever watched, played a part in a Gintama episode? What's up with that? Maybe I should just watch it already.
The music wasn't bad, but wasn't hard enough to keep my interest for too long. It was more long the whimsical side, which is okay for this anime I suppose, but I wasn't too interested in it. There you go.
Fate/Stay Night Mintheatre
Fate/Stay Night TV Reproduction
The second link is a link to something that they did after the final broadcast. They compiled all of the episodes into two 60 minute OVAs, and that's what's here. I don't really get it, and I didn't watch it because I was fine with the original versions (that and it was in parts... I hate parts), but it's totally up to you.
... and that is the end of this review, and the last review that I am going to be doing on this blog for a while... possibly forever. But if that's the case, I'll probably just shut it down, so don't worry.
Tune in tomorrow for a final thesis thing that won't interest you unless you're going to be wanting my final opinion on being a reviewer... which you won't.
