Reviews for Fate/Zero (7.66) 192m5v

Ok guys, my first review on AniDB. I'm aware that my english is not perfect so bare with me, and exuse my mistakes. I'm not going to do some complex analysis of the story or characters since I wanted to make it completely spoiler-free. If you wish to learn more about it, please read the description.

As a huge T-M fan, I could not miss this one, and after great success of Kara no Kyoukai, this time it looks like "Fate" part of Nasuverse is getting great adaptation as well.

It's an adaptation of Urobuchi Gen's light novels, prequel to Type-Moon's famous visual novel, Fate/Stay Night. These 13 episodes are actually only first half of the whole project (Volume 1 and 2 out of 4), second "season" should air in 3 months (spring season 2012). This will allow Ufotable to keep quality of animation top notch and finish the goal they put on themselfs - to make a TV series with movie-like quality.

Art & Animation - 9/10

Animation: Ufotable deserves a medal for amount of work, time and money they invested into this series. Zero looks simply gorgeous in almost every way and does not have any competition amongst TV series this year (at the very least). It really feels like watching movie. Quality of animation slowly drops in last few episodes, but it's not that obvious.

Art: Character design is, no suprprise, very Type-Moonish with some minor differences here and there. Men are displayed in more realistic way, while women have those big eys. I don't have problem with it. What I found kind of disturbing though, was CGI. Never liked it and I don't like it here either. Some of it is really well done (mainly cars and other vehicles), some is not... There is even one major character made in CGI which was really disappointing for me. It's not complete disaster, but deffinetly hurts the atmosphere and almost everything CGI feels out of place. This is the only real problem I have with art direction and that's also why it won't get perfect score from me...

Sound - 10/10

Music: Soundtrack was composed by Yuki Kajiura and as always, she did an amazing job. I can no longer wait for the OSTs to come out. It's her usual work, so if you heard at least few of her songs, you get the idea of how epic the music is. Opening and ending are also pretty good, even though I'm not sure if the OP suits the dark mood of the series. It just might be that jpop is not really my cup of tea.

Voices: Voice actors were chosen well and they did really good job. I don't even anyone annoying (except characters that were supposed to be annoying).

Story - 8/10

The main storyline is nothing too complex, but it works. "The war" between seven masters and heroic servants sounds pretty silly, but it's not your usual deathmatch. The main focus is on characters and their interactions, and even if their actions are pretty stupid sometimes, considering they're there to kill each other, it's just how the characters are. It's actually pretty interesting to look at their ways of dealing with enemies and even more interesting when sometimes those on the same side don't share the same view on how this war shoud be fought. These 13 episodes are more about planning and talking than fights, but don't worry, there is plenty of that as well.

As I said, it's an amazing adaptation that follows novels almost perfectly, but it also suffers from same problems as others. On paper, there is no problem to just "stop the time" and throughoutly explain what actually happened or what kind of technique is this, it feels akward in anime though. This can easily make fights, that could have last no more than 5 minutes, span through the whole episode. Maybe they should've just leave this aproach and make it like KnK, where you sometimes didn't know what the hell happened, but it didn't spoil the action, in some cases things were explained after everything ended. So yeah, I found pacing (mostly during fights) little off. And of course, since it's Fate/Zero 1/2 don't expect some real ending. Don't expect ending at all.

Chracters - 10/10

This is where Zero really shines. You won't find any character from the main cast that is pointless or dull. Everyone has their reasons to fight, everyone is somehow unique, while still being realistic and their actions believable. Sure, you have stereotypes - honorable guy, carefree guy, silent badass, crazy villain,... All of them done very well though. It's really fun to watch those beliefs and philosophies clash, and to be honest, I found the dialogue-heavy episodes more interesting than the action ones. Some characters did not get enough screentime but those should appear in second season more often. Not too much of a character development, since it's like 4 days or something, but it's definitely there (especially in one case). So to end this section somehow, I found Zero cast one of the more memorable bunch of characters in past few years and these characters are what made this show for me. After 13 episodes I'm not even sure who am I rooting for!

Enjoyment - 10/10
&
Value (TV) - 8/10

Even though I found few minor mistakes, I can't deny that I enjoyed every last bit of this show. Actually for me, this was the highlight of the year 2011. So of course I think this is a show with high value. I rewatched some episodes more than once and I will do so again, no doubt. I'm not giving it full score, because it's going to be the Blue-Ray version which is supposed to be complete experience - with some extra scenes and without any censorship. That is a version I would really like to own. Since this is a review of Zero broadcasted in the TV, I can't give it a 10.

Final thoughts

An absolute must-watch for every Type-Lunatic out there, obviously, and everyone who'd like some more intelligent and dark anime with interesting characters, dialogues and some amazingly-animated action scenes. Even if KnK is still the best Type-Moon anime in my eyes, Zero didn't say the last word yet.