Anime Review (and some FEELINGS): Fate/Zero

[juushika]

Fate/Zero
ufotable, Gen Urobuchi, Type-Moon, 2011-12
25 episodes
Seven mages summon seven Heroic Spirits to compete in the 4th Holy Grail war—the prize for which will grant any one wish, no matter how impossible. Emiya Kiritsugu, skilled more in assassinating mages than fighting mage wars, will do anything to win the Grail and fulfill his unlikely wish.

I came to Fate/Zero because fanart told me I would love Ryuunosuke. A serial killer who discovers a purpose for his hobby?—of course I would, and did: his arc is fantastic, and ends perfectly. But in the end, I stayed for the entire cast.

Every single last one of them.

Fate/Zero begins slowly, because it has a large cast and complex premise to introduce. Initially its art is merely average, competent but unremarkable, without much in the way of style. Both pacing and art improve with time—the former when the various battles begin because, despite the fact that they're initially abbreviated into mere teases of forward progress, they're beautifully choreographed action and rich with character interaction, bringing life to the intrigue-rich plot; the latter is a gradual change, but is in evidence as soon as Berserker (a computer animated character within a cell-drawn anime, therefore preternaturally slick and smooth) is introduced. Eventually, the entire cast is distinct, the plot has vast forward momentum, and the art style improves such that the climactic final battle is thoroughly satisfying.

There's a few ways you can work with characters. You can define them, make them distinct and unique. You can develop them, show them progressing through an arc that impacts and changes who they are. You can have them interact with other characters, perhaps in ways that the relationship between characters almost becomes a character itself. Fate/Zero does every single one of these things with almost every single one of its characters—and the one or two dead-end characters at least have the grace to die in ways that develop the rest of the cast. I can't overstate how impressive this is, or how fantastic it is if you're me and you feed on character motivation and character relationships. The four confusingly similar brown/black haired dudes each become real people by the end. The whiny schoolboy in a ridiculous relationship with a burly dude actually drove me to tears. There are multiple strong female characters, one of whom offers up perhaps the creepiest scene I've ever watched*. My favorite character interaction was actually a four-way mess of motivations and desires and rivalries and fascinations**, and was pretty well flawless.

Which is not to say Fate/Zero is that, by any stretch: a slow beginning, initially shallow/cliché characterization, art which never excels, roadbumps in story delivery (worst of which is a long flashback), a bit of characterization by way of women in refrigerators which is handled with comparable grace but remains problematic, all plague it. These weaknesses are generally counterbalanced by the show's various strengths, or at least serve enough of a purpose to excuse them, but they linger.

But I have never cared so much about such a vast cast. It's Durarara!! levels of large-cast mayhem, but (so help me) even more of them are even better realized, and the level of complexity is towering. It's not the sort of attachment that makes you beg for happy endings, which is good: there are few happy endings, here. It's the sort of attachment that makes you want to see everything, good and bad, development and climax, fallout, reactions and changes—because so many lives hang in the balance, and much more than mortality is in jeopardy.

* The end of Irisviel, Jesus me, it's like End of Evangelion just got creepier.

** Gilgamesh/Kirei/Kiritsuju(/Kariya) LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FEELINGS. No really, if you have read or watched this please let us talk about how this interaction is pretty much the definition of perfect, please.