Fate/stay night » Review

Disclaimer: The intention of this review is just to voice my personal opinion about a series. I am not trying to analyze it from an objective point of view. This is not to show how good or how bad an anime is. This is just to show how I feel about it. Also, this is not spoiler-free. Read at your own risk. To get a more accurate rating, lower my rate by 1. For example, if I give an aspect “9″, you should take it as “8″. The reason? I’ve been raised up to take that 8/10 is barely good and 7/10 is barely satisfactory, and I can’t force myself out of this system.

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ANIMATION: 8/10

  • Animation: 8/10
  • Art: 8.5/10

Animation is okay, but I don’t remember anything specially spectacular. One good thing is that I don’t remember any drop of quality over the series. As for the art, I must say that this is not really an aspect that I pay much attention to. As far as I remember, the art is good, although the color is not vividly beautiful.

SOUND: 9/10

  • SFX: 7/10
  • Voice acting: 8/10
  • OPs & EDs: 8.5/10
  • Soundtracks: 9/10

No big comment on SFX, Find nothing unsatisfactory and nothing memorable. So so. For the voice acting, again, no comment. But I do think Saber and Rin did their job well, successfully portraying the strong yet elegant Saber and the wicked tsundere Rin.

The theme songs overall are well high above average. Sachi Tainaka’s songs are quite fitting. My main complain is that for her songs, one half is just not as good as the other. First OP is from the visual novel, though sung by Sachi, it’s not written by her. Second OP and last episode’s ED are done by her. Both of them, half is good and half is not. While I certainly enjoy the good parts, I’m irritated by the bad parts accompanied.

As for myself, I think music is the best part of Fate/stay night. Some of them are taken from the visual novel, I believe, but I can’t tell exactly what (having played the visual novel only once). The score, done by Kenji Kawai is well executed and it fits the situation well. Background music ranges from sad tracks to happy tracks, fast tracks to slow tracks. The good thing of this is that you don’t get bored. The bad thing is that you don’t feel an overall atmosphere (I don’t). But no matter what, I love this OST!!!

STORY: 8/10

I think some people may argue that story is the best aspect of Fate/stay night (it originates from visual novel after all). But in my case, I’m not really engaged into the story. The main setting as a “holy war”, “race to obtain the holy grail to have a wish grant” is not appealing to me. In fact, my first reaction after reading the summary was “What? War again? Wish again?” And later, magic again. Somehow I’m fed up with magic, mage, wizard, etc.

But then again, the way the story develops is completely unexpected (to me), as it slowly bends from trying to obtain the holy grail to something else. Also, while I expect to see 7 human Masters with 7 Servants, the fact that there’s a Master who is a also Servant to someone else and the supervisor is also a Master of 2 Servants really surprises me. However, while I could point out good sides of the story, I just couldn’t bring myself to passionately love it. Also, because it doesn’t cover the whole visual novel plot, there are some questions left unanswered and that’s certainly not satisfying. Last, I clearly didn’t enjoy every single episodes and there’s none that I enjoy very much (because I don’t remember any). So, 8 is the fairest score, considering that I’m not so into the story.

CHARACTER: 8.5/10

Fate/stay night has some good character designs, particularly Saber and Rin, both visually and characteristically. Take Saber as an example. She’s powerful, she’s elegant, she’s intelligent, she’s dignified and all of those is shown very well, from the way she speaks, she eats, she sits, etc. I take back the powerful side though. That’s one thing I don’t like about Saber’s portrayal. She’s described as the strongest Servant, yet she gets injured (quite badly) in her second fight (the first encounter is with Archer and it’s not really a big fight). She shows her (true) power in the fight with Rider (and lost most of her remaining mana after that). The remaining fights, she wins, like I said, by will power (WTF). Regardless, Saber is very well-developed and is loved by many boys (LOL) (but if you ask me, again, I don’t love her that much).

The main character, Shirou Emiya is, well, how should I put this. I think it’s well explained how he has such a wimpish personality. The problem is that despite the well-explanation, I don’t like him at all. So actually I can’t say whether Shirou is a good or bad character design.

In short, characters in Fate/stay night is well designed, although I somehow find that they lacks unique characteristic. They all have catching appearance and interesting personality, but I can’t help but thinking “I’ve seen a similar, only worse, character somewhere”. Maybe it’s just me, though.

VALUE: 7.5/10

Nothing bad, but nothing too spectacular. Can’t find reasons to give it a higher or lower rate, though.

ENJOYMENT: 8/10

I do enjoy the series to some extent (that’s why I add it to this blog). But as said, I’m not truly truly fascinated.

OVERALL: 8/10

Fate/stay night is a series that does high above average in every aspects but not really reach the climax in any of them (it couldn’t stir my emotions very much). You won’t be disappointed in any aspect, I can reassure that. It’s easy to like this series. But whether will you crazily love it would be another question. I myself don’t. However, it’s a good series in term of value as it’s done well in all aspects so I would say “recommend”.