Hello everyone,
Let's go review another series I liked that aired quite far in the past, but it is pretty vivid to each one of us. (It had a massive success in both Japan and overseas)
I'm talking about Fate/Stay Night, an erogè by Type-Moon (the same company as Tsukihime) adapted in an anime and in an animated film (this one rather recently).
Let's start up with a synopsis :
Shirou Emiya lost his parents in a fire when he was young and was later adopted by a sorceror by the name of Kiritsugu Emiya. Although he was full of admiration for his adopted father and yearns to become an ally of justice, Shirou has limited powers and was unable to become a strong sorceror like his father. That is until one fateful day, he was drawn into the Holy Grail War and had to summon a female "Servant" known as Saber in order to protect himself. It turns out that the Holy Grail War involves a series of battles among powerful sorcerors to fight for the possession of a relic that will grant one's wishes, the Holy Grail. There are altogether seven "Masters" who can summon their respective "Servants" from different classes known as Saber, Archer, Rider, Berserker, Lancer, Caster and Assasin. These "Servants" have to hide their names in order not to reveal their weaknesses to the enemies. The story revolves around Shirou and his entanglement in the Holy Grail War.
Yes, this is a quite action story centered around a ritual happening in this fictional Fuyuki City and all the various characters that surround our Shirou Emiya.
The story is one of the most interesting that you can get out there, it gets you off the spot into the middle of the action and continue to tease you with new scenes and battles for the whole duration.
The story by itself it's not anything out of order (it is predictable at many points), but remains fresh and continue to compel the reader/watcher to continue.
The original erogè got three main routes for the three girls around the main character, but the anime and film adapted respectively the Fate route (the Saber one even if slightly modified to include parts of the other routes as well) and the Unlimited Blade Works route (the Rin one followed pretty closely).
From the story standpoint the film has some negative point regarding the presentation of the content. Due the limited film duration they had to pack many scenes into few minutes and ended up to miss some important part of the original story. (if you haven't watched the main series you may not understand everything)
The characters are relatively few, but you'll get to know and remember them right from the start thanks to their pretty definite behaviour and actions. (Most of them follows the standard stereotypes of anime character)
Most of them are quite likable if you make exception for that scumbag of Shinji Matou that is by far the most hatable character with no saving attributes at the point that you'll want to punch the monitor multiple times while watching the series.
If I have to say I quite hate also the Shirou character, close minded and childish from the start to the end in all three routes with few redeeming scenes. (But well at least better than Shinji)
My favourite characters is Rin Tousaka, I love her tsundere behaviour linked with wonderful beauty and sharp intelligence. She is the most reasonable character from start to the end of the story in all three routes.
The visual quality of the TV anime is pretty good for the time with some little screw up in animation consistence in some episodes, while the Film is basically state of art quality with basically no graphical problem for the whole duration of it.
The seiyuu used in both TV anime and Film are pretty high quality and do a relatively good job. I loved Kana Ueda in Rin's role!!!
The opening and ending songs were quite good, I especially liked "Disillusion" by Tainaka Sachi that was also the opening from the erogè (even if the anime one was remixed)
Concluding this is one of the most interesting and nice anime of the last years, go and take a look at it, but start up from the TV anime because as I said the film skip many important parts and leave an unprepared watcher wth too many questions.
See you soon,
feal87