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Fate / Stay NightReviewed by Chris Hori
One of Geneon Entertainment’s new releases this past Christmas was Fate Stay Night. Extremely popular in Japan, Type Moon's second property Fate Stay Night follows Emiya Shiro and his servant Saber through a highlander style war. Seven masters called Magi each summon one of seven types of servants to fight for them, with the winner being allowed to claim the Holy Grail and have a single wish fulfilled. While the plot is far from unique, the beautiful character designs, smooth animation, and rich audio track set this anime apart from others like it. Another positive, is the animation quality does not falter at any point in the series. You can expect the same quality put into each character in every episode. The American dub work is acceptable. The voices for the most part match the characters. The translation is fairly close with a few changes meant to capture the emotion of certain lines, such as sarcasm, when a direct translation isn’t possible. In the first DVD, the characters’ voices are also similar in their tone, so it’s not too distracting if you switch back and forth between dubbed and subtitled. In addition, the English dub keeps the Japanese honorifics (sempai or san). The pronunciation is a bit off but it is to be expected with English voice actors. Still this probably should have been left out. While the dub work is not as good as Hellsing Ultimate or Howl’s Moving Castle, it is watchable. One of the nice points of the story, is the servants are summoned from a pool of ‘Heroic Souls’, each having some significance to the history of mankind. Their names, personalities and even their weapons and fighting styles are taken from actual historical or mythological figures which add to the rich feel of the story. Originally an adult PC Visual Novel game, Fate Stay Night has a cult-like following for the original game, as well as the sequel Fate/Hollow Ataraxia and Type Moon's original property Tsukihime. The anime takes the first of three storylines available in the Visual Novel which focuses on the story of Shiro and Saber. The animation is true to the original storyline; however, it was decided to remove the adult content for the anime to appeal to a wider audience. Because of this, some of the back story elements that are told in the other two storylines are lost, but the anime is still a complete story with a satisfying ending. While the anime has been aired in its entirety (26 episodes) in Japan, Geneon has begun to release this title here in the US. Priced at 32.99 for the DVD and collectors box, or 24.99 for just the DVD, the anime includes the first 4 episodes (each a half hour long and shown in widescreen format), text-less introduction, and art gallery. This anime series is easily one of my favorite series of all time.
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Director: Yuji Yamaguchi
With the high quality of animation, this series is hard to resist. In addition, the Original Visual Novel has 2 alternate storylines that have the potential to be made into an anime themselves. The first follows Rin Tohsaka and her servant Archer (which is the only way to learn which Heroic Spirit Archer is), the second is about Sakura, a minor character in the anime. Each story tells you more about those characters giving further insight to their actions in the main story. In addition, there are two additional PC Visual Novels: Fate Stay Night Hollow Ataraxia (sequel) and the recently released Fate Stay Night Zero (prequel).