Fate Stay Night Part 1 Episodes 1-6

When he was a boy, Shiro Emiya was the lone survivor of a disaster that consumed Fuyuki City.  Ten years later, he is about to discover the secret behind that event.  Drawn in by his potential as an up and coming mage, Shiro unintentionally enters The Holy Grail War.  Seven Mages are to summon Seven Heroic Spirits to do battle for the Holy Grail, a relic capable of granting a single wish to whoever claims it.  Shiro has become one of those seven and has been blessed with the beautiful knight known as Saber to aid in his battle.  Their fight will be far from easy as everyone from innocent girls to rival classmates stand in his way.  At the end of the war are the secrets of a past Shiro longs to know.  Welcome to the next Holy Grail War.

So…I don’t normally do this at the beginning of a series but an exception must be made in this instance (just to get this out of the way so I don’t complain repeatedly later).  This is the Fate Stay Night series from 2006 from Studio Dean.  Therefore it doesn’t have much to do with the Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works series from Studio Ufotable that came out a couple years back.  That being said, this series looks ok.  But it is nowhere even close to as gorgeous as UBW or the Fate Stay Night prequel, Fate/Zero, also animated by Ufotable.  I have a feeling that might detract from my overall viewing of this title.  Even at it’s lowest points, UBW was incredible to look at and solidified my theory that Ufotable is capable of making feature film style shows on a TV series sized budget.  So if you’re one, like me, who has seen Unlimited Blade Works or Zero prior to this version of the series…be prepared to be let down a bit in the animation department.

Ok, that longer than needed to be disclaimer out of the way, let’s begin looking at the last series on the Anime Corner for 2016.

How weird is it that im going from one battle of magic into another?  Like X, Fate Stay Night has a battle with a very interesting set of rules: pairings of masters and servants, a limit of “can never be countered commands” and the last people you’d expect to be competitors turning out to be competitors.  It’s all explained within the first few episodes, understandably.  I just wish the characters sounded a bit more interested rather than just annoyed at having to explain it all.  Granted, Shiro is supposed to be the audience portal to the series and it’s world.  And since he’s a rookie who’s been thrown into this war, it’s understandable that characters like Rin and Kirei don’t get why they have to explain things to him.  Still, it’s fascinating to hear all of this lore behind the Holy Grail War and it goes pretty deep too.  Though it remains to be seen just how intense this one might be compared to the last…this goes double if you’ve seen Fate/Zero and know how crazy that was.  I will say that some of the massive info dump about the Grail War does come pretty quickly without a lot of time to properly digest.  To bring up Fate/Zero again, that series at least had an extended, 45min episode to establish everything from rules, to characters, to servant summonings.  Not saying Fate Stay Night needed an episode like that, just felt like the pacing on explanations could have been padded out a bit.

As I finished up the first six episodes, I realized something…there’s going to be a lot of ranting about Shiro from me, isn’t there?  For being the “hero” of this series, Shiro is less likeable than X’s Kamui right out of the gate.  His narraration of life, the universe, and everything in the first episode is worse than Rick Deckard’s narraration in the original cuts of Blade Runner (and I found those voice overs to be more adequate than Harrison Ford did).  All he does is whine, whine and whine.  And even when he’s yapping on about his goals of becoming a real life super hero (it’s not worded like that but it’s like he’s trying to be Kick Ass so same difference), you just want him to shut up and let someone else talk for a few minutes.  Kids got a serious death wish too…to the point where he might not be a super hero…but he is a video game character (fitting since this Anime is based off of the PS2 visual novel).  Shiro is stabbed, clubbed, and killed twice in the first six episodes before being restored to life with only a little wear and tear.  At one point, he gets smacked by Berzerker’s hammer of all things.  All I could think of was “DEAD”.  Even Rin chastises him as the camera pans down on his “DEAD” body, like she knows he’s just going to cheat death one more time.  And also, ill talk about the kick ass leading ladies of this series.  However, to close out Shiro Rant #1, I wanna mention how freaking terrible he is around girls.  I’m glad chivalry isn’t dead but at the same time, Saber and Rin can take care of themselves better than Shiro.  So when Shiro insists they stay out of the fighting, I cant tell if he’s being sexist or not?  And the fate (no pun intended) of the world rests on this kid?  Well we’re doomed.  Ok rant done, moving on.

Whereas Shiro sucks in every scene he’s in and everything he does on screen, no one talks about Fate Stay Night because of him.  They talk about the girls and this show is filled with many of them.  The two at the forefront are Rin and Saber.  Saber is pretty much the poster girl of the franchise.  Plenty of reason for her to be too.  Saber is all parts beauty, ferocious and fierce that everyone loves in most action anime heroines.  She can def handle herself in battle.  Shiro may be in awe of her beauty but he really should be impressed by how much more ass she can kick than he ever will.  Rin is very much the same way.  Anyone who looks at my blog knows that I bring up Rin Toshaka occasionally and think of her as one of my all time favorites, more than Saber.  Rin’s determination, knowledge and caring side underneath her coldness are more a draw than her drop dead gorgeous looks (apparently everyone in school wants to date her too, adding to her appeal).  She’s so awesome, she can even put her servant, the mouthy Archer, in his place, or at least speak on equal ground with him.  That kind of girl deserves all the respect.  It’s a shame they didn’t pair up Rin with Saber and just make them the leads of the series.  This is a very girl power show…it just has to put up with Shiro every once in a while.

I think we glimpsed most of the servants in the opening episodes and they all look like fun.  I’ve covered Saber.  Alongside her, Archer and Lancer provide both fun one liners in battle alongside awesome fight skills.  Berzerker is notable if only because his master is a tiny little girl who seems to get excited by bloodshed (very disturbing).  Rider’s a pretty provocative character in that the chains and outfit scream a bit of naughtiness that probably went into her character design.  I actually don’t think we saw much, if at all, of Assassin and Castor but im hoping they’ll be just as entertaining as the other five servants. 

Only downside is, the action doesn’t last as long as the explanations of the world and the war rules.  I feel like the Fate Stay franchise is mostly known for it’s battle sequences.  The balance of each episode seems to be off, maybe 85% chatter and 10% battle and a very small 5% to humor.  Yeah, I imagine this story is supposed to be extremely serious.  But seeing comedic bits with Shiro’s home life and his nerve grating teacher kind of throw things off and take away points from an interesting premise.  Saber’s showing up of Fujimura in battle was a little entertaining but overall unnecessary just so Fujimura could cry about how pointless she is (not quite that but that’s how I saw it).  There was also some unexpected humor in Rin’s battle with Shiro at school.  I chuckled a bit at Shiro pointing out that Rin kind of flashed him when she made a jump down the stairs.  But again, it feels so out of place and unnatural.  It caught me off guard and im sure it will probably make more appearances later.  I just don’t see Fate Stay Night as needing a humorous edge.  If I want humor in my Fate Stay, I’ll watch Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya.

Well, while Shiro would like to think “this is a mans world” when it comes to combat, it’s clear that the ladies of Fate Stay Night are more than up to the task of picking up his slack.  It would probably be a lot better if the show focused more on Rin and her exploits.  But Shiro’s sadly our main protagonist, so we’re stuck with him.  This could very well be a fun series but be forewarned…there’s definitely more Shiro bashing to come down the line.

See ya next week for more Fate Stay Night on the Anime Corner.