A review

"Are you my master?" she asks. Of course, yes. Shirou Emiya is the Master and Summoner of Saber, one of the Heroic Spirits called forth to take part in the battle royale known as The Holy Grail War. The war requires the summoning of seven Heroic Spirits, who are mythological heroes, by seven mages, and the winning team of mage and Heroic Spirit controls the Holy Grail, a device capable of granting any wish.

Concept Score: 6/10 - Decent

"Are you my master?" she asks. Of course, yes. [[Shirou Emiya]] is the Master and Summoner of [[Saber]], one of the [[Heroic Spirits]] called forth to take part in the battle royale known as the [[Holy Grail War]]. The war requires the summoning of seven [[Heroic Spirits]], who are mythological heroes, by seven mages, and the winning team of mage and [[Heroic Spirit]] controls the [[Holy Grail]], a device capable of granting any wish.

Shirou is an unwitting master forced into the war due to circumstances that he at first doesn't understand, but he soon finds his footing due to his most visible personality trait, his desire to be a superhero. He doesn't want to win the war for the sake of winning, he wants to win the war to stop the war. And this isn't some anti-hero should I or should I not use any means to an end philosophical debate either, Shirou is legitimately in it to do good.

And this typifies the exact sort of weakness [[Fate/Stay Night]] suffers from, the walls it purposely construct to obstruct it from achieving its full potential. See, this battle royale, isn't actually a battle royale. After all, why wage war when you can be friends? And Shirou spends a lot of his time making friends rather than fighting. Like-wise, the messy question of what to do with such a world benefiting power such as the Holy Grail is neatly avoided, and the savagery, greed, and brutal human emotions that one would expect to be brought upon such an important contest is nowhere to be found. Instead we have the archetypal anime villains, apathetic, cold, and ultimately robotic, unsympathetic, and unimportant. The resulting product ends up feeling sophomoric (and perhaps it is, this is one of the earliest published stories Nasu wrote, while in highschool), if not, judging by the high standards of [[Tsukihime]], dumbed down.

Of the girls in the game, and this is a [[galgame]], they come in standard fare. None of them are particularly charismatic, and all of them have back stories of varying tragedy. But it is those back stories that give these heroines depth and humanity, and at the height of their storylines, it can be hard even for the coolest detractor to stay unaffected.

Fate/Stay Night also takes us deep into Shirou's superhero complex, displaying it from multiple angles, and eventually helps us come to acceptance with it, that is, until it is forgotten in the third route. But this complex serves as the fodder for some astonishing but believable plot twists, and leads up to majestic scenes. But between moments of Shirou's impressiveness we also see chauvinistic lameness, but we do see moments of impressiveness, and those are what win Fate/Stay Night so many fans.

Execution Score: 8/10 - Very Good

As a story Fate/Stay Night is well told and well paced from the beginning to the end with only a few speed bumps in your engagement. For example, that typical [[Type-moon]] over reliance on mythological exposition. The emotional climaxes that ends each route, happens only once at the end. Is it really too much to ask for more of the good stuff in the middle of the of each story? Throughout large portions of the story, characters are cloaked in mystery, and thus it can be hard to empathize before the very end. And while it's easy to stay engaged because of the action, those who are more character oriented will feel that something is lacking while reading. And perhaps because each route in Fate/Stay Night is longer than each route in Tsukihime, but there are fewer routes and fewer endings. That's probably the wrong direction.

The poorest part, and to me the most disappointing, was the limited use of the visual novel's trifurcated format to tell a story in a way that adds to each other. We know from Tsukihime what visual novels are capable of, but Fate/Stay Night does not reach that standard. While the first and second route complements each other somewhat, the third takes a completely new direction that seems not just arbitrary, but also contradictory from the storylines of the first and second. The different things being revealed in each route feels less like an onion being peeled back than like different balls being thrown at you that you have to juggle. The third arc is especially weak, hurt by a lassitude brought from an overall thematic conclusion that precedes the conclusion of the story itself. As a result, the story as a whole doesn't feel very tight.

But let's end on the good. And that is, in Fate/Stay Night the effectiveness of every scene is high. The action scenes are visceral, the sex scenes are erotic, and the romances are, for the most part, true. And this is due in part to the great implementation of sound and visuals. This isn't a story that deserves to be in every reader's collection, but it does beacon upwards at what the medium can achieve.

Overall Score: 48/100 -> 5 stars out of 10 - Mediocre