Illya – Shallow Dives in Anime

The great thing about the original Fate Stay Night is the fact that it has three different routes. Once you have the ability to choose all three, you can pick what story you prefer and ignore the others. Don’t like Saber and Shirou as a couple? Go read or watch Unlimited Blade Works. Think Rin is just a glorified Tsundere and prefer to have your sword waifu? The Fate Route is waiting for you. And if you don’t care for both of them, you can go through door number three, and pick the final route.

This ability to choose the direction the story goes is the hidden strength of the OG Fate visual novel, and adapting each of those routes into their own series has allowed fans to have three separate servings of the characters, stories, and world that they love, and each is different enough to be its own complete entry. However, the anime journey remains incomplete, as the final route’s story has yet to be fully told. We only have a piece of it now, so after cut let’s take a dive into the first installment of Fate Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel. Presage Flower.

Every summer I take it upon myself to watch a long-running series or two of anime and this last year my friend suggested I give a look at the Fate Franchise, as it was something he knew I would enjoy, and after my first series, I decided to watch EVERYTHING involving Fate Stay Night that summer.

He said I was crazy, but I did it anyway.

Fate Stay Night is a mixed series in the views of many. Like any long-running franchise, it has great highs and horrible lows. For every studio Ufotable work, there is the 2006 series or something like Last Encore. That, however, is the fate (heh) of any franchise that has so many different installments, not everyone is going to hit it out of the park.

This series though did, and after the cut, we start Fatevember with the series that I started with: Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works.