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Fate/Stay Night Review
Mar. 6th, 2012 08:43 pmFate/Stay Night has a great concept that suffers from an overcrowded ensemble--the BSG effect--and a little bit, for my tastes, from being shounen. Here's the breakdown, light on spoilers:
The Good
* Neat concept in bringing together various famous historical/mythical figures to do battle. There's good potential for interesting interactions and cultural commentary.
* Saber: we too rarely see really good female anime characters, but she definitely qualifies. And she's a great asexual role model despite a few romantic overtones.
* Archer and Shirou's relationship: probably the most engaging thing in the series (as a thought experiment).
* Gilgamesh: well characterized as a very ancient king with a fundamentally different sense of social reality than much of subsequent civilization, including modern times. Culturally well juxtaposed with chivalrous knight Saber.
* Low annoyance factor: there are various tropes of high school hijinks and boy-heroism and spunky girls and so on, but it's pretty mild and generally deployed in the service of pretty good characterizations and a serious plot taken reasonably seriously.
( The Less Good and the Bad--Light on Spoilers )
The Good
* Neat concept in bringing together various famous historical/mythical figures to do battle. There's good potential for interesting interactions and cultural commentary.
* Saber: we too rarely see really good female anime characters, but she definitely qualifies. And she's a great asexual role model despite a few romantic overtones.
* Archer and Shirou's relationship: probably the most engaging thing in the series (as a thought experiment).
* Gilgamesh: well characterized as a very ancient king with a fundamentally different sense of social reality than much of subsequent civilization, including modern times. Culturally well juxtaposed with chivalrous knight Saber.
* Low annoyance factor: there are various tropes of high school hijinks and boy-heroism and spunky girls and so on, but it's pretty mild and generally deployed in the service of pretty good characterizations and a serious plot taken reasonably seriously.
( The Less Good and the Bad--Light on Spoilers )
