Fate/stay night -Fate- Analysis and Review

Getting into the Fate series is a bit of a hassle. Many die hard fans will attest to going in the original order of release and finishing it at Fate/Zero, while others will swear by going in with Zero first. I myself lean more towards to the latter. Fate/Zero was my first introduction to Type-Moon’s most famous series and left me absolutely fascinated and desperate for more. The world, the characters, the music, everything was mind numbing and left me at awe. A lot of what I loved in Zero’s depth and tragedy was desired in Fate/stay night. Naturally, I was disappointed to discover that my first taste of this visual novel is barren of the strong moral debates that shift between ideologies and follows a more a more traditional story. And although I was eventually satisfied with Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel blew my expectations (more on this in a couple of blogs), the Fate route still left an interesting taste of disappointment. Sadly, I can’t gush about Heaven’s Feel just yet, so I’ll be delivering my personal analysis of Unlimited Blade Works. 

Please note that a lot of my experience comes from treating this as a sequel to Fate/Zero, as my experiences come from that medium before Fate/stay night. So some criticisms might be myself subconsciously comparing this as a shortcoming to Fate/Zero's story.

Whenever you talk to a child about what they want to be when they grow up, their answers may be along the lines of civic duties. Some suggest that they want to be police officers, doctors, or fire men. Since a small age, we all have a certain feeling of wanting to be heroic. The ideology of saving the world is a sweet concept that occupies our minds before the ideas of realism and opportunities of fulfilment of those dreams come into hand as young adults. In the same way, Emiya Shirou has an ideal. After suffering the burning of a neighborhood in Fuyuki City, he is saved by the embodiment of heroism, Emiya Kiritsugu. To the young boy, he more or less died that day and became Emiya Shirou. As Kiritsugu realized the error of his ways, he slowly gave up his childish ambition, which is left to the young Emiya.

Years later, on a fateful night, Shirou ends up crossing paths between Tohsaka Rin and two men. one of them clad in red and twin swords while a man in blue brutality counters with his spear. The two men are servants and after a fatal encounter, Shirou in his last minute of desperation hides in a shed before a woman in blue suddenly appears and dashes to his aid. She is his servant known as Saber.

The master and servant system is quite simple. Masters are mages who try to summon servants, heroic beings from the past who come back as spirits to aid the master in a war to win the Holy Grail. The appropriately titled Holy Grail War allows mages to achieve their any wish they have through its godly powers. Once all of the servants get eliminated, the Grail gets summoned. Seeing this as an opportunity to start his goal of heroism, Shirou takes the opportunity to participate in the bloodshed in his quest to save the world.

The Fate route is the first story of Fate/stay night and serves as an introduction to Type-Moon’s Fate universe. As with each route, the Fate route has a main theme running through the story, which is following your ideals and the mere idea of idealism. Appropriately, the main focus of the story is Shirou’s servant, Saber. Saber follows a similar ideological stand point with Shirou in which she has been through a horrific scenario, through losing her entire nation and is working through sheer guilt to atone for her sins.

Don't worry. He goes on about her beauty for a few pages.

The theme of atonement runs through the Fate route quite strongly, as Shirou feels a need to save others has to be fulfilled so that the deaths of the many people that he witnessed in Fuyuki do not go in vain. Through many interludes, you can clearly see the horrors and the burning dragging hell that Shirou had to witness and simply move through. As a young child, Shirou’s only tool in the fire was spectacle. When he was on the floor with his final breath, Emiya Kiritsugu’s hand reaching and stopping the boy’s death symbolizes an almost God-like intervention putting ends to a motion that was going to finish at the young boy’s death. It can be assumed that the almost impossible odds being simply pushed by a savior inspired the young boy to follow his steps.

The steps in achieving the dream is where most of my problems come in. As a story writing narrative, the set up is quite good and deals with the dreams that many have experienced in their younger years. But instead of following a simple internal struggle, Nasu made Shirou’s actions reflect a more external action, leaving his ideals in the ground and never moving. The frustration plays when Saber, who shares a similar ideal, feels like a character who undergoes a change and an understanding is reached that her ideals to save a country by sacrificing her kingship will be in simple vain. Dramatically changing history’s course may alleviate a certain situation, but its inevitability cannot be halted. However, Shirou does not see that issue apply to him and simply moves on with his ideal of being a hero, no matter the odds.

Inspirational may be at a limit, but Shirou far extends it into simple stubbornness, as I never witnessed a moment where Shirou grew as a person. As a reader, I feel a certain attachment to characters going through a change, but Shirou never felt like a real person. He felt like a machine, cold and simply moving forward with what he wants to achieve. While this may be the point of his character and far extends to his inability to follow the same ideals in Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel, it leaks into his interactions with other characters.

Being one of the most revered kings in fiction, Saber’s abilities as a knight are far exceeding to other servants in hand to hand combat. However, this leads to her also being quite open to direct attacks and left in a state near to death. Witnessing Saber nearly being killed in the first night by Berserker, Shirou forbade Saber from ever fighting, stating that as a man his goal is to protect Saber. Aside from being incredibly condescending, the Fate route’s Shirou’s sense of stupidity is often met with the characters expressing disdain followed by them simply letting him do what he wants. It’s almost childish and frustrating to see such a powerful character like Saber simply follow Shirou’s orders and never go past questioning him. Part of a relationship is understanding what the other party feels and acknowledging the dangers it takes for both sides. Yes, it’s scary to see one hurt, but it is part of the risk of going into the Holy Grail War. It also does not help that the idea of not wanting to see Saber hurt wasn’t bad, but Shirou’s bullheaded chivalry was what made it feel flat.

"Saber, you stop that fighting this instant. Everyone knows that you can't fight."

Nasu’s idea might have been to downplay Saber to have the reveal of her identity to stun Shirou, but that does not work in two ways. The first way is that the reader and Shirou already understand Saber’s power, as the first night revolved around her taking on both Archer and Berserker at tremendous feats. The second point is that Shirou’s interactions with Saber suffer, as it starts to have vague hints of poor writing when Shirou starts bringing in that Saber is a girl. I would not necessarily write this off as misogyny, as that would imply that the writing was intended with hatred. The issue more so covers a poor writing decision, which could have easily been solved by dropping Shirou's rationale over Saber fighting.

While the initial relationship with Saber may seem poor, the route also suffers from poor pacing. About 80% of the story is exposition, which starts feeling rather boring once the reader starts to have an understanding of the world and setting and it becomes even worse when the story starts to take explanations as a priority over the actual action and situation. A lot of characters feel misused or only around for a single purpose before leaving the stage. Emiya Shirou is the star of the show, and a poor one at it.

Thankfully, there is a saving grace in the route in the final 5 days when the stakes start to become raised and Shirou falls for Saber. The romance aspect was actually well written in my eyes and felt as a somewhat somber affair. By this point, Saber regains her rights as a knight under Shirou and the story starts to move in a much more natural and progressive route. As mentioned, Shirou falls for Saber and no longer only sees her as a knight, but a young girl desperately trapped in the role of a king seeking for atonement. In his words, her selflessness is unjust, as she can only meet her grim death. Shirou’s objective slightly alters to add Saber to the people that he wants to save, but that adds interesting tension. As a king, Saber cannot reciprocate her feeling and that leads a conflict in interest and a strong flaw in Shirou’s plan. In a way, it breaks out of the mold and offers Saber as more of a partner than a simple lover that Shirou can convince. And Saber’s inability to respond to Shirou is what makes the conflict work. It leaves Shirou in odds and makes him realize that he cannot alleviate every problem presented to him. Unfortunately, this leads to the final major issue of this route: the ending.

After a good 5 days of solid action and drama, the Fate route falls in a less than graceful thud in the final hour of the game. Because the route focused on the world building, there never was a main villain. Yes, Illya was seen as the major threat, but she quickly reduced to a side character with no weight. To fill in the immediate threat, Kotomine Kirei and the Archer from the last war come in to act as the villains. Do not get me wrong, I love Kotomine Kirei (whether it’s platonic or more intense, I won’t comment), but Kirei’s role in this route feels flat as he merely serves as an antagonist who wants to see the Holy Grail’s true power and nothing more. Coming off of Fate/Zero, Kotomine Kirei had a lot of depth in his inability to understand his love for suffering and the emptiness his life presents, but the Fate route tucked him away for Heaven’s Feel and left in a very generic villain approach. And when Emiya Shirou kills Kotomine Kirei, everything goes well, Shirou says his goodbye to Saber (in an actually heartwarming scene) and things go back to normal.

This is where my main issue with this route comes into play; how everyone simply acts their part in Fate. Nobody feels like they naturally progress and every single action feels like it’s simply fueling Shirou’s desires and simply enabling him. Every conflict Shirou has is shrugged off and interpreted by him as a simple motivation without feeling a single drop of self-awareness. Shirou is not a good character in the Fate route and it makes the route as a whole suffer. The only thing I appreciated in this route involving Shirou was the romance between him and Saber, as it had a lot of gravity and had a more bittersweet resolution. Even not as a romantic pairing, the idea of Shirou being the hilt to Saber’s sword sets off as a good symbol towards Shirou and Saber’s relationship as partners (this is done much better in Unlimited Blade Works).

Moments like these make Shirou and Saber's relationship feel quite tragic yet touching

For every few complaints I have about Shirou, his surroundings make me not completely regret playing this route. While the first ten days are incredibly boring, you get a very cool fight scene between Rider and Saber that shows the true capabilities of Saber. Then you get an intense fight between Berserker being pinned by Rin, Saber, and Shirou, only for Shirou to be able to summon Arthur’s legendary sword. Then you get some fantastic brief scenes with Lancer confronting Gilgamesh, only for Saber and Shirou to jointly take him down with Saber’s legendary sword. Not only that, but Shirou murders the evil priest with the same dagger that Kotomine stabbed Tohsaka’s father with while Saber manages to stop Gilgamesh and die in peace. The main theme between each of these scenes that I fondly remember is the team work that the characters maintained. When Shirou isn’t playing lone hero, it feels exciting to see what happens next and what powers the characters contain. The sarcastic banter between Tohsaka and Shirou work well with the straight man interactions between Shirou and Saber. A lot of the issues rely on the idea that Shirou wants to be a lone hero and his approach and observations justifying his beliefs.

The final nail in the coffin is when Shirou gets revealed to the fact that Kiritsugu and Kirei were the cause of the fire. Instead of taking it in pure shock, the route plays a reassuring role in reminding the reader that Kiritsugu had well-meaning intentions and downplays his mistakes to never let Shirou question his savior’s actions. Yes, Emiya Kiritsugu is a good man, but he still made mistakes. These mistakes are later reserved for the next routes, but simply avoiding any sense of drama and suddenly assuring Shirou that Kiritsugu had good intentions feels contrived. While this makes sense for the drama in Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel, as a first route, one can mistake of some of the poorer writing decisions being a common trend in the visual novel (which it is not). A lot of the route leaves me feeling like things could have been better and the good scenes make me frustrated in recommending it, as there is not solid adaptation to burn through and this route being somewhat necessary for Heaven’s Feel’s ideological questions.

While some may hope for an adaptation that could better capture the idea of the Fate route, I cannot bring myself to say that it can be reinterpreted better. I feel that a lot of the issues are from a concept and execution point of view and to alleviate it, a lot of story points would have to be altered, which may somewhat mess with the parallelism later routes have.

On its own, the Fate route is partially good and can be progressively better, but on the other hand, it suffers from pacing issues that can make the reader feel disinterested and contains writing decisions that may make the reader question whether the entire visual novel has these flaws. This is partially why I feel more akin to recommend Fate/Zero first, to show the viewer that they can be in for some amazing moments in this universe and that one misstep for the series does not mean that the entire experience is soured. I really wish that the Fate route was a more solid introduction, because I really wanted to like this (as a personal fan of Saber). But I cannot justify a lot of the flaws the story has and the disinterest the route gave me, as evidenced by it taking me 5 days to finish Unlimited Blade Works from the stopping point of the anime and a week and a half to finish Heaven’s Feel, comparing to the near 5 months it took me to finish the Fate route due to how bored I would get.

The route's more quiet moments serve as the more memorable

In the end, Fate is a route that I hesitantly would suggest is necessary for the full Fate/stay night experience, but would swiftly remind readers of this blog that the route is a low point to the entire experience and that the following routes will be leaps and bounds better. Some times, dreams may seem beautiful on the exterior, but refusing to change can lead to even more internal stagnation and that is the main feeling I get from the Fate route. Childish actions over the impossible. But for what it’s worth, the small pieces of the Fate route made me glad that I have experienced them and the final moments left me with a somber and quiet feeling that left a few tears in my eyes. 

Come back next time where I more enthusiastically talk about Unlimited Blade Works and probably sound less cynical in the process.

Thanks for reading!