Review: Fate/Zero (S1)

I tried to avoid this show, since it’s based on a novel. If I wanted to tweet about every episode, surely one or two type-moon fag would retort when I criticise something. Also, Fate/Stay Night was completely horrible. But since they say this show is a lot better than FSN (and I heard the composer is Yuki Kajiura, plus the season 2 OP artist is Kalafina), why not give it shot?

Just for your info, I’m not a type-moon fan, I don’t follow the visual novels or any other stuff related. So forgive me if my thoughts on certain things seem ignorant. Just consider me as a regular anime watcher. You have been warned.

Unfortunately, the first four or five episodes were incredibly dull for me. Too much verbal version of tl;dr, too much explanation about the master-servant system, where I think they can easily explain ‘visually’ or through one of the action scenes than giving us a full 40 minutes lecture on it. You have seven masters, they’re mages but not necessarily the most powerful mages ever – and each of them has ‘Servants’, of which some of them were kings/leaders of ye olden days, ironicaly. I thought Yuki Kajiura’s music would make me stick to it but the boringness of the initial storyline was overwhelming. And I’m rather disturbed by how the three biggest family of mages act all pompous – which makes me happy that the kid called Waver Velvet decided to prove them wrong. And this piqued my interest.

a tea party before they beat the crap out of each other

Then we have two daddies who fights in the field in the dark; one is the father of one of the most popular tsunderes in the anime world, and the other had a baby with a bimbo-ish homunculus D:

The former, hides in the ‘command room’ with Gilgamesh as his Servant, while the latter, in spite of being a mage prefers to use firearms in his fights. His Servant is Saber, which is disappointingly as bland as she was in FSN. Yeah yeah she’s an honourable knight, cute and all but as a warrior princess not even as GAR as Erza Scarlet (Fairy Tail) or the newcomer Morgiana (Magi). Or perhaps I dislike her because I cannot accept that King Arthur is a girl :P. Meh it would work better if the female Arthur is not a small sized sixteen year old.

i think i know why King Arthur is a girl now... a wizard did it...

Which is why I became super delighted when Iskander pwn’d her with his army of bros, and this guy became the main reason why I had continued watching F/Z and all the way to season 2. Even her Excalibur final blow was like meh. His character is really has great as the size of his muscles!

The fights are unlike most shounens, I guess. You can see that they’re more tactical, even with the use of magic. So magic isn’t just any wand waving avada kadavra thingy. I think I can call the Masters in this anime ‘mahou seinen’. Plus there’s no definite good or evil sides, but you can tell which character is mentally sick (which makes him seem evil) and it makes you think… “DEFINE ‘GOOD’”. In this season there is not much of Gilgamesh in action, you can only see him with the kimochi warui priest guy talking about something psychological and philosophical blablabla.

Speaking of kimochi warui the concept of magic used makes me hate this ‘fandom’ so much, that I feel relieved that I have not indulged deeper into it. I think I’ll cover this in the second season’s review, along with other questionable stuff.

IMHO for the first season, they did a really grave mistake on making those 'lecture sessions' because I know some people especially the non-fate series fans got bored of it after a couple of episodes. It's a huge waste because the show is really worth watching, but the first impression was really repelling.
In conclusion, season 1 is not that special yet (just wait for my thoughts on S2). Except for Broskander :3

Tbh I dropped the show until someone told me to "watch it for Rider". I did. And I have no regrets.