(A short while ago
I did a first impressions at
JACT, an anime club at Florida State University, and we watched some of "Fate/Zero"; last weekend we watched a little more and this is my thoughts on that...)
"
Fate/Zero" is by no means the MOST baffling of anime I have ever seen but it have so many
problems layered on top of one another the thing starts to break down just
halfway through the cold opener of the pilot and does not build up steam enough
to escape the event horizon of my apathy.
I will
however complain about lots of stuff that I identified as issues in the first 3
episodes, the maximum amount of time I was given to let this thing impress
me. It failed, it is dead to me, and
here is the autopsy.
1) The
loads and loads of cryptic info dumps.
This is an egregious problem with genre shows and if I had to point to
an example of what to follow, "Witch Hunter Robin". In the first episode a fish out of water main
character is drafted into a secret society of magic users that police
witches. They have cool weapons (that we
see in use) each of the main protagonists interact to show off in efficient
ways their personalities in regards to one another, nothing is too term heavy,
and visual depictions of things move the story forward.
In
"Fate/Zero" long conversations referring to any number of cryptic
terminology and arcane political minutia make it impossible to follow in medias
res. What is more, the nature of the
show makes it impossible to see the principle characters interact with one
another in any substantive way. There is
no main character to whom things are explained and demonstrated, there is no
haunting nursery rhyme to allude to the various mystical elements that come
later, and there is very little clean displays of rules in action. Everything has to be explained, explained
again, and explained again, never getting clearer.
2) Good
God, the cast is gigantic. This would
actually be less of an issue if each cast member was as physically and emotionally
distinct as they could be, but if you were to stand 4 out of the 7 wizards next
to one another I couldn't tell you which was which. There are 7 wizards competing in the show for
the Grail, they in turn have 7 very distorted historical figures to work with,
they also have at least one supporting cast member though sometimes 3 or more,
that means there are upwards of 30 characters introduced in the first 3
episodes. "Game of Thrones"
wasn't so intense with introductions.
Compare
this to a show like "Bleach" or "Naruto" in which the first
3 episodes have maybe 6-8 characters in total focused primarily on the main
character and his supporting cast. Those
worlds even had mythologies that were a lot more original and used a vocabulary
that was clear, and lended itself toward explanation rather than being cryptic
or trying to sound epic, even now that both those shows have dozens of
characters, each character has visual personality and their introductions were
paced out to allow each time to plant themselves in the minds of the audience. "Fate/Zero" jumps into the deep end
of its own story, as if you were starting 30 episodes into a normal series.
3) "Fate/Zero"
is studded with "MEANING".
Studded is a derogatory term I use for stories which have imagery from
myths and history, but those things do not in anyway add to the story, what
those things serve to do is add a layer of fake legitimacy to the work. "Fate/Zero" throws around terms
like Grail, and names like
Bluebeard or
C'thulhu without giving any of those
terms the respect they disserve.
For
instance, an objective is to summon the spirit(?) or manifestation of a famous
historical sword fighter to serve as a servant in an upcoming grand battle,
like Pokemon but with Historical figures.
They ask for and get King Arthur, who was apparently a woman the whole
time. Why they chose to do this I have
no idea, if they wanted a prominent female warrior to serve in this battle
there is no reason to alter the gender of an established figure, instead just get
Joan of Arc or
Boudica. Instead they
throw out Arthur cause... Reasons?
4) Who are
these people?
Alexander the Great of Macedon is a character in this series, and takes on the visage of an 8 foot
tall red haired behemoth riding a chariot, several things wrong with that, as
Alexander was Macedonian, and thus was ethnically Serb/Slav/Greek, not a lot of
groups known for their red hair. Then you
have Gilgamesh portrayed as a blonde Adonis, even though he was Sumerian and is
shown standing in front of pictures of tan skinned and dark haired Sumerians,
highlighting the shows lack of research on the people they are presenting. All of it is like this.
You might
say in rebuttal, "it is a cartoon, who cares if they have Arthur as a
woman or if they have a blonde middle easterner?" I care. It goes back to the idea of this thing being
studded with meaning, these names and titles, totems and symbols are all
supposed to make us think something profound or interesting is happening... It
isn't, it is a trick. They are using
these characters to trick your brain into thinking there is something important
going on, when really it is just a very generic anime action series plot, with
slow pacing and stilted dialogue.
 |
| Gilgamesh portrayed as a Sumerian. |
 |
| Gilgamesh as presented by "Fate/Zero", and probably how Neo-Nazis like to think of him. |
What is
more, I can explain what is going on faster than the show can. There is a
society of mages, divided by class
and breeding. The noble houses of this
society
gather every so many years to compete for
the Grail, a powerful item
which will bestow one wish to the victor.
These mystics
fight with the souls of legendary beings,
generals,
kings,
soldiers, and rogues (though I still find it stupid to have "caster"
be a summon able thing by a wizard, it would be like having "human"
as you
power animal/spirit guide). Each
competitor is chosen at random and each has their own goals, supporting casts,
knowledge base, and tactics. Hell, I
wrote a poem:
Seven will come so fast
to dance the dance of death
From Heaven descend breath
Of life of legends past
Wishes from Chalice lips drips
to quench the breadth of thirst
For power, chaos, conquest
Marks call souls to unrest
But there
is no clever presentation, the characters all look alike and sound alike, they
all have the same jargon heavy dialogue, the few who stand apart do so mostly
because of the "historical" figures they conjure. The pacing of this show is a disaster,
information should be woven into the narrative, not read to the audience like
encyclopedia entries.
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