Fate/stay night « LuisRei.com

Fate/stay night

April 14, 2008 in Entertainment

Emiya Shirou is a highschool boy who lives in Fuyuki City. His parents died in a fire when he was young, after that he was adopted by an old man who refer himself as a sorcerer, but he died too.
What Shirou doesn’t know, is that the underground of Fuyuki City is the place of a great war.
When the time is right, sorcerers from near and far gather with their Servants - the summoned spirits of heroes so mighty they exist outside of time - and fight a war for possession of the Holy Grail, a relic said to grant its owner a wish. The true names of the Servants reveal their weaknesses, and so they are usually referred to by a classification of type instead; Saber, Archer, Rider, Berserker, Lancer, Caster, and Assassin.

One day, Shirou saw a fight between two servants, Archer and Lancer.
To preserve the secrecy of the war, Lancer mortally wounds him; but a girl who up until now seemed a normal classmate of his, Tohsaka Rin, saves his life using a magical pendant.
On his way home, Lancer attacked him again. Just before he’s about to die for good, the servant Saber appears before him, greeting him with the words “Are you my master?”

Fate/stay night is my favorite anime. The summary above doesn’t do it justice. I remember reading it and thinking “this sounds lame”. It came so highly recommended that I decided to watch it anyway. I didn’t use to watch anime until I started watching FSN.

The Story
The game had the game in which the anime is based had three different scenarios that came together to explain the enitre story. The FSN anime storyline is basically the FATE scenario from the game with some extras (mostly from the Unlimited Blade Works scenario). Because of this, to understand the story, one has to pay great attention to otherwise small details. The relationship between characters and other essential bits can only be understood from interpreting short flashbacks or “clue scenes”. It was easy for me to understand almost the whole thing the first time I watched the show but I was still finding small details the third time. Yes, I’ve watched this anime 3 times! That’s how much I enjoyed it. A friend of mine who also watched it completely missed some crucial bits such as the identity of Archer which in spite of being semi-obvious from the first few episodes, is only shown by an object at the end of episode 14 (another clue is given in a later episode by another object or rather two). Without knowing who Archer is, you miss out on one of the main topics of the show - ideals suck (and disillusion which is the name of the first opening btw).

I also found interesting that the current Holy Grail War was shown as largely a consequence of the previous war. Many of those participating in the war had their lives completely changed by the previous war.

Emya Shiro, the show’s main character is the stereotypical dropout loser that you see in many anime with the particularity that he has some lofty ideals of saving the world.

Tosaka Rin, the “friendly” sorcerer that is sort of Shiro’s teacher in the ways of the force… herm… magic, is also sort of stereotypical (even if bisexual) It’s sort of interesting to see that she lives her life to fulfill what she believes were her father’s expectations for her - a top of the class student and a dedicated sorceress,

I don’t want to talk about the other important characters so as not to spoil the anime for anyone. It’s a 24 ep show that was subbed by the excellent Eclipse productions.

The soundtrack is by Kaway Kenji (Gundam 00, Higurashi, …) and even though it’s a bit too “synth” I still like it a lot.

In Summary: WATCH IT!