Saber! Saber! Saber!
April 20, 2008
Something's wrong with Fate: Stay Night. I wasn't sure what it was after one episode, so I watched another. Then another. Then another. Then... the disc was over. The production values are so high that you have to shield your eyes and squint to see what the problem is. On the surface the show appears pretentious and arbitrary, but the reality is that it's hardly an anime at all, but rather a fighting game in the guise of an anime. Behold the antidote to Xenosaga: a show where you desperately want the DVD remote to sprout a joystick.
Now, Fate did start out as a game: a hentai game, though it's really not suited to that format. The story revolves around the Holy Grail Wars, which take place every 60 years and involve seven magicians ("Masters") and their summoned heroes ("Servants") battling for control of the Grail. It gets interesting ("needlessly complicated") when you learn that orphaned Servants can pair up with solitary masters and rejoin the fight ("time extended!"). Oh, and Servants can be of different classes, like an archer, lancer, knight or what have you. All you're missing for the full game experience is an onscreen mana counter like in Yu-Gi-Oh.
The last Holy Grail War ended with a glitch. Someone touched the Grail ahead of time and ended up torching half the city. In the wake of the catastrophe is little Shirou Emiya, a boy who grows up under the guidance of Evangelion's Kaji Ryoji and says things like "I want to be a champion of justice" in his senior year of high school. Now for the real surprise: I don't hate him. Shirou appears to be your typical generic male lead, but he's remarkably mature for his age. He remains calm under pressure, helps other people in need and isn't completely flabbergasted by the opposite sex. His only screw-up is agreeing to take part in the Holy Grail Wars.
I can almost follow the kid's logic. Shirou wants to save absolutely everyone who is in danger, and the Holy Grail Wars create a lot of collateral damage. Plus, it's far easier to kill a Master than a Servant, and Shirou's List apparently includes these amoral bloodthirsty mages. Instead of walking away cleanly (he actually had this option!) Shirou plunges himself into the battle to minimize casualties and probably wish for peace on Earth should he touch the Grail. Of course, there is no Fate anime without Shirou taking place, but the sensible kid we're introduced to doesn't look like the fighting type. Maybe he's doing it to spend more time with Saber.
Saber is the heroine Shirou accidentally summons while running for his life. She's a gorgeous blond in the Alice Malvin mold and comes with a suit of plate mail and invisible (for now) broadsword. We don't know much about Servants in the first disc, but Shirou knows even less: he can't use magic to heal her wounds, make her invisible, and is so protective of his guardian that he ends up getting killed for her. Revived by the sexy, sassy schoolgirl sorceress Rin Tohsaka (in the red), Shirou now has to live with Saber and explain her to his older sister and doting junior classmate.
What we have is a promising start. Not a sure-fire winner like Kamichu, but a show that can be enjoyed with less caveats than Karin. The character designs are wonderful - I'd expect nothing less from an ex-hentai title. There's a lot of CGI being thrown around to enhance the battles, and you hear an awful lot of sword/spear clanging from all the medieval weaponry. Sadly, you also have to listen to Shirou forget the facts of life, specifically: you cannot meaningfully contribute to a fight by screaming the names of the combatants.
