Fate/strange Fake

tl;dr: + Good artstyle + Nice animation + Good music ~ Visually stimulating fights (even if it left me a little cold) - Underbaked cast of characters, way too large - Overreliance on previous Type-Moon works - Feels like it's still building up the Holy Grail War for a lot of its runtime tbh It's not the worst thing you can watch but the cast is way too large to give any character that much screentime or development and some just get absolutely NOTHING to work with. The fights are well-animated (as is the rest of the show), even if because of the lack of character development, it didn't do much for me.It's a well-produced show, I just didn't find the cast very grippable to latch onto and so once it finally DID get into full swing, it just left me kind of cold. --- When I watched Whispers of Dawn to prepare for Fate/strange Fake, I was fairly optimistic. It looked good and it took the time to do a prologue to set up the pieces for the Holy Grail War, presumably so we could go relatively far into the War itself in the main season. ...boy, was I naive there. There are just way too many characters to care about any of them. Hell, care about them? I don't even remember some of their names. If you told me at gunpoint to name all the Masters in this Holy Grail War, I could give you a summary of who they are but their names? Pssh. Even the ones who get a bit more shine feel a little underbaked. As some who are a bit more familiar with me may know, I may or may not have a fondness for girls with glasses. Ayaka kinda sucks here? They spend the entire season trying to convince her to Get In The Robot and it's just not a very charming way to depict your protagonist. Maybe it'd work if she had a stronger cast around her (after all, I'm not the biggest fan of Shirou but at least Stay Night had Rin, Archer, Sakura, Shinji, Illya, etc.) but as the nominal protagonist of the show, I did not feel engaged or like her personality because she was just a giant wet blanket. Honestly, she doesn't even have Protagonist Energy despite being Saber's Master. Sigma steals the show, not for being an entertaining character, but he just kind of comes in with a lot more Main Protagonist Energy. I think the most notable, defined Master otherwise, for me, was Jester. As the de facto "villain" of the War, he does have cool powers and a cool relationship with his Servant but it's also kind of pathetic and his existence leads to one of my bigger issues with the show. It loves to lean into any aspect of Type-Moon lore it can. I think you could probably watch it without consooming any other Type-Moon mediacontent and you'd probably be fine (obviously, I've seen F/SN and I know the general gist of F/Zero, Tsukihime, etc. so I can't really say from an unbiased perspective) but Jester's mere existence is a giant nod to Tsukihime, they have an elongated reference to Zero in one scene, multiple characters are ripped straight from other Fate anime, Gilgamesh is there... it's literally just the Gilgamesh Like do I think you'll be LOST if this is your first Fate anime? Probably not. I also don't know if you'll care much if you aren't a giant Type-Moonhead. Like I like F/SN but I'm here for Strange Fake and idk, man, don't need to see Waver Velvet every episode to know I'm watching Fate. Anyway, even with the prologue, a lot of these characters are just totally forgettable by the sheer fact that they only get so little time amongst the lot of them that if you're not one of the chosen ones like Ayaka, Sigma, Francesca, etc, you might as well not even exist. I said I didn't like Durarara all that much (which, like, I didn't hate it either) but even Durarara had a few characters I would actively say I liked and was a fan of. I liked Anri. I liked Shizuo. I liked Izaya. F/SF? Unless you're counting pre-existing attachments, to be honest, that number is 0. Once the War gets in full swing, it kind of feels like a flaccid party popper. I was waiting for a while for the War to feel like it was finally picking up and then it does eventually get there and it just... I mean, yup, they sure are fighting, huh. Are the fights good, at least? I guess so, yeah. They are well-animated, didn't really do much for me. I'm not sure if it's because I don't care about the characters, the choreography is lacking, or both, but it just was Nice Animation to me, it's very visually stimulating, in any case. To be honest, despite Ufotable's best efforts, I liked F/SN more for the characters than the hype and aura fights so Fate having kind of underwhelming fights despite being very visually stimulating is kind of par for the course. It's not the worst show you could watch, I don't even think it's in the bottom 5 this season (that I saw, let alone the shit that I don't watch), it's just kind of forgettable. No character was, like, actively annoying. The artstyle is nice. The music is nice. It had a couple of intriguing characters that could potentially be better characters if they had more screentime and focus. The fights were at least visually stimulating and fine enough. I just... there's not really much here, at least for me, to enjoy.

I'm just confused to be honest. I guess this is my bad, I have only watched fate 0, stay night and unlimited blade works, so I'm probably missing a lot of context. The anime does have a good production value, the VA, the animation et soundtrack are all A-Tier. I have no idea what's happening though, so much info dumping with terms i've never heard before and I don't know if I'm missing important knowledge or if it's just the style of the anime to try and be "mysterious". It's still very much watchable, despite its biggest flaw being a too bloated cast with some of the cringiest charactersi've seen in anime (Jester or the Francisca-something twins are a pain to endure every time they have screen time) but some others are so greatly interesting it's not a big problem. I just wish I understood more about why each character has this or that power and how it works

If there’s one thing the Fate series has established by now, it’s that nothing will ever play out as promised. There can never be just a straightforward, by-the-book Holy Grail War. Fate/strange Fake, then, doesn’t set out to subvert an expected formula, because Fate has never truly operated by such a formula in the first place. Subversion is already the franchise’s modus operandi, and so Strange Fake is simply the latest entry to herald the phantasmal parade of controlled chaos. Like its predecessors, it is an installment that bends, breaks, and totally disfigures the on-paper rules of the Holy Grail War. In Fate/stay night, theGrail is corrupted from the very beginning. In Fate/Apocrypha, the system is rendered malleable and basically turned into a team sporting event. Even Fate/Zero, which most closely follows the rules, ultimately ends up proving the rules themselves to be fundamentally, irreparably twisted. Strange Fake revels in enacting one of the most wonderfully bastardized renditions of the Holy Grail War ritual in franchise history. It flaunts Servants so blisteringly overpowered that conventional power scaling is immediately thrown right out the window. It is outright shameless in its haste to name anyone or anything a Heroic Spirit—whether good or evil, human or inhuman. And best of all, it gleefully indulges in shaping what should be simple duels into straight-up cataclysms that threaten the very foundation of the stage itself. All this is frankly series tradition, and it’s more or less what Fate fans have always shown up for. But is yet another explosive death match really all that Strange Fake amounts to? Yorokobe, shounen: perish the thought. Strange Fake—while it is indeed absorbed in flourishing its many battle set pieces—is also a confluence of narrative threads and clever symbolism, an all-you-can-eat buffet of lurid subplots and cryptic subtexts. What does Strange Fake specifically do to distinguish itself from the series proper, then? It’s all in the crazy-ass execution, and the show doesn’t wait a moment to declare it. Written by Ryohgo Narita of Baccano! and Durarara!! fame, one might expect to find a take on the Fate series steeped in his signature chaotic style. However, Fate is itself famous for wanton chaos, so it already exists as an ideal canvas for Narita’s authorial sensibilities. The undefined nature of Fate’s magic system has allowed Narita to take fascinating liberties with the rulebook, compounding wonderfully with his ensemble cast of Mages and Servants. He has reached into distant parts of the Nasuverse to procure special ingredients—Dead Apostles, long-lost protagonists, and more—and tossed them into the narrative stew, resulting in an amazingly functional Frankenstein of Type-Moon favorites. Unbelievably, the visual command from A-1 Pictures keeps up with Narita’s many moving parts, matching the unstable energy like a hot dog sliding into a bun. The story is not a puppet dancing before its master, but a puppet and its master as equal partners, thriving on entropy in striking symbiosis. Strange Fake is vividly frenetic when foreign Mystics collide and stimulating even when lingering on lengthy dialogue, leaving no doubt that Fate and Narita are a match made in heaven. Visually, Strange Fake takes up the torch from the non-ufotable branch of Fate anime, making typical use of the smear animation and experimental techniques those titles are known for. This is the main style of both Apocrypha and Babylonia, and it’s certainly a great choice here, too. After all, how should animators capture Noble Phantasms that could be world-ending threats if misappropriated? There are times where putting these concepts to screen is essentially the animation equivalent of staring directly into the sun. The smearing and mindful compositing make these epic attacks into highly distorted, colorful depictions befitting their apocalyptic natures. Constantly on display is a maelstrom of light and might brimming with incalculable energy, elevated by direction that knows how to show it all off. Sky-high vistas are used to view massive attacks and climactic confrontations between Servants. Close-up shots can get so involved when it comes time to throw hands that they seem to have agency of their own, almost actively participating in all the ducking and weaving. It’s intentional visual storytelling that balances all the drawn-out conversations with the firework shows obligatory to every fight scene. The sound design also does some heavy lifting; rumble effects to give weight to the big booms and music that swells in harmony with Noble Phantasm incantations. It all works as one to propel the action to orbital heights, uncompromising in its mission to broker spectacle upon spectacle. The characters are where the rules of these True and Fake Holy Grail Wars really go haywire. Of course, listing off Masters and the True Names of Servants is tantamount to spoiler territory. But as it turns out, that’s where much of Strange Fake’s fun lies. Many contenders come with fairly unique caveats—Masters who aren’t even human, Servants summoned with twists to their Spirit Origins, and other peculiarities that drag the story ever deeper into Narita’s lawless pit of darkness. Certain identities demand careful parsing, and the complex network of personalities becomes labyrinthine. Every character here has secrets, and much of the anime’s time is spent investigating them for everything they’re worth. The point-of-view focus routinely shifts from one eccentric character to the next, back to back to back, creating a thrilling perspective whiplash. In short, the characters all worship chaos in their own ways, and their combined rampage plays right into the narrative clusterfuck. The point, after all, is a flamboyant, wackadoodle shitshow of a Holy Grail War, and that can’t happen without at least a few oddballs running amok. So, is Strange Fake satirizing Fate’s tendency to play Grail War Simulator over and over? Is it idolizing that repetition, kissing the shadows of Wars long past? The portrait so passionately painted by this story is, unmistakably, one of admiration and celebration. In retrospect, Fate/strange Fake is a brazen and confident showcase of the franchise’s wild side. Narita has employed his best tendencies here to openly and unapologetically indulge in Fate’s star attraction—spectacle. The plot might seem scatterbrained at first, but upon stepping back and taking in the bigger picture, it becomes clear how structured it actually is. That careful coalescence of themes and subplots is pretty much the customary payoff from Narita’s playbook, and here it’s bolstered by the esoteric systems of Fate’s world to craft a love letter to the series at large. Despite playing up the action to heights rarely seen, Strange Fake manages to spare some room for waxing philosophical. The poet John Donne wrote: “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” It’s a sentiment that’s perfectly in tune with Fate, a series where all manner of entities—even Death itself—are ultimately powerless before greater forces. Against fate, against chance, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Heroic Spirit, a god, or merely human—all are made equal. But the best part of Strange Fake? It proclaims from on high that all the bombast, the spectacle, and the wealth of Noble Phantasms are not deviations from the Fate formula, but characteristic of what the formula has gradually become. Strange Fake is just happy to be the title that’s finally so honest about it.

After numerous delays, the first season of Fate/Strange Fake turned out to be fairly solid. You can clearly see how earlier Fate works have influenced it as the series draws heavily from Fate/Zero, at times almost responding to its themes, concepts, and worldbuilding. The music is excellent, as expected from Hiroyuki Sawano. However, the opening and overall soundtrack give off a more modern, high-energy feel, almost as if he is trying to push anime toward a faster-paced, more upbeat direction. It has a strong Solo Leveling-like vibe, which gives me the impression that A-1 Pictures is once again trying to reshape trends, similar to how theyinfluenced the industry with Sword Art Online a decade ago. That said, while the soundtrack is impactful, some of the core tracks are reused a bit too often. The first few times during fight scenes, they’re thrilling, but by the tenth repetition, the effect starts to wear off, which is a similar issue I notice for Sawano in Re: Creators. The anime is not a beginner-friendly series at all. Even fans familiar with the Ufotable Fate adaptations may find it difficult to follow the series. Despite all of that, when judging Ryohgo Narita from a Type-Moon fan perspective, his approach feels somewhat surface-level. The series introduces a wide range of characters and concepts from the Type-Moon universe, but often in a way that feels more like name-dropping rather than deeply exploring their significance. Strange Fake comes across as a more Westernized take on Fate/Zero, and in many ways, an improvement over Fate/Apocrypha. The action is easy to digest, with most episodes maintaining a fast pace even if the overall plot progression is relatively slow. While some viewers feel the adaptation rushes through the source material, I think the anime provides enough screen time for characters and context. The first half of the series focuses heavily on introducing a large cast. Characters are presented through a mix of flashbacks, fight scenes, and dialogue, and while there is some variation, you can start to recognize a pattern in how introductions are handled. The fight scenes are visually impressive, clean, sharp, and polished, which makes the long delays feel somewhat justified. However, most fights are quite short. They build excitement quickly, only to end after a minute or so, followed by dialogue before the next confrontation. This happens repeatedly and gives the impression of a deliberate production strategy: maintaining high animation quality without overextending resources. That structure defines the overall tone of the series. It feels like a prolonged battle of attrition where conflicts happen frequently, but rarely reach full resolution except during major climaxes. Fights are often used as tools to introduce characters, showcase their philosophies, or move the plot forward, rather than serving as extended set pieces. The show also features a large ensemble cast where many characters could be considered main characters, yet none are given a clear central focus. Personally, I don’t see this as a flaw, as I enjoy this kind of narrative approach. For Fate fans, the series is almost a dream, packed with references and fan service. However, the heavy emphasis on Fate/Zero sometimes makes me wonder whether Narita is more of a Gen Urobuchi admirer than a broader Type-Moon enthusiast. Overall, I enjoyed the series and would rate it highly. That said, I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry point for newcomers to the Fate franchise. It’s better to start with earlier works, which are excellent in their own right, and come back to Strange Fake later for a more rewarding experience.