Brace yourselves, because this review will be chock full of spoilers of both Fate/Zero Season 1 and 2.

It's not often you get a show so captivating and entertaining as Fate/zero. With its battle royale plot, where 7 masters and servants fight in order to attain the holy grail that can grant any wish. It includes a variety of adrenaline-pumping and fierce fight scenes, as well as it's many remarks to philosophy, history, mythologies and old legends, including f.ex alexander the great from ancient greece (Rider) ,the legend of King Arthur from Great britain (Saber), etc. It’s safe to say that Fate/Zero is a show that pushed both my intellectual and emotional buttons.

Fate/zero has many great things that I value in anime, like f.ex stunning and vivid visuals from Ufotable, entertaining and charming dialogue from the its writer Gen Urobuchi and a slow-paced but exciting and entertaining plot by Type-Moon. If there is one single person who was the reason for me watching this in the first place, then that would be both the infamous and famous writer Gen Urobuchi, who has made a well known name for himself as "butcher" since his shows often contains dark material, like f.ex gore, dystopian and even rape and severed heads, etc.

Overall, I would define Fate/Zero as a shocking tragedy. The biggest tragedy in Fate/zero was the journey of one man's realization that his idealistic worldview was skewed from the beginning and caused more damage than good. The other being one man's repressed and unknown desires that where actualized in a corrupted and evil way at the very last episode, his wishes could’ve been done differently if he had integrated it rather then repressed it for so long. These two men, Kiritsugu Emiya and Kotomine Kirei where made to be rivals. Kirei being a christian mage who is a traditionalist who tries to be a “good man” by executing those that in his eyes perform evil and Kiritsugu, a merciless killer who tires to execute every single mage out there from childhood trauma that lead to utilitarismen. In banal terms, the bad guys won and the good guys lost.

Speaking of Kiritsugu, he was easily my favourite character in this show and the one who I wanted to see win the most. His philosophy of the world is similar to mine, i.e in order to save the whole human race, you have to sacrifice few people. As a viewer, I can admit to many of his actions going too far. As to f.ex killing his own father and his caregiver, Natalia Kaminski. But, I do empathize with him.

Apart from him, Gilgamesh and Iksander where also great characters in the story. Both being servants who were overall had the strongest personalities. Gilgamesh being a arrogant guy who called everyone “morgels” and Iksander being the reincarnation of Alexander the great. What I really liked about this was how these two where legendary kings who tried to integrate with modern society. Seeing f.ex Iksander commenting on books about him and watching war movies was really fun to see. Gilgamesh also appeared in a human form, who gave advice to Kotomine Kirei.

One of my biggest problems with Fate/Zero was the anti-climactic nature of many of its spectacular and enthralling fights. There are surprisingly few fights in this show that leads to a death in this battle royale, but like I stated in my introduction, almost all of the fights here are really cool to watch thanks to the clear and high-budget animation by ufotable. What also bugged me was that almost every single servant was so friendly with each other. F.ex in Episode 11 of Season 1, they have a wine meeting where they talk like they’re close friends, but they had the intentions of wanting to kill each other for a price! The dialogue however thankfully saves a lot of things about Fate/zero, with Rider and Saber f.ex in that episode talking about their experiences with their own kingdoms and their motives for the war, tying again into the glorious philosophical side of this anime.
I can’t also forget the 40-minute long first episode was also too much of an exposition dump, they could’ve spaced out the theory parts a bit more into the later episodes where we got to know the characters a bit more and not introduced almost every single character in the exact same episode. I think this makes the show hard to get into by not really inviting the audience, instead just blasting exposition at you.

Overall, Fate/Zero was a show that pushed both the intellectual and emotional sides of me. It started out slow, but got more entertaining and interesting the longer it went on. The philosophical aspects of the show where its virtue, with its many anti-climactic fight scenes being its vice. Kiritsugu Emiya was my favourite character, and I liked seeing every character and their perspective and what desires they had on winning the holy grail.

VERDICT: 9/10