The quest to win the next Holy Grail War is starting to heat up in this precursor to Fate/Stay Night.
What They Say:
Craving for the power of the Holy Grail that enables to do a miracle, seven wizards (Masters) summoned seven heroic spirits (Servants), and make them performing a battle royal— that is, never ends to fight until there left only one winner— Another Duel over the Holy Grail.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
For the die hard fans of this franchise, I apologize in advance. My exposure to it has been minimal for the most part with just Fate/Stay Night as released by Geneon several years ago and that’s it. I liked it, but was not a fan of the Type-Moon style at the time and have gradually come to like it to varying degrees depending on the project. With Fate/Zero, the franchise goes back in time ten years to what Fate/Stay Night did and deals with the things that were referenced there, giving it a full showing. It’s based on the four light novels that were published by Nitroplus back in 2006 and 2007 and has twenty-five episodes set for its run with animation by ufotable and distribution by Aniplex. And they went big with it by having it get a worldwide simulcast in eight languages. Suffice to say, they want this show out there.
Fate/Zero has a lot of ground to cover and the first episode runs just under fifty minutes with OVA quality animation here as it tells its tale. The show takes us back to the earlier stage of the families as they put into motion their plans for the next Holy Grail War which will happen in just a year. The details of the Holy Grail War does come into light in how the various families, originally just three, began two hundred years ago to go through this as the one that wins it would get a miracle performed. Three of those wars have been fought since then and the family lines have grown even more important since then with the efforts to hone the right kind of mages to win the battle. And those mages need things in order to summon a Servant in order to do battle, and there are a few different types of Servants at that.
Slowly but surely, we’re introduced to the core cast of mages that will fight, such as Kiritsugu, Kire, Kariya and Waver. Kariya’ story is actually intriguing at first as he wants to avoid the whole war itself and has managed to not get involved in any of the training, but now he found himself caught up in it to protect a younger girl named Sakura from participating, even though she’s not of the family. But circumstances worked against him and he got into it too late to protect her, but couldn’t back out in the end. It’s a disturbing scene with what was done to Sakura to start her down the path, and the pain and disgust shined through well from Kariya for this.
Because of the nature of this show and its origins, it’s a very slow moving piece. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as it allows the scenes to really take their time to unfold and it lets it be rather dialogue heavy. And not just pointless banter and stupidity, but plot points, family relations, goals and so forth. And it’s all set against some really lush and well detailed backgrounds, so they’re able to draw it out this way while still looking like a high end piece. It covers a lot of ground throughout here but it also goes with the usual Type-Moon method in that it’s building up this feeling of big and epic, but still has a sense of emptiness about it. There’s a lot of characters brought into play here and it goes big, especially at the end, but I already feel disconnected from it because of the scale.
In Summary:
With the first episode going the double-length route, it’s almost too much of a good thing. Fate/Zero has a lot to offer here as it gives us a moody, atmosphere and large scale show with what it wants to accomplish. While the events are known from what we’ve seen in Fate/Stay Night, the details and the full on visualizations of it all are what will be selling this to the fans of it. It’s a series that is rife with potential, even with my distaste in general for prequels since I keep leaping ahead and trying to piece it with what I know and remember, and all the right pieces are here. But in the end, I really found that with this opening salvo, it was just too much of it, not tightly done enough and not thoroughly engaging. It starts to hit those marks better in the last ten minutes, but it’s almost a bit of an effort to get there because there is so much information and such a diverse cast to be dealt with here. I liked it, but it’s leaving me hesitant.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Nico Nico
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.