Fate/Stay Night: A 20-Year Retrospective

The world of Fate is probably the single most complex franchise in all of multi-media. Originally a visual novel that came out in 2004 from Type-Moon, Fate/Stay Night was adopted into the same reality which includes Tsukihime as well as The Garden Of Sinners all dreamed up by video game writer Kinoko Nasu in a continuity fans call the Nasuverse, even though there is little crossover between the various games. The game had three different paths for the player to follow, each focusing on one of a trio of love interests, the basic first route was labeled Fate. Because of the game’s success, an anime TV series was released in 2006 named after the title it came from. This was only the tip of the iceberg as the two other routes in the game got their own separate anime outings. The second route was covered in an abridged movie and a much lengthier TV series titled Unlimited Blade Works, afterwards the third and darkest route was produced into a trilogy of movies named Heaven’s Feel. There has been some major contempt between fans of the game and the various anime that came from this as to which is better.

The Fate/Stay Night timeline is complicated enough with three branching outcomes, but the addition of the prequel manga Fate/Zero which came out several years after the original story, so no matter what path you follow the prequel acts as a pseudo-prologue which isn’t fully compatible with the story of the game. This has made many fans accept Fate/Zero as the canonical lead-in the whole Fate/Stay Night continuity with Unlimited Blade Works or Heaven’s Feel as the only acceptable way to view anything of the primary video game adaptations. Putting aside that there are dozens of other Fate titles that take place in alternate timelines or parallel universes like Apocrypha, Grand Order, or Strange Fake, all of these are spinoffs or spiritual successors to the primary Stay Night game, making the original Stay Night anime series the main pillar holding up this nearly infinite multiverse.

A quick rundown of the main plot shows our young protagonist Shirou Emiya living in the Japanese mountain town of Fuyuki City who was adopted by his father Kiritsugu after an inferno burned down a large portion of the city a decade prior. What Shirou didn’t know about his departed dad is that he’s the cause of the disaster in a battle between mages called the Holy Grail War who summon heroic and villainous characters to fight on their behalf, sort of like picking your own historical figure to battle in a Pokemon match. The time of the Fifth Holy Grail war is upon them, and Shirou is caught up in the struggle with a servant of his own, a short blonde girl in an armored dress wielding an invisible sword calling herself Saber who protects Shirou from some of the psychopathic mages. One of these seven mages happens to be a girl from school named Rin with a servant of her own whose origins are covered in one of the other routes. Rin allies himself Shirou to gain the Holy Grail which can grant a single wish to the winner and their servant. Saber is revealed to be a gender-swap King Arthur who wants to redo her run on Camelot even though Shirou develops feelings for her. In the end, Shirou has Saber destroy the Grail otherwise it would cause another calamity, and Saber flashes back to near the end of her original life after her fatal clash with Mordred.

There was a retconned epilogue that showed Shirou reuniting with Saber in Avalon far off in the future, although this hasn’t been represented in an anime yet. This has driven many Fate fans to advocate a new retelling of the Stay Night route which incorporates the extra ending and flattening out the inconsistencies that Fate/Zero introduced to the lore. Therefore, a good portion of the fandom normally recommends completely skipping the 2006 series as the production by Studio DEEN didn’t have the more fluid animation that Ufotable included into their productions of the other two routes. The original Stay Night anime does contain certain intricacies and a genuine otaku charm that the other Fate anime lack, even though the primary series could have benefited from having a full 26-episode run that most other Fate titles had.

Some of Fate/Stay Night’s low points are pacing issues which do tend to meander while taking time out to drop expositions about the magical world all this takes place in, plus gives away a little more of the spoilers you would run into in the other Stay Night routes. The animation is also limited to characters giving speeches but their lips flapping offscreen to avoid movement, plus the quality picked up considerably for the fight scenes in later installments. The use of some CGI brought about the most criticism which looked as good as 3D animation was for mid-noughties’ television productions. Obviously when the fandom for the game and the first anime busted out that future anime would be given a bigger budget and higher quality which unfortunately makes the 2006 series nadir on most fans’ wish lists.

The advantages of viewing Stay Night before any other Fate titles or indeed at all are that it is simply the best place to start off in the nearly infinite Fate universes. The initial TV series carries over the style and storytelling that anime was known for after the turn of the century while simultaneously transitioning its urban fantasy setting into a more mature viewpoint. With titles like Death Note, GintamaMushishi, and Code Geass on the rise, Stay Night’s 2006 was the prime time to introduce this game-based anime during an era when visual novels weren’t as big among American otakus. There are plenty of standard cliches that would satisfy the occasional anime fan, but there is true sincerity behind Studio DEEN’s production despite the limited resources they were given. Not every anime studio can afford the unlimited budget works that Ufotable was blessed with.

Fate/Stay Night’s brightest example is the fact that out of all three routes that Fate is the lightest one. There is more slice-of-life comedy here than in the other adaptations which lead to the creation of the Today's Menu For The Emiya Family that has arguably become most every fan’s favorite series out of the entire franchise. There is a closer bond between the main characters and a deeper respect for each other as the shared alliance of surviving mages continues to grow.

A final selling point for the first TV series is that of the romance between Shirou and Saber. Shirou already had a long-established relationship with his friend Sakura as well as finding Rin attractive but became awestruck when he first summoned Saber. They share a deeper understanding of the other as opposed to when Shirou’s father was Saber’s master. Shirou views Saber as an equal and treats her like a genuine person when he refuses to hide her away from his friends and thinks of her as young woman who should be freed from the burden of her former life as the King of Britain so she can take on a new life with him. In the canonical original series finale, Shirou has to say goodbye to Saber after the Holy Grail Wars are over, but as further incarnations of Fate has shown that their shared future is still in flux either as friends or lovers. Hopefully, there will be a reckoning of this relationship as many other anime titles such as Ranma and Sailor Moon have enjoyed success in a remake, so a more fleshed out retelling of Fate/Stay Night is worthy of considering. Please check out the original version either on Blu-Ray from Sentai or on numerous streaming services.

MISC. MANGA, *Omega 6

Takaya Imamura started out as a character designer for Nintendo who worked on Star Fox, F-Zero, and Legend Of Zelda. He eventually left Nintendo and went on to create his own single-volume manga titled Omega 6 that was first printed in French. Following that, Imamura made a video game adaptation of it called Omega 6: The Triangle Stars which is in done in glorious retro-style pulp that brings back memories of Mega Man. The manga itself is a throwback to 80s cartoons and toy-based TV shows which tells a full story in a solo graphic novel.

Onboard the starship Omega 6, a pair of androids named Kyla and Thunder a brought out of suspended animation for their job as part-time bounty hunters looking for the terrorist Petrogaze. The duo get power-ups when they consume something called "magic fruit", the downside to which is that it rapidly ages them, so they have to spend their off time in a rejuvenation chamber. It's revealed later on that both of them contain the memories of a brilliant professor and his wife who left Earth centuries ago after their own world became overcrowded by aliens that colonized the planet, and they've been looking for a planet of their own to repopulate the human race. They happened to meet up with a race of planet-builders who offer them a world of their own in exchange for capturing criminals with a high price on their heads. While on their hunt, Kyla and Thunder learn that Petrograde was really a decoy for a deeper conspiracy.

Omega 6 is a steady readthrough, although there is a major flashback halfway through the book that the story gives no segue into. Takaya Imamura gives this graphic novel a dynamic look to it for both anime and video game fans even if the plot does tend to jump around. It's super-powered cyberpunk space action that will make you nostalgic for Silver Age anime.

ANI-MOVIES, *Onward

Disney's first Pixar release of 2020 came out just at the dawn of the coronavirus, so Onward already had an uphill battle trying to get anyone to dare coming out to the theaters. Monsters University director Dan Scalon headed this project that was an original story he had written with Keith Bunin and Jason Headley which took about three years to complete. The movie unfortunately didn't make any of its money back at first because of the pandemic although it has gone on to gain some accolades after it went to streaming. Onward is a low fantasy tale that mixes family values with a road trip comedy, but with eldritch beings instead of humans into a genre usually referred to as elfpunk.

In a version of our world entirely populated by enchanted creatures, magic was commonplace along with your standard dungeon quests with magic users. Somewhere along the line, this society gave up using sorcery with the rise of technology, so they replaced their magic wands for automatic garage doors. Set in modern day, young Ian Lightfoot is an elf turning sixteen even though he never knew his father who died before he was born. Ian's mother Laurel is currently dating a centaur police officer that is always on the case of his older brother Barley for being a slacker who is more interested in preserving the abandoned ways of magic and is ravenously into RPGs. It turns out Ian's father left a wizard's staff behind for them to bring him back to life for a single day. The staff is powered by a rare gem which is entirely spent conjuring up only their father from the waist on down, so Ian and Barley take a tip from a gaming manual to find a manticore who it claims to have another gem. Turns out the manticore now runs a family restaurant, but the brothers use a map meant for kids to locate the gem. Laurel gets wind of this and sets out to make sure her boys don't use the gem as it might unleash a curse. Along the way, Ian learns he can use magic with the staff which helps when he and Barley come across pixie bikers and other obstacles, only to find that their quest leads right back to the local high school. Barley finds the gem followed by the curse which takes the form of a dragon made of parts of the school building, but Laural manages to help stop it with the manticore's old sword. Unfortunately, the remainder of their father's time is about spent, and Ian is stuck under some debris making Barley the only one who gets to say goodbye to their fully corporeal father before he disappears. Barley relays his father's love to Ian and they help people get interested in magic again.

Onward is up to scratch as far as Pixar movies go, at least that far as not being one of their gratuitous sequels. There doesn't seem to be as much love for this film that most generic Disney fanatics have so for some of their other releases, but having it come out just at the start of pandemic lockdown really put people in a bad mood which affected the movie's overall outcome. The animation and lush backdrops are picturesque, although Pixar didn't appear to put as much effort into this like some of the other visual masterpieces like Up or The Incredibles. The premise for this might have made for a reasonable series on streaming because the standard feature length doesn't do this urban fantasy world enough justice.

ANI-MOVIES: The Mouse And His Child

The Mouse And His Child was the first full-length animated movie put out by Sanrio along with what would eventually become Fred Wolf Films who animated the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Based on the book by Russell Hobson which is a children's story that contains some mature narratives and symbolism, Fred Wolf and Charles Swenson who created Mike, Lu And Og both directed this 1977 theatrically released adaptation. The movie meanders in its own minutiae which makes it incredibly tedious to sit through, while in contrast the film is visually pleasing. This was probably one of those films you caught on cable TV in the 80s on a lazy weekend afternoon and vaguely have a hazy memory of. It was the second film for Fred Wolf Films after the adult animated feature Down And Dirty Duck, so The Mouse And His Child was a major contrast from their prior production, similar to if like Ralph Bakshi did a Saturday Morning cartoon after finishing up Fritz The Cat. Despite the fact that the film had decent enough advertisement behind it, after its theatrical release it got folded into the highest level of obscurity with only a VHS release in America with little fanfare. This isn't really a lost treasure but more of an important footnote in animated film history that was forgotten mostly because it gets caught in its own pointless philosophy.

A toy of a father mouse and his child dancing when they're wound up begin life in a toy store but are thrown into the garbage when they fall off a shelf. The mice come across a rat named Manny who runs a small rat empire with enslaves other abandoned toys to do the hard labor, but the mice manage to get help from a prophetic frog who helps them on their journey to be free of needing to be wound up in order to move. The mice's quest for self-autonomy leads them to a wise peg-legged muskrat who rebuilds them and independent of being wind-ups. The closing part of the movie has the father and son mouse freeing the other toys enslaved by the rats, and for some reason the papa mouse marrying an elephant toy at the end which no one seems to question as its one of the first cross-species weddings in an animated movie.

The Mouse And His Child does contain a reasonable quality of animation put into it, however the theoretical questions it insists on dumping into the laps of young viewers makes it a chore to sit through. The musical score is equally grating with the opening and closing theme being sung off-key by the voice of the child mouse. The only real mark for this might be its English dub cast with Sir Peter Ustinov voicing the snidely rat Manny, along with other talents like Sally Kellerman and Cloris Leachman, plus fans of Wizards will recognize Bob Holt as the savant muskrat. You might be able to track down an old video cassette copy of this if you're a compulsive collector of vintage cartoons, however the film has little staying power to make it significant.

ANI-MOVIES, *Elio

Elio was Pixar's attempt at doing an original movie since Elemental, even though on its own that borrowed heavily from their parent company's film Zootopia. This movie could however be seen as a backwards version of Disney's Lilo And Stitch to which they conveniently remade into a live-action movie that came out the same summer. The one thing I noticed from most reviews of Elio was the vacancy of any comparisons to The Last Starfighter because it borrows a metric ton from the classic 80s sci-fi flick. The concept for the movie was dreamed up by director Adrian Molina when he was CalArts which is plainly obvious as a majority of character designs look like they were out of the cookie cutter "CalArts Style" that much of the older animation fans claim to be tired of, even though you could compare them to previous shows like Steven Universe. Molina directed this along with fellow CalArts graduate Madeline Sharafian plus Domee Shi with the screenplay written by Pixar regulars such as Mike Jones. However, all this talent didn't stop Elio from being Pixar's biggest dud losing out big time to K-Pop Demon Hunters which didn't even get a theatrical premiere and went straight to streaming. The family film is on its own a reasonably decent production, but Pixar's higher-ups had watered down Adrian Molina's original prospect partially due to his vision of the title character being queer-coded. If this is another situation similar to when Disney cancelled The Owl House because it was upsetting conservative parents because of its LGBTQ nature hasn't been fully confirmed, but Pixar's unwillingness to invest in the creator's original vision adds to Elio lackluster outcome. It is visually eye-catching with Pixar's new use of lenses and lighting help sell the interstellar benevolence you might be looking for in a movie with friendly and not-so friendly aliens.

Elio has dead parents like most Disney kids, so he's now living with his Aunt Olga who is a major at an Air Force base specializing in tracking down orbital space trash. Elio is obsessed with aliens and overhears a meeting Olga has about a signal which one of the crew claims is an alien response to the first Voyager space probe which causes Elio to respond to the signal causing the entire base to lose power. Olga sends Elio to a military camp where he gets taken by a collected organization of aliens called the Communiverse who believe he is the leader of Earth and send a clone of him to take his place on Earth. Elio wants to become part of the Communiverse, but they can't except any new members after the last one they rejected declares war on them. Grigon is the warlike leader of a race of huge caterpillars who stomp around in mecha suits modeled after giant crabs, and Elio tries to establish peace between them and the Communiverse, but fails to do so and becomes a prisoner. Grigon's son Glordon meets Elio and escapes with him to the Communiverse that hold Glordon as a bargaining chip to establish peace of which Grigon agrees to, but after having a fun time touring around all the sights the Communiverse has to offer, Glordon admits he doesn't want to go back to become bonded to his own mecha suit. Elio makes up a clone of Glordon to takes his place, but Grigon is not fooled and takes over the Communiverse which reveals Elio's deception, and they send him back to Earth. Glordon accidently uses Elio's star craft to go to Earth which is secured by the Air Force base, so Elio, his clone, and Olga rescue Glordon after taking back the spaceship. Once back at the Communiverse, Elio is able to work out a peace treaty and gives up his shot as an ambassador to live on Earth with his aunt, even though he still keeps in contact with Glordon via ham radio.

Elio wasn't seen as being a failed production because of the quality Pixar put into its visual aesthetics, but instead to how few people actually went to go see the film in theaters. Disney didn't have as much confidence in this as they had for their Lilo And Stitch retread, so they didn't put any genuine advertising into it, least of all any merchandise. The premise of a boy wanting to be abducted by aliens isn't all that original, even though Pixar managed to add their own touches to make it gratifying. This wasn't Pixar's hugest departure from their former glory, however Elio suffers from poor management and a blitzed ad campaign.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Fox And The Hound

The Fox And The Hound was Disney's 24th full-length animated theatrical release based on the book by Daniel P. Mannix which has a radically different ending from the one adapted for the movie. This was Disney's first movie in the 80s and its biggest challenge was the transition of a new generation of animators, one of which was Don Bluth who along with others all left halfway through the film's production to go off on their own and animate The Secret Of Nimh. Other new animators that worked on this as their first major production were Tim Burton, Brad Bird, John Lassiter, and Henry Selick, so this was the launching pad for many of the studio's future alumni. The movie was the highest grossing animated title of the year which helped as it was the most expensive film of its kind at the time. This success helped bring about a direct-to-video midquel 25 years later, although the original was considered the last of Disney's classic animated movies before the company's renaissance which had the unfortunate side-effect of condemning The Black Cauldron into the realm of obscurity.

An abandoned baby fox gets adopted by the old widow Tweed that she names Tod and he becomes friends with her neighbor Amos' new pup Copper under the tutelage of the older hunting dog Chief. Tod and Copper have fun together during the fall, but Amos takes Copper on a long winter training journey. Once springtime comes around, Tod has grown up and tries to rekindle his friendship with Copper who is now a better hunting hound, but when Chief gets hurt chasing Tod away, Copper threatens to get back at him. Tweed takes Tod out into a game preserve to ensure his safety, even though that doesn't stop Amos and Copper to hunt down Tod along with his new fox friend Vixey. An encounter with a ravenous bear causes Tod to rescue Copper with the faithful hound protecting him from the trigger-happy Amos, and the old friends part ways.

The Fox And The Hound had mixed reviews when it first came out but still did well as it was the only American animated film that was released that year intended for children. This was the final film that Disney's two remaining Nine Old Men who were the studios main animators when they first opened in the 1920s. The casting for this was masterful with Corey Feldman and Kurt Russel voicing both the young and older Copper, Mickey Rooney as the older Tod, Sandy Duncan as the pleasant Vixey, Pearl Bailey as a helpful owl, Pat Burttram as the ornery Chief, and veteran cartoon voice actor Paul Winchell playing a featherbrained woodpecker. Again, the original source material was supremely edited down for its animation adaptation whose finale makes the one for The Little Mermaid look tame, but Disney did manage to pull off a good enough production. The film does suffer from serious pacing issues and filler sequences that padded out the runtime, but it is ultimately an enjoyable watch for the whole family.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

For being the first animated Star Wars movie as well as the only one not released through Fox, The Clone Wars received a theatrical premiere at the dead end of summer 2008 which didn't help its box office numbers. Meant to bridge the gap between Episode II and III of the prequel trilogy, this was first covered in an excellent 2D micro-series on Cartoon Network directed by Genndy Tartakovsky of Samurai Jack fame, but three years after that trilogy ended a new Clone Wars series was made also by Cartoon Network, this time entirely animated in 3D. The drawback to this is that the micro-series was not considered canon which really sucked if you had come to adore the unstoppable Captain Fordo, although this didn't become totally non-canon until Disney took over the entire franchise. The 3D series ran for 7 seasons first on Cartoon Network, briefly on Netflix, and then concluding on Disney+. The 98-minute-long movie was obliviously intended to be a prolonged pilot episode, but some corporate bigwig thought they could sell more Happy Meals if it was shown in cinemas months before the ongoing TV series. Directed by future Star Wars pioneer David Filoni, The Clone Wars movie was intended to act as a self-contained arc that would be the opening for the weekly network cartoon, so the production quality was not up to theatrical standards which was noticed by most viewers. If this had been released a decade later, then the movie would have gotten enough exposure on the various Disney networks, but because they had to get greedy with it, the license holders had the biggest Star Wars theatrical bomb instead, or at least until the sequel trilogy came out.

Set sometime after Attack Of The Clones, the titular Clone Wars are fully underway with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker leading the Republic army against the Separatist forces throughout the Outer Rim of the galaxy. Anakin is surprisingly presented with his own student, Ahsoka Tano, an enthusiastic teenager ready to prove herself as a Jedi in training as the two of them have to rescue Jabba the Hutt's kidnapped son. This is all a scheme by Count Dooku and his apprentice Asajj Ventress to have the Hutt clans support the Separatists instead of the Republic. The film goes from one action scene to another leaving little room for character development, so the film is simply one big toy commercial and not in the somewhat entertaining way it was done in the 80s with Transformers and He-Man.

The Clone Wars is a sad excuse for a Star Wars movie. Where some fans had problems with the Solo motion picture, at least it was a solid effort at a full-length feature. This animated outlet should have remained on television as it was first intended. One of the only positive aspects is the debut of Asoka who fortunately became a much more likeable character throughout the TV series, plus Christopher Lee returns to voice Dooku making it his last Star Wars appearance. It also has some of the most cliche dialogue you'll ever hear. It is entirely possible to skip this film and just go straight into The Clone Wars series unless you are an obsessed Star Wars completionist.