http://www.mediafire.com/view/dwva6g3pnwrpw8e/FSN.jpg#Well, here we are once again with Ufotable adapting a Type Moon work. If it sells, why stop doing it; right? I mean have you seen how all related series sold? From the atrocious older version made by DEEN, to its prequel Fate/Zero, to its loli fan service spin-off Fate/Kaleid; this franchise is a goldmine.And you need to be aware of what exactly you are getting yourself into in case you don’t already know. The Fate franchise is affiliated with the most famous porn game of all times, and has a ridiculous amount of fans who defend it to the death. For example, if one of them reads the previous sentence, he will go apeshit and explain in a wall of text how it is not a porn game; it’s a visual novel, the ultimate masterpiece of storytelling, with exceptional writing, amazing characters, complicating terminology, and intellectual battles. How many good books have these people read that are not shitty visual novels, and how many games have they played that are not erotic visual novels? 95% chance, the answer is zero. As it happens with all fandoms, they are filled with fanatics who are inflating whatever is going on, while being in denial. It has sex scenes, it has fan service, it has harem, it’s a porn game; you can stop trying to call it otherwise. It tries to be more, but eventually succeeds only into becoming a badly written battle shonen with fancy terminology. If you keep your expectations low, you will enjoy it as a rule of cool type of show, filled with lots of flashy battles, extremely polished visuals, and poser characters you want to cosplay as, or have as your waifu. It’s a very fun show if you see it just as a spectacle. The problem surfaces when you DON’T see it simply as a spectacle and instead try to make it seem like it’s more than that. I said you should keep your expectations low but how is that humanly possible when the anime was hyped all the way to the moon as soon as its production was announced, and how can you possibly remain calm and reserved about it when it got an average score of 9/10 before it even began to air. I am not kidding you; it was placed instantly at the top ten highest rated anime of all times before the first episode was even out. The average dropped since then, but that doesn’t take away the power of its delusional fandom.And let me prove why they are delusional, starting with the premise. Seven people get a super warrior each and fight each other because there can be only one. The winner gets a wish and becomes a puela magi. What complicates this one line of a story is how the tiniest and most unimportant of events needs to be stretched out to last as much as possible, and a plot that could have ended in 2 episodes if it was pragmatic, is instead stretched to last 10 times as much. How is that possible, you may ask? Is the show mostly made up of fillers? No, but it’s instead filled with lots and lots of extra fluff that do not allow the average viewer to realize he is watching something that has no progress. It keeps you distracted with constant infodumps. Half of the whole show is people talking and explaining shit. And by explaining, I don’t simply mean they explain their strategies to the opponent or comment on everything that happens in case the viewer has his IQ lower than that of an ape. It does that too, but it is a drop in the ocean before the dreaded infodumping. Dear lord, they talk for hours about how magic works and what it can do and what are the limitations, and they use fancy words, and they explain it again, and then they go over it every time something new appears, and SHUT UP ALREADY! This is what made the source material so famous. It’s a porn game with a complicated terminology you can talk about for hours, that makes you look smart and not like a ronery who faps to cartoons. And by the end of the day none of all that matters because IT’S MAGIC; IT MAKES NO SENSE. Even if it was science that for some reason the porn game managed to present it in a completely realistic manner, it would still not mean anything, since it still works in any random way the writer wants it to work. - Rin needs to train for a decade, be fully aware of how magic works, and chant for a whole minute for something magical to take place. This is meant to explain why learning magic is a hard thing to do. And yet Shiro casts commands, summons super warriors, learns epic spells in seconds, and avoids death rays without having a clue of what the fart is going on, thus debunking the previous claim. - They keep saying there are rules that make sense, and waste half the show explaining them, only to then reveal: • Caster who has the power of Rule Breaker, • Assassin who doesn’t run out of energy without his master around, • Lancer who feigns death twice in five minutes, only to die the third time, • Gilgamesh who jumps in the death game out of nowhere, and screws up everyone with a power nobody had any chance of surviving against, besides the bland MC and his constant asspulled power ups and plot armor,• and Archer who stays alive, even when he was clearly killed. Adding to all this mess is the very bad writing.- If half the show is explanations, the other half is characters fooling around and not doing what they are supposed to be doing. I am not kidding you, none of the characters take their roles seriously; they are in a death tournament where it is “kill or be killed” and treat everything as if it’s an amusement park.• Rin, who really wants to win in this death tournament, saves the life of another contestant, explains all it needs for him to survive in this war, and then proceeds into trying to kill him, thus rendering all that she did so far to be completely pointless, only to regret it and fall in love with him. • Ilya lets her enemies escape because it was a fun game and wants to play more, while Gilgamesh is not killing his enemies because he doesn’t want to get dusty. - Ilya and Berserker don’t have their backdrops reveiled, until they are one minute away from dying.- Shinji and Caster’s first Master don’t even have much of a character or a backdrop story, and are there only as generic one-dimensional villains for the audience to hate.- As if all that weren’t enough, there is also a significant amount of characters, such as Saber, Rider, Sakura, even Kotomine, who are not doing much in the whole show, even though they seemed to be far more important in their introduction. The reason for that? Because the anime wasn’t adapting the route of the game in which they were vital.How do the fanboys excuse all that: “In the visual novel you had options of what you would do, so it doesn’t seem that bad over there”. I don’t give a damn about the porn game, and this is a review of the anime. Oh, there is also: “How could we get to know the characters if they would be killed right away and the show would be over in a few episodes? That’s impossible to happen if the show made sense. After all, it’s dumb entertainment for shonentards, so it’s ok to... WHOOPS! I meant sophisticated storytelling for mature people such as myself; there is nothing wrong with this anime; it’s perfect.”Ok, you are not convincing me, it’s still stupid. There is so much plot armour for the protagonist, and so much plot convenience when not killing people, even when they should normally do, to the point I no longer care about the characters because their conflict feels staged. I also can’t see this show as dumb action because they keep trying to trick me (and fail) into believing it is far more than just that. Hey look guys, it’s famous historical figures from the past, brought to the present to fight! And they talk about ideals and philosophies! Isn’t it amazing? ... No, it isn’t. It falls right into the pretentious territory, a thing which I happen to hate because it wants to make the viewer over-think stuff and trick him to believe he is smart for doing that. The illusion breaks when you get unforgettable quotes such as “people die when they are killed” coming from a guy who cheats death three times per episode because he is a bland shonen protagonist. There are also no consequences in a story where they keep telling you a wish can change the whole world, when the world is otherwise completely autistic to this war and its participants. Yes, they keep saying that they cover it up, but just what is there to cover when they cause a dozen explosions per episode, injuring or killing hundreds of people, and none in the city sees or hears the slightest thing. It’s as if the characters all suffer from chuunibyou and the battles take place only in their childish minds, with the adults walking by and shaking their heads upon seeing them doing all that make-belief nonsense.So down to it, what is this show exactly? It’s a silly fighting shonen with very good production values that pretends to be intelligent by overcomplicating everything. It’s full of fan catering, wish fulfilment, and escapism, with a naive plot starring a bland shonen protagonist full of childish ideals, doing silly teen romance shenanigans with a plethora of female archetypes (Rin: Tsundere, Saber: Culdere, Sakura: Yandere), and a ton of bravado for the sake of giving importance to things that are otherwise shallow. It’s fun if you still like Naruto but not if you are past the age when you still like teenagers with superpowers and unforgettable quotes such as “the archer class is made of archers”. And don’t you dare say that just because I am correct, doesn’t mean I am right.