Fate/Zero Review

Disclaimer: There will be spoilers

People who know me personally know that I'm Asian and due to cultural stereotypes, I watch anime (Japanese cartoons). Kidding. I watch anime because I fucking love it. Been watching that stuff ever since the glory days of old Toonami and the original Pokemon series. Last year, however, I really diversified in terms of which shows I watch and that has led me to a wide variety of shows. Usually, yes, I'll admit that what usually draws me in is attractive girls. That's kind of what drew me to the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel and eventually the anime after the visual novel really hooked me in.
That leads me to Fate/Zero. The basic plot of the entire series is as follows: there's this thing called the Holy Grail that exists to grant wishes or some random ass bullshit along those lines. Anyway, every couple or so years, it chooses a select few people to basically battle it out so that someone wins it. It's kind of like any reality show with a prize, say Survivor, except people die. Ok, so it's more like law school with a high rate of suicides (bad joke there). Oh yeah, and the people in the fight have these partners called "servants." Ok, so it's kind of like Survivor mixed with Pokemon with a little Harry Potter because of the magical elements.
I'm not going to go too into detail if you haven't played the visual novel so if you're reading this, I'm going to assume you have no idea what the fuck this series is. Actually, if you're new to this whole franchise, Fate/Zero is a pretty good place to start. See, it's actually a prequel to the original visual novel/anime so if you haven't played it, it might familiarize you with the world in which this stuff happens. Then again, there's a lot of stuff from the game that the show kind of spoils so if you're an uptight prude about that kind of thing, well, either play the original game or watch the original anime first.
Fate/Zero's plot revolves around the original Holy Grail War in which there are a bunch of these mage families competing for it (READ: trying to kill each other). Standing out among them is Emiya Kiritsugu, the most cold blooded, badass mother fucker in anime since Golgo 13 was first published back in the 60s. Thanks to some traumatic childhood existence, he wants to win the Holy Grail to basically wipe out all evil, suffering, conflict, etc. in the world. It's a hopeless dream, but he wants to accomplish it and he believes that the Holy Grail will grant him this wish (it doesn't). So in order to get into the contest, he marries this really hot white haired chick and summons an equally hot servant. And then the other characters run the gamut from endearing and memorable (like the duo of Rider and Waver) to absolutely despicable (Caster and Ryuunosuke).
Fate/Zero has really good action that never lets up and the story absolutely hooks you in. If I didn't want to actually preserve/enjoy it, I could have easily watched the entire show in less than 2 days. It's that good. The character development and even the emotion in some parts is real and that's actually pretty hard to come by nowadays in most animated works. Yeah, get off your lazy ass and go watch this one.

4 out of 4 stars.