Fate/Stay night could have been one of the coolest and most epic shows ever - it certainly has the setup for it. An ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny between (heavily re-imagined) legendary figures summoned into the modern world? Where can I buy tickets?
But, a few interesting fights aside, the anime fails to live up to its potential. (The visual novel is better, since it actually reveals the whole backstory.) The anime felt listless to me, with a main character that I frequently wanted to strangle. Its main crime was simply not being epic. It was a solid show, as shows go, but not particularly impressive. Archer's motivation is never explained. Any series where you have to read a wiki (or tvtropes) to get a plot-important piece of information is a bad show. (Unless its attraction is its mindscrew.) Oddly enough, it seems more awesome when reading about it on a wiki than it seems while watching it.
The legendary weapons were very cool, and the servants were (mostly) likable and fairly well-realized characters. (Except for those that got short shrift in the anime.) The route picked for the anime was the most straightforward 'giant contest we must win' route, as opposed to the 'abuse the loopholes of the rules to kill my past self' route (awesome) or the... ...actually, I have no idea how to describe HF.
And then there's the way the bowdlerize the sex scene. They replaced the act itself with a shot of a dragon ripping the main character's arm off, but didn't bother to rewrite the scene leading up to the act, or try to make the morning after look like anything other than, well, the morning after. Completely ruined the tension, which was quite a feat, considering that one character had recently died and the remaining ones were about to go up against the same foe.
Visually, it's usually a nice-looking show, but that couldn't make up for its bad pacing. I felt like I was waiting for something to happen the entire run of the show, but whatever I was waiting for never happened. This anime never really created much suspense or got very intense. And it managed to do that while having one of the most epic concepts I've ever heard of.
I recommend reading the LP of the game. Some parts are cool, some parts are actually funny, and then there are the parts that the LP's author mocks.
What could have been...
Fate/Stay night could have been one of the coolest and most epic shows ever - it certainly has the setup for it. An ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny between (heavily re-imagined) legendary figures summoned into the modern world? Where can I buy tickets?
But, a few interesting fights aside, the anime fails to live up to its potential. (The visual novel is better, since it actually reveals the whole backstory.) The anime felt listless to me, with a main character that I frequently wanted to strangle. Its main crime was simply not being epic. It was a solid show, as shows go, but not particularly impressive. Archer's motivation is never explained. Any series where you have to read a wiki (or tvtropes) to get a plot-important piece of information is a bad show. (Unless its attraction is its mindscrew.) Oddly enough, it seems more awesome when reading about it on a wiki than it seems while watching it.
The legendary weapons were very cool, and the servants were (mostly) likable and fairly well-realized characters. (Except for those that got short shrift in the anime.) The route picked for the anime was the most straightforward 'giant contest we must win' route, as opposed to the 'abuse the loopholes of the rules to kill my past self' route (awesome) or the... ...actually, I have no idea how to describe HF.
And then there's the way the bowdlerize the sex scene. They replaced the act itself with a shot of a dragon ripping the main character's arm off, but didn't bother to rewrite the scene leading up to the act, or try to make the morning after look like anything other than, well, the morning after. Completely ruined the tension, which was quite a feat, considering that one character had recently died and the remaining ones were about to go up against the same foe.
Visually, it's usually a nice-looking show, but that couldn't make up for its bad pacing. I felt like I was waiting for something to happen the entire run of the show, but whatever I was waiting for never happened. This anime never really created much suspense or got very intense. And it managed to do that while having one of the most epic concepts I've ever heard of.
I recommend reading the LP of the game. Some parts are cool, some parts are actually funny, and then there are the parts that the LP's author mocks.