Recently I decided to rewatch Fate/Zero again for the first time in over 10 years out of sheer curosity. I recall loving the series when I first watched it and a part of me thought if I were to watch it again in such a long time, it wouldn't hold up. Much to my surprise, Fate Zero still held up after all these years. It's still a well made show even now. It is easily one of my favorite prequels in all of fiction. This now leads me to the Ufotable's remake of Fate/stay night. When I first watched it, I was appalled by how bizarre and terrible the writing was in comparison to Fate Zero so much so that I question if I was crazy for liking the latter since after all, Fate Zero was supposed to lead into this remake of Fate stay night to the point where it's marketed as a sequel. It has now happened again 10 years later, I still don't like if not outright loathe this series. This could be all chocked up to UBW 2014 being a "bad adaptation" but the prior adaptation made by Studio Deen was also not considered a good adaptation. Ufotable was supposed to get "right" what Deen got wrong, they made Fate Zero after all. I'm covering all the seasons including the prologue. If Fate Zero wasn't a prequel, I wouldn't even touch a story like this, this whole show was a sunk cost fallacy because I was curious what exactly was that series setting up.
Right at the offset, UBW starts off with a teenagers instead of the adult cast from Fate Zero, this is okay since both Rin and Shirou were characters set up by Fate Zero. The prologue episode is "fine" probably some of the best writing in this series which is already really telling on how much I dislike it. Rin and Archer's dyanmics and interactions are fun and amusing with Archer stealing much of the show with how casual he can be. Rin Toosaka as a character is at her best since she's driving the story and isn't playing a game of waiting around while getting googley eyed with Shirou.
Then the series actually starts and right away things feel off. Fate Zero had a wide array of characters of different ages, skills and backgrounds and while it did take place in one city, there was a feeling of anything could happen at anywhere at any time. Fate stay night on the other hand, most of the Grail War participants all are located in this one high school Shirou and Rin attends, this already lowers the amount of tension or dynamic encounters these two characters could already be in. It starts to get really silly when even one of the school's faculty is a participant in this war.
There is a decent number pointless side characters(most likely going to a girl) that add nothing to the story. Characters like Fujimura, Himuro, Mitsuzuri, Sakura don't add much of anything to the story and disappear from the story when the 2nd half starts rolling in. There is also characters like Issei and then there is Shinji Moto who is a character so pathetically awful, I'd almost mistaken him for David Blake from Highlander 2 for much of weasel and coward he is. Shinji is one of the few who do reoccur throughout out the show and he won't provide anything of geniune value. He lasts so long you wonder if he is just favored by the plot. He survives to the end of the story where Kirei Kotomine a few episodes before the end of the 2nd half gets killed off.
Shirou isn't really anything more than a generic typical nice guy. His inner monolgoues in the VN is supposed to give him depth but hearing his inner monologues just makes it an easy tool to increase my chances of liking him since by that point I'm just being psychic. He's supposed to be a "traditional shonen protagonist" but I don't see it. He's more like a teenage Vash the Stampede without the exaggerated humor and hair with copying aspecting of Sasuke's sharringaan ability. On paper, maybe this isn't so bad but it drops the ball in that remember how Fate Zero is supposedly a prequel? This series does nothing with that. A big example of this is when Saber shows up. Considering how both Shirou and Kiritsugu both have "Emiya" in their full names and former's group mentions the latter on multiple occasions, Saber would be apprehensive towards Shirou since Kiritsugu in the last Grail War never spoke to her unless if it helping him to get an advantage, lied to her, and robbed her out of her wish from the Grail at the end of Fate Zero. This on paper should make for an interesting dynamic. Saber doesn't want to be Shirou's servant due to guilt by association but throughout the series she warms up to the latter and comes to accept that the man who fought along side her in the previous Grail War might've mellowed out and became a different person.
Speaking of Kiritsugu, the one or two scenes he has in the first half is one of the few things about UBW 2014 I like since it's bittersweet that after all the screw ups he did, he managed to do one decent thing about saving Shirou. I was a little bummed he disppears from the story after the 1st half but considering how Kirei gets character assassinated, the former disappearing is like Abe Sapien not being in Hellboy 2019 or Clearence Boddicker, Dick Jones and The Old Man not being in Robocop 2014.
Saber seemingly has a mind wipe like R2-D2 and C-3PO at the end of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith which already ruins what good writing there could be. It doesn't help that her personality is rewritten and she's esstentially nothing more than an obdient plaything for Shirou. Any crediblity Saber could have is even furthur destroyed when towards the end of the 1st half and the start of the 2nd, Saber is tied up wearing these fetished bondage clothes. If this was a movie, I would've walked out of the theater. I would've stopped there but I pressed on due to curosity.
This leads to the next few issues that work in tandem to make this remake/sequel such a mess to watch. Shirou and Rin never drive the story in any meaningful way. Most of the time, enemy mages will come to them then they planning something themsleves. Illya for example is the one to make the first move on the two characters. The school gets attacked and Shinji makes the first move and the attack wasn't even stopped because Rin and Shirou. When they attack Kuzuki, the latter overpowers them both that it never amounts to anything. When they go to Illya's castle, Gilgamesh and Shinji are the first ones to get there and the former is the one that does the major damage. I got to wonder what the purpose of these characters even were.
Surely the villains can carry this story right? Well unforunately that is a massive NOPE. Shinji Moto has already been discussed. There is the aforementioned Illyasviel von Einzbern. This character on paper should be interesting in spite of the fact that she is a underaged girl who speaks like a psycho but hey she's on the side of evil. Plus she has a lot of connections to Fate Zero with both Kiritsugu and Irvisveil both did in everything in their power to make sure she would have a normal life. She's Shirou's half brother. There is some room for drama here, right? Not really. She shows up in the first episodes of UBW 2014 and then gets killed off quickly and easily by Gilgamesh in the 2nd half. She barely has much of a presence and gets killed off at around her 3rd appreance. To top it all off, it even shows her backstory with Berserker right before she is about to die which only angered me. Illya's servants? Leysritt and Sella? They die in their 2nd appearence. The worst of the villain writing has yet to come.
There is Kuzuki who is really nothing more than a dull pawn who is a puppet for Caster.
Speaking of Caster, she might be the closest thing this series has to an interesting villain. Her plan of harvesting innocent people for energy while morally apprehesible, she does at the very least have some kind of strategy to win the Grail War. Her gathering enough energy to take on Berserker and Illya sells you on the latter two characters' crediblity more than their actions do. She doesn't amount to much since she doesn't even fight Berserker and she gets humliated by the end pretty epicly in spite of her probably being the most interesting character in the cast which isn't saying much.
Assassin is basically just a guard dog and nothing more. He's stuck in one location and in both his scenes fights Saber and that's it.
Gilgamesh while interesting in Fate Zero, it was mainly that way because he was the catalyst for Kirei's arc and development and highlighting how dull of a person Tokiomi is. On his own, he's just a one note overpowered villain. Him being OP is all he really has going for him since his motivation of wanting to using the Grail to kill millions of people just makes him come as a narcisstic idiot. He doesn't do much outside of act superior to others and think he's awesome.
The worst of all UBW 2014's version of Kirei Kotomine. The term "character assassination" gets thrown around with reckless abandon on the internet but this version of Kirei is the biggest downgrade ever from the one from Fate Zero. In that show he slowly went through an arc of being evil and inflicting suffering on to others. He ruins the lives of innocent people and kills people who showed nothing but kindness towards him like Tokiomi. He kept Kariya alive just to prolong his suffering some more. He also has no problem framing that series' version of Rider if it means getting what he wanted showing off his cunning and deception.
What does UBW 2014 do? He barely has any screen time, does anything of geniune note with that time has and when he revealed to Rin that he killed Tokiomi which SHOULD be a scene that destroys Rin to her foundations(plus almost getting inapprioately touched by Shinji Moto) and it gets brushed off fast and Kirei dies in the very scene this gets revealed in. You think Kirei might come back or the very least have a battle with Rin in the show's final few episodes but no, she's trying to save Shinji, the guy who tried to grope her. This was the moment I gave up and stopped caring, the final link to Fate Zero is gone and in an anticlimatic way.
From here on out I stopped caring about Shirou and his past selves and all that convoluted stuff about time travel or any conflict in the story. I just stopped being invested and wanted it all to end. So I fast forwarded the pen ultimate episode and watched at 2x speed for the last episode and ended it. I just wanted to sinking my time into this.
Overall, I loved Fate Zero and UBW 2014 just proves the saying "curosity killed the cat". I was smart for dropping at the first half back 10 years ago since time hasn't made me kinder on this series. Shows like this are proof that amazing animation and well animated fight scenes can't carry bad writing especially writing that is monumentally terrible as this. I don't try to finish anime I don't like anymore but my love for Fate Zero wanted to see what it was building up to. At this point, I just wished that series was just it's own story and has no connection to this. I could maybe look up a playthrough of the VN but UBW 2014 fails miserably as a commerical for that.
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