Fate/Zero

(This review covers both seasons of F/Z)

Fate/Zero was (unfortunately) my and many others' introduction to the behemoth that is the Fate franchise, after the successful but often hated (for good reason) 2006 anime adaption of the original visual novel by studio DEEN (and the somewhat forgotten 2010 UBW movie), Ufotable finally stepped in to save the day and give Fate the adaptation it deserves, and how did they do that? By adapting the prequel light novel Fate/Zero.

Now how is this history lesson relevant? That's because Zero's success and legacy can be largely owed to the timing and circumstances of its time of release, with it being a critical darling, and many people's introduction to the franchise to the point of almost overshadowing the other adaptations and spawning a breed of fans into the already volatile community that can easily erupt into civil war, how does Zero fare as both a standalone work and a prequel to Fate/Stay Night?

As a standalone work it's solid, however as a prequel it falls in line with the usual kind of underwhelming prequel.
Why you may ask? That's what I'm going to try and explain.

Fate/Zero takes place during the fourth holy grail war, where seven masters summon their servants and fight to the death and blah blah blah, you know the drill by now.
The story follows Emiya Kiritsugu, Shirou's adoptive father and idol, as he fights the other masters with his servant to win the grail.
Of course with there being six other main characters and six other servants, and good characters being generally the biggest strength of Nasu Kinoko's works then it's gonna be good right? Well here's the catch, they're not, and it can easily be traced to the fact that it was written by none other than the Urobucher himself instead.
Now my issues with the way Gen Urobuchi writes characters to be simply tools to drive the plot can be forgiven sometimes (like in Madoka Magica), however this simply isn't going to work in Fate, where the characters all had their own personalities, charm and ideals.

And I was correct, so now I will try to summarize each master and servant quickly:

Kayneth and Lancer: the ultimate forgettable duo, their only real purpose is to show how "brewtal" and "horrifying" the war is, but without any reason to care about them that kind of falls flat on its face.

Kariya and Berserker: I actually like Kariya, the problem with him though is that he's the "fallen from grace" archetype that's found in a lot of Urobuchi's works, only it was arguably done better in Madoka Magica, yeah and Berserker's there I guess.

Ryuunosuke and Caster: they cuhrazy, other than that they suffer from a severe lack of anything interesting other than murdering children, because that's a good way to shock the viewers without coming up with something that takes effort.

Tokiomi and Archer: I'm pretty disappointed in the little screentime Tokiomi got even if it was just for fanservice it would've been at least nice, Gilgamesh is slightly more interesting than his Stay Night version where he was more of an obstacle than an actual villain.

Waver and Rider: your typical coming of age story, probably the best original characters in Zero, but again that was done better in other series.

The big boy himself Kirei and Assassin: Assassin was never the best servant in stay night, true Assassin even less so, and this Assassin is no different, Kirei is probably my favourite character in Zero (probably because he's also my favourite in the vn too) and watching him turn into the cruel but intriguing character that we all know and love was fun to watch.

Kiritsugu and Saber: Kiritsugu's character was doomed from the start, knowing that he gives up on his ideals right away from the start of the original, his character arc is left unsatisfying, with it being more of a look at how he became the way he is through some sad backstory, Saber on the other hand was absolutely butchered with her just being a punching bag throughout the entire story and never resembling her original character, like the part when she gets verbally attacked by two egotistical tyrants spewing pseudo-philosophical bs, and she doesn't even try to do anything, Fate route Saber was a strong but flawed person, Zero Saber is spineless, only reduced to talking about honor and chivalry and garbage like that.

Before we get to the end I'd like to state the obvious and say that the production quality is high and it's well made and etc etc, it's Ufotable what do you expect?

Now I don't want to appear as overtly negative or a hater or something like that, I enjoyed Fate/Zero overall and as its own thing it's a good story, however it is not it's own story, it's a prequel to a pre-existing work, and that's its biggest downfall.
The reason for that is that it's simply a less interesting and half-baked version of the third Stay Night route Heaven's Feel, without really grasping what made it good to begin with.

[Very minor Heaven's Feel spoilers for this part]

the themes of betraying ones ideals, and the subversion of the narrative structure and tone of the previous routes made HF stand out in the first place and it being the explosive finale to a great trilogy, it took the characters that we've all grown to love and pushed them to the absolute limit, of course all of this are things that Zero can't do, because of it being a short light novel prequel it can't replicate any of that, so what does it do?

It tries to emulate it only on a surface level and falls into the same trap as most Urobuchi's works, the trap of superficiality, replacing interesting characters with suffering, misery and bloodshed won't improve the story, being more "mature" isn't by making all the characters adults and cranking up all the violence and tragedy so it only "appears" to be more mature, in reality it's just a shallower version of a better story, and that's why it's not different from your typical underwhelming prequel.