A slow month in reviews compared to the last one, here is the 2nd entry for this month for a game-based anime titled fate/stay night.
Story:-
As a disclaimer, I have never played the games this anime is based on. Well, for a game-based title, the story is quite good actually. We got an idealist wannabe-hero, who got involved in a highly-secretive war called the Holy Grail War. Participants got to fight each other assisted with their Servant with the grail itself as a prize.
Personally I think it can be even better if the storyline can become, well, more extreme if they killed a couple of the main characters in well-placed intervals. I generally don’t like idealist heroes like the jack-asses in Tokyo Underground or Jinki:Extend but the protagonist here managed to control himself from causing me to dock precious rating points from this series. This anime fall a little bit-short from being recognized as having a great storyline. And yeah, this anime is better than Wolf’s Rain or Jyu Oh Sei and also Tokyo Underground in this aspect. One weakness of the storyline for this anime is that it can be predictable at times.
This one also has no filler/flashback episodes, and the pacing is good especially after the first 3 or 4 episodes. The ending is one of the better ones from the anime reviewed here recently. Generally, if you like action shounen anime titles, this one will not disappoint you.
Just a question though, since when King Arthur become a female?
Character design:-
Not exactly great, but pretty decent. Actually, way before seeing this anime, I have already seen some great “artworks” for this fate/stay night game thingy, especially Saber in very “exciting” positions/postures. Would have posted some of them here but this blog will be shut down by Microsoft then, a risk I would not take. Anyway, only Saber and the other Servant called Rider can be considered to be good IMO, while others are not worth mentioning. And yeah, Wolf’s Rain and Princess Princess are better than fate/stay night in this aspect. Maybe because this is the kind of design only found mostly in hentai games.
Voice acting:-
Another questions for the production studio, why this anime has great voice acting line up but almost no synergy between them? It is just a waste of talents. For example, Noriyaki “Sugiyama, the voice actor for the hero here performs poorly compared to his roles of Uchiha Sasuke and Uryu Ishida in Naruto or Bleach respectively. It seems that this anime make great voice actors/actresses looks like amateurs here.
OK, I can make an exception for Tomokazu Seki, but with limited screen time, even a god like him cannot save this anime.
Music:-
The OST and the 2nd OP theme are good. Others are not. Hey, this is the 3rd straight anime reviewed here that has good OST isn’t it?
Animation/Direction:-
Great animation overall whether it was traditional animation or computer generation ones, and also good directing for non-action scenes. About fight scenes, some of them are simply great it even manages to overshadow the storyline. Battles between Saber-Rider and also Saber-Assassin are my favourites. Maybe because I dig sword battles?
Conclusion:-
This anime has some flaws, but good enough to get an 8 out of 10.
