Fate is a series people love to hate and with good reason. While there are some great Fate anime, there are also many bad ones, and critics often arrive at the same problem: just why does Fate have to be so confusing?!
Fate’s premise is hardly unique, so how come so many series have flopped wearing this ‘confusing’ tagline?
And, with potentially its most convoluted iteration yet on the way in Fate/strange Fake, what can the series learn from its early hits?
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Fate’s Basic Premise: Explained
First of all, to explain the basic idea of Fate. Essentially, it’s a battle royale featuring superpowered fighters where the winner has their wish granted.
The world of Fate includes small groups, usually families, that study magecraft. Every so often, they engage in a competition called the Holy Grail War, where mages (Masters) summon a legendary fighter (Servants) to compete on their behalf.
The Holy Grail War is a fight to the death, with the last surviving Master and Servant claiming the Holy Grail and the right to have a wish granted.
Simple, right?!
A battle royale is hardly a unique premise, and legendary fighters with superpowers is a common trope – see Zodiac War or Re:Creators or Drifters or countless others.
Now, it should be mentioned that some additional elements make Fate more confusing than something like Zodiac War. Servants have some semblance of free will which can skew their motives, while the true prize at the end is also shrouded in mystery.
However, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that, at its core, Fate is extremely simple; superpowered people and their masters are running around trying to kill each other to win the ultimate prize.
In fact, some of the earliest Fate series showed how intriguingly simple the franchise can be.
Why Unlimited Blade Works and Apocrypha Doesn’t
There can’t be many anime franchises with series as varied in popularity as Fate. According to MyAnimeList, ratings for Fate series go from high 8s (Heaven's Feel) down to the low 6s (Fate/Extra).
Some of the worst-rated series are spin-offs that bear little resemblance to the traditional battle royale narrative, but out of those, there are still some pretty big swings.
Fate/stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works has a rating in the low 8s and ranks in the top 150 most popular anime of all time. Compare that to Fate/Apocrypha, one of the most recent ‘traditional’ Fate series, which has a rating of just over 7 and was largely canned by new Fate fans.
It should be said that Apocrypha comes with its own caveat: instead of individual pairings, the War is split into two opposing teams of Masters and Servants. However, the basic premise remains, a battle royale to claim the Grail.
So why doesn’t Apocrypha land like Unlimited Blade Works? There may be many reasons, but I believe the biggest, and the most telling, is the opening.
Fantasy and sci-fi stories, perhaps more than any other style, are defined by their introductions, because the audience needs to know of certain mechanics before the world, and the story within it, can be understood.
It’s a similar experience to being asked to enjoy a sport you’ve never watched – it doesn’t matter how history-breaking the big game is if you have no idea what’s going on!
Fate’s Unlimited Blade Works series, and the similarly-acclaimed Heaven’s Feel movies based on the same visual novel, offer a perfect opening to the world of Fate.
Shirou Emiya is a normal kid who finds himself pulled into the fantastical world of Masters and Servants and is guided along by more experienced side characters.
This kind of cold opening can feel cliche – the entire isekai genre is built upon this storytelling device, after all. However, it’s only cliche because it works so effectively, particularly in fantasy.
We learn about the world alongside the protagonist, with clever writing feeding details slowly as the tension ramps up.
Apocrypha, and many more contemporary iterations of Fate, suffer from an assumption of prior knowledge.
The story barely reiterates the basics before piling more stuff on top, and you only need to forget one small detail – a character’s abilities, allies or enemies, or anything else – for the machine to clog up and viewers to lose interest.
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Can Strange Fake Avoid the Same Fate?
Assumptions being placed on audiences is a big reason why fantasy sequels, in most cases, do worse than the originals. However, when Fate is predominantly a collection of spin-offs loosely placed on a navigable timeline, there’s no need for it to suffer the same fate (there, I said it).
Fate/Zero is another series in the canon with a cold opening similar to Unlimited Blade Works; coincidentally, Zero is also one of Fate’s most-acclaimed series. So, it is possible, but will Fate/strange Fake do it?
Having not read the light novels but being a big Ryohgo Narita fan, I fear Strange Fake will be more Apocrypha than Zero.
Not only is it a slightly more confusing version of Fate in itself, but the initial movie gave a very similar feeling as the recent Fate iterations – lots of style and incantations, but little substance to get your teeth into.
As a Fate fan, though, I really hope I’m wrong, because when it’s done right, Fate is one of the best fantasy franchises in anime history.
If you’ve not managed to get into Fate, try Unlimited Blade Works, and I’m confident you’ll see what I mean.
Are you watching Fate/strange Fake with us? Join the conversation on Twitter @epicstreamanime or contact me directly @WTaylorwrites!
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