How to Watch the Fate Series: A Guide to Navigating the Rocky Waters of Adaptation

The Fate series is no longer an underground property. Notwithstanding starting life in 2003 as a sexual visual novel under the title Fate/Stay Night, the fascinating idea driving TYPE-MOON’s reality and characters has gone on to inform innumerable spin-offs, transformations, and spinoffs. The versatile game Fate/Grand Order, specifically, has brought about a resurgence of interest in the series, with its English form routinely hitting the top of application store diagrams and boasting record income.

However, the Fate series is additionally burdened with an appalling standing: its absence of availability. Well-known talk surrounding the establishment often underscores what number various parts it has, close by its tangled legend: what the damnation does ‘stay night’ mean, in any case? Subsequently, knowing where to begin and in what order to watch the Fate anime can be hard to sort out.

This aide offers three orders in which to watch the different Fate anime, yet doesn’t profess to be anything near objective. Instead, it proposes three unique manners by which to see the series, each because of the series’ creation and accessibility conditions. It additionally addresses three distinct kinds of Fate fans, both new and old.

Table of Contents

Fate series visual

The Problem With the Fate Series in Anime

The large issue with consuming the Fate series is that the original visual novel, Fate/Stay Night, isn’t accessible legitimately in the West.

Given the series’ exponential development lately, the way that no one has gotten the permit is mind-boggling. Lesser series get delivered constantly. Lamentably, we don’t know the full conditions (absence of a distributor or absence of a stage?) however you can find different unofficial patches on the series’ helpful subreddit.

What’s particularly disastrous about this is that the entirety of Fate/Stay Night’s resulting transformations have been lacking in one manner or another. Generally, in these conditions, it’s simpler to just suggest reading the source material prior to diving into any variations, yet we don’t have that advantage with regard to the Fate series. Instead, we are stuck navigating the rough waters of variation.

In case you’re totally new to the Fate series, here’s a short clarification: In Fuyuki City, seven Masters, and seven Servants fight it out to get their hands on the Holy Grail: an otherworldly antique said to give the winner’s one wish. Those Servants, coincidentally, are figures from genuine history and folklore, meaning that this is a kind of history buff’s fight royale.

Sound great? You’re in for a treat.

Highway 1: The Purist

Fate/stay night (2006)

Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (2014) and second Season (2015)

Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] I. foretell bloom (2017), II. lost butterfly (2019), III. Spring Melody (2020)

Fate/Zero (2011) and Second Season (2012)

For perfectionists like me, the Fate series must be capable thusly. Why? Not only is it generally chronological but it addition reflects how the story was originally composed; significant while considering the three-sided nature of the account.

Like most visual novels, Fate/Stay Night is made out of three unique ‘courses’: the Fate course, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel. Likewise, like most visual novels, these three courses are centered around three diverse female characters: Fate on Saber, Unlimited Blade Works on Rin, and Heaven’s Feel on Sakura.

Studio DEEN’s 2006 transformation of the visual novel of a similar name is the lone series on this list that really endeavors to adjust the Fate course. All things considered, it doesn’t do only this: it likewise incorporates a few components from both Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel, meaning that things are jumbled somewhat. Taken close by its dated visuals, it winds up shaking out as both a defective variation of the main curve and an ideal method to get ruined on what happens later.

This is a disgrace as, in the event that you walk straight into Studio Ufotable’s 2014 and 2015 variations of Unlimited Blade Works, you’ll apparently pass up the investigation and improvement of one of the series’ most notable characters. There is a motivation behind why Saber has shown up in basically each and every ensuing emphasis of the Fate series, leading to the term ‘Saberface’: she’s extraordinary, and the fans and the makers know it. Given that Unlimited Blade Works centers around Rin, you will not find Saber’s advancement here.

I would contend that Unlimited Blade Works is the series’ best course as far as the two thoughts and execution, but at the same time, it’s one that works much better coupled with the three others. This brings me to the subsequent part: every last one of Fate/Stay Night’s three main courses springboards off one another, with Fate being the ‘introductory’ story and Unlimited Blade Works being the ‘rear’ of that. Paradise’s Feel is then a whole inversion of that design, meaning that it is most likely the most exceedingly terrible spot to begin.

Without a skilled Fate course transformation, the Fate series doesn’t exactly work the same way in anime. Subsequently, this aide began with the issues contained therein. With regards to why Fate/Zero is put toward the end, the following segment will explain.

Fate series visual